Thoughts on Israel’s war against the Palestinian people and its possible regional and global consequences
By Michael Pröbsting, Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT), 11 October 2023, www.thecommunists.net
Contents
Introductory Note
Israel: a settler state in crisis
Zionists plan a new Nakba
Transformation into a regional war?
Will Netanyahu and the U.S. “change the Middle East”?
Could the Gaza Uprising trigger a new revolutionary wave?
Marxism, Hamas and the defeat of Israel
The Gaza Uprising and the Left
Revolutionary tactics
Introductory Note: In the following document we will elaborate some thoughts on the Palestinian uprising in Gaza and its possible consequences for the world situation. Of course, we are fully ware that such theses have necessarily a very provisional, incomplete and speculative character given the very early stage and the unprecedented and extraordinary spectacular nature of this uprising. Hence, it is possible, indeed likely, that the RCIT will further develop or correct this or that hypothesis in the course of future developments in the coming weeks and months. However, the importance of this uprising obliges Marxists to think about the possible future developments and its consequences for strategy and tactics in the struggle of the workers and the oppressed.
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1. The Gaza Uprising is another turning point in the world situation of no less significance than Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine in February 2022. True, it does not directly involve a Great Power (like Russia) since Israel is rather a junior imperialist state. However, it indirectly involves Great Powers as can be seen in hectic international diplomatic activities as well as by the Pentagon’s decision to send the USS Ford Carrier Strike Group to the Eastern Mediterranean. Furthermore, this is very likely to become a long war with profound political and economic consequences for the whole Middle East region as well as globally. It can provoke a new wave of workers and popular struggles in the region and beyond and it can result in decisive ruptures of relations between states. For all these reasons we consider the Gaza Uprising as a historic event.
Israel: a settler state in crisis
2. Already in our first statement, we drew attention to the unprecedented and extraordinary character of this uprising. The bold and decisive strikes which Hamas dealt against the Zionist enemy have shocked and humiliated Israel. Positions of the so-called fourth-strongest army were overrun by “guerillas with Kalashnikovs” – as one bourgeois commentator noted. They occupied Israeli military bases, settler camps and infiltrated cities like Sderot and Ashkelon. And the much-praised “Iron Dome” system proofed impotent against the rockets from Gaza. This operation allowed the resistance forces to destroy a number of Israeli tanks and military equipment and to take more than 100 Israelis – soldiers and civilians – as prisoners (in order to exchange them later for thousands of Palestinian prisoners). As a result, Israels prestige in the Middle East has clearly suffered a huge blow. This will both embolden the masses and, at the same time, make the Arab rulers doubtful about the benefits of normalisation with the Zionist state.
3. The Netanyahu government will certainly try to utilise the war in order to achieve several aims. It wants to annihilate the Palestinian resistance and to provoke a new Nakba, it hopes to strengthen its domestic position and its tries to force the U.S. to actively intervene on its side in an attempt to “change the Middle East”. Let us briefly explain. It is well known that the extreme right-wing government of Netanyahu and his ultra-Zionist madmen desires to “solve the Palestinian question” by provoking a new Nakba. The dramatic escalation of the settler violence against Palestinians, the increasing number of murderous incursion of the Israeli army in Jenin, Nablus and other cities in the West Bank, the repeated storming and desegregation of the Al Aqsa Mosque – the third holiest site in Islam – all this reflects a Zionist strategy aimed at the annihilation of the Palestinian people. One always has to bear in mind that Israel is a small settler state hated by the native population and living in a hostile environment of Arab and Muslim neighbouring countries. As we are living in a historic period of crises, catastrophes and wars, marked by global instability, accelerated Great Power rivalry and revolutionary uprisings, the position of such a settler state is becoming more and more fragile. This is even more the case since the traditional backer of Israel – U.S. imperialism – experienced a decline as the sole hegemonic power while new Great Powers (China and Russia) have risen. The astounding domestic crisis, where the Netanyahu government faced weekly mass protests since January 2023 by the liberal Zionist opposition, is an expression of such a crisis of the Israeli state. The Gaza Uprising has worsened this development which is an existential crisis not only of the government but also of the settler state as such.
Zionists plan a new Nakba
4. This means that the Israeli state will try, indeed must try, to “solve the Gaza problem” once and for all. If it does not succeed in this, it might open the period of death agony of the Zionist state. Hence, the objective logic of the events pushes Israel to try to kill as many resistance fighters as possible, to destroy as much as possible and to expel hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. This is the meaning of Netanyahu’s proclamation to transform the Gaza strip into a “deserted island” and this is the rationale behind the statement of Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Hecht, chief spokesperson of the Israeli military, that the Palestinians fleeing its air strikes in the Gaza Strip should head to Egypt. However, it is difficult to imagine that Israel could succeed in this without invading and conquering the enclave in an extremely bloody urban warfare. And after this, it would have to keep the stripe occupied for an extended period of time. Needless to say, that such an endeavour is extremely risky for Israel and will almost certainly provoke mass unrest in the Arab and Muslim world and bury Israel’s project to reconcile with the Arab states (the so-called “normalization”).
5. In short, Netanyahu hopes to “solve” the Gaza question by an annihilation program and, by this, also to save his crisis-riddled government. However, as our comrades of the ISL in Occupied Palestine have repeatedly pointed out, the crisis of the Israeli government is not merely caused by Netanyahu’s problems with the judiciary but reflects a fundamental crisis of the Israeli society and its internal ethnic, social and religious divisions. The extreme right-wing settler movement and the religious Zionist sector behind it do not only want to expel the Palestinians. They also want to get rid of the liberal Jews in Israel. As Lily Galili, an Israeli journalist, recently pointed out, these Zionist zealots have “a new target: Tel Aviv” (which is mostly populated by liberal Jews). These forces will certainly try to utilize the war in order to strengthen their position. It can not be excluded that they might succeed for a certain period – albeit this is far from certain. In the long run, however, these divisions between different groups of Israeli Jews will only exacerbate.
6. Could the Zionist state succeed in enforcing a new Nakba by expelling hundreds of thousands or millions from Gaza and the West Bank? One can not exclude such a terrible scenario. However, even such a development could not result in a stabilization of the Middle East since the fundamental factors of the global and regional instability – the Global Depression of the capitalist world economy, the accelerating Great Power rivalry, the explosive domestic tensions filled with popular anger against the rulers – remain in place. This is the decisive difference to the situation after the Nakba in 1948 and the creation of the Israeli state. At that time, the world entered a period of long economic boom and relative stability. Today it is the other way round.
7. Many commentators compared this uprising with the surprise attack of the Egyptian army in the October War in 1973. While there exists an element of truth in this analogy, this counter-offensive of the Palestinians is much more shocking for Israel since it a rebellion of a ghetto population against a state which is already in a historic crisis with a deeply divided society. This brings us to another important issue to observe: what will be the effects of the Gaza Uprising on the moral of Israeli society in general and the army in particular? Clearly, the Netanyahu government tries to mobilise a wave of war-mongering and chauvinism. However, it is unlikely that such a militarist mobilisation could remove the fundamental causes which have weakened and divided the Israeli society in the past years. Furthermore, one must not forget that the Israeli society has escaped the spread of decadence and demoralization which has characterised the whole Western world in the past decades. How many Israeli soldiers are prepared to sacrifice their lives for their motherland?! They are “patriotic heroes” when they sit behind a video screen far away where they can direct some drones or missiles. But let us see how courageous they will be when they enter Gaza City! Compare this to the heroic Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank! In general, Israel’s army has suffered a similar development like the U.S. army: they are very good in bombing and all kind of hi-tech warfare but not so good when it comes to long-lasting ground battles where the morale of its soldiers counts. Remember how Israel’s army was routed by Hezbollah in the Lebanon War in summer 2006 and how cautious it has been in invading Gaza in the past four wars! In short, it will be an important issue to observe how strong the morale of the Israeli society will be in the course of the current war.
Transformation into a regional war?
8. One of the most important questions is if other forces like Hezbollah in Lebanon of pro-Iranian militias in Syria and Iraq will join the struggle and therefore transform the Gaza War into a regional war? It is evident that such a transformation would bring Israel to the limits of its military capacities. Already now, the Israeli army is stretched. As an Israeli combat veterans’ group pointed out, the army wasn’t ready to protect its civilians on the Gaza border because they were preoccupied with guarding Israeli settlements in the West Bank. This is why the U.S. sent its Carrier Strike Group to the Eastern Mediterranean and it is a realistic possibility that it would directly intervene in the war in such a case. This in turn would have explosive consequences for the whole region and indeed globally. In the past years, Washington always wanted to focus on the Pacific region in order to keep its main rival – Chinese imperialism – in check. After Russia invaded the Ukraine, it had to redirect its resources. And if there opens now a third front in the Middle East, this will bring even the mighty capacities of the Pentagon to its limits!
9. At the moment it seems that the leadership of Hezbollah is not enthusiastic about joining the war. Shamefully, its resources have been massively strained by its reactionary intervention in Syria on the side of the Assad tyranny against the revolutionary uprising of the people. However, it is certainly coming under enormous pressure both from its own supporter base as well as from Israel. Hamas has called others to join this decisive battle. There is a strong pressure from the “Arab street” not to let the Palestinians alone and this will only increase if the Israeli army invades Gaza. In the end, opposition to the Zionist state and solidarity with the Palestinian people has been the hallmark on which Hezbollah has built its prestige over the decades. Its reputation has been already harmed by its reactionary support for Assad. If it fails to act now, its prestige will be further undermined. For this reason, Hezbollah allows Palestinian factions under its protection to send rockets to Israel and its fighters are engaging in some small-scale warfare against Israel with some mortar shelling and attacking Israeli positions. The resulting escalation with Israel killing Hezbollah militants could easily escalate soon and result in the opening of the new front.
Will Netanyahu and the U.S. “change the Middle East”?
10. Netanyahu has said he wants to “change the Middle East”. In addition to “solving the Palestine problem”, he hopes to win such a decisive victory and to weaken Iran and its allies so much that this would “force” Saudi Arabia and other Arab states to “normalise” relations with Israel and to join an alliance with Tel Aviv in the leading position. First, one has to say that Israel is much too small and weak to “change the Middle East”. This could be only done with the help of U.S. imperialism. Obviously, Netanyahu knows this, and it seems to us that he has the plan to drag the U.S. into the war in order to achieve such a goal. The White House itself certainly did not have such a goal since it wants to focus on China and Russia. In fact, the White House has been completely surprised by the new Gaza war. Just weeks ago, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan declared that the region “is quieter today than it has been in two decades.” (A remarkable statement for history books!) However, with the Presidential election ahead, Biden can not afford to look as weak in supporting its close ally, even more so as the Republicans will mercilessly utilise every failure of the Administration for their own electoral campaign.
11. Such an intervention of the U.S. in the Middle East would force the White House to rethink its priorities. It can not have a strong presence in the Pacific, in Eastern Europe and in the Middle East at the same time. This would be beyond its military capacities. Washington can not and will not deprioritise its most important strategic task – to keep China in check. Hence, if the U.S. is forced to send ammunition, weapons and military forces to the Middle East, it is most likely that it will reduce its support for the Ukraine (which is unpopular among the Trumpian Republicans anyway). This could accelerate the already existing sentiment among the political elite in Washington to push for a pacification of the Ukraine War and to enforce negotiations which would result substantial concessions to Putin. Such a development, as we did point out in RCIT documents on the Ukraine War, would underscore how disastrous it has been for the Ukraine that the Zelensky government strongly relied on Western financial and military support in its just war of national defence against Russian imperialism.
12. Could Israel, with the help of the U.S., “change the Middle East”? This seems very unlikely to us. The main reason for this is the political and economic decline of the U.S. and the rise of China and Russia. Saudi Arabia’s oil policy (in close coordination with Moscow) against Washington’s interests, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates joining BRICS, Egypt’s delivery of weapons to Russia, the UAE’s role in circumventing Western sanctions against Russia – all this demonstrates the U.S. does no longer dominate the Middle East. And Washington can not change these political and economic fundamentals by sending a single Carrier Strike Group. They would have to send a much larger forces which, in such a case, would massively weaken America’s military presence on other fronts. Neither Israel nor the U.S. are any longer in such a dominant position as they were some decades ago. Hal Brands, a well-known Bloomberg columnist, recognized this changed relation of forces in a recently published article. “Yet the war in the Levant is also part of a broader, intensifying crisis of global security.” He pessimistically concludes that “the Pax Americana of the post-Cold War period is over. For a generation after 1991, the world saw historically low levels of geopolitical and ideological competition, mostly because Washington and its allies had such decisive advantages. That’s changing as revisionist actors — principally China, Russia and Iran — try to throw back American power and create their own spheres of influence. The resurgence of autocratic great powers, in turn, is intensifying pressures on global democracy. We’re back to world politics as usual — and world politics is usually an ugly, violent affair.”
Could the Gaza Uprising trigger a new revolutionary wave?
13. The most likely scenarios of the war are the following. If Israel – despite its declaration of war and full mobilization of all military forces – fails to decisively defeat Hamas, this would be paramount to a historic victory of the Palestinian resistance. It would immediately embolden the Arab masses and provoke a new wave of revolutionary uprisings. Furthermore, such a victory would deepen the domestic crisis of Israel and could open its period of death agony. Likewise, such a development would deal a decisive blow to the “normalization” process. Finally, it would decisively weaken the position of the U.S. in the Middle East and strengthen its Eastern imperialist rivals. In the case of an Israeli victory, Tel Aviv and Washington would have bought some time. But no more, because all fundamental political and economic factors, the acceleration of the contradictions between the classes point to increasing instability and class struggle. Such a kind of Israeli victory would be comparable to America’s victories in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001 and 2003 – “victories” which soon resulted in new armed rebellions and guerilla struggles and, ultimately, defeat.
14. However, we also might see already soon a wave of pro-Palestinian mass mobilisations around the world and, most importantly, in the Middle East. Hamas has called for protests across the Arab world in support of the Palestinians. Khaled Meshaal, the leader of Hamas’s diaspora office, issued a statement in which he said: “[We must] head to the squares and streets of the Arab and Islamic world on Friday, the Friday of Al Aqsa Flood.” The longer Israel merciless bombards the Palestinian people in Gaza, the longer Hamas and other factions manage to withstand against the Israeli aggression, the longer the Arab and Muslim governments remain passive, the stronger will the popular anger become which could explode sooner or later. Hamas is giving an example of determined struggle against the oppressor. This example will make Abbas and all the servile Arab leaders even more clearly look as what they are – coward lackeys of imperialism. In other words, a blow against Israel is also a blow against those Arab leaders which have built political and economic relations with Israel. Such a blow might provoke a new wave of mass struggles in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, some Gulf states and other countries.
Marxism, Hamas and the defeat of Israel
15. What do Marxists say about the tactics of Hamas in the Palestinian liberation struggle? As we have always emphasised, the RCIT – as a revolutionary communist organisation – fights for a very different program than Hamas which is a (petty-)bourgeois Islamist organisation. As such, Hamas wants to build a capitalist state in religious colours. Likewise, it currently takes an opportunist stance of support for the Iranian Mullah regime as well as the Assad tyranny.
16. In contrast, the RCIT advocates a socialist revolution of the working class and the oppressed masses in the Middle East. We stand for the destruction of the Zionist state, the unconditional right to return of the Palestinian refugees and the establishment of a single Palestinian state from the River to the Sea which shall be a democratic and secular workers and poor peasant republic as part of a socialist federation of the whole region. In such a state, Jews will be a minority with full religious and cultural rights. Likewise, such a strategy aims at the overthrow of the Arab and Persian rulers by the popular masses.
17. As our comrades in Occupied Palestine have emphasised many times, the Israeli working class is part of a settler state and is bound with numerous privileges to it. It can not play a vanguard or even an equal role in such a revolutionary process. No, the leadership will have to come from the vanguard of the Arab masses. Only in a period of existential crisis will it be possible to break a sector of the Israeli-Jewish working class away from Zionism so that they the join their Arab brothers and sisters. Such an existential crisis can either be provoked by a powerful Intifada in the region and/or a decisive military defeat of Israel against the Palestinian and Arab forces. A defeat of Israel against Hamas could us bring a significant step closer to such a scenario.
18. The governments and bourgeois media in Western states try to create a hysterical picture of Hamas as a “terrorist organisation”. This is utter nonsense. Hamas has been the largest party at the last free elections among the Palestinian people, it has governed Gaza since 2007 and it is the leading force in the liberation struggle. Hamas is a legitimate part of the Palestinian resistance similar to the role of the PLO before the Oslo agreement and or of the ANC before 1994 (let us not forget that Western powers did also denounce these organisations as “terrorist” – before they became “respected partners of the international community”).
19. This does not mean that we share the bourgeois program or strategy of Hamas. Neither do we approve all its tactics. As Marxists we do not advocate terrorist tactics against civilians. Hence, we do not assume responsibility for all its actions. However, one has to bear in mind that in Israel many “civilians” are armed settlers in kibbutzim who play a vanguard role in the Zionist aggression against the Palestinian people. In any case, it is a well-known truth that the oppressed have always more primitive weapons than the oppressors. Hence, while the Zionist state can kill Palestinian civilians with hi-tech missiles and starve them out via blockade, Hamas and other resistance factions have to fight with more primitive, i.e. less precise, means. Irrespective of the Western hysteria against Hamas, fact is that – according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs – 6,407 Palestinians but only 308 Israelis died between 2008 and 31.8.2023. In other words, 20 times as many Palestinians as Israelis have died in the past 15 years. So, who is the terrorist?!
20. Karl Marx once commented on the Indian uprising against the British colonial rule in 1857 in which the rebels also committed many atrocities: “However infamous the conduct of the Sepoys, it is only the reflex, in a concentrated form, of England’s own conduct in India, not only during the epoch of the foundation of her Eastern Empire, but even during the last ten years of a long-settled rule. To characterize that rule, it suffices to say that torture formed ail organic institution of its financial policy. There is something in human history like retribution: and it is a rule of historical retribution that its instrument be forged not by the offended, but by the offender himself.” The courageous coalition of 34 Harvard University student organisations published a powerful pro-Palestinian statement on 10 October in which they “hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence” between the Palestinians and Israelis following decades of occupation, adding that “the apartheid regime is the only one to blame”. This is absolutely correct! It is the Israeli Apartheid state and not the Palestinian resistance which has introduced barbarism and terrorism. Israel is tasting now its own medicine!
21. Finally, as we said, the RCIT does not approve all tactics of Hamas and we do not advocate terrorist attacks against civilians. Nevertheless, one must not loose a sense of proportion and adapt to the hypercritical logic of Western media. The real terrorist is the Israeli state and any terrorist tactics of Hamas against civilians is only a subordinated element which does not change at all the just character of the liberation war of the Palestinian resistance. At the moment, Hamas is the leading force of the resistance struggle of the Palestinian people. We side unconditionally with this struggle, and we therefore support the struggle of Hamas – despite our political criticism of it – against the Israeli state.
The Gaza Uprising and the Left
22. The Gaza Uprising will create a new line of demarcation among the self-proclaimed progressive and socialist organisations. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a prominent “socialist” in the U.S. who is a member of the House of Representatives for the pro-Zionist Democratic Party, has shamefully denounced a pro-Palestinian rally in New York as “antisemitic”. The German LINKE has a strong wing which explicitly supports Israel. And the Spanish Stalinists and left-populists (PCE, IU, Sumar) are part of a government which supports the pro-Israeli line of the European Union. Clearly, these are pro-Zionist traitors!
23. There will be those which declare general solidarity with the Palestinian people but refuse to side with the resistance forces (currently led by Hamas) against the Israeli army. Such a position has been advocated by organisations like Alan Woods’ IMT, Peter Taaffe’s CWI or the ISA. It is effectively a kind of “neutrality”, a policy of reactionary abstentionism (similar to their position on the Ukraine War).
24. Others, like the RCIT, openly and clearly stand on the side of the Palestinian resistance. However, one must differentiate also among the supporters of the Palestinian resistance. There are those – usually with a Stalinist or Chavista background – who side with the Palestinian resistance because they fight against the Western enemy. At the same time, they sympathise or even support the Assad regime against the Syrian Revolution or Putin against the Ukraine. In contrast, the RCIT and other authentic socialists support all struggles of the oppressed peoples – those against (pro-)Western powers as well as those against (pro-)Eastern powers. It will be crucial to create a bloc of those socialists which oppose all imperialist powers and, at the same time, take a consistent pro-Palestinian, anti-Assad and pro-Ukrainian stance.
25. Of course, one has to be aware that there also exist difficulties. Among the political conscious activists among the Arab masses and the international solidarity movements, there exist contradictory sentiments. Those who have been active in the struggles against Assad or against Putin’s invasion tend to have doubts to join a solidarity movement which supports a struggle led by Hamas (which has publicly expressed sympathies with Assad). And, equally, among those who support the current Gaza Uprising, there are many who are hesitant or even reject to side with the Syrian or the Ukrainian people. These are unavoidable challenges in a period of accelerated tensions between the imperialist powers of East and West. The task of authentic socialists is to explain that we need to build a third camp of independent struggle of the working class and the oppressed peoples which opposes all Great Powers.
Revolutionary tactics
26. As we stated in the first declaration of the RCIT on the Gaza Uprising, we unconditionally support the struggle of the Palestinian resistance against the Israeli state. However, we do not lend political support to the leadership of these forces (like Hamas). Furthermore, one must demand from the Palestinian Administration of Mahmoud Abbas to immediately stop its collaboration with the Israeli state and to distribute weapons to the people so that they can defend themselves against the Zionist killers.
27. Outside of Palestine, it is the urgent duty of the international workers and popular movement to mobilize all over the world in solidarity with the Palestinian people. All Arab and Muslim governments which claim to stand by the Palestinian people must immediately break off all political, economic, and military relations with the Zionist state. They must send the Palestinian people everything they need – from medical to military aid.
28. In the imperialist metropolises – first and foremost in North America and Western Europe – socialists should support all activities which undermine the shameful support of the imperialist governments for the Zionist Apartheid state. All activities of boycott against the Zionist state and all forms of sabotage of arms shipments to Israel are important and legitimate acts of solidarity.
29. As we mentioned above, there is a realistic possibility that the Gaza War could become a regional war with the Palestinian resistance, Hezbollah, the Houthis, pro-Iranian militias in Iraq and Syria and even Iran itself joining the war against Israel (which in such a case would most likely be supported by the U.S. with its navy, air force and possible even troops on the ground). Hence, this would involve forces which play a reactionary role in other fields. For example, the Iranian regime oppresses its own people including the Kurdish and Arab national minorities and Hezbollah and pro-Iranian militias have troops in Syria which help Assad staying in power.
30. In a recently published article (“Marxist Tactics in Wars with Contradictory Character”), we explained that in periods like the current one, socialists will be increasingly confronted with wars with contradictory character. A regional war as described above would be such a case. Marxists have to analyse concretely the developments in such a conflict and advocate corresponding tactics. The primary character of such a regional war would that of a just struggle of the Palestinian masses as well as Arab resp. Iranian forces against an imperialist settler state. In such a conflict the RCIT would stand for the military victory of the pro-Palestinian forces and for the defeat of Israel. At the same time, we would continue our support for the struggle of the Syrian people against Assad (including his allies like Hezbollah and pro-Iranian militias) as well as for the democratic protests of the Iranian masses against the Mullah regime.