Statement of the Internationalist Socialist League (RCIT Section in Israel / Occupied Palestine), 24.2.2021, http://the-isleague.com
The new elections in Israel (Occupied Palestine) will take place on March 23, 2021. According to the latest polls the general movement, as is expected, is towards the right. The right-wing parties would get the following seats: Likud would get 29 seats, Yesh Atid 18, New Hope 14, Yamina 13, Shas 8, Yisrael Beytenu and United Torah Judaism 7 each. Of what is considered in Israel as left: The Joint List 9, Labor 6, and Meretz 4, and “Blue and White” would not cross the 3.25% electoral threshold. It means that either Netanyahu will be once again the Prime Minister or there will be another new round. There is a better chance for the second option as the right-wing parties are not united. The left Zionists are so desperate that according to the last survey, “taken by Panels Research pollster Menachem Lazar 62% of left-wingers want the Joint List in the government, 20% oppose it, and 18% said they had no opinion.” (1)
In the coming general elections, the ISL will give critical support to the Joined List. For us as a working-class revolutionary organization calling for participation in elections for a bourgeois parliament is not a question of a principal but of tactic. We vote and give critical support to certain parties of the working class and the oppressed under certain conditions. We are not obliged to vote or give critical support to any party regardless of the conditions. When the militant workers have illusions in a labor reformist party, we call to vote for them in order to expose the reformist leadership. The same can be true for parties of oppressed nations. When the popular classes of an oppressed nation have illusions in certain parties of the oppressed nation, we give them critical support.
For us under the existing conditions there are only two options, either to vote for the Joined list or not vote at all.
If the majority of the Palestinians were boycotting the Zionist parliament-the Knesset because of a strong movement to the left, we would join them. However, we estimate that the majority of those Palestinians who would not vote, will do it because of demoralization. Therefore we call to critically vote for the Joined List.
At the same time, we are aware of the fact that the Joined list is losing support. If until a few months it was expected to win 15 seats out of 120, today, according to public polls it will receive only seven to nine seats. This is mainly because of two major wrong positions. The first one is recommending Gantz as a Prime Minister. Gantz was the chief of the general staff of the Zionist army from 2011 to 2015 and during his election campaign he bragged that he was responsible for the killings in Gaza. The leaders of the list announced at the time that Gantz is the lesser evil. This very serious opportunistic position opened the gate for the renegade Ra’am party chief Mansour Abbas to pursue closer ties with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a move seen by the other parties of the Joint List as beyond the pale. Mansour Abbas says that if they recommended Ganatz why cannot he support Netanyahu?
The other wrong position of the Joined list has been their calling on the Zionist police to save the Palestinian’s citizens of Israel from the criminal gangs. As could be expected, the police entered the village Tamara and killed two ordinary civilians. Unless the Palestinians workers and poor peasants will organize their own self-defense the police will continue to kill the Palestinians.
In any case, the election will not bring any fundamental change. In order to liberate the Palestinian people, it is necessary to fight for a democratic revolution from the river to the sea led by the Arab workers and Fellahin, joined by a section of the Jewish working class losing its chains that currently bind it to murderous Zionism. Only a workers and Fellahin republic in the whole historic Palestine can open the road to a socialist future without oppression and exploitation!
1) https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/poll-62-percent-of-left-wants-arabs-in-government-659004
* * * * *
We refer reader for more information on the ISL’s and the RCIT’s stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people to our websites http://www.the-isleague.com and https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/africa-and-middle-east/.
The ISL’s program can be read here: http://www.the-isleague.com/our-platform/ and https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/summary-of-isl-program/
See also Yossi Schwartz: Israel’s War of 1948 and the Degeneration of the Fourth International, http://the-isleague.com/1948-war-5-2013/ and https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/africa-and-middle-east/israel-s-war-of-1948/
Michael Pröbsting: On some Questions of the Zionist Oppression and the Permanent Revolution in Palestine, http://the-isleague.com/zionist-oppression-and-permanent-revolution/ and https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/permanent-revolution-in-palestine/