In response to the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack prompting the wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people

By Hari Kumar, Red Phoenix international correspondent.

Introduction

The history of the Palestinian liberation movement is very convoluted and long. Furthermore the many tomes that have been published on it over the years do not make for an easy summary. But perhaps at bottom, the history of the theft of Palestinian land is not very complicated, as Finkelstein makes clear:

“Looking back after two decades of study and reflection, I am struck most by how uncomplicated the Israel-Palestine conflict is. There is no longer much contention among scholars on the historical record, at any rate for the foundational period from the first Zionist settlements in the late nineteenth century to the creation of Israel in 1948.” 

Norman Finkelstein. (2005).“Beyond Chutzpah — On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History.”

Nonetheless, to date there is no Marxist-Leninist account of this history for the new generation of militants. The following chronologically numbered notes intend to provide the start of one. The task here is simply to provide some historical stepping stones for Marxist-Leninists. That meant, for me, a compressed broad historical canvas. Explicitly this is not a specific programme, which is beyond my capability. That can be only crystallized at minimum, by Arabic-reading comrades, and Hebrew-reading comrades who are directly aware of experiences and discussions on the ground. 

These ‘stepping stones’ take form as notes, which inevitably loose a fluidity. Other deficiencies are glaringly obvious. Some have asked if these notes are too long, while others pointed out that it is not detailed enough. The problem I faced was ‘not seeing the wood for the trees’ versus ‘not having enough trees.’ I am conscious that some themes are far too poorly developed and need more leaves on the trees. Hopefully, despite such shortcomings a few consistent messages will nevertheless emerge. What are those messages in my own view?

First are the repetitive, thorough and usually devious attempts of the USA to control events in the Middle East. The USA relies on its ‘strategic asset’ of Israel — as Reagan called it — to do the dirty work. The current obliteration of Gaza by bombing, starvation, dehydration and methodical intimidation is a case in point. As Condoleezza Rice expressed it with regard to the state of Lebanon in 2006 all, this is nothing but “the making of a new Middle East.” For Rice, the sufferings of Lebanon undergoing Israeli invasion were “the ‘birth pangs’—of a ‘New Middle East’.” (See Thesis #39 below)

Only an independent strategy that relies on the people can succeed in effecting a settlement of any significance for the Palestinians. We believe the history of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) – and its largest and most famous party “Fatah” – shows this clearly. In their subservience to USA imperialism, the PLO serves as a negative example for Palestinians.

Second is the powerful imperative to reject individual terrorism. That acts only as a provocation to further splinter, and invites destruction of the working class movement. Nowhere is the Leninist message that individual terrorism — a facet of anarchism — is a ‘reward’ for opportunism more apparent than in the Middle East.  (See Bland for Communist League 1975) 

Lenin’s criticism applies to the recent Hamas attacks. No doubt that Israeli hands had been stained by individual terrorism from even before the inception of the state of Israel in forcing Palestinians off their homelands. But Hamas’ actions have only strengthened Israel’s hand. While the incursion into Israel was in part an explosion of rage, it will facilitate the terrible ‘revenge’ being sought by Israel on the people, the civilians.

Nonetheless, the October 7 Hamas incursions of Israel, and the current bombing of Gaza by Israel facilitated by the USA, has already re-structured Palestine. These events have broken the ‘stalemate’ mold of the last 30 years. It now speeds the Israeli genocide and or forced re-location of Palestinians. The second Nakba is in the making. There will be further changes.

But the Palestinian people will not forget about self-determination. Their thirst will re-emerge. In what shape it will re-emerge, and led by whom, is not yet clear. 

But it is clear that opportunist appeals to the supposed “magnanimity” of the USA – on which, for example, the “Oslo Declaration” depended  – will fail to obtain justice for Palestine. To remind ourselves, the “generosity” of the USA in their post-9/11 wars, encompassing all the Gulf wars and their aftermath, led to an enormous estimated toll:

“Over 940,000 people have died in the post-9/11 wars due to direct war violence. An estimated 3.6-3.8 million people have died indirectly in post-9/11 war zones, bringing the total death toll to at least 4.5-4.7 million and counting.

Over 432,000 civilians have been killed as a result of the fighting.

38 million — the number of war refugees and displaced persons.

The U.S. federal price tag for the post-9/11 wars is over $8 trillion.

The U.S. government is conducting counterterror activities in 85 countries.

At least four times as many active duty personnel and war veterans of post-9/11 conflicts have died of suicide than in combat.

The wars have been accompanied by violations of human rights and civil liberties, in the U.S. and abroad.” 

T.J.Watson Center. “Costs of War.” Brown University.

Nor will individual terror attacks on civilians win a free Palestine. Only a united Marxist-Leninist party, of the working class of both Palestine and Israel, will yield a single, democratic, secular state — moving to socialism.   

Finally, one disclaimer is necessary. Two specific areas are not examined here in any detail. First, the history of the Communist Party in Palestine. That is available to some degree, for example, in “Class, Nation, and Political Organization: The Anti-Zionist Left in Israel/Palestine.” Second, the fateful UN vote calling to establish Israel as a state. Previously Alliance ML has written on this. Both need to digest and incorporate much new material.  

These current “notes” provided below were needed, in my view, somewhat faster than those two additional tasks could be satisfactorily accomplished.   

A note on sources:

There is an enormous number of possible sources, however I was extremely selective, mainly in the interests of time. The accent has largely been on Marxist-Leninist sources up till 1973. Beyond the year 1973, a wider net for sources was cast. The ‘Marxmail’ List members have shared views and sources frantically after October 7, which was helpful. 

Acknowledgements:

These notes arose after several discussions on the role of individual terror in recent events, with Mike B. of the American Party of Labor. It was unselfishly probed at my request by a number of comrades, including Victor Vaughn of the APL; David Walters, who raised the fundamental issue of the large Israeli working class; Mark Baugher, who carefully assessed each statement to reveal flawed formulations especially in main conclusions; Marv Gandall for critical interpretations; John P., as always, methodically parsed it with gentle challenges; and finally, Norberto S. advised a practical grounding. Ultimately however the notes rest on what I had learnt from the deceased W. B. Bland and Garbis Altinoglu. 

All and any errors in these ‘notes’ that unfortunately remain are mine alone. 

These “notes,” for what little they may be worth, are dedicated to the workers, toilers and peasants of the Middle East who undoubtedly will find the way. At some time. 

1. Zionist philosophy

Zionism [is] the political philosophy of the Israeli ruling class, [and] has been since its inception at the end of the 19th century an ideology serving objectively the interests of developed capitalism, of imperialism. It presents workers and petty bourgeois of Jewish descent as members of “a Jewish nation,” as “aliens” in the countries in which they live; it tells them that, to be “free,” they must emigrate to their ancient “national homeland” in Palestine. Thus, the participation of a Zionist worker in the struggles of the working class for a better life, for socialism, can at best be only half-hearted, for he regards himself as an “outsider” whose eyes are directed towards “his own” country, which has now taken concrete shape in the state of Israel. Thus, Zionism is complementary to anti-semitism in its reactionary divisive effect.

Bland, W. B. (1973) “Class Against Class” for The Marxist- Leninist Organisation Of Britain, No. 2. Special Edition.

It was this Zionism that formed the backbone of the so-called First Aliyah (immigration) beginning in 1882. 

2. The Balfour Declaration, the Sykes-Picot secret clauses and the class character of early Palestine

As the First World War ground on, the British imperialists were anxious to maintain, and possibly extend, their dominance in the Middle East. Already in 1912:

Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, said to the 1912 Royal Commission investigating the British Navy’s oil needs: 

“We must become the owners or at any rate the controllers at the source of at least a proportion of the oil which we require.” 

Sluglett, P. (1976). “Britain in Iraq: 1914–1932.” Cited in “The Primacy of Oil in Britain’s Iraq Policy.”

This informed intense secret negotiations and battles for influence. Added to this was an uncertain set of wavering alliances. This led Great Britain to want “the sympathies of the Jews.” At least this was how the then British Prime Minister in 1917 expressed it:

In 1936, David Lloyd George, the prime minister at the time of the decision to patronize Zionism, revealed cabinet opinion in 1917:

“The French army had mutinied, the Italian army was on the eve of collapse and America had hardly started preparing in earnest … It was important for us to seek every legitimate help we could get. We came to the conclusion, from information we received from every part of the world, that it was vital we should have the sympathies of the Jewish community … They were helpful in America and in Russia, which at that moment was just walking out and leaving us alone.”

Lenni Brenner. (1984). “The Iron Wall.”

Therefore British imperialists wanted to win the support of the Zionist movement for the Allied war effort. This: 

… brought the Balfour Declaration of November 1917; this promised that the British Government would facilitate the setting up of “a National Home for the Jewish People” in Palestine. The British imperialists were unperturbed by the fact that two years earlier, in July 1915, they had won Hussein bin Ali, the Grand Sharif of Mecca, to the side of the Allies by promising to support the establishment of “an independent Arab state” in Palestine and that in 1916 they had signed a secret treaty with the French imperialists dividing a Palestine between them. Palestine became simply “the much promised land.”

Bland, 1973.

The phrase “much promised land” should remind us that Palestine had already been “promised” (as if it belonged to Britain in the first place) between 1915–1916. During the war, Lord Kitchener, Minister of War in the British Cabinet, had pressured the British High Commissioner in Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon, to propose a pact to the Sharif of Mecca, Hussein. The McMahon-Hussein Correspondence documents this. 

Kitchener…  told the British Agency (in Cairo-Ed) to reply to Abdullah Hussein (son of Sharif Hussein of Mecca –Ed.) that:

“If the Arab nation should assist England in this war that has been forced upon us by Turkey, England will guarantee that no internal intervention take place in Arabia, and will give the Arabs every assistance again foreign aggression”…

In other words if the Arabian leaders freed their peninsula from the Sultan and declared their independence, Britain would help to protect them against any invasion from abroad.

Fromkin, David. (1989). “A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East.” p. 178; p. 102.

The real British intent was to keep a hold of Palestine. This emerges again in the secret provisions of the Sykes–Picot Agreement of February 1916. The son of a French colonist, Francois Georges Picot, and Tory MP Sir Mark Sykes simply divided Syria (including Lebanon) up between France and Great Britain. Palestine was to be “placed under an international regime” to be determined after “consultation” with all parties involved, including other allies such as Russia and Italy. After the war, the British obtained the mandate for Palestine. It then had to quieten the Arab desire for independence. 

Palestine was not “an empty space full of desert” as the Zionists promoting immigration painted it. But it was, admittedly, a feudal province of the crumbling Ottoman Empire:

“Palestine in the 1880s was a province of the Ottoman Empire, which operated a primarily feudal mode of production. Within the borders of this province resided two major groups; about 450,000 Arabs and about 24,000 Jews.”

A. Ben-Porat. (1987). “Class Consciousness before Class: The Emergence of a Jewish Working Class in Palestine.”

The already present Jews ‘Old Yishuv’ (settlement) were granted a religious autonomy (milet) by the Ottomans. It was “economically ineffective” (Ben-Porat 1987).

Also contrary to Zionist mythology, there was a developing Palestinian commercial bourgeoisie. By 1948 this was thriving, as we see later. 

Initial new Jewish immigration was explicitly aimed at the soil. The First Aliyah immigrants from 1882 onward were largely from rural Eastern Europe and were mainly farmers (Ikarim) aiming to establish agricultural colonies (known as moshavot).  Although the Ottoman Empire objected to such immigration, it was powerless to prevent it as it disintegrated.

The wealthiest of the new Ikarim were to become the bourgeoisie. Those that were un-propertied joined the moshavot as day-laborers and were the “embryo of the working class” (Ben-Porat 1987). As the dispossessed Arab peasant was cheaper by about 20-30% to hire, from the start there was a source of potential friction.

To tide the Ikarim over the difficulties of early settlement, absentee European capital from the Rothschilds was essential. This formed an early capitalist structural development. Although the means of production remained the land, the moshava was developing a proto-capitalist profit generation.

By the 1890s a local labor organization was formed, “Histradrut Ha’Asarot.” These multiplied. By 1903 a conference of all workers in the moshavot was held.

The Second Aliyah main wave of immigrants came in the years 1903–1914. These 40,000 immigrants were largely from the Jewish urban proletariat of the “Pale” in Europe. They brought a collective and socialist consciousness. This was followed by the first working class parties including the Hapoel Hatzair party (The Young Worker) and Poale Zion (Workers of Zion). Some developed cooperatives on the land and also the kibbutzim. It was the growth of cities that developed the proletariat in full form. Into these came the Third Aliyah, now of a more explicit socialist mentality. By 1920 a national Histradrut was formed (The General Federation of Jewish Labor). 

These forces developed a national consciousness that tended to chafe at British Mandate. But as yet the capital class elements were not developed adequately to make a bid for state power. This was soon to come.

3. The era of rising nationalism in the Middle East

Compradors serving the interest of imperialism pitted against weak national bourgeoisie(s)

The framework which enveloped the Middle East over the time that Zionist settlers were starting to colonize Palestine, was where an imperialist power was under challenge from local nationalists.

At the early stage (19th century and start of 20th century) the dominant imperialist was Great Britain, followed by France. The USA had yet to flex its muscles in the Middle East although in-roads into Iran (Persia) had begun.

When imperialism developed in its existing colonies, it was already used to finding or creating a stratum, or class, of local indigenous rulers to be their surrogates. This tactic became especially important when the revolutionary movements in the colonies tried to fight off the imperialists. From rulers, it extended to indigenous agents such as buyers and traders whose livelihood depended upon the imperialists. Often, landed feudal gentry also allied to imperialism. They were collectively termed comprador bourgeoisie.

comprador: a person within a country who acts as an agent for foreign organizations engaged in investment, trade, or economic or political exploitation.

Oxford English Dictionary

Inevitably some indigenous capitalists wished to displace imperialism and its compradors in order to retain the colony’s profits for themselves. They were termed national bourgeoisie. 

However usually they were very weak, and at only a low level of national development. Therefore if they were to be successful, they were forced to enlist the aid of the masses, i.e. the working classes and peasantry. This often necessitated the use of a demagogic and spurious ‘socialism,’ such as a putative “Pan-Arab Socialism.”

However this strategy posed dangers to the national bourgeoisie’s own interests, as at times the masses became inflamed. Therefore that nationalist bourgeoisie balked at points where revolutionary tides threatened their bourgeois interests, and abandoned and betrayed any revolutionary struggle. Often, they threw their lot in with those imperialists who promised them the most. The most vivid example might be Nasser (see below).

The national bourgeoisies of the Middle East initially struggled against British and French — and then U.S. — imperialism. Jockeying between these imperial great powers was evident:

In response to Winston Churchill’s questions about America’s interests in Iranian oil, Franklin Roosevelt wrote in March 1934 that:

“I am having the oil studied by the Department of State and my oil experts, but please do accept my assurances that I am not making sheep’s eyes at your oil fields in Iraq or Iran.”

Churchill responded:

“Thank you very much for your assurances about no sheep’s eyes at our oil fields in Iran and Iraq. Let me reciprocate by giving you the fullest assurances that we have not thought of trying to horn in upon your interests or property in Saudi Arabia.”

James A. Bill. (1988). “The Eagle and the Lion: The Tragedy of Iranian-American Relations.” p. 29.

This ‘gentlemanly diplomatic’ tone was to change during the Suez crisis of 1956 (see #8 below). 

4. League of Nations mandate to UN legislated partition

In response to rising national aspirations, the general approach of the older imperialist powers (Great Britain or France) was to grant forms of a supposed ‘independence,’ while ensuring trading, manufacturing, and military domination favored the imperialism country. Newer imperialist powers, basically the USA, often posed as siding with the nationalists against the older powers.

In this ferment Jewish immigration into Palestine began and grew in the years thereafter: 

When the First World War was over, the British and French imperialists took over the Arab Near East disguising their colonial rule under the cloak of “League of Nations mandates”. As Jewish immigration continued, both legally and illegally into Palestine, the rise of Arab national liberation movements led the imperialists to adopt neo-colonial manoeuvres: Iraq was granted “independence” in 1932, Syria and Lebanon in 1941, Jordan in 1946. And in 1947 the British government announced that it was ending its rule over Palestine in May of the following year and was transferring its “responsibilities” there to the United Nations. 

Bland, 1973.

5. Seizure of the entire land of Palestine

Supporting Palestinian national rights, does not mean to don class blinders. The class divisions in feudal Palestine, even in its post-Ottoman from up to the 1930s, was brutal. The Zionists knew this and used the large land-owners. Initially the Zionist settlers made pacts with the large Palestinian feudal landowners, who then dispossessed the small fellahin rural peasant:

“The expropriation of the small peasants, however, can only be carried out with the help of the Arab feudal big land¬holders; the sale of land by individual small peasants is very difficult; apart from the fact that the small peasants, however burdened by weight of taxation and economic misery, will only sell their land to foreign immigrants in exceptional cases.

The big estate owners received in exchange for the sale of their land, which they could neither cultivate nor administrate properly, millions of pounds sterling. The loss fell to the Arab peasants (“Harrat” in Arabic; they rented their land from the big landholders on payment of “Humseh,” a fifth part of the harvest) who were brutally evicted from their holdings as soon as the landowners had pocketed the Zionist money. The land-owner was enabled to enlarge his possessions at the cost of the isolated holdings of the small peasants. The expropriation of the Arab fellahin by the Arab big landholders was carried through, as in the time of the Turks, by a system of usury in which the Government and the feudal lords played into one another’s hands. Money was lent at extortionate interest to the peasant, who could neither earn enough to maintain himself nor to endure the oppressive taxation of the Government, on the security of his holding until the last scrap of soil was made over to the big land-owners. The Zionists themselves boast in the statistics published by them that the bulk of the land they colonised was obtained from the big landholders by heavy money payment. Naturally, it was not their affair to inquire how the landholders came by their land and whether they had any rightful title to it.”

J.B. (Jerusalem) “The class character of the Palestine Rising”; Labour Monthly March, 1930, No.3.; at: https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/sections/britain/periodicals/labour_monthly/1930/03/x02.htm

But the process of land expropriation grew ever more rampant and violent. By 1936 – the British Peel Commission was struck to investigate why there were increasing conflicts in Palestine. Their conclusion was a Palestinian Arab desire for “independence” :

“In 1936 a British royal commission chaired by Lord Peel was charged with ascertaining the causes of the Palestine conflict and the means for resolving it. Regarding the aspirations of Palestinian Arabs, its final report stated that “[t]he overriding desire of the Arab leaders . . . was . . . national independence” and that “[i]t was only to be expected that Palestinian Arabs should . . . envy and seek to emulate their successful fellow-nationalists in those countries just across their northern and southern borders.” 

Norman Finkelstein

Unfazed, the process of forming Zionist settlements continued on its unremittingly ruthless path. Just as a national hero of the later Israeli state — Moshe Dayan — bluntly clarified:

“Moshe Dayan, former Chief of Staff and Minister of Defense, was uninhibited in his summary of the nature of Zionist colonization before students at the Israel Institute of Technology (The Techniyon):

We came here to a country that was populated by Arabs, and we are building here a Hebrew, Jewish state. Instead of Arab villages, Jewish villages were established. You do not even know the names of these villages and I do not blame you, because these geography books no longer exist. Not only the books, but also the villages do not exist.

Nahalal was established in place of Mahalul, Gevat in place of Jibta, Sarid in the place of Hanifas and Kafr Yehoushu’a in the place of Tel Shamam. There is not a single settlement that was not established in the place of a former Arab village.” 

Ralph Schoenman. (1988). “The Hidden History of Zionism.”

As Zionists continued to bring in more Jewish settlers during and after the Second World War, this brought international focus at the United Nations. The decision was made to partition Palestine. But the Zionists pre-empted this and took most of the land:

“The United Nations envisaged the partition of Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state, with Jerusalem as an independent city. But its scheme was never put into effect. On May 14, 1948, the Zionists proclaimed most of Palestine “the state of Israel.” (Bland 1973)

“(Israel) was proclaimed following a resolution of the United Nations General Assembly of November 1947, which recommended that the British mandated territory of Palestine should be partitioned into a Jewish state and an Arab state. Zionist terrorist gangs drove many Arabs from the territory of the Jewish state, and since then Israel has extended its territory in a number of phoney wars to embrace the whole of Palestine, an area four times that allotted to the Jewish state in the original Partition Plan. A large proportion of the Arab population of Palestine became homeless, stateless refugees in neighbouring Arab states, mainly Jordan and Lebanon.” (Bland 1987)

This began the First ‘Arab-Israeli War’ (1948) in which forces from Egypt, Jordan (then known as Transjordan) and Syria and Iraq invaded. After 10 months of fighting, the Israeli state held its original land allocation by the UN and 60% of the land that had been designated for Palestine. The formal establishment of the Israel was on May 14, 1948, under David Ben-Gurion. 

6. The objective role of the state of Israel

We saw above that Great Britain had fostered the initial influx of Jews from outside of the Middle East, into Palestine – as discussed above. Effectively Israel was a divisive tool in the center of Arab countries wanting their own independence:

The state of Israel came into being in May 1948 as a result of the desire of the Western imperialist powers to establish a “fifth column” in the heart of the Arab world in the form of a small Jewish racist state which would be dependent for its continued existence on these Powers.

Bland, 1987.

Initially then Israel was formed as a settler state to serve the interests of British imperialism and blunt the Arab and Palestinian nationalist demands. However, by 1945 the leading Zionists were no longer willing to cede any measure of authority to Britain. 

The main imperialist state in the Middle East after the first World War had been Great Britain. But the balance of power was now shifted toward a newcomer – namely the USA. By the end of the Second World War its position was secure enough that it could announce unequivocally by John Foster Dulles US Secretary of State: 

“The USA cannot be expected to identify itself 100% either with the Colonial powers or the powers uniquely concerned with the problem of getting independence as rapidly and as fully as possible-any areas encroaching in some form or another on the problem of so called colonialism find the US playing a somewhat independent role (of UK and France –Ed.).”

Anthony Carlton. (1981). “Antony Eden.”

As the USA became the ‘King Imperialist’ in the Middle East and elsewhere, it largely took over the role that was previously held by Great Britain (See Suez War below). That included the support of Israeli Zionism. As John Rose points out, the leading Israeli paper Haaretz understood the Israeli role:

Israel is to become the watchdog. There is no fear that Israel will undertake any aggressive Policy towards the Arab states when this would explicitly contradict the wishes of the US and Britain. But if for any reasons the Western powers should sometimes prefer to close their eyes, Israel could be relied upon to punish one or several neighbouring states whose discourtesy to the West went beyond the bounds of the permissible.

John Rose. (1986). “Israel: The Hijack State.”

By 1980 President Reagan of the USA openly proclaimed that: “Israel was… combat-ready” and has a “combat-experienced military … a force in the Middle East that is actually of benefit to us. If there was no Israel with that force, we’d have to supply that with our own.” (Rose 1986)

The compact between the Israeli state and the USA was an enormous financial and military stream. An influx of finance developed a fully capable capitalist state after 1948. (Ben-Porat 1992).

Even very recently on October 20, 2023, this central role of the USA in underpinning Israel is acknowledged. The Minister of Defense for Netanyahu’s cabinet argued against even more extremist opinions in the Israeli parliament than his own, whilst saying:

During the meeting, Defense Minister Yaov Gallant was pressed on why the government agreed to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza from Egypt before the hostages have been returned.

The Americans insisted and we are not in a place where we can refuse them. We rely on them for planes and military equipment. What are we supposed to do? Tell them no?” Gallant responds.” Gallant: “We can’t say ‘no’ to the US on humanitarian aid given how much they do for us.

“Gallant: We can’t say ‘no’ to the US on humanitarian aid given how much they do for us.” Times of Israel. Oct 20, 2023.

7. The Palestinian refugees and the Nakba (Arabic for “catastrophe”)

The violent expulsions, murders, coercion and fear led to the Nakba of 1948. 

At the time of its formation, the state of Israel contained 1.3 million Arabs and 0.7 million Jews. The Zionists took steps to establish a Jewish majority. As Michael Bar-Zhchar says in his sympathetic biography of the founder of Israel:

“Ben Gurion never believed in the possibility of coexistence with the Arabs. The fewer Arabs within the frontiers of the future state the better … A major offensive against the Arabs would … reduce to a minimum the proportion of the Arab population within the state …. He may be accused of racism, but in that case the whole Zionist movement would have to be put on trial.”

“Thus, even before the declaration of “independence” Zionist armed gangs had begun a campaign of massacre and terror against the Arab population, driving great numbers of them to seek refuge in the neighbouring Arab states. By 1950 a million Arab refugees from Palestine were officially receiving United Nations aid, and by 1971 2.6 million of the 3.0 million population of Israel were Jews.”

Bland 1973

The Nakba sparked the call for “Return” – which was accepted by the UN and has not been rescinded:

The Return… was, in fact, a right that was internationally acknowledged by annual United Nations resolutions passed with the approval even of Israel’s major ally, the United States, but not implemented by Israel.

UN Document A/5813, UNRWA Report for the period July 1, 1963 to June 30. Cited by Rashid Hamid in “What is the PLO?” Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 4 No. 4; Summer, 1975.

8. The weak national bourgeoisie of Egypt under Gamel Abdel Nasser and the Suez fiasco suffered by Britain and France of 1956

Egypt had been a British colony, ruled by the comprador Monarch, King Farouk – on behalf of Great Britain. Resentments of local businesses built, and the nationalist bourgeoisie faction in Egypt took shape in the ‘Free Officer’ Movement, to which Gamal Abdul Nasser belonged. 

But objectively the strength of this movement was weak. The movement was supported by the USA, who saw it as a weapon against the British superpower’s Egyptian base. (Mahmoud Hussein, 1977, “Class Conflict in Egypt 1945-1970“)

Thus the CIA Cairo station, headed by Kermit Roosevelt, aided the Free Officers. An uprising forced the British to evacuate their 70,000 strong troops in July 1952.
(Dilip Hiro, 1982, “Inside the Middle East”)

Nasser became President in 1954. From then on, Nasser strove to limit both the USA and UK imperialists influence. Nasser – as we saw – was happy to use the USA’s help. But he attempted to retain independence. To get the “best deal” Nasser needed other sources of support. He obtained financing for both technical but also military funding, from the revisionist Soviets. Western imperialists became increasingly anxious that Egypt was becoming drawn into the USSR sphere of influence – or a client state for the USSR. 

This was a more urgent fear for the weaker British whose Imperial star was falling, than for the USA. Antony Eden (then Conservative Prime Minister of Britain) pressured the USA to support Great Britain, writing in his diary:

“Egypt, under Nasser is… daily growing more arrogant and disregarding the interests of Western Europe and the US.“

David Carlton. (1981). “Antony Eden.”

An escalation came when Britain refused to transfer ownership of the Suez Canal to Egypt. At the same time promised ‘aid’ from the World Bank was withdrawn. 

Nasser simply then nationalized the Suez Canal, in July 1956. This provided a casus belli. Initially the USA, affected to be uninterested in details of Anglo-French plans to retaliate, and cautioned Eden not to launch war against Egypt.

When the USSR next, on August 1, offered to finance the building of the Aswan Dam, it gave even the USA a pause. Even so the USA remained on the surface against any anti-Nasser actions, likely forseeing a way to kick Britain and France off the Middle eastern stage. 

Ignoring the USA, an Anglo-French and Israeli coalition was duly formed. Joint attacks were launched in October 1956. The USA intervened privately at Whitehall to force the attacks to a halt. But this escalated into a very public rebuke. Britain was in debt to the USA from the Lend-Lease aid during the war. It was in no position to argue. 

At the United Nations (UN) both the USSR and the USA strongly condemned the invasion and called for a cease-fire. The British-French-Israeli imperialists had to retreat from the Middle East. America then filled what Eisenhower described as a “vacuum” in the Middle East.

The Egyptian state continued trying to navigate an ‘independence’ from Western imperialism by ‘aid’ from the revisionist USSR. In the process they became effectively pro-USSR compradors. This is dealt with elsewhere, as is ‘Arab Socialism’ or the Egyptian version of this called ‘Wahda’ (Arabic for ‘union’). 

Similarly the struggle with the Ba’ath Party (of Iraq and Syria) and the so-called pan-Arabian nationalist movement – that Nasser wishes to control – is covered elsewhere (See “The Syrian National Revolution: The Role of Khaled Bakdash or Bagdash” 2002; sections: Introduction, and (vi) The Ba’ath Party)

9. The Eisenhower Doctrine 1957

Having humbled Great Britain, in January 1957 US President Dwight Eisenhower proclaimed a new American policy, known as the “Eisenhower Doctrine.” This promised to aid any Middle Eastern state seeking protection against “overt armed aggression from any nation controlled by international communism.” (Hiro 1982)

This provided for US military aid and the use of US troops to “protect” Middle Eastern states threatened with “aggression.” Very soon it was put into play. In May 1958, the people of Lebanon rose against the corrupt regime of President Camille Chamoun. Eisenhower invoked this “Doctrine” to occupy in support of the USA compradors: 

“14,000 US troops were landed in Lebanon (British troops being simultaneously landed in Jordan). Under American pressure, the domination of the state by the Christian comprador capitalist groups was saved” by replacing Chamoun as President in September 1958 by the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, General Fuad Chehab.”

W. B. Bland. (1987). “Notes on Lebanon.”

In this overall strategy, the Israeli government leaders played their own part excellently, jousting and pushing on the Arab states. Israeli leaders seized the role as the Imperialist policeman in the Middle East. The diary of Moshe Sharett is only one of several revealing sources, but of itself is very compelling:

The Personal Diary of Moshe Sharett (Yoman ishi, Maariv, Tel Aviv, 1979) demolished the myth of security as the motor force of Israeli policy. Moshe Sharett was a former Prime Minister of Israel (1954-55), director of the Jewish Agency’s Political Department and Foreign Minister (1948-56).

Sharett’s diary reveals in explicit language that the Israeli political and military leadership never believed in any Arab danger to Israel.

They sought to maneuver and force the Arab states into military confrontations which the Zionist leadership were certain of winning so Israel could carry out the destabilization of Arab regimes and the planned occupation of additional territory.

Sharett described the governing motive of Israeli military provocation:

To bring about the liquidation of all … Palestinian claims to Palestine through the dispersion of the Palestinian refugees to distant corners of the world.  

The Sharett diaries document a longstanding program of Israel’s leaders from both Labor and Likud: to: 

“dismember the Arab world, defeat the Arab national movement and create puppet regimes under regional Israeli power.” 

(Ralph Schoenman, “Hidden History”)

10. The formation of Fatah 1956

“Fatah (Conquest) was formed among the (Palestinian) refugees under the leadership of Yasser Arafat with the declared aim of establishing a Palestinian state in traditional Palestinian territory by means of armed struggle.” (Bland 1997)

“After the Israeli occupation of Sinai and the Gaza Strip in 1956, some Palestinian groups committed solely and exclusively to the liberation of Palestine emerged. It was in this period that al-Fateh was created.” (Hamid 1975)

But the Fatah was not synonymous with the PLO by any means, at least in its early years – see below (#12).  

Whose interests did Fatah represent? Their political views and military wing clearly indicated they were national bourgeoisie. We saw that Palestine in 1882 had been in a feudal state. Zionists paint a wasteland of infertile sand. 

However this is a myth. There had also developed a commercial bourgeoisie, which fortunately for them had located much of its wealth outside of Palestine in the Gulf:

Contrary to Zionist mythology, pre-1948 Palestine was not an undeveloped rural backwater. In urban areas, and particularly in the coastal cities of Yaffa, Haifa and Akka, as well as the inland centres of Jerusalem, Nablus and Hebron, an urbanised Palestinian commercial bourgeoisie involved in trading and merchant activities was well developed. As a consequence of the integration of the region into the emerging world capitalist economy, many of these urbanised Palestinians tended to invest a sizeable share of their wealth in interest-bearing bank accounts located in Britain as well as in the Arab world (Smith, 1984:117). Using the records of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry in 1945 and 1946, Pamela Smith estimates that one-third of total Palestinian capital assets on the eve of 1948 consisted of sterling deposits held abroad, government bonds, commercial stocks, insured commodities and motor vehicles. In addition, large cash deposits were held by Palestinians in local Arab banks, the Ottoman Bank in Jerusalem, and the British-based Barclay’s Bank.

The presence of these moveable assets meant that a proportion of wealth was retained by the emerging Palestinian bourgeoisie following the forced dispossession of three-quarters of the Palestinian population that occurred in 1947-48.

Hanieh, Adam. (2011). “The internationalisation of Gulf cpital and Palestinian class formation.” Capital & Class Vol. 35 (1).

They are described under the term “khaleeji-capital”

They constitute what is described below as khaleeji-capital, an internationalising, pan-Gulf capitalist class, which – in some cases – has begun to interpenetrate across the borders of the Gulf-states.

Hanieh, Adam. (2010). “Khaleeji-Capital: Class Formation and Regional Integration in the Middle-East Gulf.” Historical Materialism 18.

“The formation of khaleeji-capital represents the development of a class increasingly aligned with the interests of imperialism and has important ramifications for understanding the region’s political economy.” (Hanieh 2010)

These were the exiled Palestinian national bourgeoisie. However well preserved their cash reserves may have been, they were still weak and, of course, lacked a state base. Accordingly they made alliances with the rulers of individual Arab states. These varied in their class character. 

For example, many Palestinian refugee camps, where the militants lived, were in Jordan, a monarchic state whose king was a comprador subservient to first Great Britain and then the USA, or Lebanon, where the Maronite Christian leaders were compradors to first France and then to Israel. 

Hence they were susceptible to pressures of many sorts. Ultimately as we shall see later, they capitulated to USA and Israeli pressures. But first their ardent pro-Palestinian fervor was physically bashed out of them by Jordan’s King Hussein (in Black September 1970), and then in Lebanon (Israeli invasion of Lebanon 1978).        

11. Fostering spurious ‘radical’ terrorist trends undermining legitimate aims – The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)

Bland argued that the PLO objectively served the interests of the USA:

In May 1964, on the initiative of the United States, a rival Palestinian organisation, the “Palestine Liberation Organisation”, was set up under the leadership of the demagogic mercenary Ahmad Shuqairi.

This served, objectively the interests of the Western imperialists and Israel by putting out statements that its aims were “to drive the Jews into the sea”.

Bland 1997

Such statements — “drive the Jews into the sea” — certainly serve the interests of Western imperialists and Israel. Whether Shuqairi said exactly that phrase has been challenged. But even that challenge (from the Israeli ex-Intelligence officer, Moshe Shemesh) clarifies that Shuqairi in the same speech called for genocide against Israeli Jews. (Moshe Shemesh; 2003; “Did Shuqayri Call for ‘Throwing the Jews into the Sea’?”; Israel Studies, Vol. 8, No. 2)

Diplomatic scholars acknowledge that “the PLO… had been established in 1964 by the Arab states as a way of controlling Palestinian military activity.” 

(Deborah J. Gerner & Ian S. Wilbur; 2000; “Case 257 Semantics or Substance?  Showdown Between the United States and the Palestine Liberation Organization”; Institute for the Study of Diplomacy Georgetown University)

12. The complex character of the PLO

The PLO was initially formed under the cover of the Arab countries which surrounded Israel and to which the Palestinian refugees had fled. However some, if not most, of these countries were already subservient to the USA. Moreover many were anxious about their own relations with an expansionist Israel. 

The Fatah and other militant organizations recognized this:

Their major fear was that the PLO would be used by Arab governments to contain the upsurge of Palestinian national feeling by institutionalizing it within the existing framework of Arab states, where the PLO would be subject to heavy pressure not to disrupt the existing Arab-Israeli status quo.

Rashid Hamid. (1975). “What is the PLO?” Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 4, No. 4.

As a consequence, many of the most militant organizations held off from joining the PLO until 1969. 

13. Resistance to Shuqairi’s leadership leads to Arafat’s Fatah being able to take over the PLO

“Growing opposition among Palestinians to the policies of the PLO enabled Fatah to join that organisation in February 1969. Becoming by far the largest body in it, Fatah’s policies became the policies of the PLO and its leader, Arafat, became the leader of the PLO.” (Bland 1987, “Lebanon”)

“Arab public opinion forced the rulers of neighbouring Arab states – particularly Jordan and Lebanon – to permit the guerilla units of the PLO to train in and operate from their territory against the Israeli state which occupies Palestine contrary to many UN resolutions.” (Bland 1987, “Lebanon”)

14. Differing characteristics of the factions of the PLO

Even though the Fatah now led the PLO, there were several factions within the PLO. Most had to work out of the Palestinian diaspora across the Arab world. They varied in several ways: 

(i) by the degree to which they amended their own tactics by seeking any particular Arab state sponsorship; 

(ii) the fervency and fundamentalism of Islamism they adopted; 

(iii) the militancy they undertook. Even if they adopted militant tactics, these ranged between individual terrorism and mass revolutionary military violence – with which they expressed it. 

While the general orientation of the PLO was a pro-national Palestinian bourgeois one – not all factions within the PLO were unreservedly so. Some of the organizations were overtly under the umbrella of a specific state in the Middle East. Objectively they typically acted as comprador agents of those countries. 

The objective character of the main force, Fatah, and of Arafat, requires more detailed discussion which follows. 

Today there remain at least 12 factions in the organization. Table 1 below characterizes these. 

15. The role of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)

The only organization that claimed to be an avowedly “Marxist-Leninist” faction was the PFLP, founded by Dr. George Habbash in 1967. While Fatah had already been involved in popular wars including in Jordan, the PFLP took the path of individual terror. These began with airliner hijackings from 1970, and it reached a dubious peak in 1972: 

“Moving to Beirut, along with the rest of the PLO, Habbash persisted in some of the more spectacular, publicity-seeking acts of violence – with the 1972 massacre of tourists at Lod (once Lydda and now Ben Gurion) airport by Japanese Red Army terrorists.” 

David Hirst. “Obituary: George Habbash.” Jan 27 2008. The Guardian.

16. The USA points Israel directly at Egypt and Syria in 1967 in the Six-Day War 

The USA took over the general position of Great Britain, and endorsed Israel as their lynch pin in the area. The USSR acted as a countervail in the cases of Syria and Egypt. Of course the USA wished to check those national bourgeoisie, who took the path of a pro-USSR comprador state. 

Nasser had balanced off USA influence with ‘aid’ from the then revisionist USSR. To counter the threat of a growing and “excess” USSR influence, the USA unleashed war. The USA moved via their client states. 

The USA and Britain now both heavily armed Israel. Egypt and Syria signed a joint defense treaty fearing an Israeli attack. They were quite right. When King Hussein of Jordan joined the Egyptian-Syrian Defense Pact on May 30, 1967, Dean Rusk, then American Secretary of State, clearly signaled war, saying:

“I don’t think it’s our business to restrain anybody.” (Hiro 1982)

The USA knew the very likely outcome of any war between Israel and the neighboring Arab states. As then President Lyndon Johnson put it to an aide:

“Israel is going to hit them (the Arabs)” whilst (he was) publicly responding positively to a Soviet appeal the next day for restraint.” (Hiro 1982)

After the 1956 Suez Crisis, UN Forces were based in the Sinai, under Resolution 1000. But the Israeli government refused the UN access to Israeli territory. 

Several attacks on Syria and Jordan were launched by Israel between November 1956 and April 1967. Israel was chastised by UN Resolution 228, which was endorsed by the US, UK, France, and the USSR.  

Nonetheless, the pretext was grabbed, when the Syrians shot at an Israeli tractor ploughing in the gray area of the demilitarized zone). It was around this time also that Egypt based troops overlooking the Sinai Straits of Tiran, replacing the UN troops who were expelled. 

The real ‘flavor’ is shown by Moshe Dayan’s frank recounting of events in 1976. This was only published in 1997: 

”Look, it’s possible to talk in terms of ‘the Syrians are bastards, you have to get them, and this is the right time,’ and other such talk, but that is not policy,” General Dayan told Mr. Tal in 1976. ”You don’t strike at the enemy because he is a bastard, but because he threatens you. And the Syrians, on the fourth day of the war, were not a threat to us.”

According to the published notes, Mr. Tal began to remonstrate, ”But they were sitting on the Golan Heights, and…”

General Dayan interrupted: ”Never mind that. After all, I know how at least 80 percent of the clashes there started. In my opinion, more than 80 percent, but let’s talk about 80 percent. It went this way: We would send a tractor to plow some area where it wasn’t possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn’t shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance farther, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that’s how it was.”

“’The kibbutzim there saw land that was good for agriculture,” he said. ”And you must remember, this was a time in which agricultural land was considered the most important and valuable thing…

They were thinking about the heights’ land. Listen, I’m a farmer, too. After all, I’m from Nahalal, not from Tel Aviv, and I know about it. I saw them, and I spoke to them. They didn’t even try to hide their greed for that land.”

Serge Schmemann. “General’s Words Shed a New Light on the Golan.” May 11, 1997. New York Times.

The Israelis launched a pre-emptive strike (Operation Focus June 5, 1967) on the eve of a peace mission to Washington by Egypt’s Vice-President Zakaria Mohieddin. This targeted the Egyptian air force and quickly destroyed retaliatory capacity. As Menachem Begin, Prime Minister of Israel (in 1982, and in 1967), said:

“In June 1967 we again had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.” 

55 Address by Prime Minister Begin at the National Defense College. August 8, 1982. Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Nasser’s forces were crushed. Israel took the Golan heights (Syria), the West Bank (from Jordan), and the old Jerusalem city and Bethlehem (from Palestine’s heartland). Only after this did the UN declare the ceasefire of June 8 (UN Security Council Resolution 233), which was already signed by Egypt and Jordan on the 8th of June, and by Israel on June 11.

This sealed the future role as a key agent of the USA in the area of Israel. It also destroyed illusions about Nasser’s strength to well any pan-Arab confederation. Jordan lost the West Bank to Israel, but Jordan continued to assert its claim to speak for the Palestinians.

The net death rate was as follows:

“More than 20,000 fatal Arab casualties, while Israel suffered fewer than 1,000 fatal casualties. Alongside the combatant casualties were the deaths of 20 Israeli civilians killed in Arab forces air strikes on Jerusalem, 15 UN peacekeepers killed by Israeli strikes in the Sinai at the outset of the war, and 34 US personnel killed in the USS Liberty incident in which Israeli air forces struck a United States Navy technical research ship.” (Wikipedia)

17. The Yom Kippur or the Ramadan War of 1973

The Yom Kippur War, or the Ramadan War, or the Fourth Arab–Israeli War, was an armed conflict that took place in October, 1973. Israel again faced a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria. It was launched in secrecy by Egypt which initially gained territory in Sinai. However Israel’s counter-attacks on both the Sinai and the Golan Heights of Syra, were effective. A cease-fire was declared on October 25, 1973. It was followed in 1978 by the Camp David Accords. At this, Israel returned the entire Sinai Peninsula to Egypt. In turn this prompted the 1979 Egyptian–Israeli peace treaty. This was a key turning-point, since this was the first time an Arab country recognized Israel as a legitimate state. 

18. The USA Rogers Plan – incorporating Israel as a “strategic asset”

After Suez the relationship between Israel and the USA was more firmly ensconced than ever before. It informed National Security Adviser, and later Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, in his ‘shuttle diplomacy.’  By the 1960’s:  

Israel, U.S. policymakers believed, could serve as a “strategic asset” and a surrogate for U.S. interests. … “the strategic asset thesis came to be accepted … as absolute dogma in the conventional wisdom of American political culture.” This thesis formed the basis of the 1969 peace plan developed by Secretary of State William P. Rogers and the shuttle diplomacy of National Security Advisor (and later Secretary of State) Henry Kissinger after the October 1973 Arab-Israeli War that led to the Sinai I and Sinai II disengagement agreements between Egypt and Israel.

Gerner & Wilbur, 2000.

In any case by summer 1970, the USA had already decided on a new path, and it launched the “Rogers Plan.” This was because of their then need to stabilize the Middle East to enable a steady oil supply.  This led the USA to a bargain where they would restrain Israel from going beyond the pre-1967 boundary in exchange for two goals: 

1) the Palestine national liberation movements were ‘de-fanged’; and
2) the representatives of Soviet imperialism were expelled from the Arab states.

(Bland 1973)

This led to the steady obliteration of Palestinian base quarters for their guerrillas, as various Middle Eastern countries accordingly trimmed their cloth, as seen in the following:    

(i) Jordan. In September, 1970, after several airliners were hijacked to Jordan by Palestinian commandos, this led King Hussein of Jordan to attack the national liberation forces within Jordan. By July, 1971, all Palestinian resistance forces within Jordan had been liquidated.

(ii) Lebanon. In April, 1973, the government of Lebanon attacked the Palestinian national liberation forces within Lebanon. By May the guerillas had suffered heavy casualties.

(iii) Egypt. The Egyptian government headed by President Anwar Sadat in May, 1971, arrested several hundred prominent persons associated with the pro-Soviet faction within the capitalist class – led by Ali Sabry. 

(iv) Syria. In September, 1973, the Syrian government imposed “strict restrictions” on the movements of Soviet personnel in the country.

(v) Saudi Arabia. In September, King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, whose country is a long-standing semi-colony of the USA to which it exported at one stage most of its oil, declared (in support of the US plan) that continuing US support for Israel might be purchased “at the cost of Saudi oil.”

(Bland 1973)

19. PLO rejects the UN Security Council Resolutions closing out the Arab wars  

Two UN Resolutions – 242 and 338 – were the formal closures of the Suez Wars, in 1975. However, they did not meet the Palestinian demand of self-determination, instead referring only to a “settlement of the refugee problem.” 

Accordingly the PLO rejected them as any basis for negotiation. This led Kissinger to undertake a secret U.S.- Israeli Memorandum of Understanding pledging to Israeli Foreign Minister Yigal Allon and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin that: 

“The United States will continue to adhere to its present policy with respect to the Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO], whereby it will not recognize or negotiate with the Palestine Liberation Organization so long as the Palestine Liberation Organization does not recognize Israel’s right to exist and does not accept Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338’.

Gerner & Wilbur, 2000.

In 1984, the US Congress wrote this into law adding a third clause: that the PLO renounce the use of “terrorism.”

20. Conclusions of Marxist-Leninists up to 1973

In 1973, the overall conclusions of the Marxist-Leninist movement could be summarized as follows:

“The war of the Arab states for the liberation of the territories seized from them by Israel on behalf of United States imperialism is a just war, which will have the support of progressive people in every country…  But a war fought by Arab states with the tacit support of the US imperialists cannot solve the plight of the Palestine refugees. This requires the forcible destruction of the present Israeli racist state machine and the establishment of a democratic Palestinian state in which Arabs and Jews can have equal civil rights. This can be brought about not by the present war, but only by the armed struggle of a united Palestinian national liberation movement purged of illusions of the usefulness of acts of individual terrorism.” Bland 1973 

Further events were to vindicate this analysis. 

21. Lebanon and the French comprador class, represented by the Maronite Christian led Phalange Party

In discussing Israeli machinations inside Lebanon, we have to briefly return to the period of the First World War and the Sykes-Picot Agreement (See #2). 

At the close of the Ottoman Empire, as the British and French were gobbling up portions of it, feudal class relations in greater Syria was set in favor of Sunni Muslims:

“In Turkish times the Sunni Muslim had been the privileged community, growing rich on ‘Alawi labour… (who) could be expected to be ground down by the Sunni or Christian merchant, money-lender or landowner…  But … in the early 1920’s the French gave the ‘Alawi privileges.”

Patrick Seale. (1988). “Asad: The Struggle for the Middle East.”

“France tried to pit all of Syria’s minority communities against the Sunni Arabs, who constituted the core of its traditional political elites.” 

Malik Mufti. (1966). “Sovereign Creations: Pan-Arabism & Political Order in Syria & Iraq.”

At the end of the First World War, France took up its self-appointed mandate in Syria. But it first created a newly detached State of greater Lebanon. By geographical manipulation it created a base for their Maronite compradors. 

The French created this large comprador fraction by fostering various sections of the non-Sunnis: ‘Alawis (eg. the Kinj brothers; the Abbas family); and in Mount Lebanon from 1860 onwards the Maronite Christians; and other landowners throughout the former Bilad al-Sham:

“The French fully understood that Syrian nationalist sentiment would be opposed to their rule. This in effect meant that the Sunnis were their principal antagonists and they thus proceeded to capitalise on the .. Christians, their oldest friends, by creating a new state that stripped Tyre, Sidon, Tripoli, the Baaka valley & Beirut itself from Syria and added them to the Ottoman sanjak (administrative district) of Mount Lebanon the very backbone of Maronite Christianity. Syria was cut off from its finest ports and Damascus … was weakened at the expense of Beirut and the new Christian dominated regime.” 

Robert Fisk. (1990). “Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon.”

Then in 1921, France yielded to Turkey, large parts of Aleppo, and Alexandretta-Antioch. 

A further administrative maneuver divided Syria into four parts. These were the mini-states of Damascus, Aleppo, and the “independent” Alawi mountains and the Druze mountains. 

22. Israel wreaks the destruction of the Palestinian forces in Lebanon

To facilitate destroying the forces of the Fatah-PLO based in Lebanon, Israel tapped the comprador network that had been initially set up by France. This was formed by the leaders of the Maronite Christian community. 

Before the land invasion of Lebanon, Israel’s Defense Minister Ariel Sharon came to a compact with the leader of the Kataeb Party (or Phalange) military wing (Kataeb Regulatory Forces), Bashir Geyamel. This had been formed by Bashir’s father (Pierre) along explicitly Spanish and Italian fascist lines. 

After Jordan eliminated the Jordanian based PLO in ‘Black September’ (1970), the Palestinian resistance formed their largest force in Lebanon. But this was attacked from 1975 onward:

In April of 1975 the comprador capitalists set their Phalangist militia to open civil war against the Palestine Liberation Organisation. However, in spite of large-scale aid from Israel, by June of the following year (1976) the position of the Phalangists had become desperate. In these circumstances, 20,000 Syrian troops invaded Lebanon and fought the Palestinian militia alongside the Phalangists.

Despite heroic resistance by the Palestinians, the Phalangists succeeded in smashing their way into the last strongpoint, Beirut, and the civil war, which had lasted a year and seven months and cost 44,000 lives, came to an end in November 1976.

Bland 1987, “Lebanon.”

The path was laid by Mossad with its agent, Bashir Gemayel:

“The Mossad, which is Israel’s intelligence collection and covert operations unit, was largely responsible for establishing and championing Israel’s ties with Bashir Gemayal in Lebanon.” 

Naji Bsisu. (2012). “Israeli Domestic Politics & the War in Lebanon.” Journal of the Middle Eastern Studies Students’ Association, Issue 3, Vol. 1.

23. “Operation Litani”

In March 1978, Israel invaded Lebanon: 

…with the aim of destroying the Palestinian bases in south Lebanon… and occupied its southern part up to the river Litani.

The Security Council of the United Nations called upon Israel to withdraw its forces, and set up a United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) to confirm the withdrawal and restore the authority of the Lebanese government in the south. The Israeli forces withdrew back to the frontier in June, but left a Lebanese puppet force, later known as the South Lebanon Army, in occupation of the border area. In April 1979 the leader of this force, Major Sa’ad Haddad (a Maronite Christian –Ed.), proclaimed the zone an “independent Lebanese state.”

Bland 1987, “Lebanon.”

24. The Egyptians bypass Palestinians in the Camp David Talks

In the aftermath of the Ramadan War of 1973, the Egyptians were bending to the USA, and the PLO was cold-shouldered. 

Between late 1970s and early 1980s, the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon, John Gunther Dean, “held more than thirty-five secret meetings with PLO officials, including several with Arafat’s top aide, Abu Jihad.” But these were all publicly denied by the USA. (Gerner & Wilbur 2000)

Meanwhile the USA, under Presidents Ford, Carter, and Ronald W. Reagan, negotiated with the more pliable Egypt and Jordan. This culminated in the Camp David Summit:

“In September 1978 came the American-sponsored Camp David summit agreement for an Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty. This agreement was opposed not only by the Palestinians but, as a result of public pressure, by Syria, (which was still largely dependent economically and militarily upon the Soviet Union) and this common opposition brought about a reconciliation between the Palestinians and the Syrian occupation forces in Lebanon.”                              

Bland 1987, “Lebanon.”

Syria’s situation had never been satisfactorily resolved from the point of view of the USA. Despite Syria’s limited bowing to the Rogers Plan, it had remained a pro-USSR force. (Kumar, “The Syrian National Revolution: The Role of Khaled Bakdash Or Bagdash“)

The PLO, Syria and some forces in Lebanon united, around a pro-revisionist USSR basis:

Therefore – and “with financial help from Saudi Arabia and the Soviet Union, the Palestinian paramilitary units in Lebanon were able to rebuild themselves into a new well-armed force of 15,000 and in January 1980 Syrian forces withdrew from part of Lebanon, handing over control to the PLO, which established its effective control over most of the country except for those areas, such as East Beirut, controlled by the Phalangists.

Bland 1987, “Lebanon.”

This re-grouping in Lebanon remained the main target of USA imperialist activity in the Middle East, and their Israeli “strategic asset.” One commentator writes, after the Camp David treaty:

“Solving the problem of the PLO and installing a Maronite regime in Lebanon was the answer they were looking for, and if ceding the Sinai Peninsula and making peace with Egypt would allow them to achieve this goal, then that is what they were prepared to do that. The Likud government and the coalition it had formed became more aggressive in its attitude towards the Arab world following the conclusion of this peace treaty.” (Bsisu 2012)

In Israel’s 1977 elections, the Likud party, led by Menachem Begin, won. It was the first time the right wing had done so, but it needed to form a coalition with ultra-right religious parties — which it did. The antecedents of Likud was the Irgun. In fact Begin was a terrorist, and a former member of Irgun, which wreaked terror on the Arab population: 

“Menachem Begin was a former leader of the armed group, Irgun, which was a militant Zionist organization based on the teaching of Ze’ev Jabotinsky, who said, “every Jew had the right to enter Palestine; only active retaliation would deter the Arabs; only Jewish armed force would ensure the Jewish state.” (Bsisu 2012)

25. “Operation Peace for Galilee” and the PLO evacuation of Lebanon 

For a long time the Maronites of the Phalange had been in Israel’s service. Israel wished to put them into power to further enable Israel. 

Ariel Sharon, Defense Minister for Begin, led Shlomtzion, a small right-wing group which joined Likud. 

The first aim of Sharon’s plan was to destroy the PLO’s military infrastructure in Lebanon and to undermine it as a political organization. The second aim was to establish a new political order in Lebanon by helping Israel’s Maronite friends, headed by Bashir Gemayel, to form a government that would proceed to sign a peace treaty with Israel. For this to be possible, it was necessary, third, to expel the Syrian forces from Lebanon or at least to weaken seriously the Syrian presence there. In Sharon’s big plan, the war in Lebanon was intended to transform the situation not only in Lebanon but in the whole Middle East. The destruction of the PLO would break the backbone of Palestinian nationalism and facilitate the absorption of the West Bank into Greater Israel.

Bsisu 2012

A pretext was needed, since Arafat and Fatah did not rise to the bait of bombing PLO targets in Southern Lebanon. Araft knew he could not risk rising to this bait. Fortunately for the Israelis, a convenient attack failed on the Israeli Ambassador in London:

“In June 1982 an attempt was made on the life of the Israeli Ambassador in London. On this pretext Israel invaded Lebanon again in an operation called “Operation Peace in Galilee.” This had the aim of destroying completely the Palestine liberation forces in Lebanon (they had, as has been said, been driven from Jordan in 1970-71). 

Although Syria had been informed prior to invasion that the operation was not directed at its forces, some conflict with Syrian forces did occur. On the sixth day of the invasion, by which time Syrian armed forces had lost 650 killed and 500 armoured vehicles, Syria signed a cease-fire with Israel.

By this time the invasion forces were 60 miles into Lebanon, laying siege to the Moslem area of West Beirut (where the remains of the PLO forces were bottled up). In August the Palestine Liberation Organisation agreed to withdraw its forces from Lebanon under the supervision of a Multinational Peace-keeping Force from Britain, France, Italy and the United States. The evacuation was completed by the end of the month, and 11,000 of the PLO’s fighters were dispersed to other Arab states.” (Bland 1987, “Lebanon”)

It is only necessary to point out that once more an act of individual terrorism was the ‘trigger.’ It was not the PLO who did this — it was Abu Nidal’s organization. This was well understood by Israeli leaders:

“The sought-after incident was provided by Abu Nidal’s terrorist organization which carried out an attack on Israeli Ambassador, Shlomo Argov. Although the attempt on his life failed, it was just the type of incident needed to show the Israeli public that the PLO in Lebanon had to be dealt with. The issue that Abu Nidal’s organization was not part of the PLO, in fact they were mortal enemies, did not matter to the coalition. When this point was raised, Begin responded with, “They’re all PLO!” while his chief of staff said, “Abu Nidal, Abu Shmidal, we have to strike at the PLO!”

Bsisu 2012

26. The September 1982 massacre of remaining Palestinians in Sabra and Shatila Camps  

Likely at Syrian hands, the leader of the Phalange Maronites, Bashir Gemayel, was assassinated. This prompted the Phalange massacre of Palestinian refugees and some PLO forces in Sabra and Shatila. The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) protected the Phalange and stopped victims escaping from the camps:  

“In September 1982 the new Maronite Christian President-elect of Lebanon, Bashir Gemayel, was assassinated at unknown hands. The Israeli forces then permitted Phalangists to enter two Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in West Beirut and massacre more than 800 women, old people and children.” (Bland 1987)

“The Phalangist militia, looking to avenge their fallen leader, decided to enter the fray by cleaning out Palestinian ‘terrorists’ from the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. The Phalangists were given entry by the IDF, which encircled the camps to keep the population inside. What occurred subsequently can only be described as a massacre, as a revenge-minded militia vented their fury on anyone that stood in their path—man, women or child…” (Bsisu 2012)

While the Israeli population had been told the Lebanese invasion was a limited affair to ‘wipe out terrorists,’ the obvious aim to take Beirut and install a new leadership became clear to the Israeli population: 

These events created a huge uproar by the Israeli people, who finally caught on to the true nature of this escapade.

Bsisu 2012

In 1983, an independent commission was chaired by the Assistant to the Secretary-General of the UN, Irish diplomat Seán MacBride. It laid responsibility on the massacre, calling it a form of genocide, on the IDF. 

27. The Reagan Plan

The USA imperialists leaned on the Monarchy of Jordan as their tool to manipulate the Palestinian movement:

In September 1982 US President Ronald Reagan put forward a new “peace plan” for the Middle East which envisaged the establishment of a “Palestinian homeland” on the West Bank of the Jordan, not as an independent state but as a part, with limited powers of self-government, of the state of Jordan, which had been since its inception a monarchist tool of Anglo-American imperialism.

The Reagan Plan was opposed by the right-wing government of Israel, headed by Menahem Begin, on the grounds that it would involve the surrender of Israeli-occupied territory, and by the PLO on the grounds that it did not provide for an independent Palestine state. It was nominally opposed by most Arab states, except for Egypt and Jordan.

Bland 1987

28. The Israeli-Lebanese Agreement following Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon

After Sabra and Shatila, the Israeli population was in uproar, and finally the Labor Party objected to the actions of Sharon and the IDF. A forced retreat was enacted:

“The heavy losses sustained by Israel in its invasion of Lebanon (583 killed)… continued to mount daily as a result of Lebanese and Palestinian guerilla warfare against the occupation forces – combined with the obviously aggressive character of the war, had stimulated the growth of a peace movement in Israel itself.

The atrocity against the Palestinian camps brought to a head public opposition to the Israeli invasion, not only in other countries but in Israel itself.

In these circumstances, in May 1983 the United States, Israeli and Lebanese governments signed an agreement providing for the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanese soil, combined with the recognition of a “security zone” in the south to prevent the infiltration into the area of Palestinian fighters.

This agreement, supported by Egypt and Jordan, was opposed by the PLO, Libya and Syria, the last-named declaring that its troops would remain in Lebanon. It was also opposed as a treacherous surrender of Lebanese sovereignty to a foreign power by progressive Lebanese political forces, which formed a National Opposition Front (later called the National Democratic Front) headed by Walid Jumblatt of the Progressive Socialist Party and George Hawi of the Communist Party.

In February 1984 President Amin Gemayel (who had taken the place of his assassinated brother) was forced by this pressure to revoke the agreement.” 

(Bland 1987)

Opposition at home to Israel’s aggressive war in Lebanon was one of the factors responsible for a change of government in the election of July 1984. The ultra-right Likud Front, headed by Menahem Begin, lost its position as the largest parliamentary group to the Alignment, dominated by the Labour Party, which campaigned on withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanon and acceptance of the Reagan Plan. Following the withdrawal of the Multi-National Peacekeeping Force, the new government, with a Prime Minister (Shimon Peres) drawn from the Labour Party, unilaterally announced in January 1985 that it would withdraw its troops from Lebanon, and this – was completed – by June – except for the southern zone, where control was handed once again to the puppet South Lebanon Army, headed, since the death of Haddad in January 1984, by Major -General Antoine Lahad.

Bland 1987

29. The rebellion within the PLO

“Although Fatah rejected the Reagan Plan in June 1983, Arafat went to Jordan to discuss its implications with King Hussein and this was used by the Syrian government as a pretext for sponsoring in Lebanon a rebellion of pseudo-left forces within the PLO against its leadership. By December 1983 the rebels had gained control of all PLO bases in Lebanon and the forces loyal to Arafat had been forced to withdraw to other Arab states.” (Bland 1987)

30. The First Intifada (1987); The Second Intifada (2000); Marwan Barghouti

Some have argued that in 1987 the PLO “guided and led the mass uprising in the occupied West Bank and Gaza known as the First Intifada, the continuation of which was the single strongest card in the PLO’s political hand at that time.” (Helena Cobban; “How We Speak About the Failure of the PLO: Accounts still get the history of Palestinian diplomacy wrong;” March 31, 2021)

Cobban’s view is very partisan for the Fatah, but is an over-optimistic view. Others argue to the contrary that:

Now, the actions of Palestinians from inside the West Bank and Gaza Strip—the anonymous intifada leadership that was responsible for writing the communiqués as well as for the newly formed Hamas movement—had created a new social and political reality that challenged Arafat’s claim to be the one individual whose leadership could achieve Palestinian self-determination. The popular committees, which were responsible for underground education, garbage collection, policing the streets, coordination of food distribution during curfews and sieges, and everything in between, required a high level of local mobilization, and entire sectors of society had been brought into the process. Furthermore, the Israeli assassination of one of Arafat’s closest friends and colleagues, Abu Jihad, on 16 April 1988 had eliminated the one clear, direct link between the PLO in Tunis and the intifada leadership.

Gerner & Wilbur 2000 

One leader of the Intifada was indeed a member of Fatah – Marwan Barghouti. But he clearly was not of Arafat’s mold. He took over the armed force of Fatah, the Tanzin:

“Barghouti was a youth member of Fatah, but he became one of the major leaders in the West Bank of the First Intifada (1987). Arrested by Israel he was deported to a Jordan jail, but released by the Oslo Accord. In 1996, he was elected to the Palestinian Authority’s new parliament, the Palestinian Legislative Council, with overwhelming support.

He then launched a campaign against human rights abuses by Arafat’s own security services and corruption among his officials, further raising his profile.

At the same time, Barghouti established close contacts with several Israeli politicians and members of the country’s peace movement.

But by the summer of 2000, especially after the collapse of the Camp David summit, he had become disillusioned. He predicted that the “next Intifada” would mix popular protests with “new forms of military struggle.”

The second Intifada broke out that September after a visit by Ariel Sharon, then the leader of Israel’s opposition, to the Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem, which houses the al-Aqsa mosque, sparked Palestinian anger.” (“Profile: Marwan Barghouti“; June 2, 2011)

The First Intifada and its rank-and-file nature forced Arafat to reverse all his prior statements, making a major retreat, in order to retain power. His major step is recounted by his close ally:

“Abu Mazen recalled the conversation: ‘I asked him, should we consider recognizing Israel? He said yes.'” (Gerner & Wilbur 2000)

It is possible that this is, for some Marxist-Leninists, unexceptionable, at least to the extent of seeing that Jews in current Israel have, by now, achieved some on-going physical, cultural and State presence. This commentator believes the alternative viewpoint can only be that cry that was associated with Ahmad Shuqairi. But this cry — “to drive the Jews into the sea” — serves, objectively, the interests of the Western imperialists and Israel.                       

Whether Marxist-Leninists should recognize the state of Israel as having welded a national state as of today is discussed at the end. 

31. Monarchy of Jordan washes hands of the Palestinian political agenda

By 1988, it was clear that the ground-swell from the people trapped in the amputated remains of Palestinian soil – were not going to accept anything other than a fully liberated Palestine. The Intifada showed that even the Fatah had no influence in the masses on the ground. What hope did Jordan have to ‘restrain them’? The wily Hashemite King washed Jordan’s hands of the problem:

“King Hussein dropped a political bomb on July 31, 1988. Faced with the intifada’s strong articulation of Palestinian nationalism and widespread Palestinian rejection of his claim to represent them, King Hussein shocked the world by announcing that Jordan would sever all “legal and administrative links” to the West Bank. This action put Arafat and the PLO “under intense pressure to fill the perceived vacuum created by Jordan’s disengagement from the area.” Salah Khalaf (Abu Iyad), Arafat’s close associate until his assassination in January 1991, later remarked:

‘We knew that the king had not made his decision for the benefit of the cause. I believe personally that the king was betting that the PLO would not be capable of making an initiative. The bet was that either there would be a failure to take a decision, or a failure to implement it, and that in either case the PLO would have to go back to him again.’” (Gerner & Wilbur 2000)

32. The disintegration of the state of the revisionist USSR

Following Khrushchev’s accession to power in 1953, the formal reintroduction of the profit motive of production began, and was finalized by Leonid Brezhnev by 1964. This completed the counter-revolution in the USSR.

For a period the post-Khrushchev state was propping up Arab states wanting to accept comprador status to the USSR rather than to the USA (Alliance ML, “How the Khrushchevites distorted the struggles in the colonial world”; January 1997). 

But the final disintegration or ‘liquidation’ of the USSR between Gorbachev and Yeltsin (1991) completed the revisionist logic. (Communist League UK; “The Liquidation of the Soviet Union” no.94; February 1992)

Naturally this liquidation of the USSR collapsed the chances of opportunist Arab bourgeoisie, who had long forsaken any meaningful social change, of avoiding falling into the arms of the USA. And into the new era of ‘neo-liberal’ economics. The later role of Putin’s Russia in Syria is covered elsewhere.        

Even before 1991, Arafat was already seriously grappling with how to get the USA to give a modicum of support to this movement. 

33. Arafat courts USA and Israel 

After the evacuation of Lebanon, and after the Intifada launched on the ground without Fatah’s direct guidance, Arafat was getting more pessimistic. In fact for some time Arafat had been anxious to tie Palestine’s fate to the USA apron:

For many years, (Arafat) had desired an official dialogue with the United States, convinced that the U.S. role as Israel’s chief supporter meant that only with U.S. acquiescence could the Palestinians achieve their political goals. More than once, Arafat had stated bluntly that “the U.S. holds the key to Israel.” Arafat’s intelligence cooperation with the United States in Lebanon since the early 1970s and his indirect messages to Henry Kissinger both before and after the October 1973 War were among the different ways he had tried—unsuccessfully—to get the United States to listen to him. There were two secret meetings in Rabat, Morocco, between a senior PLO representative and Deputy Director of the CIA General Vernon Walters in November 1973 and March 1974; however, nothing came of them.

Gerner & Wilbur 2000

But it also seems incontestable that there was an objective economic reason that Arafat was modifying his views. That was the enormous resources coming to the PLO from Gulf based Palestinian capital, that was by now enmeshed with the USA and European oil industry:

“Despite its junior position, the Palestinian capitalist class in the Gulf benefited from its links to ruling families and wealthy elites and, in return, mediated the Gulf’s political relationship with the emerging Palestinian national movement embodied in the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and its component factions. … numerous writers have argued that the huge flows of money to the PLO that came from the Gulf region were accompanied by a blunting of the PLO’s political radicalism, a growing ‘neopatrimonial bureaucratization’ of the organisation as control over finances became concentrated in the hands of Yasser Arafat, and a creeping accommodation with US perspectives on a two-state solution and acceptance of Israel.” (Hanieh 2011)

34. Arafat and the PLO start to downsize their goal of “all of Palestine” 

Arafat understood that to get the USA to being discussing with the PLO any possible state formation in Palestine, the PLO would have to relinquish the notion of obtaining the whole of Palestine to develop nationhood, and accept instead any part of that land:

Under Arafat’s leadership, the Palestine National Council (PNC) began to shift its focus away from its previous goal of a unified, progressive, secular state in all of Palestine. Instead, at the June 1974 PNC meeting, the parliament-in-exile advocated a Palestinian “national authority” in any part of historic Palestine that was freed from Israeli control. That October, at the Arab League conference in Rabat, the Arab states had acknowledged the PLO as the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people,” giving Arafat increased international legitimacy. Most significant for the Palestinian movement, Arafat was invited to address the members of the United Nations on 13 November 1974.

Gerner & Wilbur 2000

35. Accepting UN Resolutions 

“In January 1976 the PLO supported a Security Council resolution (vetoed by the U.S.) which called for a two-state settlement on the pre-June 1967 borders with “appropriate arrangements to guarantee . . . the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of all states in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized borders”—in effect an acceptance of resolutions 242 and 338 with a modification to allow for a Palestinian state as well as an implicit recognition of Israel by the PLO.” (Gerner & Wilbur 2000)

36. Sweden acts as intermediary

The Swedish Foreign Minister Andersson was asked by Arafat to persuade USA Secretary of State Shultz to open talks, until then steadfastly refused by the USA:

“Andersson told Shultz that Arafat himself had encouraged Andersson to pursue this approach with the Americans… Shultz made no response to the proposal. “I looked upon that as a silent yes.” (Gerner & Wilbur 2000)

37. The Stockholm 1988 capitulation and descent into pro-USA compradorship of Fatah-PLO

The first preparatory meeting took place on Tuesday, November 21, 1988, in Stockholm. In the Stockholm Declaration the PLO agreed to “accept the existence of Israel as a state in the region; and declared its rejection and condemnation of terrorism in all its forms, including state terrorism.” It also called for further negotiations and a settlement to the refugee question. (Gerner & Wilbur 2000)

The USA set out a deliberately tortuous and complex path where Arafat was forced to publicly abase himself repetitively, in order to win the USA to agree to talks. Finally, “on Tuesday, 16 December 1988, exactly one year and one week after the outbreak of the intifada, United States Ambassador Pelletreau held the first official meeting with representatives of the PLO in nearly fifteen years.” (Gerner & Wilbur 2000)

38. The Oslo Talks and Declaration  

The road to the Oslo talks was achieved. However the 1993 signing of the Oslo Declaration “on the White House lawn” marked a precipitous descent into opportunist agreements with both the imperialist power of the USA and with the Israeli state. As Cobban points out,  

The Accords said nothing about what would happen if, after the five-year interim period prescribed therein, the two sides failed to arrive at a final peace agreement. But Arafat and Abu Mazen signed the agreement anyway. They did not listen to… any of the experienced leaders from inside Palestine who knew what their community needed.

Cobban 2021

The Palestinian state was to be the severed off territory of Gaza and the West Bank bordering onto Jordan. Negotiations on any further settlement were, as Cobban points out, completely stalled and no progress made until the five year window of an “interim period” was safely elapsed.

39. The “Palestinian Interim Self-Governing Authority” (PISGA), later the “Palestinian Authority” (PA)

Since 1967 Arafat had been in exile, but in 1994, Arafat and Abu Mazen returned to the occupied territories to establish a “Palestinian Interim Self-Governing Authority” (PISGA) to which the Israeli occupation forces slowly ceded increasing plots of land in the two occupied territories.

In the first elections in 1996, Arafat was elected president. The Islamist-nationalist movement Hamas had boycotted the polls. (Cobban 2021) The formation of Hamas is discussed below.

But by May 1999, nothing had been agreed with the negotiations, and says Cobban: 

“By then Arafat, Abu Mazen (i.e. Abbas), and their cronies were too comfortable in their United States, European Union, and Japan-funded status quo in Ramallah to care much about anything else—such as the Israeli government’s continued push to expand settlements in the West Bank and the extensive infrastructure required to sustain them, its refusal to allow the PISGA to exercise any powers at all in occupied East Jerusalem, or the Israeli military’s heavy-handed and regular crackdowns throughout the occupied areas.” (Cobban 2021)

The PLO effectively was usurped by the PA, its mission of a single Palestine state having been completely discarded.  

Since… the 1993 Oslo agreements between Israel and the PLO to govern Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has become the true political center of gravity, with the PLO retaining a zombie form–a higher decision making body in theory, but marginalized in practice.

Hussein Agha & Ahmad Samih Khalidi. (2021). “A Palestinian reckoning: Time for a new beginning.” Foreign Affairs Vol. 100, Issue 2.

Arafat died in 2004. It is most likely he had been assassinated, and Polonium levels in his belongings and corpse were suspiciously high (Pascal Froidevaux et al; “Improving forensic investigation for polonium poisoning”; Lancet 2013). It is unproven, but it was extremely likely to have been committed on Israeli state orders. 

In any case, by then Arafat and the PISGA — against better advice – had already signed away crucial rights including on the so-called “bypass roads” allowing settlers to “travel freely between the settlements and Israel proper without having to face the ‘risks’ of driving through Palestinian towns and cities.” 

Likud’s government under Ariel Sharon (1996 to 1999) “used that ‘permission’ granted at Oslo to build an entirely new network of Israelis-only superhighways throughout the West Bank that upended the human geography of the entire region, facilitating superfast travel for the settlers while cutting off the Palestinian towns and cities from one other.” (Cobban 2021)

40. Empowering the Settler Colonization of even the rump of the West Bank

Encroachments and provocations on the borders of constantly-expanding colonial settlements were perpetrated by the Israeli militant armed settlers.  

Even bourgeois sources acknowledge this, as in the Brookings Institute report:

As the population of Israeli settlers has expanded almost four-fold since the start of the Oslo process, the calls have grown louder to formally incorporate into Israel the territory on the West Bank where those settlements have been established, a portion of land designated “Area C” under the Accords. Area C comprises more than 60 percent of the West Bank and is essential to the establishment of a viable Palestinian state. Yet more than 620,000 settlers are now living there illegally in more than 240 dispersed settlements, including in East Jerusalem. In addition to the physical barrier to Palestinian statehood, the settlers and their organized movement have become an even bigger political obstacle. The rightward slide in Israeli politics has tipped the scales in favor of the advocates of extending Israeli sovereignty beyond the Green Line.

Omar Rahman. (2019). “Research: From confusion to clarity: Three pillars for revitalizing the Palestinian national movement.”

41. The broader picture in the Middle East, illustrated by the USA removing Saddam Hussein and the Iraq Wars

The context in which these events in and around Palestine were taking place, need to be considered. This was both before and after the USA inspired Gulf Wars took place, which were always meant to ensure dominance of the USA in the Middle East. Moreover the determination of the USA was to change the boundaries of the states to serve USA interests. This was made amply clear, as discussed elsewhere.

For example: 

“#156. The underlying central theme of all these upheavals in the Middle East is the new USA strategic goal. This is to re-draw the boundaries and maps of the Middle East, which had been set after the First World War. Skeptics argue that this was unplanned, and has evolved. But data confirms a conscious plan. 

The Rogers Plan indicated that the USA has in fact been thinking along these lines for some time. Moreover, the USA built on what was known as the Oden Yinon Plan or the plan for a ‘Greater Israel” articulated in 1982:

“The first argument for partitioning Iraq was made in 1982 by Zionist strategist Oded Yinon, whose plan – often called the Yinon plan or the plan for “Greater Israel” – calls for dividing Iraq into separate statelets for Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. It similarly calls for the division of other secular Arab states, like Syria, into smaller states divided along ethnic or sectarian lines that are constantly at war with each other in order to ensure that Israel “becomes an imperial regional power.” 

#160. Just as vivid are other authoritative recent statements of intent. In 2006, Secretary Condoleezza Rice in a press conference, who justified the Israeli attacks on Lebanon, by invoking a ‘New Middle East’: “What we’re seeing here [in regards to the destruction of Lebanon and the Israeli attacks on Lebanon], in a sense, is the growing—the ‘birth pangs’—of a ‘New Middle East’ and whatever we do, we [meaning the United States] have to be certain that we’re pushing forward to the New Middle East [and] not going back to the old one….

#164. Of course the best plans of mice and men can go astray. In this case they were forced astray by Iran.” 

(Hari Kumar, “Theses on Kurdistan Part Two”)

42. Who were the Palestinian Authority leaders after Arafat? Palestinian ‘national’ Gulf based capital in alliance with Israel

After Arafat’s death his close ally Abu Mazen (aka Mahmoud Abbas) and other leaders of the PA continued Arafat’s path of full collaboration with the forces of Israel and the USA.  

But who are these leaders?

The leadership of the PLO/PA—a small coterie of ageing [sic] leaders, all on the U.S. payroll, whose maximum claim to “authority” extends only to the 3 million Palestinians of the West Bank (where numerous other political currents face often harsh repression from the PA). The PLO/PA does not, in any meaningful way, represent the interests of the more than 80 percent of the Palestinian people who live elsewhere—whether in the forced exile of the diaspora (60 percent), in Gaza (about 13 percent), or in Israel proper as Israeli citizens (about 8 percent).

Cobban 2021

“The PA has to many Palestinians come to resemble a subcontractor to Israeli occupation, charged with suppressing militant opposition to Israel in the areas under its control.” (Hussein 2021)

In this setting Abu Mazen’s complete rejection of violence has been invaluable to Israel:

“Abu Mazen (was) the first significant Palestinian national leader in modern history to openly and unreservedly abjure violence and to commit to diplomacy and peaceful means as the sole path to a resolution of the conflict.” 

Hussein Agha & Ahmad Samih Khalidi. (2021). “A Palestinian reckoning: Time for a new beginning.” Foreign Affairs Vol. 100, Issue 2.

“The Accords expired twenty-two years ago. What used to be known as ‘PISGA’ has long since dropped the markers ‘Interim’ and ‘Self-Governing’ from its name. The ‘PA’ has lived through repeated zombie half-lives of its own.” (Cobban 2021)

“After 1999, when (with full U.S. support) the Israeli government blithely ignored the five-year deadline set at Oslo for completion of the final-status agreement and continued its settlement project without pause, it became increasingly clear to Palestinians and many others — including a few Jewish Israelis…  — that there could be no viable two-state outcome. It therefore also became clear that the PLO’s older, bolder program of aiming for a single, secular, and democratic state in all of Mandate Palestine should urgently be revived.“ (Cobban 2021)

Since Oslo, the Fatah leaders were seen as having abandoned the refugees outside of the West Bank:

The PLO drifted from (an) earlier vision toward supporting a two-state outcome from 1974 on. For a long time thereafter, it continued to insist on full respect for the U.N. endorsed right of Palestinians who were exiled from their homeland in 1948, 1967, or later to return to their ancestral homes and lands. But after Oslo that insistence became increasingly diluted and has often been omitted from the PLO’s rhetoric completely. The PLO, which had originally been incubated in the angry refugee camps of the Palestinian diaspora, increasingly came to be seen by diaspora Palestinians as having completely abandoned their demands, their grievances, and even their internationally sanctioned rights.

Cobban 2021

But who did these visible representatives stand for? 

43. Palestinian national capital intertwined with Gulf Arab capital in the West Bank

We pointed out above (#2) that Palestinian commercial capital held in 1948, significant capital overseas. In the Gulf this capital went into on-going accumulation, as part of the Gulf capitalist class:

Palestinian capital accumulation occurred as part of the accumulation processes of other regional capitalist classes. Of particular importance to this accumulation was the Gulf area, which became the central zone of activity for displaced Palestinian capital. Palestinian diasporic capital largely developed as a distinct sub-sector of the Gulf capitalist class…. The top tier consists of internationalised capital originating in the Gulf region. Much–but not all–of this capital is owned by individuals of Palestinian national origins.

Hanieh, Adam. (2011). “The internationalisation of Gulf capital and Palestinian class formation.” Capital & Class, Vol.35 (1).

When the Oslo Accords set out two areas of Palestinian ghettoization (or Bantustans as they were commonly called), some of the Gulf capital returned to Palestine. But primarily to the West Bank:

“This capital links together within a second tier of powerful holding companies that operate solely within the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Finally, in the bottom tier, we find the domestic Palestinian companies that are owned and controlled by a network of both the internationalised groups and their holding companies. Most of the empirical work below concentrates on the West Bank, rather than the Gaza Strip, since the massive destruction of the Gaza economy that took place in January 2009.” (Hanieh 2011)

Much of that Palestinian capital accumulation development came with the rapid rise of the oil industry in the Gulf. However this was intimately tied to USA and European capital in the first place:

“By 1969, the Middle East had surpassed North America and Europe as the world’s major oil provider–a position it cemented during the 1970s… This process set in train the rapid industrialisation and urbanisation of the Gulf countries, centred on an oil industry initially dominated by US and European companies. It was around this influx of foreign capital that an indigenous Gulf capitalist class also began to emerge. The origins of this class display a systematic and consistent pattern. Virtually all of today’s Gulf capitalist class originated as family-owned concerns that owe their initial capital accumulation to their positions as contractors and service providers for the large US/European energy companies active in the Gulf oil industry during the 1950s and 1960s… By the late-1970s, Palestinian capital had been integrated as a junior component of a much larger Gulf capitalist class–most significantly in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE and Qatar.” (Hanieh 2011)

The wealthy Palestinian capitalists are topped by two families, the Al Masri and Khoury families. But of course there are also the far more numerous former poor small land owners who had been robbed. They became a proletariat in the oil industry of the Gulf:

“Nearly 40 per cent of the available Palestinian labour force in the West Bank and Gaza Strip was employed in neighbouring Arab countries by the mid-1970s… hundreds of thousands of Palestinians (in addition to many other poor workers from across the Middle East) joined the pool of migrant labour that underpinned industrial expansion in the Gulf.” (Hanieh 2011)

As the Palestinian capitalists who had been in the Gulf moved back to the West Bank they wanted to ‘normalize’ and integrate into the Israeli economy: 

The guiding principle of their economic activities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip–clearly reflected in the range of economic agreements signed between Israel and the PA during the 1990s–was full normalisation and Israel’s integration into the Middle East. In short, the goal of normalisation that underpinned both Oslo and the US-led reconfiguration of the Middle East intersected with and reinforced the internationalisation of Gulf capital and processes of class formation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The dominance that Gulf-based capital now has over the Palestinian economy is immense… Organically intertwined with accumulation processes in the Gulf, Palestinian capital thus fully embraces the vision of a neoliberal Middle East, with its unimpeded movement of capital and goods and the exploitation of cheap labour (whether local or migrant) within ‘special’ industrial zones.

Hanieh 2011

The development in Gaza has been quite otherwise and is discussed below. 

It is not surprising that other leaders have long since emerged, such as Marwan Barghouti.

44. Why Marwan Barghouti was never released from Israeli jail from 2002 till today

Evidently there are younger and more steadfast potential leaders of the Palestinian people. These were exemplified by Barghouti, who was safely locked away. Others were assassinated by Israel including Raed Karmi (Marwan Barghouti; “Want Security? End the Occupation“; Washington Post; January 16, 2002) 

While it became an awareness amongst Israeli commentators, that releasing Barghouti was a very real path towards a secular single state, he never was:

“As early as 2008, polling data revealed that Barghouti was far more popular among Palestinians than any other possible leader, including President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. But his very popularity was a problem for Prime Minister Netanyahu.

As Hebrew University professor Dmitry Shumsky points out, it has long been the unannounced policy of Netanyahu to undermine the more moderate Palestinian Authority by bolstering Hamas, which shares his hatred of the two-state solution. As confirmed by a former Israeli Cabinet minister, Netanyahu actually propped up  Hamas, approving the channeling of substantial funds from Qatar to the radical Islamist organization. Paradoxically, then, there has been a de facto alliance between the hard-line Netanyahu and Hamas, long irreconcilably opposed to the existence of Israel.

In this context, the popular and charismatic Barghouti has posed a unique threat to Israel and its persistent claim that it had no plausible interlocutor with whom to negotiate. The influential Israeli newspaper Haaretz captured the underlying dynamic well as far back as 2012, stating flatly in an editorial,“If Israel had wanted an agreement with the Palestinians it would have released him from prison by now. Barghouti is the most authentic leader Fatah has produced and he can lead his people to an agreement.

Jerome Karabel. (2023). “Time to Free Palestine’s Nelson Mandela”.

Many honest and anti-corruption militants of Fatah had joined this.

45. The formation of Hamas and its electoral win in Gaza in 2006 

Hamas was an offspring of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, and it is explicitly Sunni in belief and orientation. It was founded by an imam, Sheikh Ahmed Yasin, in 1987 after the First Intifada began. The word in Arabic means ‘zeal,’ but is an acronym for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya (or Islamic Resistance Movement). 

Hamas had, earlier on, refused electoral systems and thereby allowed the Fatah-PA to win the first elections. But this changed, and this was a change welcomed by the USA:

In 2006, and one year after Abu Mazen was elected as PA president, Hamas reversed the stand it took in 1996 and decided to participate fully in the PA’s new legislative elections. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the Israelis welcomed that decision and helped to negotiate the modalities of their participation. In those January 2006 elections, Hamas won a clear victory. Israel, Washington, D.C., Abu Mazen, and his key then-ally Muhammad Dahlan immediately mounted a brutal but failed attempt to seize power from Hamas in its long-time base in Gaza. Israel, Washington, and Abu Mazen then imposed a suffocatingly tight siege on Gaza that remains in place to this day.

Cobban 2021

Hamas formed the government of Gaza after the 2006 elections, which was vacated by Israeli forces in 2005. It rapidly excluded Fatah from any positions in Gaza. 

One of the most densely populated areas of the world, Gaza is approximately 2 million people packed into a state 25 miles by 6 miles (141 square miles), and has been sealed off by Egypt and Israel, including its sea access from 2006. 

Hamas takes some key positions including non-recognition of Israel. In essence this denies the reality of the presence of Jews as legitimate, and the legitimacy of the state of Israel. This fuels its armed wing who has launched several attacks on Israel:

“It does not recognize Israel and advocates using armed resistance against it, including through Hamas’s military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades; Hamas has long been the primary force behind many terrorist attacks and missile barrages against Israel.” 

Alexandra Sharp & Rishi Iyengar. (Oct. 10, 2023). “A Guide to Palestinian and Other Anti-Israel Factions.” The World Brief writer at Foreign Policy.

Hamas “accepts a Palestinian state on 1967 borders… We shall not waive an inch of the Palestinian home soil no matter what the recent pressures are and no matter how long the occupation,” Khaled Meshaal, the leader-in-exile of the Palestinian group said in 2017. (Al-Jazeera: “Explainer: What is Hamas? A simple guide to the armed Palestinian group”; October 8, 2023)

46. Objective role of Hamas – a comprador for Israeli and USA goals

It is true that several Middle Eastern states also support Hamas:

“Other nations provide varying degrees of support to Hamas. The biggest of these is Iran, which has long provided funding, weapons, and training to Hamas fighters. Recent statements by Hamas officials allege that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) provided the militant group with foreign weapons, technology, and training to aid its latest assault, though the White House has so far said it does not have specific evidence that Iran was directly involved in the assault (i.e. October 7 2023 attacks). Qatar also has ties to Hamas; the group’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, runs the organization from Doha, where he lives… The Lebanon-based Shiite militant organization Hezbollah is also a longtime ally of Hamas in the fight against Israel, despite the two groups’ religious and ideological differences.” 

Sharp & Iyengar 2023

And yet the main supporter has been Israel. In fact it was instrumental in its foundation:

Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev.. was the Israeli military governor in Gaza in the early 1980s. Segev later told a New York Times reporter that he had helped finance the Palestinian Islamist movement as a “counterweight” to the secularists and leftists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Fatah party, led by Yasser Arafat (who himself referred to Hamas as “a creature of Israel.”)

“The Israeli Government gave me a budget,” the retired brigadier general confessed, “and the military government gives to the mosques.”

“Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation,” Avner Cohen, a former Israeli religious affairs official who worked in Gaza for more than two decades, told the Wall Street Journal in 2009. Back in the mid-1980s, Cohen even wrote an official report to his superiors warning them not to play divide-and-rule in the Occupied Territories, by backing Palestinian Islamists against Palestinian secularists. “I … suggest focusing our efforts on finding ways to break up this monster before this reality jumps in our face,” he wrote.

Mehdi Hasan & Dina Sayedahmed. (Feb. 19, 2019). “Blowback: How Israel went from helping create Hamas to bombing it.” The Intercept.

For all the anti-Israeli vociferous talk on the part of Hamas, Israel has continued to be a key supporter of Hamas. As the Times of Israel puts it:

“For years, the various governments led by Benjamin Netanyahu took an approach that divided power between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank — bringing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to his knees while making moves that propped up the Hamas terror group.

The idea was to prevent Abbas — or anyone else in the Palestinian Authority’s West Bank government — from advancing toward the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Thus, amid this bid to impair Abbas, Hamas was upgraded from a mere terror group to an organization with which Israel held indirect negotiations via Egypt, and one that was allowed to receive infusions of cash from abroad. Hamas was also included in discussions about increasing the number of work permits Israel granted to Gazan laborers, which kept money flowing into Gaza, meaning food for families and the ability to purchase basic products.

Israeli officials said these permits, which allow Gazan laborers to earn higher salaries than they would in the enclave, were a powerful tool to help preserve calm.

Since Netanyahu returned to power in January 2023, the number of work permits has soared to nearly 20,000.

Additionally, since 2014, Netanyahu-led governments have practically turned a blind eye to the incendiary balloons and rocket fire from Gaza

Meanwhile, Israel has allowed suitcases holding millions in Qatari cash to enter Gaza through its crossings since 2018, in order to maintain its fragile ceasefire with the Hamas rulers of the Strip. Most of the time, Israeli policy was to treat the Palestinian Authority as a burden and Hamas as an asset. Far-right MK Bezalel Smotrich, now the finance minister in the hardline government and leader of the Religious Zionism party, said so himself in 2015.

According to various reports, Netanyahu made a similar point at a Likud faction meeting in early 2019, when he was quoted as saying that those who oppose a Palestinian state should support the transfer of funds to Gaza, because maintaining the separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza would prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.”

(Tal Schneider; “For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it’s blown up in our faces”; Times of Israel; October 10, 2023)

“Hamas was also included in discussions about increasing the number of work permits Israel granted to Gazan laborers, which kept money flowing into Gaza, meaning food for families and the ability to purchase basic products.

Israeli officials said these permits, which allow Gazan laborers to earn higher salaries than they would in the enclave, were a powerful tool to help preserve calm.

Toward the end of Netanyahu’s fifth government in 2021, approximately 2,000-3,000 work permits were issued to Gazans. This number climbed to 5,000 and, during the Bennett-Lapid government, rose sharply to 10,000.” (Tal Schneider)

Netanyahu was quite explicit about his general strategy:

“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” he told a meeting of his Likud party’s Knesset members in March 2019.“This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.” 

Gidi Weitz. (Oct. 9, 2023). “Another Concept Implodes: Israel Can’t Be Managed by a Criminal Defendant.” Haaretz.

In addition Israel’s strategy was to goad the Palestinians – and Hamas in particular – to launch increasingly violent counter-attacks that could be characterized as “anti-humane.” These would justify a future launching of an attempted genocide. To effect this an increasingly vicious and unrelenting humiliation and terror was launched on the Palestinian people.

47. The economy of Gaza

Gaza’s development did not benefit from the Gulf-based Palestinian capitalist wealth. Instead it was “de-developed.” It initially offered till 1967 only a small citrus fruit-based living:

“Only 14 percent of all households in the Gaza Strip had land as a source of income compared to 42 percent in the West Bank, and a significant portion of this land (20-25 percent) was concen-trated in the hands of a few wealthy families and was devoted to citrus, Gaza’s largest source of foreign exchange during this period. 3 Agriculture was clearly the primary economic activity; industrial activity remained virtually undeveloped.”

Roy, Sara. (1987). “The Gaza Strip: A Case of Economic De-Development.” Journal of Palestine studies, Vol.17 (1).

What took place instead of any development, whether agricultural or industrial, was a cheap labor farming by Israel:

“Between 1970 and 1985, Gaza’s labor force working inside Israel grew from 5,900 (10 percent) to 41,700 (45  percent), an increase of over 600 percent. In  1985, the number of Gazan workers employed in Israel was equivalent to 85 percent of the number employed inside Gaza itself. 20 However, these figures are  based on the  number of laborers registered with  the Israeli Employment Service and do not reflect the large numbers of black market laborers who work inside Israel unoffi-cially, among whom are  children between the ages of 8 and 15. 21 Israeli authorities estimate the number of illegal workers to be between 25 and 30 percent of  those legally employed;22 other estimates are  considerably higher… 

The economy of Israel has  benefited from the changes it has  created within the economy of the Gaza Strip. The availability of a large pool of unskilled and semi-skilled workers has provided Israel with a reserve of labor that it can utilize or marginalize without great risk  to its own economy.” (Roy 1987)

It is true there is some subcontracting to Gazan business of small industrial projects, but this is unable to generate any structural development inside Gaza. The net result was a Gazan “de-development.”

Meanwhile the Gazan population became a significant part of the Israeli proletariat, but one hampered by lack of any rights. As Tooze pointed out:

“Allowing for population growth this means that Gaza’s GDP per capita is today half what it was in the mid 1990s and one third of the level reached by the West Bank. Poverty rates in Gaza are at over 50 percent compared to 14 percent in the West Bank. Unemployment hovered before the current conflict between 40 and 50 percent.” 

Adam Tooze. (Oct. 14, 2023). “Chartbook 245: Gaza, beyond de-development to disposability and destruction.”

As Tooze points out, a huge ‘tunnel economy’ evolved, controlled by Hamas:

“Under the trusteeship of Hamas, smaller businessmen were allowed to invest capital in the construction of mid-advanced tunnels to allow for the flow of goods and supplies. Tunnel workers (who were responsible for digging the tunnels) were also included in the ownership of these tunnels in a way that they had a particular quota of revenues generated through individual tunnels. At the same time, Hamas obtained between 25 and 40% of tunnel revenues … Traders took advantage of the significantly cheaper prices of goods smuggled from Egypt … At the same time, goods were sold in the local markets at the same price as Israeli-taxed goods… Hence, new traders were able to make significant profits … The high security risks and security considerations involved … led Hamas to only allow a smaller group of Hamas-vetted traders… to get involved.” (Tannira; 2021; “The Political Economy of Palestine“)

At its height in the early 2010s Hamas was likely generating $750m per year in revenue from the tunnel system. (Tooze “Chartbook 245”)

But Israeli-Egyptian collaboration closed the tunnel economy, making UN the food supplier: 

“By May 2015 the number of Palestinian refugees solely reliant on food distribution from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) increased to 868,000 by May 2015, representing half the population of Gaza and 65 per cent of the registered refugees (UNRWA, 2015b).” 

Tooze, “Chartbook 245”

Israel combatted a 1990s strike by Gazan workers by simply shifting to “the recruitment of foreign workers from outside the region. Labour offices in Romania, Thailand and the Philippines increase the foreign non-Palestinian workforce from 20,000 in 2993 to 100,000 by 1996. Gaza became dispensable.” (Tooze “Chartbook 245”)

Sara Roy and Adam Tooze independently put it that the people of Gaza have become “disposable” — no one’s economy now needs them, not even the Israeli. 

48. Repeated Israeli attacks on both Gaza and the West Bank 

Defenders of Israel gloss over the sheer level of state-inspired violence against the Palestinians. And yet the data is compelling:

The extremely violent assaults that Israel launched against both the West Bank and Gaza in 2002 and 2003, and against Gaza alone in 2008, 2012, and 2014… Those Israeli actions, [were given] full permission [by] Washington, D.C.

Cobban 2021

Through the years up to September 2023, the UN documented an extraordinary volume of deaths of Palestinians (numbering 6,407) at the hands of Israeli agents – as opposed to far fewer Israeli deaths (308). Data for injuries follows suit. (United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA); “Data on casualties”)

Naturally such data go far in answering, “Who are the real terrorists in the Middle East?”

However the adoption of such brutality by the Israeli state can only be countered by the use of mass resistance and mass organized counter-state violence, not by individual terrorism. 

This reminds us of the role of Hamas and their attitude to violence. 

49. Attitudes of various factions of the PLO to the question of violent means to statehood

We saw that Fatah rejected the role of any violence:

“Besides Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, no significant Palestinian faction, popular movement, or potential successor espouses ‘armed struggle’ today or calls for its return.” (Hussein 2021)

This is clearly not a realistic option for a liberation movement and is doomed to fail against the forces of Israeli reaction and USA arrogance.

Barghouti has not opposed violence as a principle, but contrary to the claim of the Israeli state, opposes individual attacks on civilians. 

“arghouti also spurred on Palestinians in speeches, condoning the use of force to expel Israel from the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

“While I, and the Fatah movement to which I belong, strongly oppose attacks and the targeting of civilians inside Israel, our future neighbour, I reserve the right to protect myself, to resist the Israeli occupation of my country and to fight for my freedom,” he wrote in the Washington Post newspaper in 2002.

“I still seek peaceful coexistence between the equal and independent countries of Israel and Palestine based on full withdrawal from Palestinian territories occupied in 1967,” he added.

“Profile: Marwan Barghouti.” (2011).

However as we saw, Barghouti has been locked away and his movement has been stymied. 

Hamas has openly adopted individual violence against civilians, but also has preached the most offensive anti-Semitic chauvinism. This only serves the purposes of the most reactionary elements of Israel’s fascist settlers. 

One further point should be clarified. While some of the settlers are often militarized and cannot be simply said to be ‘civilians’ this is by no means the bulk of the settlers – and there is no doubt that non-militarized individual civilians were both killed and/or taken hostage. 

Hezbollah of Lebanon should be discussed briefly in this context. 

Having started initially on the basis of individual terror, by 2006 the Hezbollah had transformed itself, to some extent, into a mass organization. It had begun to eschew individual acts of terror. (Hari Kumar, Alliance ML)

Since then it has conducted attacks on Israeli forces by and large, rather than on civilians. 

50. An evolving eruption of rage — “Cui bono?” Who gained?

No one could reasonably expect 2 million people to be imprisoned in Gaza, hungry, jobless, under constant threat of violence, with no land or sea (let alone air) access. And indeed the Israeli and USA goons did not expect that. They are far too smart. 

They knew perfectly well that an explosive outburst would come – at some stage. 

The only issue was where and when. 

Both the USA and the Israeli Cabinet (Netanyahu and his most ultra-reactionary racist colleagues) could only gain by the evolving seismic revolt of the suppressed that was brewing. 

The USA gained because it needed to ‘solve’ the festering problem of the Palestinians, and because it linked up with the plan as revealed in 2006 by Condoleezza Rice, to re-write the maps of the Middle East. In addition, there is a nascent new world war, of which Ukraine is the harbinger. They wish to keep tabs on the oil supply. 

Netanyahu and his cabinet’s desire was more visceral, and manifestly racist. They simply aim to ‘solve’ the problem of Palestine by eliminating (finally from their vantage point) the Palestinians. In addition Netanyahu wishes to evade jail sentencing for his exposed corruption.  

Indeed the plan of all parties was that such an explosion of rage, as occurred on October 7, would indeed happen. They fed it and awaited it.

This would allow them full rein.  

Only this expectation of an eruption from the Palestinians can explain the evolving events.

51. Making the Abraham Accords

The recent era of Arab Accords, or the “Abraham Pacts” was another device by which to break the deadlock of no movement inside Palestine. It was designed to finally isolate the remnants of Palestinians, who — if quiet – would just die off. 

The Pacts also fulfilled, again, the mission of the USA to ‘re-draw’ the maps. As some commentators remarked in 2021, it has tried to officially bury the “Arab-Israeli conflict”:

The official Arab-Israeli conflict is finished. Over the past several months, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Sudan, and Morocco have normalized relations with Israel. Oman may be on its way to doing so, and Saudi Arabia has taken unprecedented steps in that direction. Other Arab governments maintain important, albeit discreet, ties with Israel, and further moves toward normalization appear to be only a matter of time. Egypt and Jordan have been at peace with Israel for decades.

The one-time pan-Arab call for a united front against Israel “from the Atlantic Ocean to the Arabian Gulf” has given way to normalization across that same expanse.

Hussein Agha and Ahmad Samih Khalidi. (2021). “A Palestinian Reckoning: Time for a new beginning.” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 100, Issue 2.

52. To what extent was Hamas supported by the population of Gaza?

An identity of Hamas is automatically drawn by Israeli legislators and leaders and its foreign supporters. This ‘justifies’ collective punishment on the entire population of Gaza. However a survey conducted before the October 7 attacks reveals this ‘identity’ is a completely false picture:

Some of Israel’s top officials, invoking Hamas’s success in the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections, have in effect declared that all Gazans are part of Hamas’s terrorist infrastructure and complicit in the group’s atrocities—and are therefore legitimate targets of Israeli retaliation.

The argument that the entire population of Gaza can be held responsible for Hamas’s actions is quickly discredited when one looks at the facts. Arab Barometer, a research network where we serve as co-principal investigators, conducted a survey in Gaza and the West Bank days before the Israel-Hamas war broke out. The findings, published here for the first time, reveal that rather than supporting Hamas, the vast majority of Gazans have been frustrated with the armed group’s ineffective governance as they endure extreme economic hardship. Most Gazans do not align themselves with Hamas’s ideology, either. Unlike Hamas, whose goal is to destroy the Israeli state, the majority of survey respondents favored a two-state solution with an independent Palestine and Israel existing side by side….

Surveying 790 respondents in the West Bank and 399 in Gaza. (Interviews in Gaza were completed on October 6.) The survey’s findings reveal that Gazans had very little confidence in their Hamas-led government. Asked to identify the amount of trust they had in the Hamas authorities, a plurality of respondents (44 percent) said they had no trust at all; “not a lot of trust” was the second most common response, at 23 percent. Only 29 percent of Gazans expressed either “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of trust in their government. Furthermore, 72 percent said there was a large (34 percent) or medium (38 percent) amount of corruption in government institutions, and a minority thought the government was taking meaningful steps to address the problem.

Amaney A. Jamal and Michael Robbins. (Oct. 25, 2023). “What Palestinians Really Think of Hamas Before the War, Gaza’s Leaders Were Deeply Unpopular—but an Israeli Crackdown Could Change That.” Foreign Affairs.

53. Keeping it quiet – All not silent on the front in September 2023, but news of ‘restlessness in the ranks’ was suppressed. 

Israeli reporters have revealed that a deliberate weakening of IDF intelligence and forces on the Gazan border were undertaken prior to the Hamas attacks of October 7:

Just a few days ago, Assaf Pozilov, a reporter for the Kan public broadcaster, tweeted the following: “The Islamic Jihad organization has started a noisy exercise very close to the border, in which they practiced launching missiles, breaking into Israel and kidnapping soldiers.

Tal Schneider. “For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it’s blown up in our faces.” Times of Israel. Oct. 8, 2023.

“Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants had been training for weeks near the Israeli border [in Gaza]—drilling in rocket launches, kidnapping soldiers and “storming settlements”, Gazan media reported. Yet the assessment from the Israeli military was that Hamas had no appetite for another conflict, a line repeated by trusted media figures. “The good news in the context of the Gaza Strip is that neither Israel nor Hamas want to see hostilities escalate, each for its own reasons”, columnist Yoav Limor wrote last month in the right-wing newspaper Israel Hayom. 

As for those “assessment[s] from the Israeli military”, the Post makes clear that

these were also heavily affected by Netanyahu’s nakedly political maneuvers: 

Netanyahu, [analysts] contend, allowed military preparedness to erode alongside Palestinian militant escalation as he pursued a contentious plan to weaken Israel’s judiciary—setting of months of furious protests that delighted the country’s adversaries. 

Indeed, it’s clear that Netanyahu’s autocratic domestic plot has so divided the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) that Netanyahu and supporters like Limor have begun to only listen to those “assessments from the Israeli military” that dovetail with their political aims. Per the Post (emphasis supplied).” 

(Seth Abramson; Substack column quoting from Washington Post; “As Israel Reels From Mass Deaths and a Seeming Intel Failure, Evidence Mounts of Negligence By Netanyahu—Or Maybe Something More Sinister”; Nov. 10, 2023)

54. The declared war upon Gaza

Leaving aside the escalation of attacks upon the West Bank — largely ignored by observers — the openly declared genocidal calls against Gaza mark the underlying intent of a new genocide and a new Nakhba:

 “Since October 7, the State of Israel has been carrying out military aggression against the Gaza Strip that goes beyond legitimate self-defense. It is collective punishment and its measures clearly violate international humanitarian law.

The military and political goals that were officially announced are dangerous. Currently promoted by Israeli and American experts and officials, they all lead to one end. Indeed, it seems that Israel’s ultimate strategic goal is to make the Gaza Strip unlivable – economically and physiologically. The first indicators of such risks are:

• Announcement by Israel’s Defense Minister: “We will annihilate everything.” 

• Announcement by the former National Security Advisor, who asserted that as a result of the war, “Gaza will become a place where no human being can live.”

• A Knesset member from the ruling coalition called for “not only the destruction of a neighborhood, but for the total crushing and flattening of Gaza … without mercy.”

• The encouragement of such trends by influential politicians in the United States, such as a senior Senator’s suggestion that Gaza ought to be “levelled.”

(Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute (MAS): Gaza War Economy Brief Number 1 – October 18, 2023; “The economic dimensions of the war on the Gaza Strip according to international humanitarian law: Making Gaza Unlivable”)

The same MAS document of October 18, 2023, lists all the known violations of any humanitarian principles, even those to which Israel and the USA are signators to under UN membership.    

The story moves on and an end to the misery of workers and peasants in Palestine is nowhere in sight. The Israeli bullying of the Secretary general, who dared to note the pre-history to Hamas’ actions, is exactly the way the Israeli and USA UN lobby has behaved historically. Words such as ‘shameless’ are completely meaningless in the context of their actions. Meanwhile the European Union immorally ignores the plight of the Gazans 

“Eight Hundred forty-two EU employees protest against von der Leyen’s Gaza policy. Diplomats warn, the West has lost all credibility in the Global South because of its disregard for civilian deaths in Gaza…. 

Already last week, diplomats told the Financial Times that the same standards applied to Russia in the war in Ukraine should also apply to the war in Gaza. Since this was obviously not the case, we must now assume that the countries of the Global South “won’t ever listen to us again.” Already at the next UN vote on Ukraine, “we’ll see a big explosion in the number of abstentions.”… 

The Financial Times quoted a senior G7 diplomat warning that “we have definitely lost the battle in the Global South.”(Henry Foy: Rush by west to back Israel erodes developing countries’ support for Ukraine. ft.com 18.10.2023. Financial Times ) The diplomat added, “What we said about Ukraine has to apply to Gaza. Otherwise, we lose all our credibility. (…) The Brazilians, the South Africans, the Indonesians: why should they ever believe what we say about human rights? Forget about rules, forget about world order. They won’t ever listen to us again…

Von der Leyen’s unilateral approach is provoking strong protests, not only from member states, but also from within the EU bureaucracy. Late last week, the President of the Commission received a letter signed by 842 EU staff members shapely criticizing her position on the Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip. The signatories condemn the massacre carried out by Hamas on more than a thousand Israeli civilians, but also criticize the fact that von der Leyen – contrary to the current state of the debate in the EU – “seems to give Tel Aviv a free hand to the acceleration and the legitimacy of a war crime in the Gaza Strip with her “unconditional” support for Israel’s actions.”

(“The Credibility of the West”; German Foreign Policy; Oct. 25, 2023) 

55. Who are the “Palestinians,” the “Gazans,” and the “Israelis”?

We have tried to be clear about the Israeli and Palestinian “leaders’ and “peoples” – but perforce to this point, we have talked mainly about the leadership. But the obvious distinction between state leaders and the people, needs to be understood if a “single, democratic, secular state, moving toward socialism” is to be achieved. 

It may seem a simplistic statement, but both peoples have suffered through this — both Israeli citizens and Gazan and West Bank civilians — leaving aside for a moment the refugees. In the USA as in other countries including Israel, there is an increasing recognition of this. 

Many non-Marxist forces have made these points, but not only do Marxists recognise the validity of these remarks, they need to show how to transcend current sectarian politics — sectarian in the sense of ‘Jew versus Arab, or Arab versus Jew.’ Marxists should move beyond those categories and show how to view the specific roles of toilers, peasants and working class in moving towards the goal. Marxists are the representatives of the working class. Which working class are we talking about in the context of Palestine-Israel?     

56. The route forward – one working class

The Zionists have successfully, from their inception, divided and ruled in Israel and Palestine. In turn some Palestinian leaders are unable to overcome their own bourgeois instincts and remain only ‘nationalists.’  Hence the joint destiny of the Palestinian working class and the Israeli working class is not recognised. 

Yet by the 1980s it is clear that in the State of Israel, there was a proletariat composed of both Israeli citizens and Palestinians – although the proportions of each were changing as Israelis tended ot ascend the class ladder (Ben-Porat). The task of unity is extremely difficult. It needs to transcend those brave struggles of the Israeli peace movement into socialist paths. 

Israeli capitalism was built on nurturing a racism, that is hard baked by an objective and daily economic reality of inequity. This is shown below where a hierarchical gradient in wages of the Israeli proletariat is shown, based on citizenship (yes or no) and identity (Palestinian or not?)

In some way the path has to be found of the unity that was struggled for, in the previous Communist Party of Palestine. This was, from 1919 to 1948, composed of both Palestinian Arabs and Jews. (Greenstein)

Those dubious of the capacity of Jewish proletarians to overcome their prejudices, might take heart in Marx’s injunctions to the British working class about the Irish worker in their midst:

Every industrial and commercial centre in England now possesses a working class divided into two hostile camps, English proletarians and Irish proletarians. The ordinary English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers his standard of life. In relation to the Irish worker he regards himself as a member of the ruling nation and consequently he becomes a tool of the English aristocrats and capitalists against Ireland, thus strengthening their domination over himself. He cherishes religious, social, and national prejudices against the Irish worker. His attitude towards him is much the same as that of the “poor whites” to the Negroes in the former slave states of the U.S.A.. The Irishman pays him back with interest in his own money. He sees in the English worker both the accomplice and the stupid tool of the English rulers in Ireland.

This antagonism is artificially kept alive and intensified by the press, the pulpit, the comic papers, in short, by all the means at the disposal of the ruling classes. This antagonism is the secret of the impotence of the English working class, despite its organisation. It is the secret by which the capitalist class maintains its power. And the latter is quite aware of this.

Marx, to Sigfrid Meyer and August Vogt. (~1870). “Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Selected Correspondence.”

In the way of conclusions:

There are several themes that fall out from the short history presented in the above notes. 

The original starting point was the individual terrorist actions of Hamas. 

Overall effect where Palestinians have been dragged into a new genocidal trap by Hamas’s individual violence and hostage taking. That is not to say that Hamas did not reciprocate violence. Even leaving aside the original theft of Palestinian lands and killing or driving the people by individual terror off into exile, more recent policies fall into the same category. For example, assassination became state policy of Israel, even prior to Netanyahu’s reign:    

The current, openly acknowledged policy of political liquidations was initiated by Prime Minister Ehud Barak after the outbreak of the second intifada and intensified after Ariel Sharon took office in 2001. From November 2000 through mid-2003, the Israeli army and security services assassinated more than one hundred Palestinians and “killed scores and injured hundreds of other Palestinian men, women and children bystanders.” There were reportedly “no less than 175 liquidation attempts” or “one attempt every five days.

Finkelstein. (2005). “Chutzpah.”

The point however is that individual terrorism is, apart from cruel, a fruitless path for Marxist-Leninists and invites fast and ruthless suppression. 

Beyond this, there a few other major themes to emerge from the timeline narrative of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. At minimum they can be summarized as follows:

1. The Palestinians are a stateless people with no political power between western imperialism on the one side and reactionary, authoritarian Arab and Muslim states on the other.  

2. To a large extent the Gazan explosion of combined helplessness and outright rage, was expected and provoked. It serves the purpose of enabling the most reactionary of Israeli leaders to effect a vast expulsion by starvation and killing, or by implementing a mass exodus and a new refugee crisis. In this they are assisted by the USA who blocks any move to a ceasefire at the UN. 

3. While the European powers by and large have acquiesced in this, they are opposed by non-Western states. These are increasingly pointing to the manifest hypocrisy and self-serving nature of USA, Israeli, German, and EU politicians. No doubt this will be exploited by the new Chinese and Russian imperialists. 

4. There is revulsion among many people world wide, including in Israel itself and the USA. These forces are dominated by a non-communist viewpoint. But communists must join these movements actively working to a cease-fire and then, to move to a re-building of resistance. Ultimately this resistance must be based on the working people of both Palestine and Israel. If Marxist-Leninists do not enter this struggle now, they will remain on the sidelines. 

5. To date the Palestinian leaders weakness had forced a control by Arab states who created the PLO. Later the US co-opted the PLO and enabled the transfer of Palestinian capital from the Gulf, where it had been sheltered, into the West Bank. There it thrived in a neo-liberal alliance with Gulf capitalists and Israeli and USA capitalists. It ignored the suffering of its own people.

6. Mossad and Israel instigated Hamas and saw that it got international funding.

7. Independent leaders who have potential to lead an independent Palestinian movement for freedom, are kept in prison in Israel.

8. The asymmetric nature of the struggle is marked by the huge number of Palestinian deaths relative to Israelis, who run roughshod over the people of the West Bank and Gaza.

9. The Israeli government is the USA’s ‘strategic asset’ and policeman in the MIddle East.  The USA is limbering up to ensure its continued domination of the Middle East. It sees a looming new war against the rising imperialism of China aided by its weaker imperialist ally of Russia. Russia has its footprint in Syria already.

10. Armed self-defense is a right. However a new strategy is needed that is independent of Israel, Arab autocracies, and Iran. 

11. A united movement of the proletarians of both Palestinian and Israeli is the only way forward. This however is a difficult task. Its leadership is still awaited.  

Categories: History, World History, Zionism

Tags: Israel, Lebanon, Palestine