By Miguel Sorans, a leader of Socialist Left and the IWU(FI.)
The new outburst in the Middle East conflict between the Palestinian people and Israel brings back the reasonable questions: when will this situation end?, and when will there be peace in the region? Years pass by and the massacres on the Palestinian people are renewed.
We hear or read that this is a “dead end” conflict, as the cause lies in the “extremist” stand of the Palestinian “terrorists”, or even for both sides. This is not the case. Though there is no easy way out of this, the revolutionary socialists believe there is a solution to end this permanent war, reach peace and that people can live together in the region.
Let’s be clear, though this may be shocking for the readers. The great obstacle to end the conflict is the existence of the state of Israel. The Zionists occupied with an army Palestinian land, conducted a genocide and forced ancestral Arab dwellers who survived to exile. They built a racist enclave, artificially created over seventy years ago and unconditionally supported by the American and European imperialism. Therefore, the only solution comes with the dissolution of that racist state and the creation of a unique state, secular, non racist and with full democratic rights for all the inhabitants of the historic land of Palestine.
What is Israel?
The solution is linked to the origin of the conflict. For hundreds of years the great majority of Arab Muslim population and the Jewish and Christian minorities lived peacefully in Palestine. But in the XX century the Zionists invaded Palestine, legalised by the UN which, in 1947, approved the creation of the State of Israel and decreed the “partition” of the Palestinian territory, giving birth to the reactionary utopia of the “two states2. The UN blessed, as the Vatican, the expropriation of 55 per cent of the land from their Palestinian ancestral owners. Millions of Palestinians were expelled of their land. But the Zionist did not even respect the agreement: in a sudden and devastating war, they swept the “Palestinian State” and took control of almost all the territory, except the West Bank, which remained under the control of the Jordan monarchy. Israel was born of a genocide and ethnic cleansing between 1948 and 1949.
Zionism and imperialism used the repudiation and the horror the Nazi holocaust did to the Jews to establish the lie of the slogan “a land without people for a people without land” In this way they settled an artificial state, an imperialist enclave, armed to the teeth, to control and subdued the Arab people.
Palestinian resistance during the 1960s, grew and was channelled into the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), led by Yasser Arafat, which rejected the existence of Israel and demanded the return of its people to a “secular, non-racist and democratic Palestine”. Unfortunately, in 1993, Arafat and the PLO abandoned this historic banner in betrayal of their people and signed the Oslo Accords with Israel in the presence of US President Bill Clinton. These accords agreed to “mutual recognition.” In return, Israel promised to accept a Palestinian state in five-years’ time. Thus, the lie of the “two states” reappeared. The PLO became the Palestinian National Authority (PNA)
Almost thirty years have passed of these accords and there is no “Palestinian state”. PNA representatives themselves recognise their failure despite the fact that they did not even call for a return to the historic territories, as they agreed in Oslo to “a state in only 22 per cent of our historic Palestine, which is the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, occupied by Israel since 1967. This would be ideal for us […] it is what the West promoted as the two-state solution. Which is a misleading concept because now there is only one state that is 73 years old’ (Husni Abdel Wahed, ambassador of the Palestinian National Authority in Argentina, Clarin.com, 16 May 2021).
The reactionary utopia of the “two states”
Many believed, and still do, in this fabrication of the “two states” as a way out. The facts proved once again that it is a farce and a reactionary utopia because it serves to support the racist state of Israel.
The state of Israel has never fulfilled what it signed in Oslo and has dedicated itself to the policy of “colonising” the West Bank with over 400.000 settlers and the building of a wall of approximately 700 kilometres, which divides the cities (Hebron, Bethlehem, among others) and annexes 20 per cent of the territory to Israel. Besides, it has taken basic resources such as water and has subjected Palestinians to all kinds of military controls, restrictions on movement, curfews and repression. Thousands of Palestinian prisoners are in jail. Gaza is under a criminal blockade and it is isolated completely from the West Bank. Israel only removed the settlers from there so that it could bomb it, as it is doing now.
It is impossible for a Palestinian state to coexist alongside a racist and expansionist invader state, whose raison d’être is to be an enclave to crush the Palestinian people militarily in order to maintain and extend its territorial dominance. Ethnic cleansing based on the false campaign of Israel’s “security” as it would be “victimised” by alleged “extremist aggressors” and terrorists. Israel is an apartheid state for the Palestinian people. It declared itself a “Jewish state” and issued, for example, a law that stipulates that a Jew can take over a piece of land in the West Bank, Gaza or Jerusalem and the Palestinian owner is obliged to leave, receiving a compensation that is fixed by the state of Israel.
For all these reasons, the only way out, the only solution, is to continue Palestinian resistance and international solidarity until this racist and ethnic-cleansing state is dissolved, creating a single, secular, non-racist and democratic state throughout the historic territory of Palestine, where Palestinian exiles and their families can return and live together in peace and with full rights of equality, regardless of religion or ethnic origin.
It is a difficult fight but it can be won. As happened in South Africa at the end of the 20th century, where the apartheid state of the so-called “Boer Republic”, which segregated the black majority, was defeated and destroyed. It was achieved through the resistance of the South African anti-racist movement and the international struggle to isolate and boycott the racist regime.
It is a struggle not only of the Palestinian people, but of all Arab peoples and the world, sustaining an international mobilisation to defend the Palestinian people, denounce Israel’s crimes and support the campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel, demanding that governments and any social, cultural or sports organisation break all relations with the racist state of Israel.
