By Eddie McCabe & Donal Devlin, Socialist Party Ireland. 9 June 2025
Palestinian socialist and writer Ghassan Kanafani described the Palestinian struggle as “a cause of the exploited and oppressed masses in our era.” These are apt words. The unrelenting horror in Gaza has laid bare the depravity of capitalism today.
That a veritable holocaust could happen in the 21st century, with live-streamed massacres almost daily, has exposed all of the hypocrisy, shamelessness and inhumanity of the system and its leading representatives, particularly among the Western imperialist ruling class. The world will never be the same again after this genocide.
People across the world have been awakened to political action. Tens of millions have mobilised in solidarity with Palestine. The savagery being inflicted on a defenceless population crammed into a small, blockaded strip of land has been met with a global protest movement not seen since the Vietnam War. The occupation of Palestine is one of global capitalism’s fault lines, serving to radicalise and educate many as to who is ultimately on the side of freedom and justice in our world and who is not.
Repression of a movement
Throughout it all there has been an uninterrupted flow of arms to the Israeli State from the United States and Europe. Multinational corporations, the giant household name monopolies, are directly complicit in the genocide. Google and Amazon have competed to provide the Israeli military with AI and cloud tools, which it has used with lethal effect against Gaza’s civilian population, including children.
In the occupied West Bank, where Palestinians face a new wave of mass displacement, the largest of its kind since the occupation began in 1967, companies like Hewlett Packard and Microsoft have provided the occupiers with the technology to engage in mass surveillance of its populace. Facebook has platformed more than 100 advertise-ments promoting settlements and far-right settler activity.1
The capitalist media – from the BBC, RTÉ, The Irish Times, The New York Times, CNN, and many more – largely act to either under-report, justify, minimise or contextualise the actions of the Israeli State. They sanitise the dynamics of the genocide by refusing to even use the word to describe this appalling campaign of state terror, nor even words like ‘massacres’, ‘atrocities’ or ‘war crimes’.
They promote a narrative that two equal sides exist in this ‘conflict’. This wilfully ignores the blatant asymmetry that characterises the relationship between the high-tech, highly militarised, nuclear-armed Israeli State and a dispossessed, impoverished, traumatised people: the Palestinians.
Imperialist support for Israel’s agenda has meant a clamping down on basic democratic rights in many so-called democracies in the West. In the US, the recent cruel kidnapping by ICE agents of Mahmoud Khalil, a Syrian-born Palestinian refugee whose wife is expecting a baby in April, is one blatant example of this. Khalil was one of the main organisers of the solidarity encampment at Columbia University in New York City in 2024.
His arrest, which Donald Trump publicly boasted about, is designed to create a chilling effect on the broader Palestine solidarity movement. Further arrests and threats of deportation, such as those of Georgetown scholar Badar Khan Suri and Cornell student Momodou Taal, have followed.
All of this comes in the wake of the brutal repression of the encampments last year, with thousands of students expelled or suspended from their courses. The scale of pro-Zionist censorship in the US was illustrated by the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land failing to receive a distributor in the US. A Florida mayor went so far as to threaten to close down a cinema in Miami Beach for showing it.2
In Germany, the second-largest exporter of weapons to Israel, the state has engaged in an unprecedented level of suppression of Palestine solidarity protests, targeted in particular against migrants, Muslims and people of colour – arresting activists, banning protests, raiding and forcibly breaking up meetings. This is what happened during a public meeting featuring Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur for the Palestinian Occupied Territories, an outspoken critic of the genocide.
Two Irish citizens are among four foreign nationals facing deportation at the time of writing because of their Palestine solidarity activity. Demonstrators have even been arrested for chanting and speaking in Arabic at a protest in Berlin. Germany’s citizenship law was amended to require new citizens to affirm Israel’s ‘right to exist’.
Meanwhile, there is a rush by governments to adopt the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) definition of anti-Semitism, which, in essence, equates this vile prejudice with any criticism of the Zionist State. This includes the Irish State, as the government in the South scrambles to prove its pro-Zionist credentials to the Trump administration.
Likewise, the government has ditched its commitment to support the Occupied Territories Bill, a basic measure that would ban goods and services from the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. The arrest of women from the group Mothers Against Genocide (some of whom were outrageously strip-searched) who were peacefully protesting outside the Dáil at the end of March is a warning that the Irish State is willing to follow the example of other repressive states if it can get away with it.
Settler colonialism
Western imperialist support for the existence of a client Zionist state in the Middle East has a long history. As far back as 1839, senior Tory politician Lord Shaftesbury, in an article in The Times, wrote of the need for a homeland for Jews in Palestine, speaking of an “Earth without people – people without land”. This was the perpetuation of a myth that Palestine was a desolate land and, therefore, could be easily populated by Jewish migration.
A variant of this phrase – “a land without a people for a people without a land” – became the Zionist movement’s rallying cry, notably in Theodor Hertzl’s 1896 pamphlet The Jewish State. This notion consciously ignored the existence of the Palestinian Arab population. It became the justification for ethnically cleansing Palestinians from their land to build a Jewish majority state, a peculiar form of settler-colonialism – unique in having no pre-existing nation-state directly implementing it.
Settler-colonialism was a well-established practice by imperialist powers. It was crucial to capitalist development globally, and involved genocidal crimes against indigenous populations in many places throughout the world, including the Americas, Africa, Australia and New Zealand.
Today, the Zionist State is still settler-colonial in nature and remains committed to building a state based on the concept of ‘more land, fewer Arabs’. This means the ongoing displacement of the Palestinian population from their land and the settlement of Jewish people on it.
It has been the policy of successive Israeli governments since the founding of the State of Israel in 1948. This is combined with a codified racial hierarchy in which, for example, Jewish people, regardless of where they are born, are automatically entitled to Israeli citizenship. In contrast, Palestinian refugees who were expelled in 1948 and their descendants are denied the right to return to their historic homeland. The whole dynamic is based on dispossession, leading ultimately to genocide, of the indigenous Arab population of Palestine.
Today, this process of settler-colonialism is most glaringly apparent in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and Golan Heights. The number of settlers in these regions stands at over 700,000, and is rapidly expanding.
However, a similar process is taking place within the Israeli State’s pre-1967 borders, what’s known as the ‘Green Line’. There has been a continuous attempt to “Judaise” the Galilee in the North and the Naqab (Negev) Desert in the South, where Palestinian Arabs form a majority. In the case of the latter, villages where Palestinian Bedouins reside are not recognised on official maps, facilitating their perennial destruction.
The current Israeli government has plans to give economic benefits to Jews who move to these areas, similar to the subsidised housing provided to settlers in the Occupied Territories (land occupied since 1967).3
Moreover, this policy of apartheid is promoted globally. Al Jazeera’s podcast ‘The Take’ recently shone a light on the fact that large swathes of real estate, on both sides of the Green Line, are sold in the United States, with the proviso that only Jewish people are allowed to purchase it.4 This is also what lies behind the ‘Birthright Israel’ programme, in which young American Jews are given free trips to Israel and encouraged to live there. As the name indicates, it is a blatant promotion of Jewish supremacy.
Christian Zionism and imperialism
Lord Shaftesbury was a representative of what would later be called Christian Zionism, which today has a significant influence within the Republican Party in the US, arguing that the creation of a Jewish State today is ‘biblical prophecy’. As the left-wing writer Andreas Malm has pointed out, this Zionism of the British ruling class was a:
“… wholly gentile, Christian, white Anglo-Saxon fantasy, in which actual Jews living in the Middle East or elsewhere played no active role.”5
It would not be for another century, with the coming to power of the Nazis and the Holocaust ensuing, that support for the creation of a Jewish state gained widespread support amongst Jewish people. Before this, the prospect of settling in Palestine had little traction for Jewish people. Of the four million Jews that left Eastern and Central Europe as a result of persecution and poverty between 1880 and 1929, only 120,000 went to Palestine, many of whom didn’t stay long.6
Despite being couched in religious mysticism, Shaftesbury’s support for the creation of a Jewish State in this region reflected British imperialism’s material interest in exploiting the Middle East. Such a client state, in the form of a Jewish territory, could be a loyal ally in subjecting the region to economic plunder.
In the 1840s, it hoped to destroy the regime of Muhammed Ali of Egypt and gain conquest of its cotton industry – a potential economic rival. This essentially began a pattern that exists to this day – imperialist support for a Zionist state in the pursuit of strategic domination and profit.
During the First World War and the decline of the Ottoman Empire, British and French imperialism set about gaining control of the remainder of the Middle East (Britain had occupied Egypt in 1882) to exploit its wealth, notably its oil reserves, in an infamous secret treaty, the Sykes-Picot Agreement, where the spoils of empire were carved up.
For Britain, Palestine was a central part of this, given its proximity to the Suez Canal in Egypt, a key trading route for the British Empire. The port of Haifa in Palestine also became a crucial site for the refining of this oil for export.
In November 1917, the ‘Balfour Declaration’ was issued, which promised the Zionist movement a “Jewish Homeland” in Palestine. They were careful not to use the word ‘state’ for fear of antagonising Arab public opinion.
The following month, British troops occupied Jerusalem and soon set up what it euphemistically called a ‘Mandate’ in Palestine, i.e. a colonial occupation, encouraging further Zionist colonisation at the expense of Palestinians. It implemented the ‘divide and rule’ policy that it had perfected in Ireland and elsewhere. Not for nothing did Ronald Storrs, then Military Governor of Jerusalem, describe their project in Palestine as the creation of “a little loyal Jewish Ulster in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism.”7
Israel – a strategic asset
Joe Biden, as a senator in 1986, put the centrality of US support for the Israeli State succinctly:
“Israel is the best 3-billion-dollar investment we make. Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect our interests in the region. The United States would have to go out and invent an Israel.”8
Control of the Middle East’s oil reserves has been critically important for US imperialism since the end of the Second World War. This is not, as is often thought, due to the US needing oil as an energy source at home; it has plentiful domestic supplies and imports it from Canada and Latin America. Rather, it relates to the decisive role that oil has played in commodity production more generally, and the strategic importance of controlling its supply by having pliant regimes in power where oil exists.
The Marxist economic historian Adam Hanieh has pointed out:
“…scholarship treats it [oil] solely as an energy source or transport fuel – disregarding completely the other aspect of oil’s mid 20th century emergence as the dominant fossil fuel: the birth of a world composed of plastics and other synthetic products derived from petroleum. From the 1950s onwards, a wide array of naturally derived substances – wood, glass, paper, natural rubber, natural fertilizers, soaps, cotton, wool and metals – were systematically displaced by plastics, synthetic fibres, detergents and other petroleum-based chemicals. This ‘petrochemical’ revolution enabled the syntheticisation of what had previously been encountered and appropriated only within the domain of nature; the very substance of daily life was transformed, alchemy-like, into various derivatives of petroleum. Here is oil not as energy source, but as feedstock, the literal raw material of commodity production itself.”9
Added to this was the buying and selling of oil in dollars, which came to be known as “petrodollars,” which helped cement American capitalism’s “greenback” (the dollar) as the world’s reserve currency.10
This has meant that the vast majority of trade, imports and exports, occurs in dollars, and much of this wealth built up by the Gulf States, as well as enriching tiny elites, has been “recycled” back into the financial markets of global capitalism. This has been an important factor in maintaining US imperialism’s economic hegemony, notwithstanding the real threat of its rival, Chinese imperialism.
Imperialism’s pitbull
The Nakba, or ‘catastrophe’ – the ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland – brought the Israeli State into existence in 1948. The Nakba was backed by the US and other Western imperialist powers, as well as shamefully by the Soviet Union. An editorial in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in 1951 summed up how the new state viewed its relationship with US and British imperialism:
“Israel is a rather convenient way for the Western Powers for keeping a balance of political forces in the Middle East. According to this supposition Israel has been assigned the role of a kind of watchdog. It is not to be feared that it would apply an aggressive policy towards the Arab states if that would be clearly against the wishes of America and Britain. But suppose the Western powers will at some time prefer, for one reason or another, to shut their eyes. In that case, Israel can be relied upon to punish properly one or several of its neighbouring states whose lack of manners towards the West has gone beyond permissible limits.”11
After the Six-Day War in June 1967, Israel’s stock rose considerably among the US ruling class. It was seen to have delivered a body blow to the forces of Arab nationalism after states such as Egypt were defeated.
Gamal Abdel Nasser was the primary figurehead of this movement that sought to unify the Arab nation and took radical measures such as nationalising the Suez Canal and other industries, although never breaking with capitalism.
Nasser was also a key figure in the non-aligned movement that was seen to oppose Western imperialism in the Middle East and the Global South generally, but sought to balance between the Soviet Union and the United States in the Cold War. In the context of the latter being defeated in Vietnam, Israel’s victory over what was seen as a ‘Third World’ upstart in a region crucial to US interests was important.12
It was after 1967 that military and civilian aid from the US to Israel rose considerably (today it directly receives $3.8 billion annually, mostly in military aid, and much more on top of this since October 2023). Until the late 1960s, much of Israel’s armaments came from French imperialism, which also assisted it in developing its nuclear weapons programme.
As such, the Zionist State’s connections with US imperialism run deep, though the latter is unquestionably the dominant force in the relationship, contrary to a widespread view that the Israeli State calls the shots via powerful pro-Israel lobby groups such as AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee).
While the ‘Israel lobby’ undoubtedly has significant influence in US politics, various US administrations have been able to exert themselves on Israel when it has suited them to do so. Most recently, Donald Trump was easily able to pressure Netanyahu to agree to a ceasefire deal, at least temporarily.
Israel is regarded as “a strategic asset” whose highly militarised nature allows the United States to more easily dominate the Middle East. It is a much more stable state, based on a relatively cohesive society compared to the Arab regimes or the US’s former ally, the Shah of Iran, who was overthrown in the 1979 revolution.
Israel’s economy is also intertwined with the global capitalist economy, particularly in high-tech industries. It has deep ties with major global tech companies. Author Antony Lowenstein’s book The Palestine Laboratory outlines the degree to which its military-industrial complex plays a crucial role in developing technology used to hone state repression globally.
Israeli support for the interests of Western imperialism generally goes beyond the Middle East. It has a sordid history of backing ruthless dictatorships.
In Latin America, it backed fascistic death gangs in Central America and armed and funded numerous military dictatorships in the 1970s and 80s. Surveillance was provided to the regime of Augusto Pinochet in Chile, as was weaponry for crowd control.
In his final year in power, before he was ousted by the left-wing Sandinista guerilla movement in 1979, Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle murdered 50,000 of his citizens; the Israeli State provided 98% of his weapons.13 Israel also provided military aid to apartheid South Africa; training and weapons to Mobutu in Zaire; and developed close ties with various authoritarian regimes in Southeast Asia.
The perfidy of Arab ruling classes
The Israeli State and its imperialist patrons are the obvious enemies of Palestinian liberation. However, the struggle for freedom in Palestine faces other opponents: the capitalist Arab regimes of the Middle East and North Africa. All of these dictatorial regimes are committed to upholding the rule of tiny elites, and are also ultimately subservient to US imperialism.
To give a full account of their odious history of oppressing Palestinian refugees within their borders would need more space than we have here, but some examples include Palestinians in Lebanon being denied citizenship and prohibited from working in at least 39 professions. In March 1991, an estimated 287,000 Palestinians were forced to flee Kuwait because of growing repression. In the last 20 years, Egyptian regimes have acted as co-wardens in maintaining the siege of Gaza. During the Syrian civil war, the now deposed regime of Bashar al Assad, laid a brutal siege of the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp.
The ruling classes of these states have long looked in fear at the radical sentiments among the Palestinian working class and poor – and with good reason. In 1953 and 1954, 3,000 Palestinians working for Aramco (formerly Arabian-American Oil Company) in Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia played a significant role in a strike wave demanding union recognition and better wages and conditions.14
This was in a state where there was no independent workers’ movement and whose ruling class was determined it would stay that way.
In 1970, a mass revolutionary movement of the Palestinians in Jordan threatened to overthrow the Hashemite monarchy of King Hussein. An estimated 10,000 were massacred when this revolt was put down with the assistance of US imperialism, with future Pakistani dictator Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq playing a key role.
They rightly regard a revolutionary struggle of ordinary Palestinians as potentially contagious, inspiring their own states’ workers and oppressed people to rise up and end their rule.
Regimes such as that of the Assad family in Syria sought to dominate the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) and use it as a political plaything to shore up their prestige and support. This same regime waged a brutal war against the PLO in Lebanon in the 1980s, in what became known as the ‘War of the Camps’ (a reference to the refugee camps). Through the militia organisation Amal, its Shia ally in Lebanon, thousands of Palestinians were killed to try to defeat PLO factions which were not subservient to its interests.
Today, the Arab States have ditched much of their rhetorical, however hypocritical and hollow, support for the Palestinian cause and opposition to the Israeli regime.
In the last number of years several of them have, under pressure from the US, sought to engage in ‘normalisation agreements’ with the Israeli regime – agreements that would see the Israeli State formally recognised by the Arab States, establishing diplomatic and commercial ties. Both the Trump and Biden administrations hoped that this would integrate Israel into the region and bury Palestinian aspirations entirely, which in turn could further isolate the Iranian and Syrian regimes.
Before Hamas’ horrific attack of 7 October, the Arab States, Israel, and US imperialism believed that they had firmly sidelined the Palestinian question. However, the unspeakable horror of the Gaza genocide has once again centred it as a key political question in the region, not least amongst the working class and poor, and, significantly, the youth.
This has made the process of normalising relations with Israel much more difficult. This was best summed up in a conversation that Crown Prince Muhammed of Saudi Arabia had with former Secretary of State Anthony Blinken when he secretly told him that:
“Seventy percent of my population is younger than me. For most of them, they never really knew much about the Palestinian issue. And so they’re being introduced to it for the time through this conflict. It’s a huge problem. Do I care personally about the Palestinian issue? I don’t, but my people do, so I need to make sure this is meaningful.”
He went on to note:
“Half my advisers say that the deal is not worth the risk… I could end up getting killed because of this deal.”15
The Middle East and North Africa is one of the most unequal regions in the world. Between 2019 and 2022, an estimated 16 million people were pushed into poverty, while in the same period the super-rich saw their net wealth increase by 60%.16
Impoverishment in countries like Egypt has risen in the decade following the crushing of the revolutionary upheavals of the so-called “Arab Spring”.
The Arab ruling classes, notably those in the Gulf States, purchase large sums of weaponry from Western imperialism with their vast reserves of petrodollars. Between 2015 and 2019, the six Gulf states bought more than one-fifth of arms sold globally, with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Qatar ranking as the world’s first, eighth, and tenth largest arms importers, respectively.17
The crushing of democratic rights by these highly militarised regimes is intertwined with the impoverishment of the masses by the capitalist classes. In the case of Egypt, the military dictatorship of El-Sisi owns and controls much of the economy.
The Gulf regimes are run by monarchical families that have massively enriched themselves from oil money and their ownership of major conglomerates built on the hyper-exploited labour of migrants from South Asia who also lack citizenship rights.
The fierce opposition to the Israeli State and its occupation of Palestine on the part of the working masses of the Middle East and North Africa is linked to the fact that it has become a stark reference point for the exploitation and domination of imperialism over the region.
It is also linked to the hatred of the ruling classes that brutally repress these societies and amass enormous fortunes at the expense of the working class and poor.
Palestinian capitalists – a compromised class
Among Palestinians too there is an important class divide. The Palestinian capitalists and those politically tied to it have proven time and again that their interests and those of the Palestinian masses are divergent.
While they may support the demand for an independent Palestinian state based on the June 1967 borders, at best they lack the willingness to wage the necessary struggle against both the murderous Israeli State and the corrupt Arab regimes; at worst, they act to normalise the occupation and cooperate in repressing the struggle against it.
Like other sections of Palestinian society, the Palestinian capitalist class was forced out of most of historic Palestine after the Nakba. From this period onwards, it became quickly tied to other Arab regimes. Much of the ruling class of Jordan is of Palestinian origin. It played a key role in developing Arab Bank, which is based in Amman and is a significant financial institution in the Middle East; likewise, the Lebanese national airline, Middle East Airlines; the huge Contracting and Trading Company (CAT); and the Arabia Insurance Company in Lebanon. It furthermore had business investments in a number of the Gulf States.18
Within the Palestinian Authority (PA), the collaborationist regime dominated by Fatah, the biggest faction of the PLO, a capitalist class connected with Mahmoud Abbas and his cronies has come to dominate. The PA has nominal political and military administration over the key population centres in the occupied West Bank and, in reality, acts as Israel’s subcontracted enforcers of the occupation.
In December, it began a severe crackdown against Palestinian resistance forces in Jenin, followed by banning the broadcasting of Al Jazeera after it reported on this. This crackdown in fact helped pave the way for Israel to launch ‘Operation Iron Wall’, which has resulted in at least 40,000 Palestinians being displaced from refugee camps in the northern part of the West Bank.
There is a stark gap between the conditions of this wealthy Palestinian elite in the West Bank and the mass of workers, farmers and the poor. In the last 17 years, a significant property boom fuelled by speculation has occurred in Area A, which covers 17% of the West Bank. As a result, the area is unaffordable for most Palestinians who are forced to live in these overcrowded population centres. By 2008:
“… land in parts of Ramallah had already reached $4,000 per square meter, a third the price of prime real estate in New York City and Paris, and just shy of Berlin, Brussels, and Madrid.”19
In their construction boom, Palestinian developers have acted to normalise the occupation economically. For example, the construction of the new city of Rawabi has involved contracting ten Israeli companies as suppliers. This connection with the Israeli occupiers has also seen a situation in which in 2014, it was reported that:
“According to one study, Palestinian capital is being invested in Israel and its illegal settlements at far higher rates than in the West Bank – between $2.5 billion and $5.8 billion versus only $1.5 billion… A staff member at the Ministry of the Economy said: ‘Many Palestinian businessmen are investing in industrial settlements such as Barkan, Ma’ale Adumim [major Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank] and other agro-industrial parks in the Jordan Valley.’”20
All classes of Palestinian society suffer under Israeli apartheid, and as we see in Gaza, genocide. However, a capitalist class that is tied economically and subservient politically to the Israeli and Arab States will always ultimately betray the struggle for Palestinian liberation.
A strategy for liberation
Globally, tens of millions have mobilised into action to stop the genocide in Gaza. Ending immediately the bloodshed; the withholding of fuel, food and aid; and the unprecedented physical and mental torture of an entire population is naturally the key focus of the movement.
But the demands go much further: a free Palestine – an end to the occupation, apartheid laws, colonial settlements, and racial supremacy, and for Palestinian refugees to be given the right to return to their historic homeland.
As well as fulsomely supporting these demands, we argue that they are incompatible with the existence of a settler-colonial Zionist State; this state must be overthrown and smashed. The questions are: can it happen given the balance of forces? Who has the power to take on such a militarised state and its imperialist backers? And if it can happen, what kind of solution can guarantee genuine liberation and peace for all?
These questions need careful consideration. The Palestinian people need a lasting solution – not just more ceasefire deals which can never be trusted given the maniacal regime in Israel. Still, these are incredibly difficult questions, and seriously grappling with them can be a trying experience.
As we’ve explained in the analysis above, an analysis which is instinctively understood by many in the global solidarity movement, Palestinian oppression is interwoven into the capitalist and imperialist system itself. Therefore, the commitment of millions around the world to Palestinian liberation is a fundamental threat to that system.
This understanding makes the questions about solutions even more daunting than some might have thought, but this has to be our starting point. As trying as it might be, devising a workable and realisable solution and a strategy and tactics to make it happen can provide much-needed hope for the Palestinian cause. Here, we offer the outlines of a Marxist view of these questions as a contribution to this vital movement.
One obvious way to deal with the question of liberation for an oppressed people is to examine other historical examples.
The struggle against the apartheid regime in South Africa, which was brought down in the early 1990s, has been an inspiring reference point for Palestinians as to how a state based on racist supremacy can be defeated.
The overthrow of apartheid was a historic victory – but it was a victory that fell far short of what the Black working class and poor had struggled for. The South African revolutionary movement of the 1970s and 80s was fuelled by a desire to end poverty, inequality and white minority rule – opposition to economic exploitation and oppression went hand in hand.
This was summed up in the ANC’s (African National Congress) ‘Freedom Charter’ adopted at a 3,000-strong conference in 1955. While not an overtly socialist programme, its demands summed up the desire to end both the system of racist oppression and economic exploitation of the Black majority by white apartheid capitalism:
“The national wealth of our country, the heritage of South Africans, shall be restored to the people; The mineral wealth beneath the soil, the Banks and monopoly industry shall be transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole”21
In 1994, elections were held in which for the first time all South Africans could vote, and white minority rule was ended. This was the culmination of many years of struggle, including a significant international boycott campaign and a domestic guerilla campaign, but crucially, it was brought about by mass civil disobedience and class struggle.
However, in the years leading up to apartheid’s downfall, the ANC negotiated a deal with the settler ruling class (who knew the apartheid system was no longer tenable) that betrayed its Charter, ensuring the white capitalist class would maintain its wealth and privileged status, meaning also that Black people would overwhelmingly remain in poverty.
Today, 64% of Black South Africans live in destitution, residing in the impoverished townships that came into existence during the apartheid era – a classic example of a colonial revolution betrayed.22
Class struggle in apartheid South Africa
So such an outcome is far from liberation, but it’s worth posing the question: is it conceivable that the ruling class of the Israeli State would countenance a similar arrangement – the creation of one democratic state in which their wealth and privileges are guaranteed, but where there is formal equality for all citizens in historic Palestine?
The hard truth is that it isn’t. On the contrary, in the last 30 years, successive Israeli governments have been intransigent in their opposition to even the creation of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders, i.e. on 21% of historic Palestine, let alone ending the codified racism of the Zionist state itself and allowing Palestinians the right of return.
Indeed, the whole logic of Zionism today is to dispossess Palestinians and build a Jewish majority state on their land, with their effective exclusion from its economy and society.
Settler colonialism in South Africa was of a different character.23 A white settler class ruled politically in order to exploit the resources of the country, but its economy was entirely dependent on the exploitation of indigenous labour – the Black masses – to achieve this.
The Israeli economy, by contrast, was never dependent on indigenous labour, although Palestinian Arabs have always made up a significant minority of the working class within the borders of the Israeli State.
Zionism, in encouraging Jews to migrate to ‘Eretz Yisrael’, was always intended to build an overwhelmingly Jewish economy based on Jewish capitalists exploiting Jewish workers, Jewish landlords exploiting Jewish farmers and tenants etc. Instead of mere brutal exploitation, this form of exclusionary colonialism treats the indigenous population to brutal ethnic cleansing and, almost inevitably, genocide.
So while the white ruling class of South Africa could reluctantly allow a situation where apartheid could be dismantled politically, in the confidence that they could continue to rule economically so long as capitalism was maintained; the existence of an Israeli ruling class without a colonial, Zionist state is all but ruled out.
The nature of Zionist colonialism has many implications for any strategy to overthrow the Israeli State. The Black working class and poor formed a vast majority of South African society; it had the social and economic power that meant it was able to bring the regime to its knees and make it ungovernable.
In 1985, COSATU (Congress of South African Trade Unions) was formed and in the following two years, workers took action in key sectors of the economy – transport, mining and industry. In 1986, over one million work-days were lost due to economic strikes, while another 3.5 million days were lost in official political strikes. This escalated again the following year. On May Day alone, 2.5 million working days were lost. More than 6.6 million days were lost in the year due to wage disputes. By 1987, strikes tended to last three times longer than the previous year, and membership of Back trade unions grew massively.24
Strikes and mass civil disobedience crippled South African capitalism; in short, its rule was in the balance. This threat of social revolution from below resulted in political concessions from above – namely, multi-racial elections and the inevitable ending of white minority rule, at least politically.
Unfortunately, the Palestinian working class and poor do not have the same social power in relation to Israeli apartheid. Ensuring that this was the case – that Palestinian labour would not need to be relied upon – has been a conscious aspect of the Zionist settler colonial project. Furthermore, Palestinians are faced with a highly militarised state that has the fulsome backing of Western imperialism.
The First Intifada (1987-1993) and the first few months of the Second Intifada, which began in September 2000, saw mass uprisings of Palestinian workers and youth which did strike real blows against the Israeli regime. They were, moreover, far more effective than the methods of Hamas and other right-wing Islamist groups, such as indiscriminate rocket fire, or the horrific attack of 7 October, in which hundreds of innocent civilians were brutally and needlessly killed, and which only served to strengthen not weaken the Israeli State.25
Today, the inspiring mass struggles of the First intifada in particular can act as crucial examples of how Palestinian self-organisation, linked with the question of a democratically organised armed resistance, can take on the Zionist regime.
However, even heroic struggles such as these will not be enough. While only Palestinians can lead their struggle, the stark reality is that, alone, the Palestinian people lack the power needed to win against these odds. Given the forces ranged against them, they need allies to defeat the Israeli State and bring about their liberation. The question is, who are their allies, or potential allies? This is fundamentally a class question.
Where are the allies?
No doubt the obvious place to look is the Middle East and North Africa, which consists of 22 states from Mauritania in the west and to Oman in the east, and 473 million people – 60% of whom live in urban areas – most of whom share a language and many religious and cultural commonalities.
As noted above, however, it is not the Arab elites but the powerful working classes of these countries, such as Egypt and Tunisia, who are the natural allies of the Palestinians. These working classes were decisive in ending the rule of the dictatorships of Hosni Mubarak and Ben Ali, respectively, in the revolutions of 2011.
We have seen in the context of the genocide the enormous solidarity that exists within the Arab States for Palestine. For example, in April 2025, protests took place in 54 cities in Morrocco – the 70th week of consecutive protests against the Gaza genocide.26
The Moroccan regime, meanwhile, is one of those Arab States that has concluded a normalisation agreement with Israel. Part of this sordid deal was the Israeli / US recognition of its occupation of Western Sahara. Once again, this highlights that jettisoning nominal support for Palestine is a price the Arab ruling classes are willing to pay to maintain their power and privileges.27
Another revolutionary wave, which as in 2011 spread across the region of the Middle East and North Africa, is inherent in the situation. None of the issues that gave rise to those movements has been resolved: whether democracy, inequality, or a future for its youthful population – where 60% are under 30, and youth unemployment is the highest of any region in the world at 25%.28 Indeed, those issues have worsened, as has the political turmoil in the region.
If such a revolutionary wave reemerged it would be a powerful impetus for the struggle for Palestinian liberation. If the dictatorships could be upended, and governments of the working class and poor come to power, they could give both political support and material assistance to the Palestinian struggle.
Other allies are the working classes and youth in Europe, the United States and other parts of the ‘Global North’. This is a powerful and multi-racial force that has mobilised against the genocide in its millions in some of the biggest Palestine solidarity protests in history.
In November 2023, an estimated 300,000 marched in Washington DC and 800,000 marched in London – both being the biggest pro-Palestine protests ever seen in those countries. We’ve seen the establishment of student encampments that began in the US in 2024, where over 3,000 students on over 60 campuses were arrested, and spread to many other countries, from Canada to Australia.
Worker and trade union action can be particularly effective and needs to be massively ramped up. Organising the refusal to handle weaponry and other military equipment destined to Israel, along with all goods and services coming from it, needs to be put on the agenda of all worker organisations. We have seen significant examples of this by dockworkers in Greece, Catalonia, India, Italy and Belgium.
The role of airport workers can also be crucial in targeting the Israeli war machine, for example, air traffic controllers could take industrial action to stop Israeli-bound arms going through the airspace of their respective countries. This is important in the context of Ireland, where in 2024 alone, 1,260 flights carrying weapons were given permission to travel via Irish airspace, much of it going to Israel from the United States.29
Throughout the ‘Global South’ likewise the question of Palestine has further exposed the sheer hypocrisy of the ‘rules-based order’ of Western imperialism.
The genocide in Gaza comes against the backdrop of the horror playing out in the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo), where forces backed by Rwanda have effectively invaded the DRC. Rwanda is imperialism’s key ally in this part of Africa, a storehouse of strategic minerals such as cobalt, coltan and uranium, which major corporations covet.
Such crimes have helped to deepen an anti-imperialist sentiment in the neo-colonial world. Consequently, there have been significant mobilisations in support of Palestine – notably, 200,000 in Kerala, India, in October 2023, and an incredible 2 million people took to the streets of Jakarta, Indonesia, in November 2023.30
Inside Israel
There’s no question that international solidarity is vital for Palestinians, not least for their morale, and consistent, coordinated campaigning can have a real effect in politically and economically isolating the Israeli State. If a revolutionary movement in the United States in particular could break the connection with Zionism and stop the flow of material and political support that would of course be disastrous for Israel.
Ultimately, however, there are limits to the impact of actions or forces outside of a state on the viability or otherwise of that state – the exception being military invasion by a superior military force, which is not really a possibility (Israel is, after all, a nuclear power). This naturally poses the essential question as to whether the Israeli State can be undermined from within.
Palestinians and their supporters globally are understandably sceptical as to whether this is a possibility, given the current supremacist outlook of a significant majority of Israeli Jews.
Since 7 October, widespread support for government’s genocidal campaign has been illustrated by various opinion polls, as well as the deplorable actions of Israeli conscript soldiers in Gaza and the West Bank, engaging in despicable chanting, joking and mocking of Palestinians as they carry out their murderous orders – much of which has been documented in viral social media videos.
How human beings can display or hold such monstrous attitudes can be hard to fathom, and we don’t have the space here to explore that issue in any detail, but Naomi Klein provided a useful insight into Israeli society and how the deep generational trauma of Jewish people is systematically manipulated and weaponised by the Israeli State:
“One of the most remarkable aspects of the response to 7 October inside Israel and much of the Jewish diaspora was the speed with which it was absorbed into what is now called “memory culture”… there was a near instant move to graphically re-create the events of 7 October as mediated experiences… often with the explicit goal of reducing sympathy for Palestinians and generating support for Israel’s rapidly expanding wars. Before the one-year mark, there was already an off-Broadway “verbatim play”, called October 7, drawn from witness testimony; several art exhibitions, and at least two 7 October-themed fashion shows… Then there are the 7 October films, already an emerging subgenre… Dramatic treatments take a little more time, but there are several in the works, including October 7, a feature film from the creators of Fauda, as well as the scripted series One Day in October, developed by Fox.”
She goes on:
“All efforts at commemoration aim to touch the hearts of people who were not there. But there is a difference between inspiring an emotional connection and deliberately putting people into a shellshocked, traumatized state. Achieving the latter result is why so much 7 October memorialization boasts that it is “immersive” – offering viewers and participants the chance to crawl inside the pain of others, based on a guiding assumption that the more people there are who experience the trauma of 7 October as if it was their own, the better off the world will be. Or rather, the better off Israel will be.”31
However, it is more than just a reaction to the events of 7 October. In Israeli society, a siege mentality is instilled in the population from the earliest ages, with ubiquitous propaganda about the impending threat of another ‘Shoah’ (Holocaust) – at the hands of hostile Arabs who surround them. Palestinians and Muslims generally are dehumanised with overt racism by the state, which utilises DARVO (deny, attack, reverse victim and offender) tactics in cult-like fashion.
In light of this perceived existential threat, all the actions of the Israeli State are twisted and presented as defensive. It goes without saying this state of affairs is grotesque, and an affront not just to Palestinians but – as groups like Jewish Voice for Peace have pointed out – to Jews, particularly survivors of the Holocaust.
The Zionist proposition is that safety and freedom for Jews can only be achieved on the basis of the oppression of another people and the establishment of an ethno-supremacist state, and the majority of the Israeli population have unfortunately bought into this idea.
Yet Israeli society is not homogeneous. Within it there are class divisions, like all other capitalist societies, and various sections of Israeli Jewish society suffer discrimination and oppression; Ethiopian, Mizrahi and Russian Jews suffer racism and constitute some of the poorest sections of this society.
While they enjoy significant material and social advantages compared to Palestinians, deriving from the favoured position of Israel vis a vis imperialism, it is nevertheless the truth that the perpetuation of Palestinian oppression is ultimately not in the interests of the Israeli Jewish working class – because the social and economic liberation of working-class and oppressed people in Israeli society will never be achieved within a state built around a supremacist ideology.
This is the case notwithstanding the grim degree to which, at this juncture, the majority have been whipped up behind genocidal Zionist propaganda. Far from a safe haven, their Zionist rulers have given ordinary Jewish Israelis a future of perpetual militarisation, war, increasing authoritarianism and inequality. Security and peace, which many Israelis genuinely desire, cannot be built based on occupation and genocide.
It is equally a chimaera to believe that while the status quo of apartheid remains in existence, those groups of Israeli Jews that suffer the oppression common to all capitalist societies – women, LGBTQ people, people of colour, disabled people – can gain freedom.
On the contrary, the toxic chauvinism used to justify perennial military occupation invariably leads to a rise in other poisonous ideas that attack all oppressed groups. For instance, there has been a 127% rise in the number of attacks of LGBTQ people within the Green Line since the genocide began.32
Breaking Zionism’s hold
Within the pre-1967 borders of the Israeli State, there are roughly 10 million people, just over 20% of whom are Palestinian Arabs and nearly 75% are Jews. As long as the Zionist State can rely on the allegiance of a large majority of these 7.5 million Jews, its position is quite secure.
As such it will continue to use every means at its disposal, no matter how nefarious – religion, racism, myth, fear, militarism – to maintain its hold over the hearts and minds of the Jewish population. Consequently, breaking its hold over this population – or even a significant section of it – must be a vital strategic aim of the Palestinian liberation movement. Notwithstanding how unlikely this can seem in the current context, in our view it is a possibility – one certainly worth striving for.
Without question Israeli society has, as noted, a culture of chauvinism and racism more extreme than most capitalist societies. But it’s worth remembering that every ruling class has a powerful influence on the societies they rule over; through their control of the state institutions, organised religion, the print and online media, the education system, and so on.
For any revolutionary movement to succeed it necessitates challenging and overcoming that influence, and only the way to challenge and overcome it is through the very process of revolutionary struggle – which entails unique mass experiences such as dialogue, activity, conflict and clashes with other groups and classes, all of which can profoundly alter people’s consciousness, including in ways that can seem impossible otherwise. As Karl Marx wrote:
“Both for the production on a mass scale of this communist consciousness, and for the success of the cause itself, the alteration of [people] on a mass scale is necessary, an alteration which can only take place in a practical movement, a revolution; this revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew.”33
Fundamentally, this applies to the working class in Israel too. The supremacist ideas that predominate there are the product of life in an etho-nationalist state, but neither that society nor those ideas are fixed or unchangeable. It would be a strategic mistake to think and operate as if they were, as some in the Palestine solidarity movement unfortunately do.
Even in the last 18 months, some cracks have appeared within Israeli society. There have been significant protests involving hundreds of thousands demanding a deal to end ‘the war’ in Gaza in exchange for the release of Israeli hostages kidnapped on 7 October. We should not have illusions that these protests constituted a movement of solidarity with Palestinians, but they do show a questioning of Israeli government policy.
This movement included the staging of a general strike in September. The Socialist Party wrote in the aftermath of this strike:
“Ordinary Israelis are correct to say that this government is utterly cavalier about the fate of the remaining hostages and more generally, that Netanyahu and co. do not care about the safety of ordinary Israelis. Over every struggle in Israeli society, however, there is one issue that looms: the ongoing oppression and occupation of the Palestinian people – oppression that has manifested in outright genocide for nearly one year. Until the protest movement recognises this and stands against it, it is a movement that’s completely contradictory: against the criminal Netanyahu, but failing to challenge the very basis upon which the policies he is pursuing rests – the Zionist state itself.”
A very small but significant development has been those young people who have refused to serve within the Israeli Army in the context of the genocide. One of these objectors is Ella Keidar Greenberg, a young trans woman and socialist activist who has been imprisoned for refusing to serve. She had previously been active in ‘Youth Against Dictatorship’ which emerged during the movement against plans by the Netanyahu government in 2023 to centralise power to his government away from the Supreme Court.
This was a letter signed by 230 young people in September of that year,34 making it clear that they would refuse to serve in the army, linking the question of the undermining of democratic rights within Israeli society to the occupation of Palestinian land and oppression of its people. In a recent interview, she poignantly connected the question of the oppression of trans oppression to opposition to the ideology of the Israeli capitalist state:
“As trans people, we challenge the same rigid, patriarchal, binary system of roles that demands we serve – these structures of men and women, fathers and mothers, that produce another generation of soldiers and workers. We disrupt that system, which is why we scare the regime so much, and are such an easy scapegoat that they keep returning to.
I think draft refusers challenge the Israeli military narrative in a similar way, because we don’t fulfill the role assigned to us. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I was drawn to questioning more and more fundamental assumptions after breaking one of the most basic ones. And yes, for me, as a trans person, I want freedom for myself and for everyone. I’m not interested in an “equal right” to oppress others [by serving in the military] or a clear-cut entry pass into the existing system – to be in the state’s ranks instead of resisting it.”35
The Palestinian struggle should aim to exploit the contradictions and the questioning within Israeli Jewish society. This would involve developing a programme that counters the propaganda of the Zionists, explaining that the rule of imperialism, oligarchic dictatorships and Zionism itself can only offer a future of misery and destruction.
A programme for socialist change in the region – with governments of the working class and oppressed masses taking public ownership and democratic control of the vast wealth and resources in the region and democratically planning their use in the interests of all, and supporting the right of national self-determination for all – could break at least a section of the Israeli working class away from its ruling class and ideology.
The Palestinian working class within the Green Line could be a decisive force in such an approach, given its proximity to Israeli Jewish workers and young people. It could both challenge the chauvinist sentiment that pervades in this society and make an appeal to join in the fight for a society in which both Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews could live in equality from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea.
Liberation through socialist revolution
The struggle for a democratic socialist society such as this would be based on the empowerment of the working class and all those oppressed under this system. It would not be confined to the borders of Palestine-Israel but would mean creating a democratic socialist Middle East and North Africa, in which the labouring masses take control of their societies, their economies and their international relations.
Instead of dictatorship, poverty and division, genuine democracy – based on cooperation and solidarity, in which the rights of minorities would be guaranteed – could flourish. All the “solutions” offered by capitalism and imperialism have in reality entailed the continued dominance of Zionism and subordination of Palestinians. Only on the basis of uprooting the system of capitalist exploitation and imperialist domination, upon which the Israeli state has been built, can a genuinely new path be forged.
Within this framework, Palestinian self-determination and liberation could be achieved: the overthrow of the Zionist state based on ethnic supremacy, the dismantling of settlements, apartheid, and colonialism, and total equality for all.
This has to include the right of return for Palestinian refugees; those displaced by the Nakba and their descendants. All sections of the Israeli ruling class have always emphatically rejected this just demand because they correctly perceive it would pose an existential threat to their apartheid state if implemented, as Palestinians would then constitute a clear majority between the river and the sea.
However, the available data also shows that the repopulation of Palestinian villages by the return of the refugees need not involve any major Jewish displacement. It would, however, require a fundamental restructuring of land ownership and control.
While some towns have been built over or repurposed, significant areas remain underutilised. The space and resources necessary to accommodate a return are indeed available – the vast majority of Israeli Jews currently live in just 6% of the landmass within the ‘Green Line’, a staggering statistic that highlights the artificial scarcity created by Zionist land policies.36
The struggle to overthrow and dismantle the Zionist state requires offering an alternative to Israeli Jews, who would constitute a minority nation in a free Palestine. Rashid Khalidi, in his book The Hundred Years War on Palestine, points out that Zionism was both a national and a settler-colonial project at the same time.37 The leaders of that project were extremely successful in their efforts to create a national consciousness and identity among Israeli Jews, and this is a reality that has to be reckoned with.
With the ending of any regime of Jewish supremacy, the right to self-determination could be established for both peoples on a genuinely equal basis. Fulfilling this right would be a matter of mutual agreement, possibly taking the form of one bi-national socialist state within all of historic Palestine, which in many ways would be the most desirable outcome.
However, it could also mean the creation of two separate socialist states with free and open borders, where the rights of national minorities would be guaranteed, if that was desired. No one group can be forced into one state against their wishes.
The horror, devastation and trauma created by the Gaza genocide and 77 years of Zionist terror is impossible for anyone to fathom; except, of course, for Palestinians – they are living it, struggling through it all. This in itself is inspirational. If the genocide has brought into sharp relief how urgently we need revolutionary socialist change; the indomitable spirit of the Palestinian people should imbue us all with the courage and determination to make it happen. “Mourn the dead, fight like hell for the living” – these are also apt words for today. Let’s fight for the freedom of Palestine and all humanity from this capitalist hellscape of environmental destruction, imperialist plunder, fascistic politics and obscene inequality.
Notes
1. Caolan Magee, 31 Mar 2025, ‘Meta profits as ads promote illegal Israeli settlements in West Bank’, www.aljazeera.com
2. Sian Cain, 14 Mar 2025, ‘No Other Land director calls Florida mayor’s campaign against his film ‘very dangerous’’, www.theguardian.com
3. Ben Lynfield, 21 Aug 2023, ‘An empowered settler movement relishes chance to ‘Judaise’ the Galilee’, Middle East Eye, www.middleeasteye.net
4. 22 Jan 2025, ‘Why is the land in the West Bank being sold off to US citizens?’, The Take https://open.spotify.com
5. Andreas Malm, 8 April 2024, ‘The Destruction of Palestine Is the Destruction of the Earth’, www.versobooks.com/blogs
6. Nathan Weindstock, 1979, Zionism: False Messiah, InkLinks, page 12
7. Quoted in Amandla Thomas-Johnson, 6 Dec 2017, ‘The Balfour Declaration and 67 words that changed the world’, Middle East Eye, https://www.middleeasteye.net
8. Andreas Malm, 8 April 2024, ‘‘The Destruction of Palestine Is the Destruction of the Earth’, www.versobooks.com/blogs
9. Adam Hanieh, ‘Petrochemical Empire’, July 2021, New Left Review, www.newleftreview.org
10. Adam Hanieh, 2024, Crude Capitalism, Oil Corporate Power, and the Making of the World Market, Verso, p 57
11. Quoted in Moshé Machover, 20 Nov 2006, ‘Israelis and Palestinians: Conflict and Resolution’, Marxists Internet Archive, www.marxists.org
12. Norman Finkelstein, 2003, The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, Verso
13. International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, 2012, Israel’s Worldwide Role in Repression
14. Phil Marshall, 1986, ‘Palestinian nationalism and the Arab revolution’, Marxists.org, www.marxists.org
15. 27 Sept 2024, ‘Saudi crown prince said he personally ‘doesn’t care’ about Palestinian issue’, Middle East Eye, www.middleeasteye.net
16. 6 Nur Arafeh, 2 Feb 2024, ‘Economic Injustice is Anchoring Itself in the Arab World’, Carnegie Endowment, https://carnegieendowment.org
17. Hamza Culin, 13 July 2020, ‘A Marxist Guide to Understanding the Gulf States’ Political Economy’, Jacobin, www.jacobin.com
18. Phil Marshall, 1986, ‘Palestinian nationalism and the Arab revolution’, Marxists Internet Archive, www.marxists.org
19. Ben Hattem, 13 Feb 2015, ‘Palestine’s Other Land War’, Middle East Eye, https://www.middleeasteye.net
20. Tariq Dana, 14 January 2014, ‘The Palestinian Capitalists That Have Gone Too Far’, Al-Shabaka, www.al-shabaka.org
21. African National Congress, 26 June 1955, The Freedom Charter, Marxists Internet Archive, www.marxists.org
22. Phumlani M. Majozi, 25 Aug 2024, ‘What Will Help Poor Black South Africans’, Politicsweb, www.politicsweb.co.za
23. The Marxist writer Moshe Machover has written useful articles on the nature of different forms of settler colonialism, such as ‘Machover, 22 Nov 2029, Two impossibilities’, Weekly Worker, weeklyworker.co.uk
24. William A. Pelz, 2023, ‘South African Black Workers Strike’, EBSCO, www.ebsco.com
25. We explained this in more detail in our November 2023 pamphlet, Genocide in Gaza and the Struggle to Defeat the Israeli Regime of Terror, in which we wrote: “It has been used by the establishments in the West to try to shore up support for the Israeli regime internationally, in a context wherein such support has been diminishing. Within Israel itself it created a mood of national unity, which has allowed it to carry out its war crimes even more wantonly. In reality, from a purely strategic point of view, this attack was at best an act of desperation, not part of a serious plan to defeat the Israeli State.”
26. 4 April 2025, ‘Moroccans Mark 70th Week of Nationwide Protests Against Gaza War and Normalization’, Watan, www.watanserb.com
27. 17 July 2023, ‘Israel recognises Western Sahara as part of Morocco’, www.aljazeera.com
28. Masood Ahmed, June 2012, ‘Youth Unemployment in the MENA Region: Determinants and Challenges’, IMF, www.imf.org
29. Michelle McGlynn, 2 January 2025, ‘More than 1,260 Flights Approved to Carry Munitions Through Irish Airspace in 2024’, www.irishexaminer.com
30. 5 Nov 2023, ‘Over 2 Million Indonesians Rally in Solidarity with Palestinians Amid Gaza Crisis’, Middle East Monitor, www.middleeastmonitor.com
31. Naomi Klein, 5 October 2024, ‘How Israel Has Made Trauma a Weapon of War’, www.theguardian.com
32. Hadar Gil-Ad, 5 June 2024, ‘Survey Shows Sharp Rise in Anti-LGBT+ Violence Amid War’, Ynetnews, www.ynetnews.com l 33. Karl Marx, 1845, The German Ideology, Chapter 1, www.marxists.org
34. Oren Ziv, 5 September 2023, ‘Meet Israel’s new “Youth Against Dictatorship” conscientious objectors’, ++972 Magazine,, www.972mag.com
35. Oren Ziv, 24 March 2025, ‘When our grandchildren ask about the genocide, I’ll say I refused’, +972 Magazine, www.972mag.com l
36. Salman Abu Sitta, 14 Apr 2024, ‘The Right of Return to Free Palestine’, Al-Ahram, www.english.ahram.org.eg
37. Rashid Khalidi, 2020, The Hundred Years War On Palestine, Profile Books, p 14