This is a shorter version of a longer discussion article. The long version can be sent to supporters by sending a request to contact.us@revolutionarymarxism.com
Ever since the “Balfour Declaration” in 1917 when British imperialism launched the creation of the zionist state armed to the teeth in the Middle East, millions of Palestinians and their supporters have been engaged in heroic and completely justified resistance to the increasing horrors imposed by the Zionist state. Strikes, intifadas, armed struggle and protests such as the Great March of Return have all been part of the resistance to the racist and zionist state of Israel and its brutal oppression, settler violence and genocide.
Over this whole period, the struggle for Palestinian self-determination has been a crucial and inspiring part of the global anti-imperialist struggle. Yet the oppression of Palestinians continues, with the brutality of the zionist state backed by Western imperialism reaching new, unspeakable heights in the genocide. Imperialist forces and authoritarian regimes continue to dominate the region.
One thing is clear – as long as the zionist state and its imperialist backers dominate the region there can be no guarantee of the rights of Palestinians and the wider Arab working-class and poor masses, any more than Jewish workers can live in safety and freedom while genocide is carried out in their name.
Why then, when the strategy of the pro-capitalist forces – the PLO, Fatah, Hamas and others – has not succeeded in winning liberation, the left has not been able to develop a viable alternative.
An important source for examining this question is the book “The Palestinian Left and its Decline” by Francesco Saverio Leopardi published in 2020. Leopardi is a Professor at the University of Padova. Although essentially an academic work, his book is well researched, based on interviews with many former and current participants.
It details the history of the “Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine” (PFLP), the main left force since its foundation in 1967. The role of other left organisations such as the DFLP and Communist party is only mentioned in passing, when relevant to the narrative around the PFLP.
Leopardi identifies weaknesses in the approach of the PFLP. He encourages a rethink: “Only by challenging long-standing assumptions and internal contradictions can the actors of the Palestinian national movement achieve a genuine and much needed renewal”. His own weakness though, is that as an academic he neither identifies the root cause of the PFLP’s decline, nor offers a positive alternative.
This review is an attempt to identify the root cause of the symptoms that Leopardi describes, with a clear understanding that the conclusion, a more developed programme for the liberation of Palestine, can only be achieved and refined in dialogue with activists from the Palestinian movement itself.
Decline of the PFLP built into its DNA
Early Palestinian resistance starting with the 1936 General strike was based on class-struggle with the building of trade unions, the women’ s movement, and other grass-roots initiatives. Palestinian liberation was understood to be an integral part of the Arab revolution. But the Palestine Communist Party, which had played an important role and built significant influence, was dealt a serious blow when in 1949 the Soviet Union supported the creation of Israel.
In the next decade pan-Arab nationalism was gaining strength, most notably around Egyptian President Gamer Nasser. In 1964 the Arab League initiated the creation of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) to present support for Palestinian liberation, while ensuring the struggle was kept under the control of the Arab regimes.
George Habash and other founding members of the PFLP had been active in the Arab Nationalist Movement. The Arab defeat in the war with Israel in 1967 opened up divisions with Nasser on one side and a wing looking towards Marxism and armed struggle. A few months later, the PFLP was founded.
In the 1940s over 40% of Palestinians worked in industry, construction, transport, services and as agricultural wage workers. Yet the PFLP based its methods of struggle on those more suitable for a predominantly peasant based society. This was very much the result of the then international context.
Even though the then dominant non-imperialist force, the bureaucratised USSR, was reluctant to support new revolutions, revolutionary movements in the colonial world were raging.
Mao-Zedong led the victorious Chinese revolution in 1949. Then the Cuban revolution in 1959, Algerian independence in 1962, and the defeat of US imperialism in Vietnam fed illusions that victory could be found not in a revolutionary struggle primarily by the urban proletariat but through a peasant based guerilla war. Even the by then misnamed ‘Trotskyist’ Fourth International developed huge illusions in Maoism.
In 1969 the PFLP declared it was a “Marxist-Leninist” organisation – a term universally used by Maoist organisations. Lenin’s united workers front strategy was replaced by Mao’s popular frontism; his class-based approach to the national question was overturned by prioritising the national conflict over class struggle; his international workers’ solidarity was replaced by alliances with the ruling elites of ‘friendly countries’; and Lenin’s “arming the working class” during a working-class led political revolution was replaced by “guerrilla struggle” aimed at igniting a mass based popular war.
Although Leopardi does not himself specifically identify Maoism as the cause of the PFLP’s decline, his book is full of examples of how the PFLP’s approach led to downplaying the grass-roots political organisation of the working class, relying instead on relatively small ‘armed forces’ while tail-ending the bourgeois leadership as a ‘loyal opposition’ within the PLO framework. Having started with a relatively strong base within the Palestine resistance, it became increasingly sidelined, and left a vacuum later filled by radical Islamic forces.
“Popular frontism” instead of “United frontism”
The 1922 Comintern “Theses on the United Front” warned that reformist and pro-capitalist leaders use the instinctive desire of the masses for unity in struggle to draw the masses into class collaboration. It therefore called for a “united workers’ front” in which the working class maintains its own political identity, and a revolutionary organisation freedom to present its own views and criticisms of those who oppose it.
Popular frontism, though, meant an alliance between the workers’ organisations and sections of the bourgeoisie, in which, to maintain unity, the workers were subordinate to the political leadership of the bourgeoisie. Leopardi gives numerous examples of how this led in practice to the submission of the interests of the oppressed classes to those of the Palestinian and wider Arab elite.
In its 1969 Political and Military report the PFLP argued for “the creation of a front in which all the classes of the revolution – workers, peasants and petit bourgeoisie – should be represented”. It went on though to explain that the bourgeoisie was numerically small, and that therefore any attempt to “squander and disrupt the forces of the nation and bring about an internal struggle within them is unscientific and false”. This underestimation of the national bourgeoisie and its role in betraying the interests of the Palestinian people is a key part of events in the decades that followed.
A small layer of Palestinians benefitted from Palestine’s role as a key base for British imperialism during WW2. Their links with Arab capital led to the development of a “national bourgeoisie”. As Tariq Dana of Al-Shabaka explains: “Palestinian capitalists’ engagement with the PLO included funding, occupying leading PLO positions, and political mediation”. The dominance of the “national bourgeoisie” was seen by the different PLO factions as an indispensable part of the anti-colonial struggle.
Instead, Leopardi explains, George Habash and the PFLP positioned themselves as a “loyal opposition” to the PLO leadership. When mass pressure, particularly from within the occupied territories, pushed for more radical measures, the PFLP would temporarily oppose the dominant faction, sometimes even resigning their positions, only to return and fall into line with Arafat’s position once the pressure was eased.
Leopardi explained how after the PLO was expelled from Jordan in 1970 and relocated to Lebanon, it formed a quasi-state there. It was based on the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees in the Lebanese camps and included the running of schools, hospitals, police and armed forces. Reportedly the economic resources controlled by the PLO amounted to half a trillion dollars and led to a dramatic expansion of the PLO’s bureaucracy from which all the factions benefitted.
In 1974 the PLO changed its position to call for the creation of a National Authority on “any part of liberated land”, moving away from the full liberation of territories within mandatory Palestine towards the acceptance of a two-state solution. The Arab league recognised the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinian people, the UN granted it unofficial observer status.
Initially opposing this move, the PFLP withdrew from the PLO Executive, but when civil war in Lebanon threatened the PLO, it quickly retreated to de facto accept the new programme to maintain PLO unity. This was, Leopardi said: “the first occasion on which the PFLP compromised over its oppositional role for the Loyal opposition.”
The PLO factions were caught unawares by the outbreak of the First Intifada in December 1987 after four Palestinian workers were killed in an accident by an Israeli truck driver. For nearly four years the Israeli forces were unable to put down the largely non-violent strikes, civil disobedience, mass demonstrations and barricades.
Israeli Civil Administration bodies in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) were boycotted and Palestinians refused to work in Israeli settlements. Leopardi describes: “the new kind of popular mobilisation that emerged with the Intifada, a mobilisation where the regular, popular dimension of the protests, with the establishment of Popular committees to coordinate action, took the place of the elite armed operations that dominated PLO and PFLP strategy so far”.
The PFLP recognised the importance of the mass civil disobedience as an alternative form of opposition to the occupation, placing emphasis on stepping up the Intifada as, it argued, the Israeli and US position was still too strong, and more pressure was needed for negotiations.It criticised the “rightward drift” and Arafat’s increasing faith in negotiations with the US. But it stayed in the PLO, and fought for the leadership of the uprising to be under the control of the PLO.
Globally the next years were epoch changing. The US with support from the dying USSR launched the first Iraq war after Hussain invaded Kuwait. The Soviet Union disbanded in 1991. These changed the balance of forces in the region. The Arab elites dramatically reduced their financial support for the PLO.
Despite the growing rift between the activists in the occupied territories and the increasingly highly bureaucratised PLO, Arafat succumbed to US pressure to negotiate the Oslo Accords over the heads of the Palestinian masses.
The Oslo accords changed the relationship between Israel and Palestine. Israel’s right to exist was recognised, and armed struggle rejected, while Israel recognised the PLO as representative of the Palestine people. ‘Self-government’ of the West Bank and Gaza was to be delivered by the Fatah led Palestinian Authority, at least until 2006 when Hamas won elections in Gaza. Israel outsourced security and policing of the OPT to Fatah. No agreement was made for the complete end of the occupation, the rights of returnees, or for an end to the expansion of settler territories.
True to form, the PFLP initially resisted this capitulation to US demands, and again withdrew from the PLO executive. As the reality of the Oslo Accords emerged, it attempted to build opposition within the PLO, firstly in alignment with the other significant left force – the DFLP – and then with Islamic forces in the Alliance of Palestinian Forces (APF). But this approach failed and, having initially condemned the “path of surrender” during the Oslo negotiations, by 1996 the PFLP was once again returning into PLO structures.
Rejecting class struggle to solve the national question
Rejecting Lenin’s approach to national and colonial questions which called for “a closer union of the proletarians and the working masses of all nations and countries for a joint revolutionary struggle to overthrow the landowners and the bourgeoisie”, the PFLP adopted the Maoist conception of “primary” and “secondary” contradictions which prioritised the national conflict at the expense of class struggle.
This down-played the importance of grass-root organisation and class struggle, but it also led the PFLP to prioritise the recognition of the PLO as representative of the Palestinian state over the liberation of the occupied Palestinian territories and self-determination of the Palestinian people.
In the 1960s future PFLP members had debated with others on how to achieve a “socialist state all over the Arab Levant” [Syria, Levant, Jordan and Palestine]. A genuinely democratic socialist state could only have been achieved through a mass revolutionary movement led by the working class in alliance with the poor and oppressed masses.
But the PFLP quickly moved away from having socialism as its strategic aim, demoting it instead to a vague notion for the future or for use elsewhere. In 1969 it declared “since we are in the stage of national liberation, we cannot envisage a class struggle which is only justified in the stage of socialist revolution; consequently in the stage of national liberation a class struggle would mean that the conflict among the classes of the people takes precedence over the conflict between the entire people and the foreign colonialists.”
Initially based with other PLO factions in Amman, the Jordanian capital, the PFLP linked the struggle for Palestine with the need to overthrow the Hashemite Kingdom. Amman was called the “Arab Hanoi” and George Habash, the PFLP leader became known for his saying “the road to Jerusalem passes through Amman”.
But as events developed, the PFLP’s insistence on Arab unity increasingly ignored the separate consciousness of the Palestinians who had already faced decades of specific oppression at the hands of the Zionist project. The distrust of the Palestinian masses at the role played by the reactionary Arab regimes, and the shock of the defeat of the Arab armies in the 1967 war, meant that placing Arab unity as more important than the liberation of Palestine was almost tantamount to ignoring the national question.
In this context the original position of Arafat and Fatah is important. Unlike the PFLP, which developed out of the pan-Arabic nationalist movement, the leading Fatah cadres came overwhelmingly from within the occupied territories and had been active in the pre-1967 Palestinian struggles.
Initially Fatah spokespersons were ambiguous about their aims, but often called for the liberation of all Palestinians defined during the third Fatah Congress as “A democratic, progressive, non-sectarian state in which Jews, Christians and Muslims would live together in peace and enjoy the same rights”. It still argued in 1959 that “the liberation of Palestine was primarily a Palestinian affair and could not be entrusted to the Arab states”. The proponents of Palestinian nationalism and Arabic nationalism within the resistance movement clashed over this issue for at least the next two decades.
In the immediate aftermath of the 1967 war, leaders in the occupied territories who argued for the recognition of a Palestinian entity were sometimes condemned as collaborators. But the mood of Palestinians in the occupied territory, let down by the Arab regime, and with memories of the pre-war repression meted out by the Jordanian regime still fresh, was changing fed by the daily brutality of the occupation. By 1973 Palestinian consciousness was strengthening, a Palestinian flag started to appear on demonstrations, and chants included “No to occupation, No to Jordan, Yes to the PLO”.
Needless to say, Fatah’s original distrust of the Arab regimes disappeared when the Arab league in 1964 established the PLO and when, ten years later, it accepted the “two-state solution”. In 1976 the Israeli regime called municipal elections in the territories in the belief it would create local leaders prepared to act as a counterbalance to Fatah’s quasi state in exile. Many PLO candidates won positions, thus undermining Israel’s plans. But the PFLP found its radical opposition to the two-state solution did not resonate with those who saw it as a step towards the liberation of the territories. The PFLP was side-lined in these elections.
After 1982, the PFLP took a “tactical” turn. It began to call for an “independent Palestinian state”, by which it meant “a democratic state ensuring equal rights to Jews and Arabs”, a position which had earlier belonged to Fatah, while Fatah moved on to argue for what was essentially a mini-state on the West Bank and Gaza.
The PFLP found it was not only tail-ending the changes in consciousness in the occupied territories, it was being overtaken by Fatah. Activists in the OPT were distributing leaflets calling for an end to the occupation and the setting up of an independent Palestine on the occupied territories. The PFLP found itself distanced from what the population of the occupied territories wanted, its marginalisation deepened.
The illusion of alliances with the “anti-imperialist” bloc
In fighting imperialism, Lenin warned that “The most dangerous people of all in this respect are those who do not wish to understand that the fight against imperialism is a sham and humbug unless it is inseparably bound up with the fight against opportunism”, which he defined as an alliance between a section of the workers and the national bourgeoisie.
Mao’s “Theory of three Worlds” turned Lenin’s approach on its head with its binary division of the world into imperialist and anti-imperialist countries that led the PFLP to seek alliances with the ruling elites of “friendly countries”. .
When, after 1967, the Palestinian masses realised they could not rely on the Arab regimes for their liberation, they began to take agency not only in the occupied territories, but across the region. This put the Arab elites which were opposed to Palestinian self-determination under tremendous pressure.
But at the same time, the relationship between the PLO, its factions and the regimes became more complex and entangled. Fatah, once distrustful of the Arab regimes, started to coordinate its own military strategy with that of the same regimes. It became more reliant on their financial patronage, and often acted as proxies on their behalf.
The PLO formally had a policy of non-intervention in the affairs of the different Arab states. When the Palestinian masses took things into their own hands, the factions used such pressure not to build mass movements against the Arab dictatorships, but as levers to further their diplomatic maneuvers.
To counterbalance Arafat’s integration into the US driven negotiation process, the PFLP looked to the Syrian regime, even though Damascus was sending proxy-militias against Arafat’s forces. In doing this the PFLP met with opposition within its own ranks with a section of the leadership looking to Iraq for support.
As the Oslo negotiations neared, while the PLO’s raison d’etre was found in the possibility of a diplomatic agreement, the PFLP found the ‘anti-imperialist camp’ rapidly losing ground. The US war against Iraq, with the support of the still existing (just) USSR saw its last potential ally disappear.
By 1993 at its fifth Congress the PFLP had postponed the creation of a “democratic socialist state over the whole of Palestinian land” into a mythical future. Its aim was fully in line with the Menshevik theory of stages: “liberate Palestine from Zionist colonial occupation… establishment of a democratic state on the entire Palestinian national land”.. By 2000 the 6th Congress passed a resolution which merely defined the “strategic aim which is to establish the democratic state of Palestine.”
Approach to armed struggle
No Marxist worth the name would deny, especially given the brutality of the Israeli military actions and attacks by armed settlers, the right of Palestinians to defend themselves and conduct armed struggle against the occupiers. As Frantz Fanon pointed out when a colonial force submits its dominance over the colonised people using brutal violence: “The very same people who had it constantly drummed into them that the only language they understood was that of force, now decide to express themselves with force”.
The PFLP replaced the Leninist conception of “arming the working class” as the key to a working-class led revolution by guerilla struggle. The 1969 Political and military report of the PFLP states: “We cannot completely destroy the forces of the enemy and attain liberation through popular warfare. But popular warfare is the first stage of a popular liberation war. Guerrillas will gradually develop into a revolutionary regular army which will be able to defeat the enemy through a long term war.
The widespread and spontaneous seizure of landed and church estates by the peasantry alongside the ‘Red Guard’ militias to protect the revolution from the forces of counter-revolution were critical elements in the development of the Russian revolution. Their significance is that they were directed against the national bourgeois and in themselves could not complete the revolution, only when the working class was politically organised and resolved to overthrow capitalism did the revolution succeed. Once that happened the army split, and the revolution itself was practically bloodless.
The PFLP’s reliance on “commandos”, which by definition have to work in secret and are not connected with the masses, belittles the role of mass struggle instead of promoting the self-organisation and self-organisation of the masses. In other words their actions deprive the masses of agency. The victims of such actions are quickly replaced and the opportunity is used to step up repression and carry out revenge on the masses.The tragedy is that all revolutionary struggles in which guerrilla war is the dominant feature, if they succeed in overturning the old regime, lead to authoritarian societies ruled by the military and bureaucratic structures developed during the war.
The experience of the Palestinian struggle, and in particular the role played by the PFLP unfortunately demonstrates how mistaken it was to put so much emphasis on guerrilla actions, which it has to be said did not even get anywhere near the scale of the struggles in China, Vietnam or Algiers. Leopaldi gives the figures for the numbers involved in the different military forces – they are measured in thousands and tens of thousands [total for all factions] which is a small proportion of the Palestinian population.
The experience of the First Intifada demonstrated how self-organised mass action, even if largely non-violent based on strikes, demonstrations and boycotts, managed to hold the Israeli regime at bay, and even forced change. By the time of the Second Intifada the PFLP’s potential had been dramatically reduced. Although again the first acts as part of the Intifada had a non-violent character, the organisations and structures such as the popular committees that played a large role in the First Intifada had been sidelined – in part by repression, and also by the promotion of NGOs, which monitored and observed, rather than mobilised opposition.
Even today, the PFLP has failed to draw the lessons from their previous wrong approach. In February 2024 it called for the unity of “popular, national and official components in the West Bank to counter the occupation” to form popular protection committees to protect villages and cities “requiring the participation of the [Palestinian] Authorities Security Forces” – the very same Security Forces that act as sub-contractor to the IDF and implement the notorious “revolving door/al-bab al-dawaar”.
Growth of radical Islam
At the end of the 1960s organisations such as the Muslim Brotherhood had limited appeal. Their aim was to Islamize Palestinian society and they did not prioritise resistance to the occupation.
The growing arrogance of imperialism across the region, its increasing support for and militarisation of Israel and its oppression of Palestinians, and series of setbacks for the Palestinians, after Nakba, the 1967 war and then Lebanon Civil War demanded a radical, revolutionary struggle against imperialism and the zionist state. Yet increasingly the largely secular leadership of the resistance, mainly the PLO, was seeking diplomatic compromises with US imperialism and the Israeli state.
The Soviet counterbalance to imperialism was weakening as the Kremlin bureaucracy promoted ‘detente’ with US imperialism while Islamic forces were strengthening, and were boosted by the Iranian revolution in 1979. US imperialism was even promoting the Mujahideen in Afghanistan in its campaign to defeat the Soviet intervention.
In early 1980, the Islamists who had been concentrating on social programmes, schools and culture, started to turn violently against the left, as well as breaking up liquor stores and other sources of ‘western influence’. They strengthened their approach to grass-roots organisation and mobilisation, often using the resources provided by the reactionary Arab regimes and Iran to finance their work..
The Israeli regime, initially seeing Hamas as a potentially viable alternative to PLO domination of the territories continued discussions with Hamas representatives, and in 1988 even allowed it airtime on Israeli TV. But the Islamic youth were growing more radical, seeing the success of the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan and Hezbollah in Lebanon, they pushed the newly formed Islamic Jihad movement in Palestine to take up armed struggle.
It has often been said, including by the author of this review, that the reason for the lack of success of such movements has been the lack of a genuine left working class alternative, which leaves a vacuum in society that is filled either by liberal bourgeois or reactionary forces. This is true. But the real question that has to be asked is why, when the situation is so desperately crying out for revolutionary change, is there no working class based revolutionary force capable of leading the change needed?
The answer has to be found in a combination of interacting causes that affected the revolutionary movement in many parts of the world, but have been felt most acutely in the Palestinian struggle. They include the initial adoption of a mistaken revolutionary strategy, the failure to understand the consequences of the collapse of the Stalinist model, the continuous retreat from the need for the self-organisation of the working class and poor, and the continued retreat from a revolutionary challenge to capitalism in the search for ‘national unity’.
As a consequence, the leadership of the Palestinian movement has devoted its energies to negotiating compromises with imperialism, while the fundamentalists have been exploiting the growing radicalisation of the masses to further their own agenda.
The vacillation and indecisiveness of the PFLP and its refusal to clearly oppose the bourgeois leadership of the PLO that Leonardi describes meant it failed to present a clear, radical, working-class based opposition, leaving the increasingly radicalising participants in the Intifada to link up with the right.
The PFLP underestimated the growing influence of the Islamists. It wavered between seeing them as a competitor on the ground, to being a potential ally in opposition to Fatah.
Many critics of Hamas are driven by elementary Islamophobia. The key point about the PFLP’s attempts to forge alliances with Hamas is that it is mistaken not just because Hamas promotes reactionary, repressive, and misogynist policies, but because it represents an extension of the PFLP’s approach of allying with the national bourgeoisie.
Even though Hamas has developed a social base amongst the poorest sections of society, Hamas is led by, and represents the interests of landowners, merchants, businessmen and wealthy Palestinians. Financial inputs from Qatar and Iran, as well as the support of businesses involved in the construction of tunnels, the trade through them and the real estate above ground, have strengthened the bourgeoisification of the Hamas leadership. Hamas explicitly promotes “free enterprise and the right to private profit” and opposes a socialist economy.
Despite this, the PFLP sought to make Hamas an ally against the rightward drift of Arafat. Instead of defending secularism, it began to talk of overcoming the contradictions between “democratic and Islamist currents” and published interviews with Islamic leaders. Some PFLP members even left to join Hamas, seeing it as a more viable opposition.
Palestinian masses deprived of agency
The Zionist state and its imperialist backers understand the importance of working class struggle very well. And yet every aspect of the PFLP’s strategy has restricted any independent agency of the Palestinian masses, and in particular the working class in the struggle for the liberation of Palestine.
Leapoldi explains it thus: “A political agency focused on institutional policies drove the PFLP to neglect fundamental social issues affecting the Palestinian population both in the diaspora and the OPT. For instance, the PFLP and the whole Left stopped addressing labour organisation, widespread youth unemployment and growing poverty in its political proposals.” This allowed Hamas, which did strive to build an alternative independent of the PLO, albeit on a religious reactionary programme, to seize the initiative that the PFLP had missed.
Palestinians were left with a political elite that no longer stood for their struggle, and the PFLP was increasingly sidelined as Hamas took over the mantle of the radical wing of the Palestinian resistance. Palestinian workers were left without a political organisation that could channel protests such as that which broke out in Gaza in 2019 against the rising cost of living with placards reading: “We want to live the same life of luxury, money and cars as Hamas’ leaders’ sons.”
National struggle prioritised over women’ s rights
The PFLP’s approach damaged its relationship to the struggle of women, which has always been an integral part of the Palestinian struggle. In the 1920s and during the 1936 General strike, women played a critical role in organising demonstrations, boycotting goods, arms smuggling, prisoner solidarity.
The Palestinian left inherited a relatively [stress on relatively] progressive and secular approach to the role of women from the Arab nationalist and early communist movement. But while at least formally recognising the rights of women and the need for equality, any struggle on these issues was treated as subservient to the national struggle.
This led, as Mai Albzour says to “facing the enemy” as opposed to “facing the cultural self”. She gives the example of how: “women who volunteered to fight in Jordan and in camps in Lebanon were still unable to get married without the consent of their guardian, or challenge male supremacy bestowed by social customs, a clan’s law traditions and the following legislation”.
After the expulsion from Lebanon, when grass-roots organisation in the occupied territories was strengthening, a new generation of Palestinian women activists, facing the triple oppression of class, gender and nationality developed to challenge attempts to restrict the struggle to the national question. Mass organisations of women were set up in the towns, villages and refugee camps. They promoted an expansion of the struggle for liberation by linking it with the fight for social demands such as the right to struggle, to work, to be educated, and to be represented equally in political decision-making.
The potential of this movement was dissipated in large part because of the wrong approach of the leadership of the Palestinian movement. But there was still a significant layer of left activists and former members who still wanted to be active in the struggle.
After 1993 many turned to Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) as they were seen as a possible base of opposition to the Palestinian Authority. The NGOs, often financed by “donor” countries wanting to be seen to “provide aid” to Palestine, were expected to be ‘non-partisan’, reflect certain ‘values’ and engage, not in social mobilisation, but government lobbying and monitoring.
As one Palestinian activist explained: “the left lost any direction. They have all been sucked up into the human rights organizations…the PFLP used to have a place, fighting the occupation, but Oslo killed the spirit of the revolutionary (tha’ ir). The real revolutionary, the real nationalist, was one who fought against the occupation.”
Need for a socialist perspective
In its earlier programmes the PFLP often referred to scientific socialism as a guiding ideology, but denied the need to struggle for socialism today, defining the struggle in a schematic way as a national struggle.
Ever since the development of imperialism, the imperialist powers have divided up and fought over the resources of the world, and for the right to exploit the peoples of the world. In these conditions the development of national bourgeois classes capable in colonial and former colonial countries of leading a struggle for the creation of a nation state and to implement the other tasks of the bourgeois revolution is practically excluded. All experience has demonstrated that the national bourgeois quickly submits to imperialism, and merely serves its interests – in the way that the PNA is acting to serve the interests of the Zionist state and its imperialist backers.
The imperialist division of the world today leaves absolutely no room for the development of new “democratic states”. 72% of the world’s population live in authoritarian countries, and in the traditionally ‘democratic countries’ democratic rights are being rapidly eroded. Inequality both between rich and poor, and between rich countries and poor countries has reached previously unthinkable heights. Wars and military conflicts are currently waging as the imperialist powers fight over resources. The climate crisis is rapidly escalating out of control.
In this context, Habash’s often expressed perspective that “the struggle against the Zionist project may last a hundred years or more” which would then establish a democratic state still not ready for socialism clearly offers no hope for today’s generation of Palestinians suffering the brutality of genocide. .
There is no space for the development of an independent Palestinian bourgeois capable of establishing a genuinely democratic nation in today’s world. Free enterprise and capitalist methods have proved absolutely incapable of providing decent living standards for billions in today’s world, and any promises to rebuild Gaza will remain as empty promises as long as capitalism exists. Even the imperialist project to ‘rebuild’ Gaza, even if implemented, will only allow the housing of a small, relatively well off rich in gated compounds while the vast majority remain living in camps and desperate conditions.
At the same time the national perspective adopted by the Palestinian left has led to its failure to build working-class based opposition to the Arab ruling elite and their dictatorial regimes, as well as limiting the development of splits within Israeli society to assist in strengthening those forces that are opposed to the zionist state.
Now, more than ever, all the struggles against genocide, for the liberation of Palestine, for the resources needed to rebuild homes and workplaces, to provide decent living conditions for all Palestinians, and all across the Arab world, to stop the climate catastrophe and end patriarchy and gender based violence are all closely linked, and can only succeed if linked to the complete overthrow of capitalism and imperialism, and for the building of a genuinely democratic, socialist transformation of society.