In an era where national liberation movements and organized class struggle overall are suffering merciless repression, the magnifying of Palestinian people’s national liberation war with Israel resurrects the faith in class struggle and national liberation as essential to complete the democratization of various societies.
The occupation of Palestinian territories by the Israeli state and the prevention of an independent, sovereign Palestinian state are the root of the terror and malignancy, which has been perpetuated since 1948.In the absence of an independent, internationally recognized Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, any talk of peace is baseless or superficial.
The phenomenal heroism of the Palestinian people in their protracted struggle for national liberation projects this an era of active resistance. In Palestine’s case, demanding any “two-state solution” is a gross violation of an oppressed nation’s right to self-determination andan endorsement of the settler-colonial project engaged by Zionists. There is only one kind of state viable e in the region, the state of Palestinian people.
The mass genocide in Gaza, of Israel in the pretext of extinguishing the base of Hamas, has escalated to it’s boiling point. Hamas bases have been destroyed. However displaying relentless spirit or death defying courage, the Palestinian Resistance, has staged retaliatory
The Palestinian resistance this time not a spontaneous militant attack, but a well-planned strategic offence. There is ample evidence that the Palestinian resistance planned Operation Al-Aqsa Flood based on the changing geopolitical realities of the world and the Middle East. In certain ways the Palestinian resistance has resurrected glimpses of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam in 1973, by the Vietcong, to isolate USA, reminiscent of David overpowering Goliath.
Protests all around World
Support for the struggle of the Palestinian National Resistance and for the defence of the people of Gaza have encompassed many regions of the globe despite merciless terror.In India several people have been arrested for backing the just struggle of the Palestinian people. In Mumbai four people were arrested, accused of insulting the Israeli flag. In Uttar Pradesh a Muslim religious leader was arrested for “spreading hatred” because of his alleged support for Palestine, and four students were arrested for organizing pro-Palestinian events. In Delhi 60 people were arrested at a rally by students, teachers and intellectuals in support of Palestine. March in solidarity with Palestine in Mumbai.
In the city of Medellín in Colombia, a protestr match was launched comprising nearly 150 participants in support of the struggle of the Palestinian people. Different revolutionary and democratic groups also gathered in a forum on the current situation in Palestine.
Ang Bayan, the newspaper of the Communist Party of the Philippines, published an editorial condemning the genocidal war of the US and Israel against the Palestinian people.
In Paris, around ten thousand people assembled in a solidarity rally for the Palestinian people. French and Palestinian immigrant organizations as well revolutionary and democratic organizations for Turkey, including Partizan, supported the rally. Source: Yeni Demokrasi
Ati-Imperialist Action Ireland has released a statement declaring their solidarity with the Palestinian National Resistance and the Palestinian people, and taking a firm position in support of the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation.
In Ireland, big demonstrations broke out in support of the struggle of the Palestinian people. Activists have distributed leaflets and planted the Palestinian flag. On the 11th of October demonstrators marched in Dublin, forming a blockade at the O’Connolly Street Bridge.
On 14th October a big demonstration with vociferous slogans thronged through the main street in Dublin, O’Connolly Street, to the embassy of Israel. Speeches were made for expelling the Israeli ambassador. More demonstrations have been announced for the upcoming Saturdays, and thus also on the 21st of October, tens of thousands marched in Dublin in solidarity with the struggle in Palestine. Demonstrations were also staged in other cities such as Ennis, Cork, Carlow, Limerick and Galway.
This military operation was not a spontaneous militant attack, but a well-planned strategic offence. There is ample evidence that the Palestinian resistance planned Operation Al-Aqsa Flood based on the changing geopolitical realities of the world and the Middle East.
Polarisation of nations against Israel and West
The Iran-backed Lebanese Hezbollah group is also integrating in the conflict. Hezbollah has reportedly fired rockets targeting the Zionist bases from Lebanon. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards are directing Hamas’s strategy and tactics.Since these forces have won the war against Western aggression in Syria, in which they fought a proxy battle against the Zionist puppets, their morale is high. Although the Israeli forces, heavily armed with expensive war equipment, are portrayed as lethal, they have no real combat experience. The Israeli forces have experience in only attacking ordinary unarmed civilians.
Iraq’s Iran-backed Qata’ib Saeed al-Shuhada Brigades said in a statement that all US forces, bases and US-controlled regions in the entire Middle East would be legitimate targets of the Resistance Axis if the US military directly gets involved anywhere in the conflict.
Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leader and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas endorsed Operation Al-Aqsa Flood in Ramallah. He said that the Palestinian people have the right to defend themselves, especially against Israeli aggression in the Al-Aqsa Mosque and against the oppression of Zionist forces in the occupied territories.
On the other hand, the left-wing Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLF) backed Operation Al-Aqsa Flood in a statement and called on all Palestinian people to join the Palestinian resistance, break the backbone of the enemy and destroy its supply routes.
In general, all Palestinian organisations have welcomed the armed insurrection against Israeli occupation. Due to Iran’s growing influence over these incidents and the geopolitical mileage it has been gaining, the US ally Saudi Arabia is virtually compelled to oppose the Zionist forces.
Arab countries close to the US, like Saudi Arabia, have been forced to adopt a stand against the West, against the Zionist genocide, to evade wrath of public at home. The once-warring Saudi Arabia and Iran have drawn closer, much collectively voicing the concern over Palestinian lives, tickling the belly for the West in the Middle East.
Apart from Bahrain, Egypt, Morocco, and the UAE, Zionist Israel doesn’t have diplomatic relations with any country in the Arab world. Despite establishing relations with Zionist Israel under US pressure, due to the Zionist Israeli attack on Palestine, even these states are currently raising their voice against the West’s formula, and its patronising the genocidal regime.
Anti-Western sentiment has magnified in the Arab world, and the entire Global South, as the US and other Western powers continue supporting the Zionist Israeli attack on Palestine. The West has allied itself against Russia and China in the “Second Cold War” across the world. Most countries in the Global South refused to join the anti-Russian bandwagon of the West. They chose multilateralism over US hegemony. Most of the Global South countries defied the US’s diktats, to protect their national interests. Although, the Biden administration thought that the current events would force all countries to isolate China, most of the countries in the Global South still continue to aintain good relations with Beijing. This created a reversal for the West.
The Middle East issue isn't restricted the just demand for the creation of a Palestinian state. It is inter related to the fierce intra-imperialist contention that is escalating, with the epicenter being the imperialist war in Ukraine.
The US and the West are currently facing severe marginalisation over their support for the Zionist Israeli attack on Palestine. By supporting the Zionist Israeli attack on Palestine, they have not only infuriated people in the Middle East and Africa against their colonial orientation, but they have also invited the wrath of the progressive and democratic forces of their own country against themselves.
The manner in which China and Russia have proposed an immediate ceasefire and cessation of hostilities in the United Nations and other platforms, to immediately suspend the massacre of innocent citizens of Gaza, has won them the support in the Arab world as well.
As a result, just as the US and Western powers carved their own downfall in this crucial region of the world by supporting the Zionist Israeli attack on Palestine, and offering Tel Aviv a leeway to continue this genocide, the countries of the Global South are also rising up to challenge them.. The emergence of a multipolar world order has come to the fore .
Nature of Hamas and Political Struggle
In light of the situation of Palestine, the principal need of the people is national liberation and Hamas valiantly upholds this struggle as its chief goal. Hamas upholding Islam does not undermine its struggle but is a natural part of the overall historical development of Palestinian people and the class struggle they wage. Under veil of religion, class struggle is waged in societies where democracy has not fully prevailed.In an era where national liberation movements and organized class struggle overall are suffering merciless repression, the magnifying of Palestinian people’s national liberation war with Israel resurrects the faith in class struggle and national liberation as essential to complete the democratization of various societies.
Palestine was always trapped by the imperialists like the British colonizers and then subsequently the Zionist settler colonizers, which was blessed by the US-NATO imperialist block. The bourgeoisie within Palestine is denied independent functioning .Without the development of independent capitalism, Palestine has not completed its bourgeois democratic revolution being and is still semi-feudal in nature. Friedrich Engels when writing about the struggles of the German peasantry against feudalism, said:
“In the so-called religious wars of the Sixteenth Century, very positive material class-interests were at play, and those wars were class wars just as were the later collisions in England and France. If the class struggles of that time appear to bear religious earmarks, if the interests, requirements and demands of the various classes hid themselves behind a religious screen, it little changes the actual situation, and is to be explained by conditions of the time. The Middle Ages had developed out of raw primitiveness. It had done away with old civilisation, old philosophy, politics and jurisprudence, in order to begin anew in every respect. The only thing which it had retained from the old shattered world was Christianity and a number of half-ruined cities deprived of their civilisation. As a consequence, the clergy retained a monopoly of intellectual education, a phenomenon to be found in every primitive stage of development, and education itself had acquired a predominantly theological nature.”
Basically, Engels apprehended that in societies where democratization has not crystallised, the principle mode of struggle will be through the prevailing ideological apparatus, of which religion is the strongest force. In societies which are still semi-feudal, liberal values and stronger resistance to religion sprout during the course of the democratic struggle but will only be in proper shape upon the completion of the process of democratization, not prior. This difference between quantitative change and qualitative change must be clearly understood.
However Hamas does not and cannot manifest the genuine objective of the Palestinian people for freedom, having deep roots in Islamic fundamentalism. Hamas is dependent, financial and politically, on sectors of the bourgeois classes in Iran, Turkey and other Muslim countries. While the people of Gaza die from war, occupation and poverty, leading members of the Islamist party are living in luxury in Beirut and Istanbul.
This demand must be integrated with the struggle for the overthrow of rotten capitalist system, both in Israel and the Palestinian territories. This exploitative system is patronised by the political elite of Israel, as well as by the leading cadres of the Palestinian political leadership, primarily Hamas but also Fatah.
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Harsh Thakor is freelance journalist
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