We are all
Palestinians!
Dear friends and comrades,
Not a day passes in which we do not hear
of yet another massacre in occupied Palestine. Not a day
passes in which the Zionist Israeli army of occupation does
not raid Palestinian towns and villages in the West Bank or
Gaza Strip, detain people at will, demolish targeted houses,
open fire on those who resist, in which Zionist Israel does
not hatch assassination plots against the leaders of
organized Palestinian resistance. Not a day passes in which
we do not hear of dozens of dead and wounded in bleeding
Palestine.
The Palestinian people have now been
living quasi as slaves in their own land under occupation
for over fifty years. They have to pass through dozens of
check-points to go from one locality to another in their own
land. Millions of Palestinians were forced to leave their
country and go into emigration. To live in their homeland,
in their own country – a whole state apparatus stands in the
way of this most human wish.
The Palestinian people withstood and
continue to withstand this great injustice done onto her,
resist this life in slavery, this banishment. This
resistance, this movement for a free homeland turned in the
end into a real popular rebellion, into the first Intifada
in the lands occupied after 1967, in the Gaza Strip and the
West Bank.
The Intifada movement is a movement of
the whole people who reached the point of not being able to
withstand the pressure on it any longer, of preferring death
to living as they have done till now and said: “Enough is
enough”.
This movement showed the whole world that
tanks, guns and even the latest weapons are of no avail in
the face of a people up in arms; that the will to
independence of an undaunted, indomitable people who march
with stones, clubs and slingshots in their hands against
tanks cannot be broken. Precisely this movement brought a
great deal of people in Israel to the point of saying; “This
cannot go on forever”, “We cannot carry on with the
occupation forever, we must find a solution”, and led to a
massive rise in the number of people in the “Peace Now”
movement in Israel. And in the imperialist world, the
Intifada forced above all the US imperialism, Israel’s
mainstay, to push the State of Israel into taking steps
towards the resolution of the conflict.
The result of the first Intifada has been
the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the occupied
territories in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, and the
transfer of their control to the “Palestine Autonomous
Administration” that was set up. The area under this
“Palestine Autonomous Administration” is a tiny section of
Palestine, a disjointed area under blockade by Zionist
Israel, the access roads of which are controlled by the
forces of occupation. What’s more, there are hundreds of
Jewish settlements inside this “Autonomous Administration
Region”, each of which is an armed fortress inhabited mostly
by extremist, most radical Zionists. Upon the pretext of
protecting these settlements, Zionist Israel is in fact
carrying on its occupation of the territories from which it
purportedly withdrew its troops. For the Israeli Army, the
“Palestine Autonomous Administration” zone is a
semi-occupied region which can be entered at will whenever
seen fit. The Zionist Israeli Administration is doing
everything it can to prevent the Palestinians from realizing
a self-sufficient economy, an independent administration of
their own in this region.
The continuation of this state of being a
slave in one’s own land, revocation of the gains achieved in
the aftermath of the first Intifada that gave rise to hopes
of certain steps being taken towards the establishment of a
Palestinian State alongside of Israel, exacerbated the anger
of the Palestinian people. After a demonstrative provocation
by the butcher Sharon, whom the people know inside out since
the Sabra and Shattila massacres, the fury of the people
grew into frenzy. People in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip
rose up again. The second Intifada began.
The answer of the Zionist Israeli State
to the second Intifada was the same as its answer to the
first Intifada – try to suppress the just rebellion of the
people by terror, terror and still more fascist terror. A
still bloodier period began.
In the meantime, the declaration of
“international war on terrorism”, which is nothing but a
declaration of war on the peoples worldwide by the USA after
September 11, provided the international pretext for the
Israeli State for intensifying its massacres against the
Palestinian people. Shedding the blood of the Palestinian
people with the most terrorist methods of fascist
oppression, the Israeli State began now a lot more
unashamedly to justify its behavior as “defending itself
against terror”, as a part of the “international war on
terrorism”.
In actual fact, what’s going on in
Palestine is the most explicit example showing the real
nature of what imperialism and reaction call “war on
terrorism”.
Millions of Palestinian people were to
pay the price of a crime against humanity in which they
played no role, as if they were its perpetrators and
responsible for it. They were to be banished from their
homeland for the holocaust the Nazis perpetrated which the
imperialists deliberately overlooked. Those who did not
leave their land were forced to live like slaves under
harshest conditions of suppression. This will not to be
called terror, but defending one’s homeland will be called
terror.
Millions of Palestinians will be
condemned to live under the most brutal oppression and
violence of the Zionist State of Israel on a tiny part of
Palestine for over 50 years, will pass through dozens of
check-points on their way from one locality to another, will
be subjected to insult and slander, will be forced to choose
one of the options dictated to them: “accept slavery, die,
or leave Palestine”. Millions of them will be forced to live
a most wretched life in the refugee camps in the reactionary
Arab states of the region quasi as beggars. This will not be
called terror, but rebellion against this scandalous state
of affairs, against inhuman living conditions, the fight for
independence in one’s own country will be called terror!
Some guerilla actions undertaken to make one heard by those
deafened by imperialist propaganda, to spread the truth
about what is going on in Palestine will be presented as
acts of “international terrorism”!
Zionist Israel will enter with tanks and
guns the areas controlled by the “Palestine Autonomous
Administration” whenever it sees fit to do so, assassinate
leaders of the Palestinian liberation organizations one
after another, do everything it can to prevent the economic
development of the Palestinian Autonomous Administration
zone, impose conditions upon it, and destroy the work of
years, the whole infrastructure built up so far, in the
course of one week when these conditions are not fulfilled,
lay siege to the building of the Palestinian Autonomous
Administration and quasi take its leaders as hostage before
the very eyes of the whole world – and all this will be
called “war on terrorism”! But the rebellion and actions of
Palestinians who march against tanks and guns with stones
and clubs in their hands in the face of this crying
injustice will be called terror!
In the occupied areas of the territories
controlled by the Palestinian Autonomous Administration,
fire opened from Jewish settlements that look like knives
stabbed into the body politic of the Palestinian people will
be called “a mistake of a stressed citizen who felt himself
threatened”; but actions of Palestinians against these
fortresses of provocation will be called terror and they
themselves terrorists!
The Zionist State of Israel will claim
for itself the right to arrest or detain any Palestinian at
will, torture and torment, even get rid of him. This will be
called war on terrorism. But when youths and youngsters who
had enough of this everyday terror of the Israeli State and
were brought to the point of preferring death to a life in
misery by it blow themselves up as suicide bombers together
with as many Israelis as possible, this will be called
terror, with Israel claiming that it is combating precisely
this “terror” and striking back tenfold and hundredfold in
revenge after each such action!
This kind of suicide bomber actions
indiscriminately targeting all Israelis is of course not an
appropriate form of action to advance the cause of the
Palestinian people’s liberation struggle. The Islamist and
anti-Jewish ideology lying behind many of these actions is
of course wrong; it cannot lead the peoples to liberation.
But also built upon a racist ideology itself, preaching and
practicing terror and pressurizing the people into choosing
between slavery, exile, or death, the Israeli State itself
is the real architect of this much-lamented “Islamist
terror”. In its eyes, everyone who questions the colonialist
structure of the Israeli State, its Zionist ideology, its
fascist-terrorist practice in the occupied areas, and puts
up resistance with whatever means he/she can, is a
terrorist, and every resistance is terror.
But there is a reality which everyone
must see and, indeed, was brought to see by the resistance
of the Palestinian people:
The Zionist thesis of the Israeli State
that it will never tolerate the existence of a neighboring
Palestinian State, there will be no State other than Great
Israel on the “Holy Land”, has collapsed.
In Palestine there is no solution but
setting up an independent Palestinian State on one part of
the Palestinian soil alongside Israel. There is no doubt
that this is not a real solution to the problem. The
existence of two bourgeois states, one of them Zionist and
the other Arab nationalist and anti-Semite, cannot disperse
the atmosphere of conflict that breeds enmity between the
peoples. This atmosphere can be dispersed only when peoples
put an end to the rule of the bourgeoisie, take their fate
into their own hands, when “they themselves speak”, as
Bertolt Brecht says, when they overcome nationalism and
rally under the banner of proletarian internationalism.
Although not a real solution, the establishment of a
Palestinian State will create an area –however small– on the
Palestinian soil free for the first time from Zionist
occupation. This has become an irreversible trend in the
course of events.
From the standpoint of the USA, the
Palestinian question is one of the first questions to solve
that stand in the way of realizing its schemes of total
domination in the Middle East – and the world in general.
From the standpoint of the USA, this
question is one of the fundamental causes for the
instability in the region as well as the worldwide
strengthening of Islamist currents in particular. Therefore,
it must be solved as soon as possible also with an eye to
destroying the so-called Islamist terror organizations in
particular.
The USA also introduced its solution
plan: The present Palestine Autonomous Administration zone
will be developed towards a Palestinian State; preparations
will be completed by the year 2005 when the establishment of
the Palestinian State will be announced.
This plan has been accepted by the
Palestinian bourgeoisie.
Israel has, however, been hampering the
implementation of this plan at every step in the name of
self-defense actions against terrorism although it holds
this plan for negotiable in principle.
The USA, having reached its primary
target of overthrowing the Saddam regime and occupying Iraq
in a short while in the imperialist war of aggression
against Iraq, now has a lot more aces in the hand as the
biggest military might right in the region itself to force
Israel as well as the Palestinian Autonomous Administration
to the negotiating table. Now, Israel is derived of one of
its pretexts, namely the threat posed by Iraq.
As a result of these developments, the
USA is now in a position to push the Sharon administration
more than ever into a Pax Americana.
And, indeed, this has already yielded its
first results. The Israeli cabinet meeting at the end of May
announced its acceptance of the “road-map” proposed by the
Bush administration envisaging the announcement of a
Palestinian State in 2005. The Palestinian Autonomous
Administration had already announced the acceptance of this
plan.
Hence the Zionist State of Israel has for
the first time ever and formally accepted the establishment
of a Palestinian State. In his speech at the cabinet meeting
one of the Zionist hawks, Sharon, openly spoke again for the
first time ever of occupation and said: “We don’t like the
word, but this is OCCUPATION. To keep three and a half
million Palestinians under occupation is bad for Israel as
well as the Palestinians. We must somehow get rid of it
without endangering our security. This cannot go on
forever.”
For those who still cannot think of
anything else but Eretz Israel, these words are nothing but
heresy. And there will be some people fighting against this
heresy in Israel to sabotage the US peace plan now favored
by the great majority of the Israeli bourgeoisie.
Similarly, there will be some people
rejecting and doing everything they can to prevent the
realization of the “peace plan” agreed to by the Palestinian
bourgeoisie even before Israel in the illusion of “let’s
throw the Jews into the sea” or for the correct reason that
this peace plan is actually an injustice done onto
Palestinians.
But under the conditions of the present
balance of forces, it seems as if the US peace train is well
on its way to its destination.
In this process, safeguarding a certain
part of the security of Israel has been delegated to the
Palestinian bourgeoisie. Israel and the USA are now
demanding and expecting from the Palestinian bourgeoisie to
stop what they call “Islamist terror”. The Palestinian
bourgeoisie seems to be ready to cooperate on this score.
This is an indication that in the period laying ahead some
internal conflicts will be experienced inside the
Palestinian society itself, whereby Israel and the USA will
extend every kind of aid and support to the Palestinian
bourgeoisie!
Well aware of all these developments, we
express our full support for the righteous cause of the
Palestinian people and their liberation struggle, and
condemn Zionist Israel and its supporters, first and
foremost among them the US imperialism, as terrorist states.
The real liberation of the Palestinian
people lies in the last analysis in a future Federation of
Soviet Socialist and People’s Republics of Palestine under
the rule of the toilers of all nationalities in Palestine.
At present, this is not the goal, of
course. Compared with this goal, the mini Palestinian State
to be set up is a very backward step.
None the less, the suffering of the
people in quest of achieving even this much should not be
forgotten. It should not be forgotten that all of this has
been wrenched from the imperialists and the Zionist Israel
at the price of a life-and-death struggle.
In this sense, the struggle of the
Palestinian people is a model to the struggles of all
peoples of the world.
The struggle of the Palestinian people is
the struggle of us all.
We are all Palestinians!
Down with Zionism! Down with imperialism!
Long live the Palestinian revolution!
May 30, 2003.
“Call for a New World”, Nr 69, July 2003
Contribution of “Çağrı” read at the
workshop
on “Palestine and the Middle East” during the
Thessalonica Resistance organized by the ILPS
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