The triumph of Hamas, and of the other orgs within Gaza’s armed resistance coalition, has implications for all fronts in the global class struggle. That Palestine’s armed resistance has stopped the Zionist occupier from colonizing Gaza, and thereby accelerated Zionism’s collapse, represents a shift within the entire balance of power. It proves that even when the ruling force has the most advanced surveillance and policing systems, a resistance will be able to break through these systems, and deal a blow that speeds up the structure’s unraveling. This is a lesson that the members of all the world’s revolutionary organizations need to internalize, and apply in accordance with their own conditions. Palestine’s recent strategic and tactical victories have lessons for all of us; ones which we’ll be able to fully apply in time.
Right now, most places are far from being in the kind of strategic situation that would allow for us to get as far as Palestine’s resistance has. Moreover, Palestine is fighting for liberation in a very specific set of circumstances, one where a people are facing colonization in modern form. Yet in all areas of the worldwide class war, the shockwaves from Palestine’s victory are being felt. It’s left the imperialists and each of their proxy forces in a more weakened state, even if these proxies have lately been having successes on certain fronts.
For a resistance movement to successfully force one of Washington’s proxies into a retreat, after the U.S. has sacrificed so much of its international standing in order to fight this resistance, is enough to call everything into question. Everyone who’s connected to the Palestinian struggle sees the vulnerabilities which have been exposed within their enemy. And however much the enemy tries to hide these weaknesses with PR rhetoric about wanting “peace,” these destabilizing factors are only going to have a bigger impact as time goes on.
The objective conditions for a new revolutionary wave have absolutely been improved by the events of these last couple years. This widespread nature of the strategic shift comes from how in order to strike a blow against the Zionist occupier, we within the imperial sphere have needed to strike blows against our own respective governments. The purpose of these efforts has been to assist the Palestinians in their fight against annihilation, which takes precedence over all else; in the process, though, we’ve advanced the wider class struggle, which is itself essential towards building an effective movement for Palestine.
As the workers movement has become more connected with the Palestinian cause, as the consciousness of the workers has shifted against Zionism, our ruling class has become less able to manage organized labor. And if we take this break from Zionism to the next level, building independent worker organizations that can continue fighting for Palestine even amid a full union crackdown, we’ll come to a stage where the struggle is much more advanced. Where these revolutionary organizations have become capable of defending the people from the violence of the ruling class. This is how the successes of the Palestinian resistance could start spilling over into other popular struggles. For this to happen, though, we first need to ensure that the lessons from Palestine’s fight will be absorbed by the ranks of the workers movement. Which means building a platform for the pro-Palestine movement, and for the workers movement, that truly stands on its own.
The efforts by the Zionists to get us to “debate” them is how they’ve tried to prevent us from attaining this independent platform. The notion of engaging in dialogue with Zionists is a trap, and this is something that those within the pro-Palestine movement have increasingly been realizing. The only way we can successfully aid the Palestinian struggle is by creating the platform ourselves, and reject all arguments which normalize the occupation. The more of Palestine’s allies understand this, the more we become aligned with the resistance, which by necessity has taken the position that there can be no compromise with those who seek Palestine’s annihilation.
In response to the latest fraudulent peace proposals, the People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine has said that “The top priority at this stage is to halt the holocaust being inflicted on the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, who have made and continue to make enormous sacrifices in defense of their land and identity and in loyalty to their national cause.” It spoke of the “necessity to reach a unified position on the American proposal, and the political and existential risks contained in some of its provisions, which could be exploited to reshape the situation at the expense of established national rights.” There is great hope that the PFLP will succeed in its goal of unifying multiple Palestinian factions behind such a pro-resistance stance, because these factions are operating within the heart of this violent campaign. A big question is whether those of us within the Zionist-aligned countries will manage to unify our own organizations behind the resistance, and bring our anti-colonial fight to the next phase.
The most practical way we can advance this fight is by expanding BDS, and this will have to mean keeping the pro-BDS momentum going amid the reformist efforts at capturing the movement. Zohran Mamdani, who’s become a major face of BDS, has shown himself to be compromised to an extent that should make us seriously worry if he can implement it. Unless the fanatical Jewish supremacists who hate Zohran manage to stop him from winning, it looks like he will be the next mayor of New York City, and if NYC boycotts “Israel” then this will catalyze a much larger trend. Amid all of the warning signs we’ve seen around Zohran, though, what we must do is redouble our efforts at constructing a Palestine movement which is truly independent.
A reality we need to internalize is that even though the conditions have greatly shifted in our cause’s favor, we’ll still be thwarted if we leave the fight up to the reformists. The next actions we take must not be ones which are sanctioned by the pro-normalization figures within Palestinian-aligned spaces; these actions must be guided by advice from the actual resistance within Palestine, and they must involve a serious effort to bring in the masses. These are the missions that we’ve been mandated to carry out; if we fulfill these missions, we will further turn the power balance against the pro-colonial forces.
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