RKOB
7th July 2014, 19:38
Palestine: Forward to the Third Intifada!
Organize the Uprising in Workers, Peasant and Youth Popular Committees! Revitalize the Arab Revolution! Smash the imperialist Apartheid State Israel! For a Free and Red Palestine!
Statement of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT) and the Internationalist Socialist League (RCIT- Section in Israel / Occupied Palestine), 7.7.2014, www.thecommunists.net (http://www.thecommunists.net)
1. A spectre is haunting Israel and the Middle East the spectre of the Third Palestinian Intifada. The Palestinian masses have entered the streets since several days to protest against the brutal killing by burning alive of Mohammed Abu Khdeir, a 16-year-old Palestinian teenager. His 15 year old cousin Tariq was subjected to a brutal beating by Israeli police. At least 600 Palestinians have been arrested in the West Bank during the past weeks. At the same time Israeli society is full of racist hatred and calls for lynching since the death of three young Jewish settlers. In addition the Israeli air force is bombarding Gaza daily and killed nine Palestinians on 6 July. The army has also mobilized forces at the border to Gaza and threatens another massive military strike against the Palestinian population. In short, the Israeli state is mobilizing all its forces to prepare the annihilation of the Palestinian resistance.
2. The Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT) and its Section in Israel / Occupied Palestine (Internationalist Socialist League) are in full solidarity with the Palestinian uprising which could become the Third Intifada. The Palestinians experience terror by the Israeli occupation forces every day. Hundreds have been killed in the last years, thousands are hold in prison, and millions live in hunger, humiliation and poverty. In Gaza, nearly two million Palestinians are cut-off from the world and are living in an open-air prison since 2007. How can one expect such an oppressed people to vegetate in passivity and agony?! The oppressed Palestinian people have every right to rise up and we are in full solidarity with their struggle! Equally we support the military struggle of the Palestinian people in Gaza against the all-powerful Israeli army. The international workers movement must mobilize for the support of the Palestinian struggle. It is encouraging that the biggest single trade union in Britain UNITE has decided recently at its congress to support the international boycott campaign against the Apartheid state Israel.
3. Characteristically Western imperialism has supported Israel since the beginning of its existence in 1948. Israel is Number 1 among the recipients of U.S. foreign aid. Germany provided Israel in the last years with several Dolphin-class submarines, which are capable of launching cruise missiles with nuclear warheads. Imperialist Russia too has improved its relationship with Israel in recent years. It is urgent that the international workers movement and solidarity campaigns fight for an immediate end of financial aid and military support for the Zionist state.
4. While the enemy is the Zionist state, the Palestinian masses face also major obstacles within their own camp. The Palestinian Authority led by President Mahmoud Abbas and the bourgeois-nationalist Fatah party serves as collaborators of Israel and the imperialist powers. Hamas, a bourgeois Islamist party, is resisting Israel under the pressure of the masses. However, they too look for an agreement with the Israeli government. They all fear a Third Intifada since it would imply the danger that the masses get out of their control and that they would begin to organize independently. It is therefore urgent that the Palestinian masses organize themselves independent of their bourgeois leaderships in popular committees. These committees should meet regularly and organize the resistance activities. They should organize self-defense groups which should also include progressive Jews who are prepared to defend the Palestinians to resist against the terror of the Israeli army. The masses must force the Palestinian Authority to serve its cooperation with the Israeli state. They must demand from their leaders to organize popular mobilization and general strikes of protest. Most importantly, the formation of a revolutionary workers party is highly overdue in order to build a political alternative to the existing rotten leaderships.
5. The Palestinian masses themselves are not strong enough to defeat the powerful Israeli state. The central task is to build a region-wide anti-imperialist popular resistance of the Arab workers, poor peasants and youth which is independent of the rotten regimes. These regimes often talk of solidarity with the Palestinians but act as servants for the imperialist powers and hence help to consolidate the political order which ensures the continued existence of the Apartheid state Israel since 66 years. In fact, a Third Intifada could act as a trigger for the revival of the Arab Revolution. This is particularly true for Egypt where the reactionary military dictatorship of General Sisi which is shamefully supported by the Communist Party of Egypt is brutally suppressing the popular resistance. Equally, it could re-strengthen the Syrian resistance which is currently weakened by the combined pressure of the armed forces of the Assad dictatorship which again is supported by the Syrian Communist Party as well as Russian and Chinese imperialism as well as the reactionary Islamists of ISIS. Such a perspective of a region-wide struggle of the Arab workers and youth could mobilize the forces to smash the Israeli state and to build a Palestinian state from the river to the sea as part of a socialist federation of the Middle East. It could also convince a section of the Israeli working class to break with the racist Apartheid state and join the struggle of the Palestinian and Arab workers and youth for equality and liberation.
6. The RCIT and the ISL have always supported the national liberation struggle of the Palestinian people. That is why in the struggle between the Palestinians and the Israeli state we are always on the side of the former - despite our absolute rejection of the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois forces at the forefront of these struggles. All Palestinian prisoners must be set free immediately by Israel. All Palestinians must have the right to return to their homeland. Likewise, the land grab must be reversed and the Palestinians must get their land returned.
7. A Jewish state in Palestine can only survive as long as the expulsion of the Palestinians continues to exist. A "two-state solution" would deny the Palestinians the right of return. Likewise, a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza would be reduced to a Bantustan, a dependent de-facto colony of the much richer and more powerful Israel. We therefore reject the so-called "two-state solution" which is promoted by the Fatah leadership as well numerous Stalinist, social democratic and centrist forces both in Israel as well as around the world (e.g. the Communist Party of Israel, European Left Party, the left wing of the British Labour Party, Peter Taaffees CWI, the British AWL, etc.). Instead we fight for a single state in the whole of Palestine in which the Palestinians naturally would constitute the majority. Hence, the State of Israel must be destroyed and be replaced by a Democratic, Palestinian, Multinational and Socialist Workers and Fallahin Republic from the River to the Sea. For a Free and Red Palestine!
8. The international workers movement and all progressive organizations must rally to the support of the uprising of the Palestinian people. We need solidarity actions all over the world. The RCIT and the ISL call for:
* Victory to the Palestinian resistance! Support the Popular Uprising! Defend Gaza! Defeat the Israeli aggression!
* For the release of all the Palestinian political prisoners, including hundreds of underage teens, whose only crime was to raise their heads in protest against the apartheid policy of the Israeli government!
* For the immediate cancelation of all demolition decrees against Palestinian families under any and all pretexts!
* For the removal of all military forces from Palestinian residential areas in the West Bank and a complete halt to the Israeli murderous bombings of Gaza!
* For popular committees and self-defense guards of the Palestinian workers, poor peasants and youth in enterprises, towns and villages to organize an Intifada from below.
* Drive out the reactionary settlers from the West Bank and East Jerusalem!
* For international solidarity actions including demonstrations and boycott actions against Israel!
* Israeli workers and youth: Turn against the racist demagogues! Defend the Palestinians against the reactionary settlers, the fascist gangs and the army!
* Lift the Israeli blockade against Gaza! Egyptian workers and peasants: Break the reactionary blockade of the Sisi regime against the Gaza!
* Unite the Arab Revolution with a renewed Intifada in Palestine! Support the Syrian Revolution against the reactionary Assad dictatorship! Bring down the reactionary military dictatorship of General Sisi in Egypt! Support the Sunni Uprising in Iraq!
* Forward in building a revolutionary workers party as part of a Fifth International based on a revolutionary program!
International Secretariat of the RCIT
For additional RCIT historic analysis of Israel as a Zionist Apartheid state and the revolutionary programme for the Palestinian liberation struggle in numerous documents and articles. See among others:
Yossi Schwartz: Israel's War of 1948 and the Degeneration of the Fourth International, in: Revolutionary Communism, Special Issue on Palestine, No. 10, June 2013, www.thecommunists.net/theory/israel-s-war-of-1948-1 (http://www.thecommunists.net/theory/israel-s-war-of-1948-1)
Yossi Schwartz: Israels Six-Day War of 1967. On the Character of the War, the Marxist Analysis and the Position of the Israeli Left, in: Revolutionary Communism, No. 12, July/August 2013, www.thecommunists.net/theory/israel-s-war-of-1967 (http://www.thecommunists.net/theory/israel-s-war-of-1967)
Michael Prbsting: On some Questions of the Zionist Oppression and the Permanent Revolution in Palestine, in: Revolutionary Communism, Special Issue on Palestine, No. 10, June 2013, http://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/africa-and-middle-east/permanent-revolution-in-palestine
Organize the Uprising in Workers, Peasant and Youth Popular Committees! Revitalize the Arab Revolution! Smash the imperialist Apartheid State Israel! For a Free and Red Palestine!
Statement of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT) and the Internationalist Socialist League (RCIT- Section in Israel / Occupied Palestine), 7.7.2014, www.thecommunists.net (http://www.thecommunists.net)
1. A spectre is haunting Israel and the Middle East the spectre of the Third Palestinian Intifada. The Palestinian masses have entered the streets since several days to protest against the brutal killing by burning alive of Mohammed Abu Khdeir, a 16-year-old Palestinian teenager. His 15 year old cousin Tariq was subjected to a brutal beating by Israeli police. At least 600 Palestinians have been arrested in the West Bank during the past weeks. At the same time Israeli society is full of racist hatred and calls for lynching since the death of three young Jewish settlers. In addition the Israeli air force is bombarding Gaza daily and killed nine Palestinians on 6 July. The army has also mobilized forces at the border to Gaza and threatens another massive military strike against the Palestinian population. In short, the Israeli state is mobilizing all its forces to prepare the annihilation of the Palestinian resistance.
2. The Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT) and its Section in Israel / Occupied Palestine (Internationalist Socialist League) are in full solidarity with the Palestinian uprising which could become the Third Intifada. The Palestinians experience terror by the Israeli occupation forces every day. Hundreds have been killed in the last years, thousands are hold in prison, and millions live in hunger, humiliation and poverty. In Gaza, nearly two million Palestinians are cut-off from the world and are living in an open-air prison since 2007. How can one expect such an oppressed people to vegetate in passivity and agony?! The oppressed Palestinian people have every right to rise up and we are in full solidarity with their struggle! Equally we support the military struggle of the Palestinian people in Gaza against the all-powerful Israeli army. The international workers movement must mobilize for the support of the Palestinian struggle. It is encouraging that the biggest single trade union in Britain UNITE has decided recently at its congress to support the international boycott campaign against the Apartheid state Israel.
3. Characteristically Western imperialism has supported Israel since the beginning of its existence in 1948. Israel is Number 1 among the recipients of U.S. foreign aid. Germany provided Israel in the last years with several Dolphin-class submarines, which are capable of launching cruise missiles with nuclear warheads. Imperialist Russia too has improved its relationship with Israel in recent years. It is urgent that the international workers movement and solidarity campaigns fight for an immediate end of financial aid and military support for the Zionist state.
4. While the enemy is the Zionist state, the Palestinian masses face also major obstacles within their own camp. The Palestinian Authority led by President Mahmoud Abbas and the bourgeois-nationalist Fatah party serves as collaborators of Israel and the imperialist powers. Hamas, a bourgeois Islamist party, is resisting Israel under the pressure of the masses. However, they too look for an agreement with the Israeli government. They all fear a Third Intifada since it would imply the danger that the masses get out of their control and that they would begin to organize independently. It is therefore urgent that the Palestinian masses organize themselves independent of their bourgeois leaderships in popular committees. These committees should meet regularly and organize the resistance activities. They should organize self-defense groups which should also include progressive Jews who are prepared to defend the Palestinians to resist against the terror of the Israeli army. The masses must force the Palestinian Authority to serve its cooperation with the Israeli state. They must demand from their leaders to organize popular mobilization and general strikes of protest. Most importantly, the formation of a revolutionary workers party is highly overdue in order to build a political alternative to the existing rotten leaderships.
5. The Palestinian masses themselves are not strong enough to defeat the powerful Israeli state. The central task is to build a region-wide anti-imperialist popular resistance of the Arab workers, poor peasants and youth which is independent of the rotten regimes. These regimes often talk of solidarity with the Palestinians but act as servants for the imperialist powers and hence help to consolidate the political order which ensures the continued existence of the Apartheid state Israel since 66 years. In fact, a Third Intifada could act as a trigger for the revival of the Arab Revolution. This is particularly true for Egypt where the reactionary military dictatorship of General Sisi which is shamefully supported by the Communist Party of Egypt is brutally suppressing the popular resistance. Equally, it could re-strengthen the Syrian resistance which is currently weakened by the combined pressure of the armed forces of the Assad dictatorship which again is supported by the Syrian Communist Party as well as Russian and Chinese imperialism as well as the reactionary Islamists of ISIS. Such a perspective of a region-wide struggle of the Arab workers and youth could mobilize the forces to smash the Israeli state and to build a Palestinian state from the river to the sea as part of a socialist federation of the Middle East. It could also convince a section of the Israeli working class to break with the racist Apartheid state and join the struggle of the Palestinian and Arab workers and youth for equality and liberation.
6. The RCIT and the ISL have always supported the national liberation struggle of the Palestinian people. That is why in the struggle between the Palestinians and the Israeli state we are always on the side of the former - despite our absolute rejection of the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois forces at the forefront of these struggles. All Palestinian prisoners must be set free immediately by Israel. All Palestinians must have the right to return to their homeland. Likewise, the land grab must be reversed and the Palestinians must get their land returned.
7. A Jewish state in Palestine can only survive as long as the expulsion of the Palestinians continues to exist. A "two-state solution" would deny the Palestinians the right of return. Likewise, a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza would be reduced to a Bantustan, a dependent de-facto colony of the much richer and more powerful Israel. We therefore reject the so-called "two-state solution" which is promoted by the Fatah leadership as well numerous Stalinist, social democratic and centrist forces both in Israel as well as around the world (e.g. the Communist Party of Israel, European Left Party, the left wing of the British Labour Party, Peter Taaffees CWI, the British AWL, etc.). Instead we fight for a single state in the whole of Palestine in which the Palestinians naturally would constitute the majority. Hence, the State of Israel must be destroyed and be replaced by a Democratic, Palestinian, Multinational and Socialist Workers and Fallahin Republic from the River to the Sea. For a Free and Red Palestine!
8. The international workers movement and all progressive organizations must rally to the support of the uprising of the Palestinian people. We need solidarity actions all over the world. The RCIT and the ISL call for:
* Victory to the Palestinian resistance! Support the Popular Uprising! Defend Gaza! Defeat the Israeli aggression!
* For the release of all the Palestinian political prisoners, including hundreds of underage teens, whose only crime was to raise their heads in protest against the apartheid policy of the Israeli government!
* For the immediate cancelation of all demolition decrees against Palestinian families under any and all pretexts!
* For the removal of all military forces from Palestinian residential areas in the West Bank and a complete halt to the Israeli murderous bombings of Gaza!
* For popular committees and self-defense guards of the Palestinian workers, poor peasants and youth in enterprises, towns and villages to organize an Intifada from below.
* Drive out the reactionary settlers from the West Bank and East Jerusalem!
* For international solidarity actions including demonstrations and boycott actions against Israel!
* Israeli workers and youth: Turn against the racist demagogues! Defend the Palestinians against the reactionary settlers, the fascist gangs and the army!
* Lift the Israeli blockade against Gaza! Egyptian workers and peasants: Break the reactionary blockade of the Sisi regime against the Gaza!
* Unite the Arab Revolution with a renewed Intifada in Palestine! Support the Syrian Revolution against the reactionary Assad dictatorship! Bring down the reactionary military dictatorship of General Sisi in Egypt! Support the Sunni Uprising in Iraq!
* Forward in building a revolutionary workers party as part of a Fifth International based on a revolutionary program!
International Secretariat of the RCIT
For additional RCIT historic analysis of Israel as a Zionist Apartheid state and the revolutionary programme for the Palestinian liberation struggle in numerous documents and articles. See among others:
Yossi Schwartz: Israel's War of 1948 and the Degeneration of the Fourth International, in: Revolutionary Communism, Special Issue on Palestine, No. 10, June 2013, www.thecommunists.net/theory/israel-s-war-of-1948-1 (http://www.thecommunists.net/theory/israel-s-war-of-1948-1)
Yossi Schwartz: Israels Six-Day War of 1967. On the Character of the War, the Marxist Analysis and the Position of the Israeli Left, in: Revolutionary Communism, No. 12, July/August 2013, www.thecommunists.net/theory/israel-s-war-of-1967 (http://www.thecommunists.net/theory/israel-s-war-of-1967)
Michael Prbsting: On some Questions of the Zionist Oppression and the Permanent Revolution in Palestine, in: Revolutionary Communism, Special Issue on Palestine, No. 10, June 2013, http://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/africa-and-middle-east/permanent-revolution-in-palestine