International Statement of International Socialist League (ISL) and League for the Fifth International (L5I)
The massive mobilization that continues to grow and the shift of a majority of global public opinion in favor of the Palestinian people and against the genocide of the Zionist State of Israel have accelerated imperialism’s efforts to achieve a new and precarious ceasefire, the objective of which is to dismantle the international mobilization and allow Zionism to continue advancing by other means, resting on a counterrevolutionary pact with the Palestinian leadership.
We understand and share the joy of the Gazan population for the cessation of the bombings they have suffered daily for two years and the possible end of the criminal blockade that has submitted them to a desperate humanitarian crisis. But we must be honest: this does not mean a victory of the Palestinian resistance, as various organizations are mistakenly claiming. The reality is much more complex.
This ceasefire is partially a result of the extraordinary global mobilization, as well as of the danger of Gaza’s desperate situation becoming unpredictable. But the accompanying agreement that Hamas and Israel signed was negotiated under conditions imposed by the United States. Its 20 points, if materialized, would represent a setback for the struggle for the emancipation of Palestine. They propose accepting imperialism’s policy for the region and legitimizing the Zionist occupation.
To reach this agreement, imperialism counted on the direct collaboration of Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey, and the complicit celebration of the entire Western bourgeoisie, the Arab autocracies, and even Russia and China
The agreement, if imperialism manages to prevent it from failing before reaching its second phase, in addition to the release of the Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, which is already being finalized, proposes the transformation of Gaza into a US protectorate under the tutelage of a puppet government led by Donald Trump and Tony Blair.
It does not require Israel to completely withdraw its troops from Gaza or end its colonial advance in the West Bank. It does require Hamas to disarm and not hinder the formation of a new government of „apolitical“ Palestinian technocrats and „international experts,“ nor the establishment of a foreign military force that would assume control of the Strip.
Zionism’s genocidal response to Hamas’s actions on October 7 sparked an international mobilization in favor of Palestine far and beyond anything that preceded it. The process extended beyond its historical epicenter in left wing sectors, erupting in the world’s main imperialist countries. It was massive in the United States, with radicalized encampments in various universities and significant sectors of the Jewish community breaking with Zionism. Hundreds of thousands and millions marched in Australia and Europe. In this despite the fact that major trade unions and social democratic parties in the imperialist countries stood aside from this movement or actually continued their support for Israel. And the regimes of the Middle East (minus the Houthis) prevented the so-called Arab Street from mobilising to force blockades against the Zionists and the western states arming the genocide. In a number of imperialist countries, Palestinian organisations have been banned an thousends of protestors criminalised or even charged with terrorism. But despite all this, the movement grew and the recent general strike and port blockades in Italy, in solidarity with the Sumud Global Flotilla, shocked the world and began to serve as an example that could spread.
It is a fact that the United States and Israel, despite the complicit support of the entire capitalist superstructure, lost the battle of global public opinion. This is the most significant result that the Palestinian cause achieved. Israel had never before in history been so isolated internationally, so notorious, and subjected to such widespread condemnation and criticism.
However, two years since the genocide deepened, the Palestinian people are not better off than they were before October 7, 2023. Gaza has been destroyed and militarily occupied by the Zionists, at least 67,000 Palestinian lives, possibly many more, have been lost, including 20,000 children, tens of thousands have been wounded and maimed. The West Bank continues to lose territory to Zionist settlers and life in East Jerusalem is increasingly difficult.
Hamas’s October 7 action achieved its immediate objective of interrupting the process of „normalization“ of relations between Israel and the Arab countries known as the Abraham Accords. But Hamas’s expectation that the blow it dealt Israel would exert sufficient pressure to force them to negotiate an agreement did not materialize. Nor did the hypothesis that Iran would respond in strength to a brutal Israeli reaction. It became clear that the mullahs‘ regime only defends its own capitalist and caste interests. The Arab regimes also failed to support Palestine and are supporting the current agreement, which seeks the surrender of the resistance in order to return to the path of „normalization“ of relations with Israel and imperialism.
Hamas’s misguided gamble resulted in genocide, the destruction and occupation of Gaza, and now in a pact riddled with concessions, reminiscent of the one Arafat signed in Oslo over 30 years ago. It is no coincidence that, pressured by the mobilizations, several countries, such as Spain and the United Kingdom, have revived the two-state fantasy, which is not even mentioned as an objective in the agreement.
No Palestinian state is possible while a colonial, expansionist, and genocidal state exists on its historical lands. It has been demonstrated that Israel will never allow this. On the contrary, its strategic project is the complete ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people and the construction of a „Greater Israel“ by conquering more and more territories.
To achieve peace, and for it to be lasting and just for the Palestinian people and all the peoples of the region, we must first defeat the Zionist monster and its ongoing colonialist expansion. As long as the terrorist state of Israel, built with blood and fire by the imperialists, continues to exist, the only possible peace will be that of the cemeteries.
Only the construction of a single, free, secular, and socialist Palestine, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, can allow the region’s peoples to live in peace again. But this solution will not come from the hands of the Arab capitalists or the Iranian mullahs, nor through pacts with any of the imperialist powers. It can only come from the Arab working masses leading a revolution that overthrows the capitalist governments of the region, defeats the Zionist monster, and establishes a voluntary federation of socialist republics throughout the Middle East.
In 1948, our political forebears of the Fourth International, the only organization of the global working class movement that fought against the creation of the Zionist state, declared:
“Thanks to the bourgeois and feudal leadership of the Arab countries—agents of imperialism—we have been defeated in one stage of the struggle against imperialism; and we must prepare for victory in the next stage, that is, the unification of Palestine and the Middle East in general, by creating the only force that can achieve these goals: the unified revolutionary proletarian party of the Middle East.”
That is, today as well, the strategy on which those of us who have signed this statement are betting. Therefore, we commit ourselves to promote, help and build revolutionary parties in the region, regrouping without sectarianism the fighters who agree with these objectives.