Review: Israel-Palestine – A revolutionary way forward. Revolutionary Communist Party, 147pp, £6.00
This new edition of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) pamphlet Israel-Palestine – a revolutionary way forward is billed as presenting ‘the wider Palestine movement with the revolutionary perspective and programme needed to fight imperialism’. Given its declared purpose, and given that it is published by a self-proclaimed communist and anti-imperialist organisation, it requires a review. However, far from providing a revolutionary perspective, the pamphlet uses an anti-imperialist facade to obscure the absence of clear support for the Palestinian right to self-determination and the armed resistance, and it ducks any substantive consideration of the tasks facing the solidarity movement here in Britain.
RCP – its chauvinist background
The RCP is, alongside the Socialist Party and Socialist Alternative, a descendant of the Militant which was part of the Labour Party for decades until 1991 when what was to become the Socialist Party left the Labour Party; those who remained set up Socialist Appeal. 30 years later, in 2021, Labour expelled Socialist Appeal and it rebranded itself the RCP in 2024. Meanwhile the Socialist Party suffered a split and Socialist Alternative came into existence in 2020.
The Militant was a social chauvinist organisation which treated questions of imperialism and racism as peripheral to what it regarded as the ‘real’ class struggle in the trade unions over bread and butter issues. It ferociously opposed the Irish liberation struggle, dismissing the Provisional Republican movement as reactionaries and terrorists having no relationship to the working class. Its position on Palestine was equally reactionary: it called for the establishment of a socialist Israel alongside a socialist Palestine. Today, the idea that an imperialist outpost, a colonial-settler state, can somehow take on a socialist form and that the Israeli working class can become a force for progress, is shared by both the Socialist Party and Socialist Alternative.
What progressive Israeli working class?
The RCP may reject the concept of a socialist Israel but it does not challenge its own social imperialist heritage. It is evident in the pamphlet’s title. ‘Israel-Palestine’ denotes equivalence between the two rather than the reality of occupation, dispossession and genocide. Its purpose is to distract attention from the function of the Israeli state as an imperialist outpost in guaranteeing the privileged conditions of the Israeli working class. In turn it allows the RCP to argue that the Israeli working class can play a progressive role. Suggesting that ‘At present, the voice of reason in Israel is being silenced by the ravenous roar of the counter-revolution’ (p27) already implies that there is a progressive element however weak.
Later on, the pamphlet argues that the task of revolutionaries is ‘to expose the divide-and-rule tactic of the Israeli ruling class; and aim to drive a wedge between the Zionist state and ordinary Israeli Jews, who in the last analysis suffer at the hands of the same oppressive system.’ (p143) ‘In the last analysis’ is a weasel phrase par excellence, for in the last analysis, anything is possible. ‘Ordinary Israeli Jews’ – another weasel phrase – do not suffer the ‘same’ oppressive system as the Palestinian people: they do not suffer occupation, dispossession, oppression and genocide, and in a Pew poll on October 2024, only 4% of these ‘ordinary Israeli Jews’ thought the war on Gaza had gone too far. In the same vein of this supposed ‘voice of reason’ we read that:
‘Only the establishment of a united front between the people of Palestine and the working class and progressive layers of Israeli society will create the possibility of dividing the Israeli state on class lines, opening the way for a lasting and democratic settlement of the Palestinian question.’ (p28)
It cannot spell out the political basis for this ‘united front’ or identify who these ‘progressive layers’ are because they are fantasies. There is only one possible basis for unity between the Israeli working class and the Palestinian people and that is in fighting for the destruction of the Zionist state, the precondition for Palestinian self-determination. Achieving this means that the Israeli working class has to stand with the armed resistance of the Palestinian people against the occupation. Nothing less will do – yet the RCP does not acknowledge this point that Lenin made quite clear:
‘National self-determination is the same as the struggle for complete national liberation, for complete independence, against annexation, and socialists cannot – without ceasing to be socialists – reject a struggle in whatever form, right down to an uprising or war.’ (Lenin: A caricature of Marxism and imperialist economism, 1916)
The likelihood of the Israeli working class standing with the Palestinian people ‘down to an uprising or war’ is negligible until and unless the Zionist state disintegrates under the pressure of Palestinian resistance on the one hand and externally-imposed isolation on the other.
Opposing Lenin’s standpoint, RCP theoretician Alan Woods says ‘The ruling Israeli clique led by Benjamin Netanyahu claims that Israel has a right to defend itself. So it has.’ (The Communist, 8 January 2024) Supporting the narrative of imperialist politicians and the media, he then describes the 7 October 2023 Al Aqsa Flood action as ‘an appalling atrocity’. The pamphlet echoes this bile when it refers to the ‘murder of Israeli citizens on October 7’ (p6). Given the consideration the pamphlet gives to ‘ordinary Israeli Jews’ it periodically comes very close to blaming the Palestinians at least in part for their situation, for instance when it claims
‘The continuous military threat posed by neighbouring Arab regimes and the tactics of individual terrorism adopted by the Palestinian nationalist organisations since the mid-1960s drove the majority of Israelis into the arms of the Zionist state.’ (p55)
Elsewhere it adds that ‘In truth, past leadership of the Palestinian struggle have played into this sectarian split.’ (p143) But to reduce the reality of occupation and genocide to a ‘sectarian split’ and then argue that both sides bear responsibility for this situation is reactionary. The pamphlet complains further that the Zionist trade union confederation Histradut has played ‘a shameful role, playing second fiddle to the Israeli state…rather than pointing out the solidarity that should be built between working class Israeli Jews and Palestinians.’ (p143) This is a completely formal concept of trade unionism: Histradut was set up to entrench Zionist supremacy in employment, not to promote solidarity with Palestinian workers, but instead to reinforce their exclusion.
Throughout, the pamphlet displays no understanding that Palestinian self-determination is indivisible: they alone have the right to determine the outcome of their struggle, the means they employ, and the alliances they form to achieve it. It is not down to those outside to offer advice or criticism of this or that Palestinian resistance organisation, or their tactics: this places political conditions on solidarity actions. The points where the pamphlet advises the Palestinians how to conduct their struggle, for instance that they ‘must place no trust in the promises of foreign governments’ (p25) or that they must reject what the pamphlet calls ‘individual terrorism’ (p137) and instead ‘appeal to all oppressed strata in the region to overthrow capitalism’ (p141) are typical examples of British chauvinism.
What about here in Britain?
The Zionist state is the first line of protection for Britain’s substantial interests in the Middle East: that is why both Tory and then Labour governments have been determined to provide political cover for the genocide in Palestine. There is no dispute therefore that the movement in solidarity with the Palestinian people here in Britain needs a revolutionary – that is, anti-imperialist – perspective. Hundreds of thousands if not millions of people have been out on the streets over the months since the Zionist state launched its genocidal war on Gaza in the wake of the 7 October 2023 Al Aqsa Flood military action. Yet the movement has been controlled by forces aligned to the pro-imperialist left of the Labour Party and the trade union leadership. These forces, coordinated by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) and Stop the War Coalition (STWC), have banned any expression of support for the Palestinian resistance. Instead, they allow those who condemn the armed struggle to speak on their platforms, feting Jeremy Corbyn in particular.
Not a single Labour MP or trade union leader supports the unfettered right of the Palestinian people to self-determination – yet they are too are welcomed on PSC/STWC platforms. They do not condemn the Labour Party as an imperialist party or indeed oppose British imperialism. Their principal slogan – Ceasefire now – is official Labour government policy, and it is completely detached from the interests of the Palestinian people let alone the strategy of the Palestinian resistance.
These reactionary forces are relentlessly driving the solidarity movement into the ground. Opposing them must be the starting point for a revolutionary strategy. Yet the pamphlet does not address this at all. Stating that ‘It is our duty to the Palestinian cause to raise the call for socialist revolution’ (p10) is not a strategy but wishful thinking; to add that ‘It is our task to organise against the enemy at home and to fight to bring down all the warmongers in Westminster’ is of course true, but where do we start? Who are our friends in this struggle, who are our enemies? What alliances should we build against these warmongers, on what political basis? Nothing is said.
The pamphlet never addresses the role of the imperialist Labour Party. The closest references are to Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer: one in relation to the spurious British arms embargo (p5), another, a warning that we should have no illusions in him or his associates (p10), and lastly, a description of Starmer as an agent of imperialism in defending Israel’s supposed right of self-defence (p17). But that is it. How can there be a revolutionary strategy without challenging the imperialist Labour Party and its defenders? There is a whole chapter attacking the two-state solution, but its principle target is Noam Chomsky who has no influence in Britain. Other supporters of this imperialist plan such as Jeremy Corbyn and the whole of the Labour left escape any criticism. To target them, however, would inevitably raise questions as to why the RCP as Socialist Appeal attached itself like a limpet to the imperialist and Zionist Labour Party for so many decades.
The reader will therefore look in vain for any proposals on how to build solidarity with the Palestinian struggle here in Britain – the political basis for it, the obstacles it would face. The slogan ‘Intifada until victory’ is not a strategy or a perspective for a solidarity movement – it is just hollow rhetoric, yet is given a whole chapter. The pamphlet’s final flourish – a call for a socialist federation of the Middle East – solves not a single practical problem for today. So what can we conclude? As a guide to anything in Britain the pamphlet is useless. As a guide to anything in Palestine, equally so: the Palestinian people have no need of advice from British sects.
So what is the revolutionary way forward here in Britain? We start with the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination the realisation of which depends on the destruction of the Israeli state. This will require unity in action between the Palestinian liberation struggle and anti-imperialist solidarity movements in the imperialist heartlands. In Britain, aim of such a movement will be to force British imperialism to break all support for the Zionist state. Contributing to the world-wide isolation of the Zionist state requires the imposition of cultural, diplomatic, economic and political sanctions. That will involve a ‘determined and relentless struggle’ against the outer ramparts of British imperialism’s defences – the social chauvinists and the opportunists, the Labour Party, the trade unions, those who protect the Labour Party through their alliances, the PSC, CND and STWC. For without such a struggle ’against these parties—or groups, trends, etc., it is all the same—there can be no question of a struggle against imperialism, or of Marxism, or of a socialist labour movement.’ (Lenin: Imperialism and the split in socialism)
