‘What is needed today is a new generation, a new vision, a new hope for Palestinian struggle and organizing that can place Palestine once again at the centre of the Arab and international scene, this time without the illusions of pragmatism that marked the devastating road to Madrid and Oslo.’ – Khaled Barakat
FRFI activists took part in the Masar Badil (Alternative Path) conference on 30 October, attended by Palestinian leftists and international supporters in Madrid, Spain. With the mass Palestinian uprising of May 2021 still resounding and the Palestinian Authority (PA) colluding violently with Israeli terror in the West Bank, the gathering aimed ambitiously to bring together a revolutionary trend and plan action to shift the balance of power from liberal campaigning towards action to liberate Palestine. Taking place on the 30th anniversary of the imperialist-instigated Madrid ‘peace talks,’ which were the precursor to the Oslo accords, Masar Badil was immediately attacked by forces tied to the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).
As reported in Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! at the time, the 1993 Oslo accords negotiated between the Israeli state and the PLO represented a great betrayal of the Palestinian masses who had fought relentlessly against Zionist colonial violence in the First Intifada of 1987-1993. Already by the Madrid conference in October 1991, it had become clear that the PLO would abandon demands about refugees and land:
‘In exchange for what amounts to a neo-colonial, apartheid bantustan-style “autonomy”, [PLO chairman Yasser] Arafat promises to try and terminate not just the Intifada but the armed struggle and the Palestinian revolution itself.’[1]
Oslo saw the right of return, the question of Palestinians who reside in the 1948 territories seized by Israel and a host of other issues relegated to ‘final status’ negotiations which never transpired. Without a whimper from the bourgeois collaborationist PA, which fortified its European-funded security complex in the West Bank, Israel built hundreds of thousands of colonial settlements and launched murderous onslaughts upon Palestinians and Lebanese, beaten back by the grassroots resistance and armed actions of non-Oslo groups.
The Masar Badil conference brought together the Samidoun prisoner solidarity campaign, supporters of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and leftists involved in anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist campaigning in Europe and North America; parallel events took place in Lebanon and Brazil. In an opening discussion on what principles are needed by a new popular movement, Palestinian contributors spoke about emulating the socialist solidarity offered by Cuba to the South African anti-apartheid struggle and by the Soviet Union to the Algerian resistance to French imperialism. An RCG supporter was warmly received for the organisation’s history of solidarity with the Irish movement and for pointing to the reactionary role of European social democratic forces in attacking anti-Zionism as ‘antisemitism.’
Samidoun coordinator Charlotte Kates spoke of the post-1967 Palestinian revolution as capturing world attention. While recognising that ‘it’s 2021, not 1971,’ she highlighted a theme picked up by others, that Palestine solidarity and Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaigning are monopolised by the Boycott National Committee in Ramallah, which has recently attacked Samidoun. Activist Mohammed Khatib said that ‘slogans like Free Palestine are not enough’ and his call for an alternative movement, ‘for a boycott of the Zionist state’ was taken up by the conference. Conference coordinator Khaled Barakat called for links to be built with the militant boycotts of Israel taking place in Egypt, Lebanon and Tunisia, while others called for the revolutionary legacy of the boycott to be rediscovered.
Alongside the launching of boycott campaigns, the conference agreed to push for resistance and the leading role of the prisoners to be put at the centre of protests, with Khatib demanding that ‘we make it clear to our people in exile that we have no relationship to the Oslo Authority and the Oslo Embassies.’ Part of the Masar Badil perspective reflects the harsh realities faced by impoverished refugees in hostile European environments. Musician Reem spoke against the Fatah-connected Palestinian community organisations that organise self-congratulatory events and promote their own businesses, while ‘offering nothing to the youth and the poor.’ Some attendees came from Sweden, where Palestinian refugees have been forced into destitution by a pro-Zionist and anti-immigrant government of Swedish Social Democrats, sister party to Britain’s Labour Party. Masar Badil plans to set up social centres in Germany and Greece, where Palestinian refugees are concentrated, to inject revolutionary politics, while providing spaces for education, culture and childcare.
In aiming to shift the balance of power from the privileged PLO leadership’s failed strategies of ‘negotiations’ and wholesale concessions to Zionism, Masar Badil organisers draw on the Marxist legacy of Ghassan Kanafani, who called for ‘new blood’ in the wake of the 1967 Arab defeat. Veteran blogger Rima Najjar, who attended the conference, compared the approach to a ‘fresh breeze coming from an unpolluted environment.’ At a time when British Tory and Labour politicians continue to back the Zionist state and wage class war on the masses at home, we all need the alternative path of revolutionary resistance.
From the river to the sea – Palestine will be free! Isolate the Zionist state!
Free all political prisoners of Zionism and imperialism!
[1] ‘Israel/PLO Agreement: The Great Betrayal’, Eddie Abrahams, FRFI 115, October/November 1993.
