The Palestinian People's Resistance Will Make Its Way Under New Conditions

The founding of Fatah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and other revolutionary parties opened a new chapter in the Palestinian liberation struggle. A period of great struggles and historic examples of internationalism began. Palestine became a center of resistance and a place of hope for progressive humanity around the world. However, this phase did not end with the liberation of Palestine. There are many reasons why the Palestinian people could not assert their right to their own land and self-determination during the first period of resistance until the Oslo process. All the imperialists have backed Zionist Israel in one way or another. Thus, in the course of the different phases of the liberation struggle, the inequality between the armed forces of the revolutionary Palestinian groups and Israel has reached extreme proportions. The hypocritical attitude of the bourgeois Arab states and their policy of collaboration with Israel have also failed the Palestinian resistance. Even more, their dictatorial rule prevented their own people from supporting Palestine. Other reasons include the insufficient forces in the occupied countries and the extensive dependence on the forces in exile and also the dependence on financial resources in the form of NGO and UN funds to maintain the living conditions for the Palestinian refugees and the failure to form an effective national united front. Moreover, in the course of the Palestinian resistance, the imperialist world system has changed with the transition to the phase of imperialist globalization, and along with it the objective conditions of the class struggle. The world revolutionary movements and struggles have also changed. The fragmented communist movement is confronted with the question of its reconstruction. Despite the great experiences of internationalism in Palestine, the weakness of international solidarity and the lack of participation of internationalists in the Palestinian struggle also paved the way for all other causes. Zionism has forcefully consolidated its colonial rule.

The so-called Palestinian "state" created by the Oslo process was established on a part of the land that was already very small (less than 15%) due to the settler colonialism of the Zionist state, in the form of small islands, like the Bantustans of the racist South African colonial rule. It has no army and exists as an administration that can attack Israel at any moment without any reason. The 2nd Intifada, which erupted in 2000 when Sharon announced that he would not make peace in exchange for land, was not the "end" of the Oslo process, but its "consequence." Even then, it became clear that the United States and Israel would not honor the two-state solution on the territory established by the 1967 UN decision. The agreements following the Oslo meetings were merely submission tactics that included belligerent aggression and served to stall by granting minimum rights. Emboldened by Trump's "deal of the century," the Zionist state now hopes to end resistance by military means and possible war attacks.

Based on the Muslim Brotherhood (Hamas in Palestine) and as an issue that can be useful for his expansionist neo-Ottomanism, Turkish dictator Erdogan also gave the impression that he was on the side of Palestine. But then, through the developments in the Syrian civil war, he created a situation from which the Israeli Zionists will benefit. Organizations supported by the fascist Turkish state in the Syrian civil war, such as ISIS and al-Nusra, attacked the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmuk and harmed the Palestinian cause. By ensuring that Hamas representatives could leave Syria, Erdogan forced Hamas to cooperate with Zionism and Qatar. Now Erdogan is reordering his relations with Israel. He no longer utters a single word about the Palestinian cause. He is now silent even on the Israeli attacks on Gaza, where Hamas is in power. He is normalizing relations with the Zionists like other Arab states. His regional policies of the last 10-15 years have made Turkey a regional center of counterrevolution along with Israel.

The two long-standing revolutionary democratic liberation struggles of the Kurdish and Palestinian people play a leading role in the liberation of the entire region. The close relationship of the Turkish and Kurdish revolutionaries with the Palestinian liberation struggle goes back to their common history of fighting comradeship and dates back to the early 1970s. The cadres and leaders of the revolutionary movement went to Palestine to participate in the struggle as internationalists, but they also had the perspective of learning the armed struggle to prepare the revolutions in Turkey and Kurdistan. Some fell as martyrs there, such as 11 PKK members during the Israeli occupation attack in 1982, and some returned to Turkey to start the armed uprising. This historical bond is still alive among the communists and revolutionaries in Turkey and Kurdistan and needs to be renewed in order to create a sense of community and trust between the peoples against the imperialist interventions, especially in the context of the situation around the revolution in Rojava.

The conflicts between Fatah and Hamas affected the Palestinian administration in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and divided the autonomy administration into two. Fatah and Mahmoud Abbas, who dominates the PLO over Fatah, exert anti-democratic pressure and avoid organizing resistance in the face of Zionist Israel's war attacks. This attitude stems from its character as a capitalist profiteer and its willingness to compromise with imperialism, Zionism and the reactionary Arab states. The political Islamic Hamas is also repressive and although it fights militarily against Israel from time to time, in the end its compromising side prevails because of its anti-democratic character and its reconciliation with the Arab reactionary states. The relationship with these two dominant forces must be handled on a revolutionary democratic basis.

Undoubtedly, the sections of the Palestinian population that support these two forces are much closer to the resistance. They want the liberation of Palestine. A national democratic united front should include these masses as well as all Palestinian national organizations that stand for the resistance. Today, an outstanding aspect of the Palestinian liberation struggle is, above all, the preservation of the livelihood of the Palestinians who have to live in besieged areas. Due to the climate catastrophes of the global ecological collapse as well as the embargoes of the Israeli apartheid state, Palestinians face drought, food and water crises, and environmental degradation. A task of communists and revolutionaries is also to ensure that the developing mass ecological movement worldwide turns its face to Palestine.

A struggle for the unity and liberation of Palestine is possible if organizations like the PFLP or the DFLP develop in resistance and regain hegemony by organizing the people accordingly. In any case, they must unite all the forces of resistance, including the Islamist organizations, in a national democratic front. The PLO can be functional if it is reorganized as such a national democratic front. Otherwise, the PLO plays no role other than being an instrument of hegemony for Abbas and Fatah. The same applies to the parliament that forms the Palestinian administration.

Today, the path of national liberation struggles leads through social liberation under the leadership of communist forces. The liberation of Palestine from apartheid colonialism is possible with a state under democratic popular power that encompasses all of Palestine from the river to the sea and guarantees all the rights of the Jewish people, the Christian people and all peoples. For this, the liberation struggle needs the active support of the Arab and all peoples of the world. The worldwide struggles for Palestine must be considered as direct reserves of the Palestinian revolution and not of the reactionary Arab and political Islamic bourgeois states.

The MLKP formulates its support for the Palestinian liberation struggle in its program as follows: "All demands of the Palestinian nation with revolutionary and democratic content shall be supported and shoulder to shoulder shall be advanced with the struggle for the victory of the Palestinian revolution." It is the duty of communists worldwide to support the Palestinian liberation struggle on a strategic level and in the long term. Given the conditions of extremely unequal power relations, agreements of the Palestinian forces in various political forms for democratic solutions, such as the two-state solution, can lead to partial social or political achievements. According to the choices of the democratic and revolutionary Palestinian movement, these solutions can be supported by revolutionaries and internationalists. The decisive factor will be, in the long run, to free humanity from the evil of Zionism and any kind of colonial subjugation and to win a life in dignity for all people in Palestine.