The hope in Israel-Palestine

How can the political reality in Israel/Palestine be changed? And how can those, like us, many thousands of miles distant from the territory, best contribute to struggles for that change?

Workers’ Liberty agrees with those Palestinians and Israelis who stress the irreplaceable role of pressure from grassroots social movements organising on a binational basis, aiming to win equal rights for both peoples.

Supporting efforts to develop such movements is not an immediate answer. It is not a substitute for immediate-term efforts such as increasing diplomatic pressure for a lasting ceasefire. But we are not in a position to make immediate answers happen anyway. Building forces for a wider horizon for change is irreplaceable.

Standing Together (Naqef Ma’an-Omdim be’Yachad) is the largest grassroots Arab-Jewish movement in Israeli society. Since 7 October, it has focused on organising “Arab-Jewish Solidarity Guards”, especially in mixed cities, mobilising both Palestinian and Jewish citizens of Israel to carry out community organising and mutual aid. Their “solidarity rallies” have mobilised thousands, and the movement now has around 5,000 members. This grassroots anti-racist work is especially important in a context in which the far-right elements of the Israeli government are working to incite Jews to violence against their Arab neighbours.

Standing Together also runs a hotline for anyone victimised by their employer or educational institution for making anti-war statements. Activists report being inundated with calls from Palestinian citizens of Israel, facing an authoritarian government crackdown, with right-wing forces attempting to portray them as an “enemy within”.

Standing Together’s work to build Arab-Jewish solidarity inside Israeli society does not provide an immediate mechanism for stopping the war. But it has the potential to build a movement that consciously aims to break the hold of a politics of perpetual occupation — a reality which oppresses Palestinians, but also makes Israelis less safe. As Karl Marx’s adage puts it, “a nation that oppresses another can never be free.”

Recent opinion polling in Israel shows that Netanyahu is plunging in popularity. One poll indicates that, if elections were held today, he would suffer a heavy defeat. His likely successor, the “centrist” Benny Gantz, is hardly less hawkish, but deposing Netanyahu, and his alliance with the settler far right, would open cracks of political space that a binational movement for equality could seek to widen.

The organised radical left in Israel is small and beleaguered, and therefore in particular need of solidarity. It can also make an important contribution to the effort to develop an anti-occupation, pro-peace, pro-equality agency. The left party Hadash, linked to Maki, the Israeli Communist Party, was able to mobilise some hundreds for the first formal pro-ceasefire protest in Israel since the war began, on 18 November. Think-tanks like A Land for All, which advocate for a political settlement based on two states within a confederal framework, can also help contribute to an effort to first imagine, and then work to enact, a shared future.

Although Maki has formal links to the Communist Party of Britain (CPB), which publishes the Morning Star, the Stalinist-influenced left in the UK shows little interest in the activity and perspectives of even its own direct counterparts in Israel. The CPB’s formal support for a two-state settlement has almost no bearing on its activity. Apart from Workers’ Liberty, no current on the UK radical left has engaged with or promoted Standing Together or A Land for All in a consistent way.

The basic reason for that is that much of the radical left sees the Israeli Jewish nation as an illegitimate presence in the region, an artificial implantation of imperialism, out of whose society no progressive potential can emerge. The more “extreme” version of this perspective, as articulated by the Socialist Workers Party, sees change as coming about through an “Arab revolution” in which the “Palestinian resistance”, led by Hamas, will sweep Israel away. Groups like Standing Together, Hadash, and A Land for All, which all argue for equal rights between Israeli Jews and Palestinians, are an anathema to this perspective.

An acceptance that two distinct nations inhabit the territory, and that both are rooted in the land, does not provide a political perspective by itself, but it is a necessary starting point. As Edward Said once put it: “The Jews of Israel will remain; the Palestinians will also remain. To say much more than that with assurance is a foolish risk.”

If one accepts, then, that binational struggles for equality are an irreplaceable ingredient in any wider programme for change, it follows that the most effective role we can play, from a distance, is to explain and support them. This is why Workers’ Liberty emphasises direct support and solidarity for movements like Standing Together as the key priority for activists internationally.

Hundreds of thousands have marched against Israel’s bombing in recent weeks. To channel the energies of even a fraction of those marches into efforts of solidarity with Arab-Jewish movements for equality would be a direct and practical intervention into the situation that would actually connect to struggles for change on the ground.