IRCL Position on the Palestine/Israel Conflict
- A single state which replaces the current state of Israel.
- Brought into being by an Israeli and Palestinian workers’ revolution.
- No support for “faith” or “race” based organisations or positions.
- Limited intervention in existing popular front movements.
- Maximum support for the creation of a genuine united front of Israeli and Palestinian workers’ left organisations.
- Support for the creation of an international united front against imperialist war that can harness the combined strength of the international working class.
The reaction of Israel's Zionist government to the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023 has caused the deaths of many thousands of Palestinian workers and children and the wholesale destruction of their homes and workplaces. The Zionist government has also targeted hospitals and aid workers in their unashamed genocidal attempt to eradicate the Palestinian people.
It is clear that these events have consequences that extend far beyond their original borders. Some states and regimes are positioning themselves to take advantage of the chaos, whilst the imperialist powers are willing to turn a blind eye to the genocidal ambitions of their regional proxy. We fear the current situation will develop into a far reaching conflagration with the potential to consume many more thousands of workers’ lives. With this in mind we will work to create an international united front against imperialist war.
Paradoxically the current situation, replete with horror as it is, has within it the possibility of a revolutionary outcome. The terrible dislocations and calamities of war, the breakdown of the state’s ability to protect and fully control its population make the prospect of revolution more attractive, more necessary, and at the same time more achievable than in more stable times.
With this in mind we support a solution based on the revolutionary formation of a workers’ state that is secular and in which it is the right of all citizens to live in peace and equality. This new state will replace the existing state of Israel and be comprised mainly of former Israeli and Palestinian people.
We believe that solidarity between working people is a much more constructive and an altogether more stable base to build upon than ideologies that are dependent upon exclusion and subjection. The outmoded paradigms of race and religion have played their part in producing the current situation. These are the tools used by the ruling capitalist class to divide us. They can have no place in its solution.
Support for the Palestinian people has come from a wide range of groups, organisations and individuals. Inevitably this has produced loosely structured movements which contain within them a fantastic mix of opinions, positions and classes, from capitalists to workers, from the devout to the atheists, from bourgeois liberals to communists. We intervene in existing popular fronts, but given their heterogeneous composition and the consequent lack of unified political direction we are keenly aware of their limitations.
We strongly believe that the creation of united fronts of worker-based political and trade union organisations is the way forward. In Palestine/Israel genuine socialist and communist parties can provide an alternative by presenting a united front opposed to the capitalist strategy of dividing us by race and religion. In other countries building united fronts will enable us to support the struggle in Palestine/Israel more effectively and will strengthen us in our own struggles against local oppression.
In summary, the revolutionary establishment of a socialist state where workers can live together in solidarity and security is the only solution to the current disastrous situation.