Statement 1: The current events in Palestine have shown us that a period of rapid development is upon the peoples of this region, that a dam put in place by the Oslo Accords of the 1990s is now finally breaking and a deluge is being unleashed that will reshape the terrain upon which the current struggle there is fought. Hamas militants have struck deeper into the Israeli State than ever before, as well as managing to overwhelm the US-provided air-defence systems that has so far managed to keep the majority of the Israeli population out of the firing line. Multiple settlements surrounding Gaza have been overrun, and thousands of settlers have begun to flee in fear of the advance of Palestinian fighters and the population as a whole. This represents arguably the largest military and intelligence failure in Israel since the Yom Kippur war, and the response by the Israeli State to this provocation is shaping up to be massive, and as usual, far out of proportion relative to the number of Israelis killed by the Palestinian fighters. It has become clear that the post-Oslo consensus is effectively dead, and that so long as the Israeli settler-regime continues its long term project of settlement in the existing Palestinian territories, the Palestinian masses are prepared to respond with equally deadly measures as those their occupiers direct towards them on a daily basis. Ever since the Assassination of Rabin, it has been in the interests of the Israeli leadership to obfuscate and oppose any attempt to reach a meaningful peace with the Palestinians and to end the ongoing program of settlement in the West Bank, both for fear of losing power and potentially even being killed by the prevalent far-right political tendency in Israel. It seems that this current event has shown this is a position that cannot last, and that the Israeli regime must come to terms with one of two solutions; either come to the table and seek an actual resolution with the Palestinian people, or prepare to speed up their long term plan to strangle the Palestinians lest they lose the support of the Israeli population who are evidently no longer safe behind border walls of the occupation. Whatever option is decided upon by the Israeli ruling class, it is clear that the task of Communists the world over is to stand in solidarity with Palestinian masses against the genocidal onslaught that is being unleashed upon them, and to fight against policies of our own governments that seek to defend the Israeli settler-state.
Statement 2: In many ways this uprising spear-headed by Hamas has been a long time coming, a symptom of the broader failure of the Arab Nationalist movement to defeat Israel in previous conflicts leading to the languishing of the Palestinian population in increasingly decrepit conditions. The PLO signing onto the Oslo accords, which notionally advanced the situation towards a Two-state solution, has only transformed the historical leadership of the Palestinian nationalist movement into a de-facto local police force for Israel, leading them to be seen with increasing scorn by the Palestinian Population at large. This had culminated in Fatah, the main organisation involved in the PLO, being driven out of Gaza in 2006 by Hamas, alongside around 8000 Israeli Settlers who could no longer trust in an adequate level of policing directed against Palestinian militants. Since then Hamas has emerged as the main militant organisation amongst the Palestinian movement, signifying a broader shift away from the historical dominance of the movement by the Secular and broadly leftist forces embodied in PFLP, DFLP and most importantly Fatah, and the increasing Islamification of the struggle by forces like Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Whilst both these forces are broadly reactionary in political content (and in the case of Hamas, was the target of funding in its early days by the Israeli state for the explicit purpose of creating a rival for the Secular PLO to divide the movement), that does not mean that their predominance in the struggle must lead us to disavowing the broader movement of the Palestinian people for the establishment of their own state and an end to the apartheid regime that currently subjugates them.
Statement 3: Rather, we recognise that the advance of the Palestinian masses towards an end to the Israeli regime and the establishment of a national Palestinian state is merely the first step on the long road of human emancipation that is at the heart of this struggle, and which can only reach an adequate end with the realisation of Communism and the destruction of all capitalist and imperialist regimes the world over. For that that to occur, it is necessary to state plainly the tasks ahead, those being to unify the working class masses in Palestine under a socialist leadership that is capable of mobilising both armed struggle and mass action against the Zionist settler-state and in doing so, laying the groundwork for the establishment of a secular and pluralistic socialist workers republic in Palestine that fights to put an end to both the current Capitalist settler-polity in Palestine and the Capitalist and Imperialist forces in the whole Middle East, that for over a century have bathed in the blood and sweat of hundreds of millions of workers and oppressed peoples. For Communists outside this region, it is the task for us to support these endeavours by organising the workers of our own countries against the Capitalist-Imperialist World system which these reactionary forces serve and benefit from, and which our own bourgeois state in Australia is a major architect and beneficiary of. The path ahead is clearer now more than ever: From Al-Aqsa flood to the Red flood, from the liberation of Palestine to the Liberation of all Mankind!
Beat the squares with the tramp of rebels! Higher, rangers of haughty heads! We'll wash the world with a second deluge, Now’s the hour whose coming it dreads.