At the moment of writing, between the middle and end of August 2024, we await the response from Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah to the killing in Teheran of Hamas’ political leader Isma’il Haniyeh by the State of Israel - a response which, as well as leading to a halt in the basically inconclusive to and fro of meetings between the two parts, might also result in a dangerous spread of the conflict over an increasingly devastated Middle East. For the time being Iran doesn’t seem to be over-willing to stage a real show of power, preferring to limit itself to demagogic threats: but at the moment things are still in a state of flux and we must see how they evolve, without launching into rocambolesque geo-political forecasts. Meanwhile, the slaughter of Palestinian proletarians proceeds unceasingly in its savagery and indifference to all indignation, humanitarian protest or rhetoric from other international brigands: the deaths now amount to around 40 thousand but the future, lethal, physical and pscho-physical consequences will be infinitely greater and more devastating than this obscene genocide, typical of capitalism in its imperialist phase (how easy it is to forget the millions of proletarians, civilians and soldiers, massacred in two world bloodbaths, and the hundreds of “minor wars” that preceded, accompanied and followed them!). As to the “Pro-Palestine” demonstrations that have multiplied and proliferated more or less all over the world in the last few months, apart from the ritual, pre-electoral mega-demo at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, they seem to be languishing: university students are on holiday and though the mobilisation of the Palestinian communities abroad is not diminishing in terms of numbers, it still remains caged inside a fallacious “nationalist” prospective (not to speak of the so-called fellow travellers in the older imperialist cities, the “hardcore resisters” who so irresponsibly exalt and fuel that prospective, just proving that they are simply “standing in line”… to put it kindly!).
In this context and after having dealt with the “Middle-Eastern question” several times over the years in our press, pamphlets and other interventions, it will be useful to take a closer look at the origins, nature and political reality of the main Palestinian “player”, to which other “resistant” formations, including the self-proclaimed “Marxist-Leninist” ones (!) are subordinated: in other words Hamas 1.
***
When, at the time of the First Intifada (1987), the Palestinian group denominated “Islamic Resistance Movement” or Hamas broke away from Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, it could be said that a process lasting several decades was finally concluded: this process must be briefly retraced to understand the deeper significance of the dynamics that led to the emergence of the group (to a great extent, this was dealt with in the article published elsewhere in this issue, “The Palestinian Proletariat in the Deadly Trap of Nationalisms”). This means returning to the years immediately following the Second World War, when various de-colonization movements matured, affecting mainly (but not only) the southern Mediterranean coastline and areas around it, from Algeria to Egypt and to the Arabian Peninsula. In Egypt in particular, at that time we see the emergence of a secular political power, the expression of a local bourgeoisie under the illusion that it is able to call into question the status quo and international, post-colonial relations.
The ideology of pan-Arabism, which saw Nasser as its main representative, splits with the backward and corrupt monarchy of King Faruk, limiting itself, however, to formulating the hazy vision of a single “Arab Nation” uniting as brothers all the “peoples” with a common language, history, traditions and presumed common interests, in opposition to those of the old colonial powers and now dominant imperialisms (first and foremost the United States, but also Great Britain and France): this is an illusory objective because it is entrusted not to a widespread mobilisation of the Arab masses but to agreements between the States in the region, all considerably jealous of their own slice of “crude oil revenue” to trade with the leading international thieves. The failure of secular and bourgeois pan-Arabism will thus be essentially due to the small-mindedness and tendency towards compromise of other Arab bourgeoisies, as well as to the firm opposition of imperialisms with an interest in keeping the Middle East in a state of economic and strategic subordination 2.
In the meantime, however, albeit amidst peaks and troughs and always strongly conditioned by imperialist interests, a process of capital penetration advanced in the area and with it the development in all national segments of a modern proletariat, concentrated mainly (but not only) around the poles of exploitation, processing and distribution of crude oil and other raw materials for energy, of central importance to a capitalism initially in a state of expansion and later, from the 1970s onwards, in desperate straits. How to control this proletariat, which the bourgeoisie cannot do without but towards which, at the same time, it nurtures an understandable dread resulting from centuries of experience? The failure of secularity, embodied initially by the young military forces who were the protagonists of the anti-colonial struggles, sometimes with pseudo-socialist claims and turns of phrase, must be replaced by another form of control, even more profound and extensive: that exercised by religious fundamentalism. Moreover, the variety of interpretations of the Sacred Book (the Koran), make it suitable for adaptation to the local requirements of bourgeois and petit-bourgeois factions that do not hesitate to dig up and exploit to this end whatever remains of socio-cultural, pre-capitalist traces.
This is certainly not a “plan” drawn up round a table, or a “plot” by some local or international bourgeoisie but a question of material dynamics, rooted in the post-colonial history of a Middle East obliged to try and extract itself from the historical backwardness produced by a long phase of crude colonial dominion, and the present, unrelenting stranglehold by world capitalism. And the dramatic events in Algeria (its harsh war of independence and troubled post-war period with the emergence and political establishment of religious fundamentalism through a bloody civil war) are emblematic of these dynamics. But something similar occurs in Egypt in the post-Nasser period.
Here, the movement of the Muslim Brotherhood, arising in the late 1920s (a date to be kept well in mind), has been active for some time. It has grown up around the preaching of Hassan Al-Banna, supporter of a return to the origins of Islam, an all-encompassing principle decontaminated of any other residues or deviations. Gradually, Al-Banna’s movement assumes a hierarchical structure and develops its own solid and widespread network of charitable institutions and social assistance, educational and information structures, health services, trade unions, youth groups and women’s groups – a sort of religiously-based welfare fully in line with Islamic dictates. Not only this: as an expression of the emerging middle classes, the movement enters with impetus into the world of economy and finance, with enterprises, joint-stock companies, various types of initiatives and important ramifications in other Arab countries. In addition, in view of the fact that it is operating right in the midst of the oppressive British mandate (and later the friend-enemy régimes first of King Faruk and then of Nasser) and that for the whole of the 1930s harsh strikes, repeated demonstrations, clashes and violent repression took place (the Thawra, the Great Arab Revolt of 1936-37), it equips itself with a semi-clandestine military structure. After 1945 and especially after the 1947 Nakba (the birth of the State of Israel, with the immediate blessing of Stalin’s Russia, amongst others), the Brotherhood is also present in Palestine, where it makes an essential contribution to the military development and consolidation of the anti-Sionist movement, active in the area for some time. We shall not go into all the developments of the Brotherhood here 3. However, it is important and urgent to emphasise two aspects. First of all, it is evident to us communists that in it, we are witnessing a religious movement bearing a reactionary ideology, which is essentially anti-proletarian and anti-communist, like all the religions and movements that act as expressions or spokespeople for it. This must be stressed, repeated and kept firmly in mind. Initially, the Brotherhood did not intend to set itself up as a political subject: for its ideologists the religious dimension in itself already contains the political.
But very soon, faced with the situation in Palestine, with the creation of the State of Israel and its function as armed gendarme and longus manus of western imperialism in the area, and the consequent instinctive response from the Arab masses (proletarians and in the process of proletarianization), expelled from the region or bearing an increasingly oppressive burden, the more strictly political dimension emerged and took root, interweaving and identifying itself with the religious – a characteristic then inherited, amplified and intensified by Hamas, from its very onset in 1987, inspired by the preachings of Ahmed Yassin, who takes up Al-Banna’s directly.
The Brotherhood and later Hamas play a specific role then, but always (this is the second aspect) as an expression of emerging and by now fully fledged bourgeois and petit-bourgeois classes, and consequently marked by a religious nationalism which, in the general picture of imperialism and a world crisis of the capitalist mode of production, must also have recourse to arms in order to establish itself, resorting once again to a strategy that had been abandoned for some time by the corrupt policies of compromise of Yasser Arafat’s PLO and the Palestinian Authority (in particular the Ezzedin al-Qassam brigades, Hamas’s military branch, inherit, pursue and modernise the experience of the Brotherhood’s clandestine armed structures). The clash with the State of Israel and its relentless displays of oppression and repression and the daily aggression unleashed by both the armed forces and the illegal forces set up by the armed Israeli settlers, aggravates this prospective, driving to the forefront a “resistance” that is widely and cynically nurtured by the suffering and exasperation of the Palestinian proletarian masses – all this amidst the more or less complete indifference of the other Arab states, with the progressive loss of any international vision of the struggle against capitalism and with the complicity of all those who, locally and internationally, have abdicated any revolutionary leadership role, however minority and counter current it may appear today.
In 2015 we wrote: “ Israel as a state [...] is a European political formation of a perfectly bourgeois nature and origins: but as a superstructure it shares the same reactionary ideology as its Islamic and Catholic counterparts. Those who discover presumed progressive and revolutionary elements in the Muslim religion (as neo-converts!) forget that a true revolutionary bourgeoisie has never existed in the Middle East, that the bourgeoisies that have arisen or been imported into the Middle East are now anachronisms and that today there is no longer any trace of the anti-colonialism and pan-Arabism of the late 1950s, both of which have failed. In addition, Palestine’s own national claims at the start of the 1970s (once a lever for a possible “revolutionary” process) have taken shape in that wretched bantustan in which all the Palestinian political forces, secular and religious, are playing a game of reciprocal massacre, particularly of their proletariat after having driven it into that dead-end. To see pan-Islam and all its contemporary variations as a battering ram attempting to attack the imperial fortress (a Bin Laden, ISIS, for example) and thus driving the middle-eastern proletariat into an alliance with the wretched Arab bourgeoisie, whether fanatic or secular, violent or pacifist, is pure madness” 4.
At this point the argument must be broadened and again take us back in time.
***
In September 1920, thanks to an initiative by the Communist International (CI), a few weeks after its important Second Congress (its highest point before the degeneration caused by emerging and later victorious Stalinism), in Baku (Azerbaijan) the first Congress of Eastern Peoples was held. It was attended by Zinoviev, Radek, Bela Khun, Alfred Rosmer, John Reed and other European and Asian communist militants, with 1891 delegates from 26 countries and regions, including Palestine (then a British protectorate) 5. Amidst overall enthusiasm for the new prospectives that might open up (of the fusion between the proletarian class war in the West and revolutionary anti-colonial movements in the East, under the guidance of the CI) there were a series of interventions in all languages and motions and proposals for action were presented, substantially taking up the “Theses on National and Colonial Questions”, approved by the Second Congress itself. In these “Theses” and in all the interventions by the communist militants present in Baku, of central importance is the insistence on the prime role of the revolutionary political party in the delicate field of revolutionary anti-colonial uprisings, in which “national issue”, “colonial issue” and “agrarian issue” are closely intertwined, due also to historical backwardness in many of these areas, the persistence of feudal and/or pre-capitalist elements, and social and political forces that are expressions of them in a religious form, as well as the relentless games and the burden of western imperialisms – all questions that could only be solved by the establishment of communist political parties in the East and by the class revolution in the West.6
In those same decisive years of the 20s and the dramatic decade that followed, this huge prospective was to be gradually forgotten, deviated and finally completely upturned by Stalinism, an acute and even more degenerate form of Menshevism: in other words, tailing the local bourgeoisies (China, 1927!) and ever increasing total submission to a national prospective and subordination to the national interests of one State or another – the “national paths to socialism” are certainly not a European prerogative! And so the very concept of a class society, and thus the historical need for the class war for the abolition of classes remain in the background. And this happens at the very time when, in the hotspot of the Middle East, there is reinforcement (the two “phenomena” are dialectically intertwined) of the return to radical Islam and an exclusively national prospective. It is not simply a coincidence that the Muslim preaching of Al-Banna spreads with increasing intensity and effectiveness over the course of those very years, culminating in fact in the foundation of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928. Just as it is no coincidence that in the 30s, shaken by continuous, harsh fighting against oppression by the British Protectorate, the internationalist prospective yields to a purely nationalist vision and to disappointment in Stalinist politics, mistaken for socialism or even communism7. Later (and here we are already in 1979) the Iranian “Islamic revolution” and the institution of Khomeyni’s and his successors’ religious State will carry their own weight here. Finally, to consolidate Hamas’s grip on the Palestinian population, between 2010 and 2012 comes the defeat of the so-called “Arab Springs”, springing from a decidedly proletarian impulse but soon channelled into the sidings of petit-bourgeois claims.
Faced with this situation, schematically recalled here, we have always shown that the prospective of a “dual revolution” contemplated by the “Theses on National and Colonial Questions” of 1920 was closed around the mid 1970s, basically when the expansive economic cycle of the post-second-world-war period came to an end and the crisis of surplus production of goods and capital began, in whose peaks and troughs we are still immersed. Since then, the still unsolved “national issues” have lost all their potential revolutionary impetus and persist merely as residues and cancrenes infecting the body of the international proletariat, with the decisive contribution of all the “vehicles of infection” at work in the big imperialist cities, which can only be overcome and cancelled out by the pure and open revolutionary struggle of the proletariat, directed against all national States, against all imperialisms, under the guidance of the revolutionary party (8).
The mystical-religious approach thus replaces the communist prospective, nationalism that of internationalism: this is why positioning on the terrain of national claims and building a programme of action around them, mainly nurtured by religious ideology, means acting in an openly anti-proletarian and counter-revolutionary sense.
***
Let us return now to Hamas. Naturally, since this is not a merely historiological study, we shall not go back over the many events that have marked its history: the characteristics of the welfare practised by it as an evolution of that pertaining to the Muslim Brotherhood, the sociological composition of its leadership and the “government of professors” inaugurated after the victorious elections of 2006 with a programme emblematically entitled “Reform and Change”, the problem of the internal relations between the political and military wings, between the foreign centre and the internal centre and prisoners, the continuous ambiguity over the “Israeli issue” and the borders to be claimed, the origins and significance of the clash with the PLO and PA, and so on. As to all this, we refer back to the texts indicated at the beginning of the article: instead, here we limit ourselves to analysing a few illuminating documents. But first of all, let it be clear that our open criticism does not regard the thousands of Palestinian proletarians who, driven by anger and suffering and egged on by bombastic words and actions, have decided to take their fate in one hand and a gun in the other, by joining one “resistance” organization or the other. Our critcism regards, as ever, the organizations that have convinced them, channelled and directed them towards objectives that are not and should not be their own.
Let us start, then with the of 1988 Charter or Covenant (the Mithaq), Hamas’s document that is the “most widely discussed, quoted, condemned and utilised – time and again – as a tool of political negotiation” (Caridi, p.114), nevertheless remaining a constant reference point. In it, right from the initial invocation (“In the Name of the Most Mercifull Allah”), the mystical-religious structure is closely entwined with the political (every article is accompanied by a quotation from the Koran). Article 1 thus proclaims: “The Movement's programme is Islam. From it, it draws its ideas, ways of thinking and understanding of the universe, life and man. It resorts to it for judgement in all its conduct, and it is inspired by it for guidance of its steps.”; and: “Allah is its target, the Prophet is its model, the Koran its constitution: Jihad is its path and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes” (Article 8) 9. When, from this and other proclamations, we move on to Chapter “Strategies and Methods”), here we find the affirmation: “The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. Neither a single Arab country nor all Arab countries, neither any king or president, nor all the kings and presidents, neither any organization nor all of them, be they Palestinian or Arab, possess the right to do that. Palestine is an Islamic Waqf land consecrated for Moslem generations until Judgement Day. This being so, who could claim to have the right to represent Moslem generations till Judgement Day?” (Article 11) 10.
Further on, speaking of the “ideological invasion” of “orientalists and missionaries”, to be countered using all ideological means by the “scientists, educators and teachers, information and media people, as well as the educated masses, especially the youth and sheikhs of the Islamic movements ulama, the professors, the masters, people working in advertising and the media, by the learned, the Muslim youth movements and their teachers”, it states that the “ideological invasion […] paved the way for the imperialist invasion [!!!]”. And again: “Imperialism has helped towards the strengthening of ideological invasion, deepening, and still does, its roots. All this has paved the way towards the loss of Palestine. It is necessary to instill in the minds of the Moslem generations that the Palestinian problem is a religious problem, and should be dealt with on this basis!” (Article 15). And so historical materialism is also written off.
Consequently it is “necessary to follow Islamic orientation in educating the Islamic generations in our region by teaching the religious duties” (Article 16). And before passing on to the sections entitled “The role of Islamic art in the battle of liberation” and “Social mutual responsibility”, here comes the specific one entitled “The role of the Moslem woman”: the woman in the war of liberation, “a role no less important than that of the moslem man in the battle of liberation”, since she is “a maker of men” (Article 17). And most of all (take heed!): “Woman in the home of the fighting family, whether she is a mother or a sister, plays the most important role in looking after the family, rearing the children and embuing them with moral values and thoughts derived from Islam. The woman, in the home and family of fighters, whether mother or sister, has her most important role in looking after the house and bringing up the children according to Islamic concepts and values […]. She has to be of sufficient knowledge and understanding where the performance of housekeeping matters are concerned, because economy and avoidance of waste of the family budget, is one of the requirements for the ability to continue moving forward in the difficult conditions surrounding us.” (Article 18). To sum up: “God, Nation, Family!” 11.
In this way, is political-religious nationalism affirmed. In fact: “Nationalism, from the point of view of the Islamic Resistance Movement, is part of the religious creed. Nothing in nationalism is more significant or deeper than in the case when an enemy should tread Moslem land. Resisting and quelling the enemy become the individual duty of every Moslem, male or female. A woman can go out to fight the enemy without her husband's permission, and so does the slave: without his master's permission (Article 12). Woman and slave: “female question” and “workers’ question” are thus written off!
Religious nationalism is the equivalent of “the fight against secularity”. In fact when dealing (in Article 27) with relations with the PLO, which at the time (in1988) “the closest to the heart of the Islamic Resistance Movement,” it is stated that “the Organisation adopted the idea of the secular state. And that is how we view it. Secularism completely contradicts religious ideology. Attitudes, conduct and decisions stem from ideologies. That is why, with all our appreciation for The Palestinian Liberation Organization - and what it can develop into - and without belittling its role in the Arab-Israeli conflict, we are unable to exchange the present or future Islamic Palestine with the secular idea..” (our italics – ed.) And this is because “the Islamic Resistance Movement [i.e., Hamas – ed.] does not refrain from discussing new situations on the regional or international levels where the Palestinian question is concerned. It does that in such an objective manner revealing the extent of how much it is in harmony or contradiction with the national interests in the light of the Islamic point of view” (Article 26).
Nationalism and the unity of the people go arm in arm, as always, in democratic and interclass, and therefore – necessarily – anti-proletarian and anti communist ideology. This is not our interpretation. A little earlier (Article 22), in a daring historical-political analysis, we read – and at this point it is worth quoting the whole text:
“For a long time, the enemies have been planning, skillfully and with precision, for the achievement of what they have attained. They took into consideration the causes affecting the current of events. They strived to amass great and substantive material wealth which they devoted to the realisation of their dream. With their money, they took control of the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others. With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of the world with the purpose of achieving their interests and reaping the fruit therein. They were behind the French Revolution, the Communist revolution and most of the revolutions we heard and hear about, here and there. With their money they formed secret societies, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, the Lions and others in different parts of the world for the purpose of sabotaging societies and achieving Zionist interests. With their money they were able to control imperialistic countries and instigate them to colonize many countries in order to enable them to exploit their resources and spread corruption there. You may speak as much as you want about regional and world wars. They were behind World War I, when they were able to destroy the Islamic Caliphate, making financial gains and controlling resources. They obtained the Balfour Declaration, formed the League of Nations through which they could rule the world. They were behind World War II, through which they made huge financial gains by trading in armaments, and paved the way for the establishment of their state. It was they who instigated the replacement of the League of Nations with the United Nations and the Security Council to enable them to rule the world through them. There is no war going on anywhere, without having their finger in it.
"So often as they shall kindle a fire for war, Allah shall extinguish it; and they shall set their minds to act corruptly in the earth, but Allah loveth not the corrupt doers." (The Table - verse 64).
“The imperialistic forces in the Capitalist West and Communist East, support the enemy with all their might, in money and in men. These forces take turns in doing that. The day Islam appears, the forces of infidelity would unite to challenge it, for the infidels are of one nation.
"‘O true believers, contract not an intimate friendship with any besides yourselves: they will not fail to corrupt you. They wish for that which may cause you to perish: their hatred hath already appeared from out of their mouths; but what their breasts conceal is yet more inveterate. We have already shown you signs of their ill will towards you, if ye understand’" (The Family of Imran - verse 118).
“It is not in vain that the verse is ended with Allah's words ‘if ye understand’".
And so the Bolshevik October is also written off!
And where are we supposed to find the proof of what is affirmed in this Article? There’s a quick answer to that (Article 32): “The Zionist plan is limitless. After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying. ” As we were saying! Not bad as an analysis of imperialism! Poor Marx, poor Lenin!
But let’s stop here with regard to the 1988 “Charter” or “Covenant” and jump forward almost thirty years to May 2017: in between, as well as the First and Second Intifadas, there have been Hamas’s victory in the 2006 elections with the “Reform and Change” list, the following year the military clash with Fatah for the control of the Gaza Strip, in 2008 the deadly Israeli “Molten Lead” operation, the operations that followed under a wide variety of names…Always the incessant, constant murder of Palestinian proletarians.
The “Document of General Principles and Policies” produced by Hamas that same 2017 means to go beyond the 1988 “Charter” without contradicting it, bearing in mind its new role in Palestine with the control of the Gaza Strip. In this sense, the approach is more directly political, as befits a political force running the government: but the close tie between Palestine and Islam remains and is emphasised in more or less each of the 42 articles that make up the “Document”, right from the preface, which proclaims that “Palestine is a land whose status has been elevated by Islam”. And again: “Its [Hamas’s] frame of reference is Islam, which determines its principles, objectives and means us” (Article 1); Palestine is an Arab Islamic land. It is a blessed sacred land that has a special place in the heart of every Arab and every Muslim (Article 3), “Palestine is the Holy Land, which Allah has blessed for humanity” (Article 7), and so on 12.
But apart from this, the Document insists that it has the nature of a political text which “reveals the objectives, the milestones and the way by which national unity can be attained”, with a “language approaching that of western democracy” (Mantovani, cit.). National unity, therefore: like any other bourgeois proclamation (constitution or similar) that refuses to admit the reality of a society divided into classes. Is it at all possible that, in today’s Palestine and in a different tomorrow, social classes do not, or will not exist? “The Palestinian people are one people, made up of all Palestinians, inside and outside of Palestine, irrespective of their religion [???], culture or political affiliation”. (Article 6). For the rest, we come across the same formulations we might come across in any position assumed by eminently bourgeois international bodies: is there anyone who does not claim to defend “the values of truth, justice, freedom and dignity”, against “all forms of religious, ethnic or sectarian extremism and bigotry” (Article 9)?
And again: when it states that “The Palestinian cause in its essence is a cause of an occupied land and a displaced people. The right of the Palestinian refugees and the displaced to return to their homes from which they were banished or were banned from returning to – whether in the lands occupied in 1948 or in 1967 (that is the whole of Palestine), is a natural right, both individual and collective. This right is confirmed by all divine laws as well as by the basic principles of human rights and international law” (Article 12); or when it declares that “The establishment of “Israel” is entirely illegal and contravenes the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people and goes against their will and the will of the Ummah; it is also in violation of human rights that are guaranteed by international conventions, foremost among them is the right to self-determination (Article 18); in short, when all this is affirmed, and time and again “divine laws and international norms and laws” (Article 25 and others) are invoked, is it still necessary to comment that here we reside in the rosy empyrean of pure idealism? Human rights, international law? Which ones, in the hellfire of capitalist States?!
Furthermore, Palestinian society is presented as being “enriched by its prominent personalities, figures, dignitaries, civil society institutions, and youth, students, trade unionist and women’s groups who together work for the achievement of national goals and societal building, pursue resistance, and achieve liberation” (Article 33). Once again the strong image of national unity, using words that evoke those of the Italian CLN (National Liberation Committee) dated 1943! Indeed, what are being claimed are “sound democratic principles, foremost among them are free and fair elections” (Article 30), because Hamas “believes in cooperating with all states that support the rights of the Palestinian people” (Article 37), repeating that “the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus” (Article 20). With the pragmatism typical of bourgeois formations, what is skimmed over is the the highly debated question and source of fierce polemics (as well as of further suffering for the Palestinian proletariat) of “Two States” and/or “Destruction of Israel”, though it is stated that “Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea” (Article 20)...
It is true that, as previously said, the 2017 “Document” should replace the 1988 “Charter” (if not abrogate it). But the imprinting remains, and it is that of a religious movement which is the expression of national bourgeois and petit-bourgeois classes and which has ample recourse to a mystical-religious and reactionary (anti-proletarian and anti-communist) turn of phrase, closing in this way the just and comprehensible anger of proletarian masses who have been suffering and combatting violence and exploitation by the State of Israel for almost eighty years inside the infamous trap of nationalism for nationalism’s sake and without any real prospectives.
We can stop here with regard to Hamas’s programmatic 1988 and 2017 documents.
A couple more words should be spent, however, about the “Joint Declaration from Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command”, of 28/12/2023, i.e. just a few weeks after the direct action by Hamas against Israel of 7 October – a joint declaration that never seems to have been withdrawn and that says a lot about the subordination to Hamas of formations that present themselves as … Marxist-Leninist! Here, as well as the overriding national prospective, claiming “the legitimate national rights of our people” and the “creation of an independent State with Al Quds as its capital”, at point 3, amongst the “military tasks and direct and immediate battles to be carried out” figures “the Arab, Muslim and international commitment to reconstruction and [the] request to fraternal and friendly countries and to international and regional organisations, amongst which primarily the Arab League, the Organisation for Islamic Cooperation and the United Nations [!!!], to launch an international initiative for rebuilding what the occupation and barbaric attacks have destroyed in the Gaza Strip and to work seriously to restore life to the arteries of the Strip” (our italics). Since then eight months have passed, the genocide has never ceased, the widespread destruction has proceeded shockingly and – mat least as we write – there are no signs of it stopping soon. Nor do we doubt that “the international and regional organisations” quoted above (and above all the United Nations!) are eagerly awaiting the right moment to descend on the Strip and do profitable business – as they always have done!
Further on, at points 1 and 2 are some “suggestions to all parties in the national movement in Palestine and their components”, as well as the demand for “a global national meeting including all parties”; and the proposal is put forward to “present a national solution for Palestine based on the formation of a government of national unity emerging from wide national consensus and including all parties, to be responsible for the unification of national institutions in the occupied territories of the West Bank and the Strip, assuming responsibility for adopting projects to rebuild what the barbaric invasion has destroyed in the Strip, to restore life to our people and prepare elections”, developing and reinforcing “the Palestinian political system on democratic bases, through general elections (presidential, legislative and for the national council), according to a completely proportional system of representation, in free, just, transparent and democratic elections, with the participation of everyone, thus reconstructing internal relations on the bases and principles of the national coalition and authentic, national partnership”.
Since then, 28/12/2023, more than eight months have passed: and so, the 40,000 Palestinian proletarians killed since then (and those who will be, together with all the physical, psychological and material devastation) have died for “free, just, transparent and democratic elections”?!
***
Now, as we await developments in this dramatic situation and the publication of new documents by Hamas, let’s indulge in some political fiction. Without going as far as a scenario hypothesising the destruction of the State of Israel (and to be accomplished by whom?), an unrealistic hypothesis unless part of a complete reversal of the present international balance of power and, as a consequence, of a new world conflict with all that this implies, let us imagine that a Palestinian State finally comes into being. Apart from the foreseeable unceasing belligerence towards the “old enemy”, a belligerence at least equal to what exists now, if not worse, and therefore still with immense suffering for the Palestinian proletariat, who would be managing the rebuilding of Gaza and the West Bank: the “people”? or else rather – through their body of officials – the highly bourgeois economic-financial Palestinian élites, at present living abroad but tomorrow bloodsuckers in their own country, closely entwined (and in competition) with foul international capital? And who would the land belong to: to the “people”? to a league of cooperatives? to a modern category of agricultural entrepreneurs? to the State? and in any case wouldn’t the relations with Palestinian and immigrant farm workers be relations of exploitation? Indeed, in the new State what would be the relationship between capital and labour, if not one of ferocious exploitation of the latter by the former, with a Palestinian (and, again immigrant) proletariat subjected to the whip for “the higher good of the Nation”? And we could continue.
We know that indignant voices will be raised: “So what do you propose?”. We can only tell the Palestinian (and more generally Arab) proletarians that, independently of their membership of one organisation or another, any national prospective leads to a dead end destined to cause slaughter, suffering and destruction to drag on infinitely; that the only, difficult way out (and not in the short term) involves a radical upturning of all the prospectives adopted and upheld up to now by all the “resistant” and “nationalist” formations (with the consequences we are well aware of, especially after a year of massacres); and that the prospective of communism (with all that this involves in terms of theory and practice, daily political friction and open social struggle, right up to the class war) must be recovered and put into practice again in close contact with the international proletariat.
Whatever the political outcome of today’s terrible slaughter, the proletariat of Gaza and the West Bank (those living there, emigrants and refugees, paralysed by the cynical, sticky charity of international organisms more interested in keeping them in a state of humiliating subjugation)13 and in all the Arab countries more or less directly involved, will find themselves obliged to fight resolutely both against the State of Israel that has been oppressing them so savagely for over eighty years, and against their own bourgeoisie, which has made use of them as cannon fodder for its own national interests and international business. At the same time, once they have finally rediscovered the path of open social conflict, without compromises or limits and under the guidance of the revolutionary party, it will be up to the proletariat in the cities of the older imperialisms to attract and include that battle into the broader, general and decisive class war against the capitalist mode of production, in all its national political disguises. We are for this prospective. We work towards this objective.
A long and rocky path? Certainly. But there are no others.
NOTES
- Let’s establish this right from the start: we are well aware that in the “Palestinian movement” there coexist radical souls and different organizations, from the Islamic Jihad to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and other formations; but in these few months they have all become subordinated to Hamas in practice, sharing its prospectives and national objective. A sort of middle-eastern “Popular Front”... In this case, too, to the detriment of proletarians, it is not just a European speciality!
- See “La chimera dell’unificazione araba attraverso intese fra gli Stati [The Pipe Dream of Arab Unification through Agreements between States]”, il programma comunista, no.10/1957.
- In this regard and for the rest of the article, we refer readers to the wide-ranging book by Paola Caridi, Dalla resistenza al regime, Milan 2023, and to the article by Alessandro Mantovani, “Cosa attendersi da Hamas”, in www.rottacomunista.org. We have drawn widely on both studies.
- “L’islamismo, risposta reazionaria e imperialista dopo la chiusura del miserabile ciclo borghese in Medioriente [Islamism. A Reactionary and Imperialist Response to the Conclusion of the Miserable Bourgeois Cycle in the Middle East]”, il programma comunista, n.3/2015. It goes without saying that, in Hamas’s vision, not even real “pan-islamism” can be referred to, but instead pure and simple nationalism.
- “Manifesto to the Peoples of the East”, in To See the Dawn Baku, 1920. First Congress of the Peoples of the East, Pathfinder Press, NY 1993, pp.221-233. In particular, on p.226: “What has Britain done to Palestine? First, acting for the benefit of Anglo-Jewish capitalists, it drove Arabs from the land and to gave it to Jewish settlers. Then, trying to appease the discontent of the Arabs, it incited them against these same Jewish settlers, sowing discord, enmity, and hatred between the communities and weakening both to reinforce its own rule and command…”.
- C in particular point 11 of the “Theses on National and Colonial Questions” (published in full and with an ample commentary, in our Storia della Sinistra Comunista. 1919-1920, Edizioni il programma comunista, Milan 1972, pp.714-720).
- Again in the ’30s, when all the many problems caused by the unrelenting Stalinist counter-revolution rise to the surface, with the physical elimination of the Bolshevik “old guard”, the creation of “popular fronts” for the control of a proletariat which continued to be broadly militant, and strong ambiguity towards the situation in the Middle-East, to the consequent disillusion of Palestinian and Jewish proletarians, our comrades in emigration, gathering around the journals Promoteo and Bilan, managed to keep the helm steady and continued to point to the only revolutionary path, minority and counter-current though it was at the time. See: ““Uno sciopero in Palestina. Il problema ‘nazionale’ ebreo”, Prometeo, no.105, 17/6/1934; “Il Vicino Oriente: nuovo braciere della guerra imperialista”, Prometeo, no.149, 31/10/1937; “Le conflit Arabe-Juif en Palestine”, Bilan, nos.31 e 32/1936; “Le monde arabe en ébullition”, Bilan, no.44/1937. After careful research and study, the story of the Communist Parties in the area should also be analysed.
- “Residues and Cankers of the So-Called ‘National Issues’”, The Internationalist, n.4/2017.
- Cf The Avalon Project_Hamas Covenant 1988.mht. See also the sections “Time and Place Extent of the Islamic Resistance Movement” (“Allah is its target, the Prophet is its example and the Koran is its constitution”), “Characteristics and Independence” (“The Islamic Resistance Movement is a distinguished Palestinian movement”) and “The Universality of the Islamic Resistance Movement” (“the movement is a universal one”).
- “Palestine is the navel of the globe and the crossroad of the continents. Since the dawn of history, it has been the target of expansionists” (Article 34). Not bad as a historical analysis!
- In this regard, at risk of being truly irreverent, we can travel to another planet light-years away: “Not until women are called to participate independently not only in political life as a whole, but also in permanent and general civil service, can we speak not only of socialism but not even of full and lasting democracy. ‘Police functions’, such as assisting the infirm and abandoned children, control of hygiene in eating etc. cannot be guaranteed satisfactorily until women have obtained in practice and not only on paper juridical equality” (Lenin, “The Tasks of the Proletariat in our Revolution”, 10 April 1917 – our translation).
- C Hamas Islamic Resistance – A Document of General Principles and Policies.mht.
- To be meditated on: “Hitherto, every form of society has been based, as we have already seen, on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes. But in order to oppress a class, certain conditions must be assured to it under which it can, at least, continue its slavish existence. The serf, in the period of serfdom, raised himself to membership in the commune, just as the petty bourgeois, under the yoke of the feudal absolutism, managed to develop into a bourgeois. The modern labourer, on the contrary, instead of rising with the process of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth. And here it becomes evident, that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an over-riding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society” (Marx-Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, Chapter 1: Bourgeois and Proletarians)