The situation has always exceeded that view.
From its beginnings on October 7th, Al-Aqsa Flood was conceived as initiating a new phase in a struggle that encompassed the entirety of the Arab nation. Mohammed Deif, Commander of the Al-Qassam Brigades, declared: “Oh, our brothers in the Islamic resistance in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, today is the day when your resistance merges with the resistance of your brothers in Palestine. It is time for the Arab resistance to unite.” It is important to note here that, apart from in Lebanon, the resistance struggles mentioned by Deif were predominantly struggles against the US—and, to an extent, Saudi Arabia—rather than ‘Israel’. Of course, the structural links between the US and ‘Israel’ have always been present in a system of world imperialism under US hegemony. Likewise, Saudi’s keenness to act as a proxy for British and US interests in the region, as well as its moves towards ‘normalising’ relations with ‘Israel’, are not new developments. But it took Al-Aqsa Flood, and the Resistance in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen answering its call, to make this mean something politically. On October 14th, the Popular Mobilisation Forces, promised to “carry out all our duties towards the Palestinians, whether at the level of aid or at the military level.” They also asserted that “what the resistance is doing is a response to the crimes of the occupation, and America is an essential partner of that occupation”, grounding the necessity of intensified resistance to the US in Iraq as an act of solidarity with Palestine. Deif also called for “mobilisation towards Palestine” from “our brothers in Algeria, Morocco, Jordan, Egypt, and the rest of the Arab countries.” Iraqi actions in solidarity with Palestine have targeted both US forces and targets within ‘Israel’, particularly the port of Eilat, most recently on July 9th.
This merging of the Resistance, from Palestine to Iraq and Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen, has been a crucial effect of Al-Aqsa Flood, and merits far greater attention, particularly with regard to the Resistance in Iraq and Syria and the struggle against the US, which has almost totally passed by the media of the imperial core. Al-Aqsa Flood has also awakened other parts of the Arab nation, from Morocco to Bahrain—whose Islamic Resistance have recently hit the ‘Israeli’ port of Eilat—to Jordan, described by the Al-Qassam Brigades as “the most important Arab Front.” From late March to late April, Jordan saw substantial daily protests in solidarity with Palestine,
with pan-Arabist and anti-normalisation slogans (“And we’ll uproot normalisation and the zionist project from every inch of our Arab land”) featuring alongside slogans in support of PIJ and, more often, Hamas. These protests led to considerable instability, and faced major repression. Indeed, the level of repression demonstrates the structural importance for the regime, given its regional role in world imperialism, of complicity with ‘Israel’. Popular pressure has led to the release of at least some, but by no means all, of those imprisoned during the crackdowns.
The rejection of normalisation has crystallised in opposition to the Wadi Araba treaty, especially its clauses forbidding Jordan from stopping exports to ‘Israel’. The necessity of opposition to the treaty, and these clauses in particular, has been stressed by the PFLP, as well as some Arab analysts. Ahmed Alqarout, reporting for Mondoweiss, noted in February that “Jordan has a critical mass of Palestinian citizens, and yet it is the only country through which such a [trade] corridor can feasibly pass”, and, as such, “pro-Palestine activists in Jordan should… focus their efforts on severing Jordan’s longstanding trade agreement with Israel” as a means of exerting popular pressure on both the Jordanian regime and the ‘Israeli’ war machine. By May 4th, he was referring to “the land blockade in Jordan”, as well as a “regional pivot away from Israel”.
Land Day saw a joint statement from various socialist and communist groups and parties from across the Arab nation (including the PFLP and DFLP, as well as Morocco’s Democratic Working Path Party and various Jordanian parties), condemning the repression of popular protests and movements in Morocco, Jordan, Egypt, and Bahrain. Significantly, the statement was also signed by CODESA: the Sahrawi Association of Human Rights Defenders; the PFLP have long expressed solidarity with Sahrawi struggle against “the treasonous monarchic regime in Morocco”. In many ways, Morocco and Jordan face a shared political and geopolitical reality: two “monarchic regimes” for whom the integration of the country into imperialism, including support for ‘Israel’, is reliant on the insulation of the regime from the popular masses.
Al-Aqsa Flood has reconfigured the politics of the Arab nation. By interpellating the Arab popular masses as subjects of a common struggle, it has made solidarity with Palestine a political factor that the various regimes cannot discount. Normalisation has received a significant, perhaps fatal, blow. This was clearly one of the motivations behind Al-Aqsa Flood—however much the hack discourse of the imperial core might seek to deny the political rationality of Hamas, and the Palestinian Resistance more broadly.
To be free and not bargain is to resist politicide. Bargaining with the oppressor not only acknowledges their power, but involves calculating, selfish, anti-collective values. We have all made our accommodations, our bargains with oppressive power.
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Their wager was that, even in anti-democratic regimes, the awakening of the popular masses can have impacts. In this, they have been proven correct. And this awakening entails not only a critique of the various regimes’ corruption, but also a self-critique of the popular masses’ previous acceptance of this. The moral and practical reproach of the Palestinian peoples’ resistance and steadfastness is proving transformative. A key Jordanian slogan has been “Gaza is free and does not bargain”. To be free and not bargain is to resist politicide. Bargaining with the oppressor not only acknowledges their power, but involves calculating, selfish, anti-collective values.
On the terms of Daqqah’s argument, the slogan affirms the capacity of the Palestinian people to frustrate the grubby concessions made by negotiators. It ought to remind us that we have all made our accommodations, our bargains with oppressive power.
Yemen! Yemen! Make us proud! Turn another ship around!
According to Khalil Nasrallah, reporting for the Cradle, the US has made “an astounding set of private… promises” to Ansar Allah “behind closed doors”—to include the lifting of economic sanctions and blockades, the withdrawal of foreign military forces, a prisoner exchange deal, and the removal of the group from the US State Department’s ‘Specially Designated Global Terrorist’ list—in return for the cessation of operations in the Red Sea. The US position seems to amount, in Nasrallah’s words to: “Stop your Gaza support, and we will give you everything.” This is a striking demonstration of Yemen’s power; but still more striking is that the US will not give up on the one thing that, explicitly, could make all of this go away: the blockade of, and infliction of famine on, Gaza.
There is huge popular support within Yemen for Ansar Allah’s actions, and for Palestine solidarity more widely, with regular mobilisations of well over a million people. Ansar Allah’s own hegemony is secured to a significant degree through its capacity to deliver pro-Palestinian consequences; these actions are not an imposition on and against the Yemeni people, but in direct accordance with their will. At the most ridiculous point of denial, Keir Starmer has rejected what he calls “claims” that Ansar Allah’s actions are “somehow linked to the conflict in Gaza”, when this they have stated, explicitly and repeatedly, that Gaza is the only reason that they’re doing it. The absurdity of this should be evident even to those who are not connoisseurs of Resistance News Network, but then again, the sheer scale of the support for Palestine among the people of Yemen is completely obscured from Western audiences. If Ansar Allah are to remain politically relevant, they have no choice but to respond. But, as with Hamas, the idea that there is any rationality to Ansar Allah is largely refused in the media discourses. This, of course, bears on the ways in which politicians in the imperial core respond to Ansar Allah’s actions: if there is a rationality to them—if they are not turning ships around merely for a laugh, or as an emanation of some set of backward beliefs that are utterly unintelligible to ‘the civilised’, or because Iran told them to—then surely they can (and should) be negotiated with. This is the reality that the West is desperate to avoid.
A telling symptom of this avoidance can be found in an interview with their spokesperson, Abdelmalek al-Ejri, conducted by Robert F Worth for the Atlantic As well as repeating the demonstrably false line that Yemeni operations in the Red Sea are only “ostensibly in defence of Palestine” and “may not have done much for Gaza”, the interview drips with orientalist condescension. Worth is shocked at al-Ejri’s punctuality and his appearance: so much so that his reflections take on a bizarre tone, like a racist fever dream:
I was a little surprised by his appearance; I had half expected to see a swaggering tribesman of the kind I used to meet in Yemen—mouth bulging with khat leaves, a shawl over his shoulders and a curved dagger in his belt. Instead, [al-Ejri] was a neat-looking fellow in a blue-tartan blazer and a button-down shirt.
Like any political group, Ansar Allah have goals, and they act to achieve them—this should, in theory, allow for discussion. By denying their rationality, and therefore precluding any possibility of negotiation, the politicians and press of the imperial core seek to obscure that Ansar Allah have one very clear primary goal, which imperialism will not negotiate on: ending the blockade and famine in Gaza.
Ansar Allah are finding ways to exert leverage in support of Palestine, against genocide, when almost nobody else is. After the discovery of mass graves at Nasser medical complex, they responded by escalating attacks on shipping. Isn’t this the only plausible moral response to the discovery of mass graves under a hospital?
If one is against genocide, how could one be against this? This is why, at almost every London demonstration in support of Palestine, we chant Yemen! Yemen! Make us proud! Turn another ship around!.
The media’s commitment to ignoring Resistance News Network also obscures just how badly the British and US action against Yemen is going—even when the US President himself openly admits it (“Are they stopping the Houthis? No. Are they gonna continue? Yes.”). After the first day of attacks on Yemen, there has been little coverage of US and British bombings, but these are ongoing. From late January to mid-March, Resistance News Network featured daily reports of attacks by “American-British warplanes”.
From late March, numbers dropped to about two attacks a week, but over the last six weeks, it appears that the number of attacks has started to increase again. On May 31st, American-British strikes martyred 16 in Hodeidah. A statement issued by the PFLP said this massacre shows
that the United States leads an aggressive colonial alliance against the Arab peoples, deluded in thinking it can impose its hegemony on the region unchallenged, affirming that the resistance forces and their allies stand at the forefront defending their peoples, nation, and just causes.
However, for all the regularity of these strikes, Ansar Allah continue to effectively target ships bound for ‘Israel’, as well as British and US ships. For British news and social media to report on this would not even require them to pay attention to Resistance News Network. All of it is covered by the incident reports of the official British state agency, ‘United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations’. It is particularly ironic that Resistance News Network regularly broadcasts UKMTO reports (most recently an attack on a ship on July 9th), and not long prior to that the sinking of the Tutor ship, but the British media never does.
The Palestinian Resistance is more than just Hamas.
It should already be clear that “the Israel-Hamas” war is a spatially and politically untenable designation. There are, as we have seen, various Resistance groups participating in Al-Aqsa Flood. On October 28th, leading figures in Hamas, PIJ, the PFLP, the DFLP, and the PFLP-General Command convened in Beirut, later issuing a statement which affirmed that
Adhering to national unity is a main pillar in confronting the zionist war of genocide against our people, as well as rejecting the enemy’s attempts to divide our people or monopolise any part of it. We stress unifying efforts and closing ranks in this fateful battle.
December 28th saw a similar meeting, also in Beirut, in which (per a joint statement issued after the meeting):
The attendees agreed on the need to confront the consequences of the barbaric war on our people with a unified strategic and combative struggle, reintroducing our cause as a national liberation cause for a people under occupation.
What is clear from these statements is that, on a classical—that is, Leninist
—understandings of hegemony, there is a broad and pluralist Resistance bloc, within which there are significant differences, but also a sufficient community of interest in the national liberation struggle to allow for a coherence. Coherence, moreover, in the classical theory, requires hegemonic leadership—a group with the capacity to advance the shared interests of potentially divergent elements. The Resistance bloc is cohered under and through the hegemony of Hamas.
This hegemony is not secured to any great degree by coercion, but by consent and participation in a shared struggle, and by Hamas’s capacity to lead it. A bloc of this sort does not leave any of its elements unchanged, and it is very clear to see that one effect of Hamas’s leadership of the bloc has been a marked shift in certain of its own positions and attitudes. Hamas’s 1988 charter, with its often noted antisemitism and religious particularism, offered a very poor basis for cohering a national liberation struggle. The charter had an essentially anti-collective and anti-national character; it opened no possibility for an alliance, even an alliance led by Hamas. Its basic conceptions, moreover, offered little guarantee against incorporation into the ‘Israeli’ apparatus. On the other hand, the left-nationalist conceptions of the PFLP—from the assessments of the enemies of Palestinian liberation and the centrality of the organic unity of world imperialism and ‘Israel’ found in 1969’s Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine, to its contemporary line treating the US as “fully complicit in the genocide” and emphasising that “the Al-Aqsa Flood battle revealed the retreat of the American project in the region”—not only offer a stronger analysis of the situation, but can bring together a wide set of groups in the “heroic epic” of the Palestinian people. These conceptions, moreover, can situate the national epic in a regional and even global context. This rigorously anti-imperialist orientation, which emphasises the structuring and enabling role of the US, has not been confined to the PFLP. It is also notable in many of the statements of PIJ. Andreas Malm has stressed this tendency in PIJ—especially in its 2018 political document, which conceptualises emphasises the “organic links” between “settler colonial” ‘Israel’ and “the forces of Western colonialism”. Hamas’s statements during Al-Aqsa Flood frequently condemn the US; to take one example among many, a 8th February statement which insisted that “the key to stability in the region is for the US administration to seek to stop the aggression on the Gaza Strip, lift the oppression from our Palestinian people”.
This is not to say Hamas’s shift has been cynical. They have chosen leadership of a national liberation struggle, and acted on a national liberation conception. In that choice, the antisemitic elements, which have regularly been used in an attempt to justify the genocide of the Palestinian people have necessarily been sidelined. It is important to note the total absence of antisemitic arguments from the Palestinian Resistance groups in their statements. In view of this, it would appear that one function of hacks in the US or Britain ignoring such statements is to shore up the pretexts for ‘Israel’’s actions—justifications that would collapse if any serious attention was paid to what the Resistance groups actually say.
Having grasped the character of the Resistance as a hegemonic bloc—something which requires acknowledgement that the Resistance is more than Hamas—it becomes possible to notice points of contradiction that are currently non-antagonistic, but which could potentially turn antagonistic. Surely an intellectually serious media would want to explore this? Indeed, an intellectually serious media that was opposed to the Resistance would likely have a strong interest in inflaming and exploiting the potential lines of fracture. It is clear from the statements of the Resistance groups that attempts are being made to fracture the unity of the bloc, especially around priorities in the ceasefire negotiations; it is equally clear that these have been unsuccessful. PIJ have recently asserted that “the occupation’s goal to cause discord among the resistance ranks has failed”. Likewise, the PFLP have stated that “the movements [Hamas, PIJ and the PFLP] are united politically… just as they are united militarily in the field.”
It should also be noted that Hamas’s capacity to secure consent from the Resistance is ultimately dependent on its capacity to deliver consequences, and that this may well have been a motivation for initiating Al-Aqsa Flood. The centrality of the prisoner question is significant here, firstly because the liberation of prisoners is a major priority for the Palestinian people; and secondly because, until relatively recently it was not as major a priority for Hamas as for some of the other Resistance groups. An understanding of hegemony can help us make sense of positions taken by Hamas which do not appear to be in its immediate interests. There has been, among the Resistance groups, a particular focus on certain prisoners who are also political leaders, notably Anwar Sa’adat and Marwan Barghouti, whose freeing would reconfigure Palestinian politics, especially against Abbas and the contemptible PA. Hamas, in particular, have emphasised the importance of liberating Barghouti, as well as prisoners from non-Hamas factions more generally. They have done this even though polling suggests Barghouti is the only person who could beat Ismail Haniyeh in Palestinian presidential elections. This is not necessarily a sign of Hamas’s benignity, still less of political naiveté. It is about how hegemony works. The securing of leadership through consent over the broad bloc requires that Hamas represent the Resistance and the Palestinian people as a whole, and are able to deliver political-military consequences for them.
That the Resistance is a bloc including various political groups under the hegemony of Hamas, and that hegemony does not leave Hamas untouched, also suggests one set of limits (among many) to the abject approaches of neo-‘decent left’ formations, such as ‘Left Renewal’, whose statement asserts that “most leftists in South West Asia and North Africa (SWANA) [are] confronted more directly with Islamism’s reactionary politics than leftists in other parts of the world… Leftists from outside SWANA should listen to them”. Are the (notably secular) PFLP not leftists? Are they outside (the awkward formulation) “SWANA”? But of course, ‘Left Renewal’ aren’t interested in listening to anybody, let alone Palestinian Marxists. Their interest is to insist upon the constant application, from above, of a model of the absolute primacy of class politics; the “renewal” they call for specifically requires what they call “a renewal of class politics”. What ‘Left Renewal’ are saying is that Palestinian Marxists are deficient in international solidarity by not prioritising the class struggle, or initiating a struggle against Hamas, while they are being subjected to a genocide. But if the Palestinian left prioritise national liberation over class struggle in the conjuncture, as they clearly do, should we not listen to them, rather than mechanically apply a class struggle as always and purely the primary contradiction model?
Given the Trotskyist formation of many of those involved in ‘Left Renewal’, it may be useful to revisit the Old Man himself on this subject. In his biography of Stalin (which was attempting to complete at the time of his assassination in 1940), we find Trotsky in full agreement with Lenin’s 1915 analysis of the imperialist character of World War I. Trotsky came to this position later: in the article, Lenin describes him as one of the “helpless satellites of the social chauvinists”. In Stalin, having reflected on his position, Trotsky writes:
the struggle of the oppressed peoples for national unity and independence, on the one hand, it prepares favourable conditions of development for their own use, and on the other, it strikes a blow against imperialism. Hence, in part, the conclusion that in a war between a civilised imperialist democratic republic and the backward barbarian monarchy of a colonial country, the socialists will be entirely on the side of oppressed country, notwithstanding its monarchy, and against the oppressor country, notwithstanding its ‘democracy’.
The Palestinian Resistance are a long way from a “backward barbarian monarchy”, and ‘Israel’ is a long way from a “civilised imperialist democratic republic”, but even if we were to accept ‘Left Renewal’’s explicit characterisation of Hamas as barbarian (and indeed its reduction of the Resistance to Hamas), and its implicit characterisation of ‘Israel’ as civilised, the correct Leninist – and indeed Trotskyist position – should be clear.
These questions bear on the current debate between Malm and Matan Kaminer. In Kaminer’s account, Hamas (throughout his essay, Kaminer tends to reduce the Resistance to Hamas, obscuring the internal plurality of the Resistance bloc) are “counter-systemic but neither internationalist nor revolutionary.” But even if one accepts this characterisation, for the left in the imperial core, it is sufficient for a Resistance to be counter-systemic. We have no right to demand anything more. In the imperial core, the demands imposed upon us by internationalism are not demands which we have any right to impose upon Hamas, or any of the Palestinian Resistance. These are questions we must pose of ourselves. Are we—and this includes the left in ‘Israel’—internationalist enough to call for the “defeat of our own governments”? Are we internationalist enough to call for the defeat of imperialism by the “counter-systemic”? Can we be more than the “helpless satellites of the social chauvanists”?
Are we internationalist enough to call for the “defeat of our own governments”? Are we internationalist enough to call for the defeat of imperialism by the “counter-systemic”? Can we be more than the “helpless satellites of the social chauvanists”?
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The debate between Kaminer and Malm takes place substantially on the terrain of ecology: Malm’s first essay is entitled ‘The Destruction of Palestine Is the Destruction of the Earth’, and Kaminer treats Hamas as an anti-ecological movement because of they are backed by “fossil fuel money from Qatar” and the assumed likelihood that a sovereign Hamas would “eagerly join their neighbours in the bonanza of unsustainable extraction.”
On the one hand, this is little more than a puerile gotcha, a facile piece of “non-political ecology”. On the other, it is indicative of a colonial mindset — as Max Ajl puts it, “accusations of ecological mismanagement and extractivism soften up Western public opinion for the 21st century diplomacy and coup d’etats”
— and a profound commitment to the imperial mode of living. The Palestinians have a right to sovereign development (development for their own use). The question for the left in the imperial core is this: what is the ecological struggle against the main enemy at home, that does not, on Ajl’s terms, lock in underdevelopment?
Malm’s conclusion — with which Kaminer takes issue — is that:
Limiting, stopping, reversing the destruction of Palestine and planet therefore require, as a logically unassailable condition, the destruction of fossil fuel infrastructure and racial colonies – not necessarily their physical destruction; but necessarily their decommissioning and repurposing, in the cases where that is possible, and where not, on the path to their abolition, yes, their physical destruction.
This is true, as far as it goes, but I want to suggest an “ecological-Leninist”
extension of Malm’s argument. Following Jason W. Moore, we should assert that imperialism is a way of organising nature (that it is a “gangster operation in the web of life”). This conception goes beyond Malm’s limited model of finding articulations between supposedly separate terms — in the essays in question, between ‘the Earth’ and ‘Palestine’; in much of his other work, ‘ecology’ and ‘class struggle’. Once we move beyond Malm’s dualism, it becomes easier to see how a counter-systemic movement functions as an ecological movement, regardless of whether or not they might exploit fossil fuels in future. The alternative, as Raymond Williams argues of non-political ecology, offers us nothing more than simply “calling upon the leaders of the precise social orders which have created the devastation to reverse their own processes… to go against the precise interests, the precise social relationships, which have produced their leadership.” The Palestinian Resistance, by contrast, represent a direct attack on the social and international orders that have created the devastation. It must be supported as such.
The possibility of Hamas exploiting gas fields is not the only time Kaminer’s argument runs on evasive hypotheticals. He laments “the fact that the Palestinian resistance is not being led by a secular, democratic force such as the PFLP”. One response to this would be to note the influence of PFLP perspectives within the broad Resistance bloc (including on Hamas), and in providing an analytical frame that is, at the very least, far less useful to antisemitism than Hamas’s previous and now rejected perspectives. Another would be to note, that if one is willing to honour the PFLP by lamenting that they don’t lead the Resistance, one must also honour them enough to acknowledge that they accept the hegemony of Hamas, rather than making the basic error of collapsing a whole bloc into its hegemonic element. Ultimately, Kaminer’s position is little better than if my grandmother had wheels…
The Palestinian Resistance is the Palestinian Resistance as it is now: one cannot posit a grandmother turned into a bicycle in order to “maintain a critical distance towards [the Resistance’s] leadership while remaining unwavering in our support for Palestinian liberation”. One supports this Resistance or one does not support Palestinian liberation. “The conditions themselves call out: Hic Rhodus, hic salta!”
Ceasefire Negotiations
In negotiations towards a possible ceasefire, Hamas’s hegemonic role is extremely apparent: they attend the meetings with Qatari and Egyptian mediators, and take any proposals back to the Resistance as a whole for approval. As their statements during the latest round of negotiations show, Hamas clearly want a ceasefire—but not at any cost. ‘Israel’, conversely does not want a ceasefire at all; it still wants revenge, and has not accomplished politicide through genocide. In official statements, Ismail Haniyeh has re-emphasised the “positive and flexible positions” of the Resistance, and claimed that it is Netanyahu “wants to invent perpetual excuses for continuing the aggression and expanding the scope of the conflict, sabotaging the efforts made through mediators and various parties.” Whilst the ‘Israeli’ position in negotiations has broadly been to demand the return of the hostages in order for them to even consider a cessation in aggression (with no guarantees that they would actually stop the killing), what Hamas and the Resistance are seeking is a genuine ceasefire (which would include the return of hostages): “a phased agreement that ends the aggression, ensures withdrawal, and achieves a serious prisoner exchange deal.” As the PFLP put it: “the goal of the negotiations from the American-zionist perspective is to wrest the card of zionist prisoners from the grip of the resistance and then return to completing the project of displacement and elimination, a matter that the resistance cannot allow to pass.” The Resistance is united around these demands, despite efforts to fracture that unity. There are, of course, some differences of tone in the statements issued by the PFLP, PIJ, and Hamas, but that is as one would expect in a bloc constituted by pluralism and shared struggle. Indeed, it may well be the case that Hamas would have accepted some of sort of arrangement without a genuine ceasefire guarantee, were it not for the discipline imposed upon them by the Resistance as a whole, and, more significantly, the Palestinian people, who will render any bad agreements impossible to implement.
Of course, it is necessary to note that ceasefire negotiations are taking place in a context where, on the one hand, ‘Israel’ is losing, but on the other, it retains the capacity to inflict famine. Famine, therefore, is central to ‘Israel’’s strategy, and this determines both the almost total restriction of aid, and the massacres of those trying to receive what small amount there is. It has been impossible to subdue the Palestinian people and Resistance by military means; that element of genocide as a means to an end has failed. Now genocide through famine towards the same end is being attempted. Famine is being used to try to break the Resistance, to force them to accept terms which allow for any relief. This of course shapes the negotiating position of Hamas and the Resistance. For Hamas to seek compromise with ‘Israel’ to end a famine would by no means be conformism or cowardice; it would be distinct from contemptible bargaining.
The ceasefire negotiations are also shaped by proximity to elements of the Arab big bourgeoisie, especially elements of the Qatari state. Hamas’s leadership-in-exile is, of course, based in Qatar, and this might exert some additional pressures on the situation. Yemen’s Minister for Information, Dhaifallah Al-Shami, has posed the question of Hamas’s possible expulsion from Qatar (“I doubt that Qatar would decide to expel the leadership of Hamas from its territory. We open our doors to all fighters in Sanaa”), which might suggest that such pressures exist, though nobody else has mentioned such a possibility. The role of Qatar in the negotiations is consistently stressed by Hamas, and rarely mentioned by any of the other Resistance groups.
An agreement negotiated, in whole or in part, by Qatar would be a major diplomatic coup for the emirate. Countering these tendencies is the fact that the military struggle in Gaza necessarily elevates Hamas’s military leadership (who are based in Gaza) over those leaders currently based in Qatar. On the other hand, the negotiation process tends to centre those closer to Qatar—or would, were it not for the counter-pressures of the other Resistance groups. For the moment, subordination to Qatar seems less decisive than Hamas’s need to embody national and collective values.
The West Bank resists!
Within much of the pro-Palestinian discourse in Britain and the US, the West Bank largely appears as a counter to ‘Israeli’ justifications of violence: “there’s no Hamas in the West Bank,” no ‘Israeli’ hostages, yet there is still substantial violence and repression. This line entails a twofold risk.
Firstly, it is hard to disarticulate this argument from the implication that there is at least some justification for ‘Israeli’ violence in places where there is a Hamas presence. There is not.
Secondly, it effaces the extent of resistance in the West Bank (an effacement further enabled by the identification of the entire Resistance with Hamas; thus no Hamas equals no resistance), treating it as a place of passive suffering: West Bank Palestinians are constructed (to borrow Kanafani’s terms) as “heroic” but “paralysed” (or as having been subject to an effective politicide). In actuality, there is substantial fighting and resistance in the West Bank, including from groups who have far less presence in Gaza, as well as more spontaneous resistance.
It is important to note, against the narratives of helpless passivity, that there would be no need for ‘Israel’ to attempt politicide if there was no resistant power. A force does not go out of its way to destroy the arch in Jenin unless that symbol terrifies it. In other words, some of the IOF’s sadism and attempt to wipe out national symbols would be unintelligible if there was not a resistance in the West Bank that was a genuine threat. The Resistance groups regularly report the IOF being forced to withdraw (though they often return) recently in both Tulkarem and Jenin. The West Bank and Al-Quds has resisted—both in solidarity with Gaza (example), and against its own oppression—and this resistance goes back beyond the beginning of Al-Aqsa Flood. The West Bank always resists.
This also undermines a central exculpatory narrative: that ‘settlers’ (those who occupy land outside the 1967 ‘borders’ of ‘Israel’) are to blame for the violence in the West Bank, and that this violence, unlike that in Gaza, is unjustified. This argument is frequently rehearsed within ‘Israeli’ liberalism (such as it exists). It is also relied upon by those in Britain and the US who attempt to adopt a pro-Palestinian perspective but on the terms of liberal Zionism, and even by some of Israel’s backers – Britain, for example, is banning entry to “extremist settlers…[who] are undermining security and stability for Israelis and Palestinians”—as if the British border could ever be an instrument of justice.
The exculpatory narrative insists that, yes, there is real injustice in the West Bank—however, this is down to settlers: bad apples who have little to do with the ‘Israeli’ state, and may even (as the British legislation states) be acting against its interests. Even when it is admitted that the IOF have been involved—that settlers have “teamed up with soldiers”—the violence, ultimately, is presented as having been being initiated by settlers, in a relation to soldiers that somehow circumvents senior IOF command. There is also an analogous argument on the political level—a line taken up by Haaretz and praised in Britain—that the ‘Israeli’ state, an essentially benign or neutral instrument, has been taken over by a “settler government”, and this explains the injustice. In actuality, all the violence and repression in the West Bank originates from the ‘Israeli’ state; settlers are the bearers of this state logic, not the initiators of violence. Additionally, given the 76 year-long Nakba and the broad support across ‘Israeli’ society for genocidal intensification, to posit the state as having been corrupted by settlers is historically and politically erroneous, an attempt to salvage the good old ‘Israel’.
The extent of fighting and incursions in the West Bank represents far more than settler-initiated violence. It would not be possible without the cohered capacity of the state for focused violence. Nor would it be possible without the complicity of the Palestinian Authority, world imperialism’s security sub-contractor in the West Bank. As well as the violence and incursions, there are also the continuing abductions—including of Palestinian captives freed in the November truce—sometimes with the help of the “traitorous” PA. The PA have also killed Resistance fighters in the West Bank. The PFLP have argued that the PA’s collaboration with ‘Israel’ “has turned the Authority’s Security Forces into a security guard for the occupation and settlers.”
The traitorous PA is key to understanding the situation, both in terms of its actions, and how this (widely shared) sense of its treachery impacts the politics of the Resistance groups. It is particularly relevant to the various “day after” proposals, most of which involve the imposition of arrangements on Gaza, usually under the authority of the PA (sometimes with Mahmoud Abbas replaced, sometimes not), and with complete indifference to the popular will. If politicide, as Daqqah argues, aims to destroy precisely those capacities which stop negotiators enforcing concessions on the Palestinian people—rendering them, as Kanafani puts it, “heroic” but “paralysed”—the history of these types of proposals reveals them as always politicidal. They are founded on, the intended liquidation of the Palestinian Resistance, and the involvement of various regional power—today, Turkey, Qatar, the UAE, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt—working on behalf, in the last instance, of world imperialism.
The PA gains its functional legitimacy not as a representative of popular sovereignty, but in its role as a sub-contractor for external powers, including (but not only) ‘Israel’. The role of Abbas here is simultaneously contemptible and irrelevant, and the Resistance groups focus their critique far more on the PA as a whole than on Abbas as an (admittedly disgraceful) individual. The treachery of the PA is a particular target of the PFLP, but all the Resistance groups share this view, emphasising the PA’s in its imprisoning of resistant Palestinians on behalf of the occupation. Indeed, the stated purpose of the Resistance News Prisoners channel is to distribute “news and media about our heroic prisoners in zionist and PA prisons”. Ahmad Sa’adat, the General Secretary of the PFLP, was held in a PA prison for four years before being abducted to ‘Israel’ with the full complicity of the PA – and the British and US prison guards, who abandoned their posts just before he was seized.
As we have seen, describing the situation as “the Israel-Hamas war”, or keeping the critical focus solely on Gaza, not only denies the anti-imperialist struggles across the Arab nation (and Palestine’s place within them), but also works to conceptually separate Gaza from Al-Quds, from the West Bank, from the oppression of Palestinians within what is currently called ‘Israel’ (so serious that even the British border recognises it as such), and from Palestinian refugees across the world, forced into multi-generational exile, and prevented from returning to their homeland. But the Palestinian struggle is one struggle—one struggle on many fronts.
Partly as a result of ‘Israel’’s inability to achieve its war aims (losing in Gaza, losing on the front with Lebanon…), and its desperation to achieve something, the West Bank has become a major front of that struggle, with ‘Israeli’ violence escalating and intensifying. On April 21st, the IOF committed a massacre in Nour Shams refugee camp (which they had already attacked in mid-October), with images published “which could be mistaken for those from Gaza, [and] testify to the fact that our enemy is the same entity built on the genocide and ethnic cleansing of our people across all our occupied lands.” A large number of fighters from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade were killed attempting to defend Nour Shams.
Two weeks later, on May 4th, they committed another massacre in Deir Al-Ghusun, north of the occupied city of Tulkarem, in which, per a PFLP statement:
the occupation deliberately bombed the besieged house, assassinated three young men, and mutilated and defiled their bodies in a cowardly crime that confirms the established zionist doctrine of revenge to raise the morale of its soldiers after the successive defeats they are exposed to in Gaza and other fronts.
The last two months in the West Bank have seen not only a brutal intensification of violence, but the deployment of IOF techniques of the sort they continue to use in Gaza. These are the techniques of genocide.
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Then, on May 21st, the IOF committed a massacre in Jenin. In this massacre, as they have repeatedly done in Gaza, ‘Israel’ deliberately targeted doctors and medical infrastructure, a tactic which, as the PFLP point out, “is now finding room to expand…in every inch of occupied Palestine due to American cover and international silence.”
The sheer extent of destruction in Nour Shams, and the targeting of medical personnel and infrastructure in Jenin, attest to the fact that the last two months in the West Bank have seen not only a brutal intensification of violence, but the deployment of IOF techniques of the sort they continue to use in Gaza. These are the techniques of genocide. This intensification is obviously quantitative, but it is also, ominously, qualitative: a shift away from the politicidal degradation analysed by Daqqah—the unified effect of a chaotic assemblage of fragmentation, humiliation and constant, ordinary violence—and towards the organised techniques of annihilation. Ctd....
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