It is a prescient time to review this book, The Battle for Justice in Palestine by Ali Abunimah-with the present attacks on Gaza where the world sees daily deaths and destruction. We are past 100 days of the war on Gaza which has led to the greatest losses of lives in the history of the national conflict in Israel/Palestine. This follows the October 7th Hamas attack on southern Israel where more than 1,000 people were killed and around 240 taken as hostage. Since then, more than 23,000 Palestinians and 12,000 Israelis have been killed. On January 11th, the United States and Britain targeted Houthis in Yemen with airstrikes claiming that they were safeguarding international shipping. These incidents raise the threat of a regional war where Israel is in one camp with Western countries, particularly the US and on the other side is Iran and its allies including Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and militia groups in Iraq and Syria. The Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Houthi leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi have both stated that they will continue their attacks until the assault and siege of Gaza ends. Additionally, Cornel West is gaining momentum running for president as the independent, “cease-fire” candidate.
Although The Battle for Justice in Palestine was written in 2014, the solutions and analysis Abunimah puts forward remain extremely relevant to any discussion on how to build opposition and organization against the bloodbath in Gaza. 2014 was a year of struggle in the US. It saw the Fight for 15 movement where there were victories won in LA, Massachusetts, and Chicago. 400,000 working-people participated in the People’s Climate March. Most importantly, this was a year of Ferguson and Baltimore where the murder of Mike Brown sparked protests around the country.
At the same time, this period of struggle had its significant reflection in Israel and Palestine where a number of racist attacks in Jerusalem by far-right Israeli nationalists against Palestinian workers sparked a surge in protests in Palestinian communities across Israel which was the most extensive movement among Arabs in Israel in many years. This conflict continues to demand a thoughtful analysis for anyone determined to end the bloodbath in Gaza and is especially important in the US because of the influence of US imperialism.
Abunimah argues that the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions Movement (BDS) has changed the discourse around how to achieve liberation for Palestinians:
...[I]n a way unimaginable just a few years ago, academic associations, trade unions, churches and pension funds are debating and adopting policies to isolate Israeli institutions and foreign companies that are complicit in crimes against the Palestinian people…Rather than shutting down dialogue as critics claim BDS does-it is generating more discussion and action than ever.
Abunimah dedicates two of the seven chapters to analyzing the BDS movement and the “War on Campus” where he describes Israel’s campaign, mainly through the David Project, a “four-million-dollar-per-year organization focusing on Zionist advocacy on campuses” to quell Palestinian solidarity and academic examination connected to Israel’s war crimes and occupation on college campuses. He explains that as an effect of actions connected to the BDS movement, the question of Palestine “is being redefined not as a ‘Palestinian problem,’ but as the settler-colonial problem and the problem of Zionism’s attempts to deny the rights, the history, and even the existence of the Palestinian people.”
Abunimah is correct in that the BDS movement has increased consciousness of the Palestinians’ struggle for self-determination and for an end to oppression yet there are limits on what it can win. BDS actions have made Israel’s ruling class at times feel more isolated in the world and have added pressure on it to make concessions which temporarily reduce some of the suffering of Palestinians. Abunimah explains how student walkouts at US universities have isolated Israeli officials:
One way that students all over the United States have adapted their tactics in wake of the Irvine 11 trial is to stage walkouts, rather than audible protests, when Israeli officials, especially soldiers taken on tour by Israeli advocacy groups visit their campuses.
BDS actions can diminish the profits of Israeli capitalists and corporations that are making money from the Israeli occupation which can cause Israel to make further concessions.
Yet, the dominant force to win Palestinian liberation must be mass action by Palestinians. This mass action must be organized democratically by Palestinian workers. Mass organization of Palestinian workers can be much more successful in pushing their struggle forward than boycotts from the outside. These movements need to come up with ways to broaden the struggle against the occupation.
I don’t think that all BDS campaigns should be avoided because some can help the Palestinians’ struggle for self-determination. These campaigns can and have included preventing the sending of weapons to Israel and targeting Israeli ministers when they speak abroad as is discussed by Abunimah with the example of the Irvine 11 who were forced to complete 56 hours of community service enforced by the University of California after they called out Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister for overseeing the 2008/9 attack on Gaza and committing war crimes when he came to speak.
Yet, it is important that Palestinian workers’ organizations have a role in determining what companies are boycotted as some of them affect Palestinian workers directly. As of now, numerous Palestinians advocate for boycotts inspite of the consequences. I do not advocate general boycotts of Israeli goods. Boycotts of anything Israeli not only creates divisions between Israeli workers and BDS workers, they aren’t concentrated on what tactic/strategy will be the most effective. Additionally, some goods are so ubiquitous including many things made in Israel are parts of finished products put together in other countries which make them difficult to avoid and Israeli companies often obscure their identities globally.
Lastly, working-people deciding not to purchase products tied to the occupation is hard to keep track of. Additionally, there have been some BDS campaigns run by small groups that are not always structured democratically.
In the second chapter, Abunimah asks, “Does Israel have a right to exist as a Jewish state?” He answers definitively “no” by arguing that “Israel’s ‘right to exist as a Jewish state’ is one with no proper legal or moral remedy and one whose enforcement necessitates perpetuating terrible wrongs.” Abunimah insists that any Palestinian state that existed alongside a Jewish state would be “a state on a fraction of Palestine for a fraction of the Palestinian people-would only perpetuate the denial of self-determination for the vast majority of Palestinians, no matter how ‘sovereign’ the state.” He argues for a one-state solution where “Israel recognize(s) the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and uphold international law by ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands:…recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of present-day Israel to full equality… ”
Yes, the Israeli state and the Zionist movement carry out a colonialist policy whose goal is to push aside and remove the Arab-Palestinian population and replace it with an Israeli-Jewish population as Abunimah explains. This has included stealing Palestinian land and the settlement enterprise in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Likewise, I agree with Abunimah that the Israeli ruling class views the dispossessed Palestinian masses as a threat to its rule:
From the record of every Israeli government, including those headed by Netanyahu, it would appear that decent schools for Palestinian citizens, sufficient land for housing and development, a fair shot at employment, a role in government and national decision-making, and national symbols that foster inclusion could all cause too much integration and therefore present an existential threat to the Jewish character of Israel.
Yet, the notion of a bi-national state is entirely idealistic under capitalism-the majority of both Palestinians and Israelis are not interested in conceding national independence and dividing a single state, and even if a state like this were forced upon Israelis and Palestinians, it would be based on inequality and an intense national division. The solution Abunimah puts forward effectively denies the national aspirations of both Palestinians and Israelis. Abunimah expresses this plainly, “It is important to stress here that Israeli Jews do not have a choice about their minority status within historic Palestine.” One bi-national state even if it were a socialist state can not respond to the fears, suspicions, and strong desire for national independence from both Palestinians and Israelis.
Additionally, given the history of the near extermination of Jews during the Holocaust, the oppression of Jews and the anti-Semitic threats of conservative Arab and Islamist forces in the Middle East, a solution that would require that millions of Israelis relinquish national independence will likely be seen as a way to erase Jews in the region. A bi-national state program will push the Israeli working class to show greater support for the Israeli right-wing and the notion of a “war for survival” by any means which includes the use of nuclear weapons. Furthermore, the Netanyahu government makes it explicit that it is firmly against the creation of a Palestinian state.
Abunimah’s fourth chapter is entitled, “Neoliberal Palestine.” Abunimah describes how in the early 2010s, the US had been trying to make the Palestinian Authority’s security forces “a formidable force for suppressing armed resistance to Israel as well as for internal repression.” The PA has a history of making compromises that the majority of Palestians would not find acceptable like giving up the majority of East Jerusalem. He goes on to describe a period of “easy money” where many Palestinians in the West Bank paid for “goods imported from or throughout Israel, benefiting Israeli companies and Palestinian middlemen.” This led to a debt boom in the West Bank and Gaza while the PA became increasingly dependent on foreign aid and poverty rose. Just like in the 2010s when the PA went along with neoliberalism, now they enforce violent police repression against demonstrators in the West Bank including firing against them.
In response to all of Israel’s crimes against the working-class and oppressed, it is understandable that Abunimah argues that “Israel was created as a ‘Jewish state’ by expelling Palestinians and preventing their return. It can only survive in this form by maintaining current and committing future violations of the rights of Palestinians.” It should be noted that in spite of the fact that the Israeli state had distinctive characteristics and that Marxists warned about the devastating ramifications of the Partition Plan and was against it, there are many national states that were brought into existence as a consequence of imperialism including occupations, removing populations, colonial land theft and a nationalist strategy of making the ruling national-ethnic group the majority. Yet the most significant question is how to go from a situation of persecution and theft to a solution to the key problems in order to create a democratic and equal society.
The answer must start with a struggle to get rid of all manifestations of prejudice and persecution in society and for a socialist world which will prevail over all the ethnic and national conflicts. Abunimah agrees that Palestinian statehood on its own can’t guarantee Palestinian economic sovereignty:
The harsh realities of Palestinian and Israeli economic interdependence under conditions of Israeli domination and colonial rule should lead us to conclude that ‘independence; and ‘statehood’ by themselves cannot offer Palestinians real economic sovereignty, democratic control of resources, and dignified, sustainable livelihoods.
In the here and now, we must fight for a program that includes the right for existence and self-determination which will be expressed in two socialist states with equal rights including complete rights for minorities. The two states would work together of their own volition as part of a confederation of socialist states in the region. The question of what territory would constitute each state would be determined through democratic processes led by large social movements. This program can unite Palestinians and Israelis to take part in a shared struggle against Israeli capitalism.