The intensification of Israeli settlers’ attacks on Palestinians, including children – which we have witnessed in these last months and against one of the main sacred places for Muslims, the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem has accelerated an ongoing process moving towards a new peoples’ uprising dubbed “Intifada of the knives”.
Faced with the complicity of the governments all over the world regarding this unsustainable situation and the betrayal of the traditional leadership, the historic Palestinian resistance takes on a new form.
Daily humiliated, forced off their land and dehumanized, the Palestinians respond challenging the settlers (currently at the most aggressive phase of land occupation by Israel) the best they can. They fight against the world’s fourth military power, using kitchen knives and razors. About 40 Palestinians lost their lives in such confrontation as against 10 occupants. The movement shifts further: young people stand up and fight also on the occupied Palestinian territories since 1948, which are part of Israel today.
As the revolutionary Leon Trotsky asserts, revolution is the outcome of a process. A new Intifada – some call it the Third one – (the first one 1987-1993 and the second in 2000-2004) while others (who consider the revolution from 1936 to 1939) – regard it as the fourth and it has been germinating for quite a few years now.
The current revolt was spurred by revolutions in the Arab world and had its foreshadowing in 2011. The demonstrations for the right to return, on May 15 [1] of that year were a milestone of that trajectory. That movement was articulated by activists of the Egyptian revolution on social networks. It began simultaneously in the Palestinian territories and on the borders of the Arab countries with Israel, driven by the youth – and was violently repressed.
Later on, apparently, a new uprising remained on hold, keeping the pace of the ups and downs in the Arab world. In the interest of its stability, Israel has recently signed up an agreement of cooperation with Russia in pursuit of hedging off the Syrian revolution that, in spite of the counterrevolution coordinated by imperialism – with the aid of Russia and Iran -, threatens not to give up and to overthrow the dictator Bashar Al Assad.
The process there has been going on for four years and a half and has now become deeper, unleashing a vicious civil war. Israel and its direct and indirect allies are doing their best to prevent the victory of this revolution for it can alter the local geopolitical scenario, forcing it to shift towards a free Palestine.
Powerful enemies in check
So, it’s evident that the situation in Palestine can’t be analysed without having a look at the Arab world. The tyrants ruling the Arab countries guarantee Israel’s security. The very same powerful enemies that caused the defeat of the 1936-1939 revolution against the British mandate and the Zionist colonisation, exposed by the Palestinian revolutionary fighter, Ghasan Kanafi in his piece of work The Palestinian Revolt of 1936-1939 still holds true: the Palestinian bourgeoisie, the Arab regimes and Zionism/imperialism.
The new Intifada is beginning to gain solid contours and is due to challenge and expose such enemies. This may represent an ascent of the revolutionary process in the Arab world (great demonstrations in various cities in Jordan on October 16 for the end of the agreements with Israel have been a signal).
This current people’s uprising differs from the previous ones that occurred in 1987 and 1993 for it occur without any leader, spontaneously, and is essentially produced by the youth allied to the working class. About 40% are women.
A treacherous leadership
For all practical purposes, Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the collaborationist Palestinian National Authority (PNA) is trying to hold the wave back, but in his rhetoric he tries to tune in some way with the unrest and the lack of prospects that prevail among Palestinians.
In accordance with this logic, on 30th September, in an address at the United Nations (UN) he asserted that he would break with the disastrous Oslo Accords signed in 1993, culminating in the expansion of the colonization and apartheid on Palestinian land.
The cooperation of security forces between the PNA and Israel is one of the results of those agreements. Hamas – whose main difference is that they resist on the Gaza Strip – is trying to capitalise this people’s uprising. The fact remains that today no party at all seems to sound convincing for the youth out in the streets. They lack a revolutionary leadership and the sensation is of isolation from the rest of the world.
World solidarity
Movements of solidarity in the world are beginning to respond with demonstrations in Europe, in the USA, in Africa and in Latin America.
Under the banner of Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel the activists have exposed the complicity of their governments with the apartheid, occupation and colonisation to which Palestinians are submitted. This is the case of Brazil which has become one of the major importers of Israeli military technology.
Adding our voices and hearts to those of the Palestinian resistance and to all the revolutionaries in the Arab World, we call for a new Intifada and for the strengthening of the BDS campaign in Brazil and in the whole world.
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Notes:
[1] – Nakba anniversary: the Palestinian catastrophe, when the State of Israel was unilaterally created in 1948 as an exclusively Jewish state, through the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.
