Two-state solution is rubbish, what will it take to liberate Palestine?

After decades of hegemony, the two-state solution is no longer considered a viable or desirable solution to the decades-long oppression of the Palestinians among pro-Palestine activists in Australia. In Melbourne, where I am involved, the phrase “two-state solution” has been essentially banned from the platforms of the regular Gaza solidarity demonstrations.

This is an extremely positive development. For decades, the two-state solution has served as a means to browbeat the more principled and radical supporters of the Palestinian people. Prior to the 1980s, the majority of Palestinian political parties supported the full liberation of historic Palestine, and the two-state solution was used by Labor Zionism to denounce them as extremists and coopt them into a more moderate position.

The two-state solution reached its zenith in the 1990s during negotiations for the Oslo Accords between the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and Israel. During this period the Palestinian leadership under Fatah abandoned all sorts of rights and principles in exchange for the chimera of a Palestinian statelet in the West Bank and Gaza. While a minority of Palestinian capitalists and politicians have become fabulously wealthy as a result of this process, the Palestinian people have continued to go backwards, losing further rights and territory.

So the clear rejection of the two-state solution by the majority of serious pro-Palestine activists is an important breakthrough. It provides a stronger basis from which to build a movement that can demand real justice. And importantly, it opens up space for discussion about what sort of scenario might actually succeed in achieving genuine liberation for the Palestinian people.

For most people, the alternative to the perpetual apartheid and oppression entailed by the two-state solution is the creation of a democratic state for all inhabitants of the area. Far from “driving Jews into the sea”, the idea is for Arabs and Jews to live together peacefully, with equal rights in a liberal democratic set-up. In many ways this is a worthy goal, and when it was developed in the 1960s, it was a progressive position for the Palestinian liberation movement to adopt.

But many of the same issues that make the two-state solution unworkable also apply to one state. Most importantly, the Israeli state will not accept equality between Jews and Palestinians. Its founding ideology is that of an ethno-state: a state that exists for a particular ethnic group, with others as second-class citizens. This means a single state based on equal rights will never be achieved through negotiation or brought into existence through UN mandates or diplomacy. It requires the overthrow of the Israeli state.

The Western powers, to which Israel is an important strategic and economic ally, would of course never accept this. The only one-state outcome it’s possible to imagine is one in which Israel is in effect allowed to annex the entirety of the Palestinian territory and expel millions of refugees.

Supporters of Palestine often refer to the defeat of apartheid in South Africa as proof that a transformation from a system of apartheid to democracy is possible. But mainstream accounts of this important history tend to downplay the crucial role played by the economically powerful, politically sophisticated and industrially militant black working class, which existed in South Africa but does not in Palestine. By repeatedly bringing the economy to a halt through strike action, these workers made it impossible for South African mines and ports to function reliably, and for capital to profit. This hit the rich where it hurts, and created enormous pressure for change.

Only when it became clear that the old order was doomed did Western governments impose sanctions to try to expedite the transition so that the vital mines and ports of South Africa could remain functional and be relied on.

Palestinians have no comparable economic power, excluded as they are from large parts of the Israeli economy, particularly its most strategic sectors. So traditional class struggle at a domestic level cannot create the economic disruption needed to break apartheid and end the occupation of all Palestinian lands.

At a global level, Israel is a nuclear-armed imperial outpost in a central region of world politics and a long-term strategic ally of the US. Far from facing crippling sanctions for its many crimes, it is still being armed, funded and courted by the world’s elites. Indeed, its utility to US empire has been reinforced in the last two years, given the ease with which it has crushed Hezbollah and subdued Iran.

This alliance is likely to continue as long as imperialist domination remains a central plank of US foreign policy. Even if the US is somehow dethroned, then China or any other rising power would have a strong interest in allying with such a well-armed and strategically important state. China is already the second largest importer of Israeli goods, and Israel imports more goods from China than any other country, $19 billion worth annually according to the United Nations Comtrade database.

So while the apartheid system in South Africa could be ended without fundamentally disrupting the structures of global and regional imperialism, the same is not true in Palestine. In any case, the end of formal apartheid has not fundamentally changed the experience of the vast majority of working class and poor Black South Africans. Their living conditions are actually worse, meaning this is hardly a model to be aspiring to.

The harsh reality is that while many former colonies have been able to achieve some measure of national independence within the capitalist system, there are a number of cases where it is just not possible. In the Middle East, the examples of the Palestinians and the Kurds stand out, where the maintenance of national oppression is absolutely essential to the functioning of capitalism as it has been established over the last century. So just as it is impossible to imagine a capitalist America without anti-Black racism, there will never be a capitalist Middle East without the whole suite of religious, national and caste hierarchies that have been deliberately entrenched in the region.

It’s long been argued by revolutionaries in the Middle East and elsewhere that overthrowing the Arab regimes, which pose as champions of the Palestinians while simultaneously accommodating to Israel and repressing movements that challenge it, is a prerequisite for a liberated Palestine. But the experience of the Arab revolutions that erupted in 2011 shows that simply replacing one capitalist government with another in no way brings closer the goal of ending the injustices that face the workers and the oppressed of the region. It’s clear now that in a very direct sense the struggle for Palestinian liberation, and that of the masses in the region and beyond, will require a more radical goal. To be precise, only the successful overthrow of capitalism across the region, particularly in key states such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, can make possible the liberation of Palestine.

This doesn’t change the fact that the Palestinians will continue to have a central and leading role to play in organising popular resistance to Israel and capitalism, both inside occupied Palestine and in the neighbouring countries. But it does mean that the practice of seeking allies among the Arab regimes, which has been the long-term approach of the leading Palestinian factions, has to be opposed. Not only is it a betrayal of the Arab masses living under these regimes, but it is a dead end for the Palestinian struggle.

Instead, efforts must be made to link up with the many economic, social and geopolitical grievances of workers and the poor across the region. This can most effectively be done by locating Palestinian oppression in a wider context of regional exploitation, oppression and imperialism, and Israel’s role in maintaining this unequal and oppressive status quo. This involves popularising a systemic critique of Arab capitalism and its role in propping up Western imperialism, and building a movement that can turn this critique into action.

Those of us outside the Middle East also have an important role to play. Israel can survive and get away with its atrocities only due to endless Western support and funding. We have seen that a mass movement in Australia has been capable of shifting the terrain of discussion and politics, but not core aspects of government policy. It is similar elsewhere. To force Western governments even to begin to break ties with Israel would take immense struggle by workers, the kind of struggle that would make clear to the Albaneses of the world that the choice is between profits and social stability and continued support for genocide.

Standing in the way of this is the existing leadership of the workers’ movement, which has no interest in mobilising workers to make Australia’s support for Israel unviable. Such action would threaten not only the interests of Australian capitalism, which the union leaders do not oppose, but also the electoral fortunes of the Labor Party, which most union leaders are aligned with, and the relatively privileged position of the leaders themselves within the system, not to mention their future career prospects.

To make the kinds of strikes that could lead to real sanctions against Israel and the arms industry happen today would require a profoundly more radical and organised working-class movement than what currently exists. This in turn presupposes the existence of a serious left in the workers’ movement, both able to lead action and carrying weight ideologically. Socialist-led unions, backed by a militant rank and file, could organise black bans of weapons companies and Israeli shipping lines, and engage in targeted actions to enforce them. The places where this has happened in recent years, for instance the dock workers in Greece, have long traditions of communist influence in the union.

So both in the Middle East and in the imperialist West, fighting for revolutionary socialist politics grounded in mass working-class organisations is a vital step on the road to Palestinian liberation. This means rejecting both the two-state farce that serves to validate the status quo, and also the sort of liberal utopianism that assumes a single Palestinian state in the framework of capitalism is possible and able to bring liberation.

Instead, a revolutionary socialist approach means a relentless and uncompromising struggle against all of the institutions that have become so discredited by their response to Israel’s genocide, including every powerful nation state on earth. Only a struggle for a socialist Palestine that unites the revolutionary workers and peasants of the Middle East with an insurgent, anti-imperialist working class movement in the West can hope to achieve liberation.

Omar is a long-time pro-Palestine activist based in Melbourne