What is the future of Palestinians in Gaza?

Palestinians face systematic extermination, which is intended and organised by Israel with the consent and support of all imperialists, starting with the most democratic United States of America and European states.

After decades of failed attempts to constitute themselves as a nation and an independent state, on a par with others and above all with Israel, there seems to be no way out; however there is one way out, and that is the historical path of the resumption of the class struggle of the proletariat not only in the countries of the Middle East, but above all in the advanced capitalist countries, in the perspective of the international proletarian and communist revolution in Europe, America, Russia, the Far East, China and Japan; such a class struggle cannot fail to affect – from outside – even those countries where class collaboration between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie has become so entrenched over the decades that it seems unshakeable, as is the case in Israel.

To many, this perspective may seem detached from reality, illusory and unachievable, just like the “reawakening” of the working classes in the countries of the Middle East.

The bourgeois ruling class – after more than two hundred years of enduring an endless series of economic, commercial and financial crises, social struggles and attempts by the proletariat to seize power, and even a revolution such as the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 with its temporary influence on Europe and the world; after surviving two world wars, one more devastating than the other, and their negative consequences; after further developing the industrial and capitalist economy and subjecting every corner of the world, even those geographically furthest from the major financial and imperialist centres, to its laws; and after binding every proletariat to the national interests of its own bourgeoisie, suppressing revolts and uprisings whenever they broke out, and continuing to wage wars throughout the world until it shook peaceful Europe to its foundations – after all this, what seems impossible is not the revolt, the uprising of the masses or of entire nations against the oppression to which they are constantly subjected by the great imperialist states, the great monopolies and world trusts, the big banks, but that these revolts and uprisings would be transformed into organised class struggles, as was the case in the 19th century and in the first thirty years of the 20th century.

So far, we have witnessed democratic states which, according to the immediate and future interests of their bourgeoisie, unite or come into conflict with other democratic states or with authoritarian, totalitarian, but thoroughly bourgeois and anti-proletarian states; for decades, we have witnessed the ever-increasing militarisation of borders of every national, whether this militarisation is the work of the domestic bourgeoisie or of the bourgeoisie of other countries that have gained their rule through victory in wars. It has become increasingly clear, especially since the end of the Second Imperialist World War, that the competitive struggle between different national capitalisms has brought to the fore what the Communist Manifesto, Capital, Imperialism – in short, Marxism – predicted 180, 160 and 110 years ago: that bourgeois states, whether democratic, constitutionally monarchist or totalitarian, are in every country an instrument of capitalist domination over society; that they suck the sweat and blood from the wage labour of the proletarian masses, the sweat and blood of the poor peasant masses, solely for the purpose of strengthening the power of capitalism over every piece of land on the planet, over every sea and every sky. According to the bourgeoisie, not only large and small enterprises, large and small trade, every small and large property, and thus every country and every individual from birth to death, but also all future generations must submit to the laws of capital, and thus to the laws of the big capitalist bourgeoisie. If we imagine the future on the basis of what is happening in the present, it will not be one of the much-touted prosperity, the much-vaunted peace, the proclaimed freedom, equality and fraternity: the future that the ruling bourgeoisie is bringing about in every country is heralded by the mouths of guns, bombs raining from the sky, rockets fired from the ground, the sea and the sky. And if the guns do not fire, if the bombs and rockets do not kill and ruin entire cities, then hunger, malnutrition, thirst, famine and crime – which always thrive on the chaos generated by social crises and wars – will do it in their place. The bourgeoisie and criminality, although they fight each other, support each other; both are products of the capitalist mode of production and both worship money as the almighty god, to which they are willing to sacrifice everything, including entire peoples.

Against this world, against this future, there is no solution in the “good will” of the people, nor in “democracy” with its false “values of freedom and equality”. The bourgeoisie is not made up of people who care about human society, but of people who are instruments of capital, the hands of the god-capital, whose interests run counter to human society: when the interests of capital, money, commodities – that is, an economy that uses human labour exclusively for the valorisation of capital – are pursued instead of the interests of the social life of the human species, then any violence is permitted: the violence of capital, of its mercantile economy, is directly translated into the violence of the class that holds political, economic and military power in order to subjugate the whole of society to the interests of capitalism. To this end, this class not only appropriates all the wealth produced by human labour, concentrating it in its own hands, but also employs every form of violence to defend its power and extend it over ever wider territories.

The war – which the Israeli bourgeoisie has been waging for decades against all the peoples inhabiting the territories bordering what has always been considered the “Promised Land” (… promised by the God of Israel), starting with the Palestinian population, which has been present throughout the region for more than a thousand years, as it is also a Semitic people, just like the Jewish one – does not have its roots in the supposed anti-Semitism of the Palestinians: its origins lie in the interest and need of both peoples to dominate the other and control the shared territory, especially the fertile areas along the Jordan River; the thousand-year-old religious disputes are nothing more than an ideological justification for both sides. With the development of capitalism, and thus of the bourgeois classes within each of these peoples of the region, the conflicts inevitably took on the character of a permanent war, in which – after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, which had ruled these territories for four centuries, and after their colonisation by the victorious imperialist powers of the First World War – Britain and France – the entire Near and Middle East was completely dismantled, starting with the ancient imperial order. Britain and France, in pursuit of their imperialist domination and concerned only with their imperialist interests, without regard for the traditions of the various ethnic groups and populations, created new national entities: Iraq, Palestine/Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia.

Naturally, the interests of the imperialist powers were not limited to dividing the territories of the former Ottoman Empire in the Near and Middle East into spheres of influence (hence Syria and Lebanon were assigned to France, while Jordan, Palestine/Israel, Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia were assigned to Britain), in order to directly control communication routes, trade monopolies, and the revenues from oil fields, but also in fomenting divisions among various minorities (primarily the Kurdish minority, and later also the Jewish minority) against the Arab population. Following the end of the First World War, the Treaty of Sèvres (1920) established new borders, radically transforming the entire region of the Middle East. After the Second World War – following the defeat of the Axis states and the Arab powers that had supported them, and after the extermination of the Jews – the victorious imperialist democracies, which had triumphed for a second time over the imperialist totalitarian regimes, only further deepened the conflicts among the peoples of the Middle East; it was particularly the case with the creation of the State of Israel, which in 1948 evolved from a “Jewish homeland” into an actual state on territory that the world’s imperialist powers, gathered within the United Nations since 1945, had intended to partition into two separate states, one Palestinian and one Jewish – something which never came to pass. That Britain, the United States, and France essentially sided with the Jewish population and not with the Arab population, was evident – despite repeated declarations regarding the Arab-Israeli conflicts and the formula of “two peoples, two states” – from the very outset of the violent establishment of the State of Israel, which caused for the Palestinians the first great catastrophe (in Arabic, al-Nakba), forcing them to flee to Lebanon and Jordan. Neither Britain nor France made any move to prevent the forced exodus of 700,000 Palestinians from their land, which had been militarily occupied by Israeli forces. The Jewish state served the interests of all the imperialist powers, as it could fulfil the role of their gendarme in a region that, after its complete disintegration, had become turbulent and difficult to control; and it also helped to assuage the guilty conscience of the imperialist democracies, which – despite being aware of the fate of millions of Jews in the Nazi concentration camps – did absolutely nothing to halt this long-announced genocide.

Thus, after the war, the victorious democracies facilitated the migration of hundreds of thousands of European Jews from Poland, Germany, Russia (thereby essentially effecting a massive ethnic cleansing in Central and Eastern Europe and effectively becoming the executors of the Nazi will to solve the ‘Jewish question’ in this part of Europe) and also from the Middle East itself to Israel, their new homeland. In this way, imperialism – whether under the guise of formal democracy or not – hoped to mitigate, if not outright pacify, the Middle East, which was instead emerging as a region where the ethnic, religious, political and economic conflicts between the peoples who had inhabited it for centuries would intersect and, with the added contradictions between various imperialist powers, become even more intense. Meanwhile, over the decades since 1948, Israel has become a highly advanced capitalist country with pronounced expansionist ambitions – ambitions that it can only realise by subjugating the entire Palestinian population so that it cannot in any way threaten Tel Aviv's interests in seizing the entire territory of Palestine – even at the cost of exterminating the Palestinian people, as has in fact been happening in Gaza for more than 600 days.

Rebellions, uprisings and wars, in which Palestinians have been the main actors for more than sixty years, despite constant defeats and the need to fight not only against the Israeli army but also against the governments and armies of Arab countries that claimed in words to be supporters and friends of the “Palestinian cause”, have not led to a “resolution” of the “Palestinian question”. Despite they have repeatedly placed their trust in the influence and leadership of political groups and militias which, from the days of the PLO to the present-day Palestinian National Authority and Hamas, have consistently demonstrated that they prioritise their own interests and privileges, exploiting the Palestinian proletarian and peasant masses and alternately placing themselves at the service of one regional or imperialist power or another; and despite that they have borne the most terrible consequences in the form of oppression, humiliation, torture and death – the Palestinian masses continue to resist and survive on the remnants of land that are increasingly being transformed into open-air cemeteries.

It is clear that all imperialist powers have an interest in maintaining favorable economic, trade, financial, and political relations with Israel; even after 8 October 2023, they continued to trade in all kinds of weaponry – with the leading actors in this trade being the United States, Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy, and even Spain. The latter, despite Pedro Sánchez’s recent recognition of the so-called “Palestinian state”, increased its arms imports from Israel after 7 October 2023, including new Spike missiles and Cardom mortars “tested in combat” in Gaza (1). These powers have done nothing to follow up their conciliatory words about “two peoples, two states” (which they know perfectly well will never be realised) with concrete actions, and they have done nothing to stop the systematic violence of the Israeli army and settlers against the Palestinian civilian population.

What, then, has their great political, economic, and military power served for? To protect the Palestinian civilian population? To intimidate the State of Israel with threats of harsh retaliatory measures if it does not stop its systematic violence against the defenceless Palestinian population? Certainly not – considering that after 600 days of bombardment, which is razing the Gaza Strip to the ground – with more than one hundred thousand dead, whether identified or buried under the rubble, and hundreds of thousands wounded, dying, starving, and sick without access to medical care – many rulers in suits and ties still dare to declare in front of the cameras that Israel is “going too far” that it has “crossed the line” (what line? how many civilian deaths are “acceptable” for these gentlemen after nearly two years of bombings that have hit schools, hospitals, civilian homes, refugee camps?), that it is time to “negotiate”… Negotiate with whom? With Hamas? Which is itself a co-responsible party in this war unleashed by Israel, and which, on the contrary, has an interest in seeing the population of Gaza continue to suffer all the atrocities that the Israeli army is capable of, so as to have yet another pretext to reorganise and regain its influence over at least part of the Palestinian population, and to continue serving as an extended arm of the regional powers (and not only Iran) that find it convenient keeping Israel fully engaged in the territory that was once Palestine?

And it is certainly not the so-called “humanitarian aid” – in the form of trucks loaded with food, medicine, clothing, and supplies that has arrived at the borders of Gaza and, since March 2, has been blocked under the scorching sun by the Israeli army, thereby preventing any assistance to a population that is being systematically bombed and tormented by hunger – that is easing the survival of Palestinians in Gaza. After expelling the UN humanitarian organisation UNRWA, accused of terrorism by the terrorist Israeli government, and, in cooperation with the United States, establishing a new self-proclaimed humanitarian organisation, the Alliance of Lawyers for Palestine (ASAP), under the leadership of the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) – financed by Mossad and the Israeli Ministry of Defence, and in reality composed of American mercenaries and former CIA agents – Israel is rapidly advancing its plan to concentrate the majority of Palestinians from the Strip into its southern area. Here, near the border with Egypt, under the supervision of the United States, it has established four food distribution centres (compared to the previous 400 distribution centres previously operated by UNRWA throughout the Strip), while long and narrow corridors of barbed wire have been constructed and all those queuing for food are identified using the most advanced biometric technologies. After days and weeks of starvation, it is understandable that Palestinians crowd in order to secure at least a minimal amount of food. As was anticipated, in order to disperse the pressing crowd and force the Palestinians to line up in an orderly fashion within the specially prepared corridors, and to prevent any assault on the meagre food supplies available, American contractors and criminal militias organised by Palestinian clans in coordination with Netanyahu's government(2) opened fire on the crowd, adding more dead and wounded to the tens of thousands already hit by Israeli attacks. In this way, Palestinians are being treated worse than prisoners in any concentration camp: behind the façade of “humanitarian aid” – which serves to soothe the guilty conscience of the imperialist countries – loom the barrels of machine guns and the cannons of tanks, turning the food distribution centres into deadly traps.

And while this long and bloody slaughter continues in the Gaza Strip, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan was planning, on Sunday, June 1, to meet with Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, in the West Bank, to discuss what is supposed to become one day the much craved “Palestinian state”. For more than fifty years, no high-ranking representative of Saudi Arabia has set foot on Palestinian soil; for more than fifty years, Riyadh has remained silent about the tragedy of the Palestinian people. At the head of an Arab delegation composed of the foreign ministers of Egypt, Jordan, and other countries of the Arab League, Prince Faisal bin Farhan intended to launch an initiative through which Saudi Arabia would like to once again play a key role in restoring inter-state relations between the Arab countries of the region and Israel – and, as befits an experienced merchant, on several fronts at once. First and foremost, through the normalisation of relations with Israel on the basis of the famous Abraham Accords, which were suspended following the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, and Israel’s extremely violent response in the Gaza Strip – accords that had already normalised relations between Israel and Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Morocco, and which could lead to the restorations of relations between Tel Aviv and Riyadh. Secondly, by restoring relations with the Palestinian National Authority, after they were severed, and by placing the “Palestinian question” back at the centre of attention – all in line with Macron’s France, with whom Riyadh has convened a UN conference for June 17–20 precisely to push once again for the recognition of a Palestinian state.

Thus, we are once again witnessing yet another theatrical performance in which the “Palestinian question” is being used – now by one power, now by another – as a lever to advance their own interests in the partition of a region that is systematically subjected to fundamentally irresolvable conflicts, and in which the regional powers – Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, and, of course, Israel – have been trying for at least sixty years to assert their dominance over the other competitors. Behind them – or alongside them – operate the historic imperialist powers and as well as younger imperialisms, such as China, which are not so much interested in the “Palestinian cause” as in oil and the trade routes that pass through the Red Sea, the Suez Canal, and the Persian Gulf. In fact, this visit to Ramallah was thwarted by Israel and was naturally… postponed. Proof that the grand Israeli plan aims to reduce the number of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank to a historic minimum can be seen in the continuous new settlement activities in the West Bank – and tomorrow, after the extermination in Gaza is completed, also in the Strip itself. It is certainly no coincidence that the visit of Saudi Prince Faisal bin Farhan to Ramallah was scheduled to take place exactly twenty-four hours after Netanyahu’s government approved another 22 settlements in the occupied West Bank – the largest settlement operation in the occupied territories, which are still illusorily designated for a future Palestinian state…

War in the turmoil-ridden Middle East has been, is, and will continue to be the normal state of affairs, because too many contradictions have accumulated and concentrated there over more than a century: they continue to generate further conflicts. The only historical answer to this situation of permanent war – to the constant bloodshed through which the regional and imperialist bourgeoisies repeatedly seek to impose their particular interests – can be the outbreak of the proletarian class struggle. Such a proletarian class struggle could erupt in Egypt as well as in Syria, Iran, Turkey or Saudi Arabia itself, Lebanon, Iraq, or directly in Palestine – and it could well possess the force to rapidly engulf the entire region in the flames of class struggles.

Unfortunately, and not just today, any way out of oppression, massacres, and the ongoing extermination of the Palestinians is still completely denied. Under the guise of “Israel’s right to defend itself”, the bloody Jewish bourgeoisie – in the name of the “chosen people of God”, a God who demands absolute obedience and to whom even the most precious sacrifice – human life – must be offered – justifies “Israel’s right to defend itself” by any means, including the most violent and inhumane, conceived, planned and carried out against any other “godless” nation or nation considered an enemy. Based on this ancient religious belief, the “chosen people of God” have, over time and from generation to generation, forged a very close bond of solidarity among all their members – and among all Jewish communities that have been expelled from various countries since the Roman Empire. This bond has helped them survive throughout history, during which they were mainly engaged in trade and money lending, eventually becoming usurers and bankers, as they were prohibited by law from owning real estate and land. In reality, especially during the Middle Ages, the “chosen people by God” fulfilled an important social function in this way: as a non-member of the Christian community, it could engage in activities that Christians condemned yet needed – above all, usury. The development of trade and monetary circulation led to the expansion of usury, which contributed to the entrenchment of the early seeds of capitalism and the subsequent dissolution of feudal society. This, however, was not enough to protect Jewish communities from the massacres and pogroms that afflicted them from the Middle Ages onward in Germany, England, France, and especially Russia. The “chosen people by God” were persecuted by many other nations, particularly Christian ones, since – in the endless hypocrisy of Catholicism, Protestantism, and Orthodoxy – the discontent of the lower classes was deliberately directed against Jewish communities, which, due to their distinct characteristics, were easily identifiable and could be easily isolated into ghettos. Thus was born the resentment triggered by the competition that Jews represented for non-Jews, when – in addition to usury, and thanks to the money they had at their disposal — they turned to the classic petty-bourgeois professions (trade, the liberal professions, etc.). In this way, anti-Jewish sentiment (known as antisemitism) from the feudal era was taken up by the bourgeoisie, who turned the Jews into convenient scapegoats.

Centuries of persecution did not prevent a large part of the Jewish community from becoming wealthy through trade and usury – in a world where relations between different peoples, whether violent or less so, were intensifying and increasingly revealing the necessity of exchanging products, and later commodities. So much so that, when gold, silver, and eventually money became the standard of exchange, the commercial and usurious practices that Jews had perfected and developed over centuries secured them such a privileged position in society that they became the foremost representatives of capitalism.

The absence of class struggle in Israel, Europe, America, and the Arab countries of the Middle East prevents the Palestinian proletariat – and even more so the Palestinian population as a whole – from relying on the only concrete solidarity that could help it resist extermination and shake off the leeches in the form of the nationalist-bourgeois forces of Hamas, the Palestinian National Authority, and the various clans and politico-military formations; these forces, over the past decades, have represented not a “national and democratic solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but the exploitation of the combativeness and indomitable resistance of the Palestinian proletariat to advance their own bourgeois class interests and privileges – at times through armed clashes with Israel and with this or that Arab state which proved just as repressive towards them as Israel, and at other times through the vilest and most cynical compromises with the ruling powers, whether represented by Israel, the Arab states, the United States, or the European powers.

The most recent Israeli offensive against the population of Gaza, following a false ceasefire agreed with Washington, has been named Gideon's Chariots. Every name Israel has given to its wars has always carried a strong symbolic meaning. In this case, it refers to the Bible, specifically to the Book of Judges and the deeds of Judge Gideon (11th–10th century BC), “chosen by God” to lead the Israelites back to faith in the God of Israel, after they had turned away from God’s commandments and were oppressed by pagan peoples such as the Midianites and Amalekites. His actions can be summarised as a campaign of extermination, which Gideon organised through a surprise night attack on the Midianite camp; the element of surprise facilitated the victory of Gideon and his three hundred warriors. He personally executed the captured princes and ordered the extermination of the inhabitants of two villages, Succoth and Penuel, whose inhabitants were guilty of not supporting his army. Thus, according to the Bible, the law of the God of Israel was restored and control over the territory inhabited by the Israelites was secured – and Judge Gideon then ensured forty years of peace. In the New Testament, he was elevated as a model of faith for all Christians – a faith that in reality commanded the extermination of all who did not submit to the law of the God of Israel… and to the law of the God of the Christians…

And what else is it, if not an extermination organised down to the smallest details – precisely what has been taking place in Gaza since 8 October 2023, the day after Hamas’s attack on the Israeli kibbutzim bordering Gaza? An extermination carried out with the consent of all so-called civilised states – and for which they will one day be held accountable before the advancing revolutionary proletarian movement, which – driven by the ever sharper and more acute contradictions of global capitalism – will inevitably rise from the ashes.

(1) Cfr. https://contropiano.org/altro/2025/06/05/benefici-inconfessabili-la-compravendita-darmi-tra-la-spagna-e-israele-dopo-il-7-ottobre-0183806

(2) Cfr. htpps://www.avvenire.it/mondo/pagine/caos-aiuti-striscia, 31may 2025,about Yasser Abu Shabab, a member of a powerful family from Khan Yunis in the south of the Strip, who, in agreement wi th Israeli forces, organised the assaults on hundreds of UN World Food Programme trucks.

5 June 2025 (updated 15 June 2025)

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