Nation and Class: Generations of Palestinian Liberation

Abstract

After a century of confrontation with Zionist settler colonialism, the triumph of capitalism and unfettered marketization without justice and national rights for Palestine appears an irresistible and assured process. The Palestinian ruling class and Arab, international, and Israeli forces have sustained belief in a peace process that for a generation has persuaded or coerced Palestinians living in exile and within Israeli colonial dominion to delay or abandon the collective national goals of liberation, independence, and return. The market promises but can hardly deliver individual prosperity, quality services, and civic rights. But in the standoff between the interests of nation and of class, material conditions are being created for a generation of Palestinian liberation that may challenge settler-colonial exclusion and domination. A redefined notion of liberation would demand the people’s systematically denied social, economic, and political rights, which the people’s own political and economic leadership cannot indefinitely subordinate to a lost national struggle.

Key Words:

• Arab Socialism
• Bourgeoisie
• Nationalism
• Neoliberalism
• Palestinian Liberation Organization

Notes

1 The West Bank and Gaza Strip, occupied by Israel in 1967, are claimed by the PLO as the territory of the State of Palestine, and they constitute some 22 percent of historic Palestine.

2 Repeated United Nations resolutions condemning Israel’s occupation are the most evident manifestation of this status, though other forms of solidarity with Palestine are emerging, including boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaigns against Israel and a generational shift in U.S. Jewry’s position toward Israel’s occupation.

3 See “Communist Parties in the Middle East,” Khamsin, no. 7 (1979).

4 I do so without here delving into the polemics or the nuances of a still contentious debate.

5 Most recently demonstrated in Hilal and Hermann (2014).

6 This was at the initiative of a key Palestinian Marxist faction, the DFLP, which had split from the Arab nationalist Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (itself a reluctant latecomer to endorsement of the same position).

7 As demonstrated by the number of senior Palestinian Communist Party cadre members who have served as PNA ministers over the years, who in some cases championed reform inspired by the Washington Consensus.

8 See the fourth quarter 2016 data in Economic Monitor, no. 48 (2017), http://www.mas.ps/files/server/Monitor/monitor%2048%20eng.pdf.

9 See Economic Monitor, no. 48 (2017), http://www.mas.ps/files/server/Monitor/monitor%2048%20eng.pdf.