Where Are We Now?

Conditions in Palestine before October 7 were comparatively stable, although “stable” does not mean “good.” In fact, conditions had been deteriorating for years, while Netanyahu’s government became known for its policy of “managing the conflict,” which rejected any negotiation attempt. Instead, Israel pursued a policy of carrots and sticks. As carrots, money would be provided to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza in order to ensure stable governing services. As sticks, the West Bank and East Jerusalem would be increasingly militarized, with settlers empowered to encroach upon more Palestinian territory. In these areas, each year from 2021 to 2023 broke the record for the most Palestinians killed by the Israeli military outside of “war time.” In Gaza, “managing the conflict” also meant “mowing the grass” every few years, with Israel committing massacres to sow demoralization. They did this with increasing intensity in 2008, 2012, 2014 and 2021.

During this period of “conflict management,” Israel began to go through its own internal crises related to Netanyahu’s corruption and his attempt to seize control of the judiciary, culminating in a general strike against Netanyahu dominated by liberal forces. Regionally, the Syrian war had been frozen for years, with the Assad regime seemingly coming out on top. Despite the unpopularity of the intervention by Hezbollah and Iran on Assad’s side, they maintained a relatively strong military position.

October 7 and Hamas’s Strategy

October 7 shattered the status quo in the region. The Hamas-led assault breaching the Gaza fence, engaging the IDF and massacring hundreds of civilians represented the most serious attack on Israel since the 1973 Yom Kippur war. The Israeli regime shifted its course from “managing the conflict” to “solving” it. How? By “eliminating Hamas,” meaning the elimination of all Palestinian resistance and forcing Palestinians into submission through death, ethnic cleansing and surrender.

Nineteen months later, the balance of forces has shifted toward the Israeli state and U.S. imperialism. Gaza lies in ruins, more than 50,000 Palestinians have been killed (many estimate a much higher figure) and the path is now clear for Israel to intensify its genocidal war and starve the Strip. This dire situation is not merely the result of Israel’s military superiority. It is also due to Hamas’s own strategy, which relied on a number of false assumptions:

1. That U.S. imperialism would intervene and force Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians.
2. That the U.S. would be forced to do this through pressure from the “international community,” public opinion and protest movements.
3. That Iran and the rest of the Axis of Resistance would be forced to declare a regional war against Israel.
4. That chaos in Israel was so great that the military would crumble from within.

The first assumption speaks to Hamas’s illusions in U.S. imperialism. They believed that the weakening of U.S. power would mean it would be more willing to concede and retreat from its spheres of influence. In reality, the opposite is true. With its hegemony threatened, the U.S. must rely even more on its Israeli attack dog.

The hopes expressed in the second assumption deny that the U.S. leads the international community. It was wishful thinking to believe that Western countries or the subservient Arab regimes would defy U.S. diktats. As for protest movements, in the West they remained dominated by liberal politics, guaranteeing their impotence. Throughout the Middle East, the movements were either sponsored by the regimes as a way to blow off steam and cover their own inaction and/or were led by Islamists whose politics were similar to Hamas’s. In both cases, the impulses of the masses were restrained.

The third assumption showed blind faith in the Islamic Iranian regime and Hezbollah. The clerical regime in Tehran and the leaders of the Shia movement in Lebanon have always placed their own internal stability and narrow interests above that of the Palestinians. This is what is behind their doctrine of “strategic patience”: the idea that the Axis of Resistance would wage a long-term war of attrition against Israel and the U.S., gradually draining their military power, together with diplomatic appeals based on “international law” and liberal principles. In reality, “strategic patience” conceded all of the initiative to Israel and the U.S., which were perfectly willing to constantly escalate, deliver the strongest possible blows and violate every norm of previous conflicts. Meanwhile, the Axis of Resistance, despite considerable military capacity, remained politically paralyzed and in constant retreat.

The fourth assumption showed Hamas’s misunderstanding of the crisis inside Israel. Divisions within Israeli society are certainly deep. However, a shock like October 7, with its indiscriminate massacre of kibbutzniks and festival-goers, was not going to exacerbate such divisions but rather provide the means to bridge them. This kind of action emboldens the ruling class and all wings of Zionism, which present the Israeli state as the only bulwark against a new holocaust. This is why the idea—widespread in the Palestinian movement—that Israeli society will crumble at any serious shock is wrong and profoundly disorienting. Furthermore, Hamas was under the illusion that pressure from liberal Zionists to continue negotiations for a ceasefire would lead to concessions for the Palestinian side. But the liberals do not have the upper hand; Netanyahu’s right-wing government does. He has made clear that the main priority is destroying Hamas, and if the hostages die, as many have, so be it. While this policy has caused liberals in Israel much horror, they have no way to challenge it since they share with Netanyahu the underlying premise of the war.

Therefore, despite the fact that October 7 did deliver serious blows to Israel, the strategy behind the operation was mired in political problems that could only lead to disaster for the liberation struggle. Hamas knew full well that October 7 would open up a new, devastating war against Gaza. And they knew they could not win it. Their strategy consisted in offering up Gaza for slaughter in the hope that the Axis of Resistance would enter the war and that this would force the international community and the U.S. to intervene against Israel.

Instead, the indiscriminate massacre of civilians was seized on by the Israeli government to openly proceed toward genocide with full U.S. support. Iran and Hezbollah spent the war temporizing and wavering, a weakness Israel exploited to devastating effect. As for the international community, the U.S. made sure it would do nothing other than issue meaningless declarations and UN resolutions. Now, with the Palestinian movement receding in the West, reactionary politicians are cracking down on activists with a vengeance. In the end, the pro-Iranian motto of slowly “boiling the Israeli frog” proved fatal compared to the Talmud’s saying, “If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.”

The Axis of Resistance

Hamas isn’t gone and Israel hasn’t gotten off scot-free. But it’s clear that Israel has the upper hand, and whatever capability Hamas still has will not be enough to improve the balance of forces for the Palestinians. The Hamas leadership has already conceded control of Gaza, stating only that the “arms of the resistance are a red line.”

In Lebanon, Israel successfully deterred Hezbollah, one of the biggest challengers to the IDF in the region. Hezbollah’s entire intervention in the war was to keep the Lebanon front active as long as the fighting in Gaza raged on. In his final speech, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said that “the Lebanon front will not stop before the aggression on Gaza stops” and that Netanyahu “won’t be able to ‘return’ the settlers to the North and do whatever [he] want[s].” Days later, Nasrallah was ready to sign a ceasefire agreement. Soon after, on 27 September 2024, he was assassinated. Hezbollah’s war aim was foiled and the organization was decapitated. Of course, Hezbollah is still standing—the massive funeral for Nasrallah was a huge show of force and the largest gathering in Lebanon’s history. Nonetheless, Israel still occupies five observation points in Lebanon and continues to strike Hezbollah targets.

Iran, the central force behind the Axis of Resistance, has emerged from this war with egg on its face. Palestinians and Lebanese commonly say that Iran should have intervened more forcefully from the beginning. Instead, it spent most of the war trying to build up diplomatic pressure for a ceasefire. Iran intervened only when it was absolutely forced to, after countless Israeli provocations, from the bombing of its consulate in Syria to the killing of almost the entire Hezbollah leadership. Iran’s attacks on Israel, notably the second one in October 2024, which included 180 ballistic missiles and was carried out without warning, did show its military capacities. Multiple new-generation missiles pierced Israel’s air defense systems and struck Israeli bases with precision. This restrained some in Israel who were advocating war with Iran.

Iran’s missile attack underlined that its main strategic problem in the conflict was not military but political. The Islamic regime, in constant fear of the Iranian masses and embroiled in economic crisis, still looks for accommodation with the U.S., which Ayatollah Khamenei pursues under the cover of the reformist faction. It is this situation that was the source of its constant wavering and inaction throughout the genocide. After the missile exchanges, the initiative went right back to Israel, which continued to massacre Palestinians, Hamas and Hezbollah militants, et al.

Another serious blow for Hezbollah and Iran has been the fall of the hated Assad dictatorship in Syria, which used to guarantee them supply routes for weapons (see “Only Anti-Imperialism Can Unite the Peoples of Syria,” Workers Hammer No. 255, Winter 2025). The new Syrian government has been very clear from the beginning that it opposes the “Iranian project” and has been appealing to Western imperialism, even after Israel invaded the south of Syria and seized the highest point in the country.

That said, the new regime’s attitude can change. Israel has made a number of statements declaring that it wants the area south of Damascus “demilitarized” and claims that it is ready to invade to defend the Druze minority in Damascus. As these threats ramp up, the new regime might face pressure to mount some sort of response, although this would be incredibly weak given the divisions in the new state. In early April, the regime issued statements attacking the Israeli presence, and local militias in Daraa province (not part of the HTS militia that took power in Damascus) engaged Israeli occupation forces in the South. It remains to be seen how far Israel will go toward expansion. Whatever the case, the local Syrian militias do not pose a serious threat.

Israel is fanning the flames of sectarianism in Syria, trying to reach out to the Alawite, Christian and Druze minorities that were pillars of the Assad regime. The recent mass killings of Alawites on the coast preclude any prospect of Syrian unity under the new regime. Until Assad was toppled, October 7 seemed to unify the Sunnis and Shias of the region against Israel’s aggression. His fall has removed this facade: Sunni sectarian politics are resurfacing in Lebanon, Hamas and the Axis are divided on Syria, and the Syrian regime is clashing with Hezbollah and the Axis.

The Houthis are the only force in the Axis of Resistance whose authority has been strengthened. Despite constant bombing by the U.S., Britain and Israel, they have continually been able to disrupt trade in the Red Sea and even attack Israel directly. As Trump seeks to bomb them into submission yet again, there is little indication that this will be more successful than Biden’s failed campaign. Nevertheless, the Houthis are now much more isolated. Iran’s negotiations with the U.S. do not bode well for them.

Israel

The internal situation in Israel is complex. The ruling class is not an independent force, and since the 1956 Suez Crisis and particularly the 1967 war it has been tied to U.S. imperialism. What is decisive in Israel are the winds blowing from the U.S. Israel’s primary importance has never been its natural resources or industries but its utility as a military outpost serving to ensure the imperialist division and exploitation of the Middle East. Zionism provides the superstructure to rationalize this role.

For years, a faction fight has raged in the Israeli ruling class between liberal Zionists tied to the military-intelligence establishment and big tech firms and right-wing Zionists led by Netanyahu and supported by settler organizations. October 7 put a pause on competing mass demonstrations by these factions. But the burden of the war, the worsening economic crisis, Trump’s re-election and Netanyahu’s renewed push to overhaul the judiciary and security apparatus have brought the polarization back into the open. Regular protests in favor of a hostage deal and semi-regular demonstrations of the far right in support of continuing the genocide are one manifestation. Recent protests against Netanyahu’s firing of Shin Bet head Ronan Bar are another.

Netanyahu has presented himself as a defender of democracy against the deep state, fighting the judiciary and security apparatus which remain dominated by liberal Zionists and Ashkenazim (Jews of European descent). He has successfully exploited the frustrations of Mizrahim (Jews of Middle Eastern and North African descent), who make up around half of Israeli society and for whom liberal Zionism and Ashkenazi control have meant contempt and discrimination in housing and jobs. (This helps explain why many Mizrahim have become settlers in the West Bank.) While the entire Israeli population was pushed into a genocidal frenzy after October 7, anger at the liberal establishment has made it easier for the government to argue that the only solution to the Palestinian “problem” is the final solution.

Liberal Zionists have always supported the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the goals of Eretz Israel but have sought to do so with a democratic cover (at least for Jews inside the Green Line). But since October 7, the farce of Israel as “the Middle East’s only democracy” has been roundly discredited internationally. Netanyahu’s faction has been betting that they don’t need to keep up the farce anymore, even for Jews, as they proceed toward consolidating a bonapartist, militarized theocracy. Through land grabs, ethnic cleansing and shocks to the Axis of Resistance, Netanyahu has succeeded in realigning Israeli politics, with the political space for liberal Zionism crumbling away. Thus, even if the liberals return to power, it would be in a changed political context. Netanyahu’s agenda would be pursued, only presented in a different envelope.

The Histadrut trade-union bureaucracy remains fully in the camp of Israel’s liberal bourgeoisie, with its leaders committed to genocide. Early in the war, Histadrut leader Arnon Bar-David proudly signed a bomb on behalf of the union to be dropped on Gaza. In the last few years, every time the Histadrut has launched a general strike, it has had the backing of sections of the ruling class. That said, the strike movement is contradictory: while the consciousness of workers is still liberal Zionist, chauvinist and hostile to Palestinian liberation, it also reflects anger over the pursuit of the war. Communists must intervene in these strikes to show that national chauvinism is a dead end in advancing the struggle to free the hostages, topple the government and improve living conditions, and that the workers’ greatest allies in this struggle are Palestinian and Arab masses fighting U.S. imperialism and the Zionist rulers.

The Left in Israel

The left in Israel remains dismally small and mired in liberal liquidationism. The most prominent are the Israeli Communist Party (ICP) and the more recently formed Standing Together (ST), many of whose leaders come from the ICP. They also both have a mixed Arab and Jewish membership, with the ICP being predominantly Arab. Both groups have a strong tradition of class collaboration and liberal Zionism, promoting the farce that equality for Palestinians can come through a two-state solution. The ICP even capitulates to centrist Zionist forces, as seen when its parliamentary group endorsed Benny Gantz as prime minister in 2019.

Standing Together, meanwhile, tries to build a left-populist movement in the style of the post-2008 left formations in Europe, with entirely liberal and moralistic politics designed to make the Palestinian question palatable to Zionists. For example, they grotesquely equated Hamas’s Yahya Sinwar and Netanyahu as “cynical politicians who do not care about human lives.” Yet despite their histories of capitulation, both groups, and particularly the ICP, are often the first organizations Arab and anti-Zionist youth look to for struggle, particularly in the universities. To win over their best elements, Marxists must intervene in those organizations by motivating the need for a break with Zionism and U.S. imperialism and insisting on the duty to champion the liberation of Palestine as essential to the liberation of Israeli workers.

The vanguard of centrism in Israel/Palestine is the International Socialist Alternative’s Socialist Struggle Movement (SSM). While the SSM, on paper, opposes the ST’s “succumbing to the pressures of Israeli chauvinism/nationalism,” their own program capitulates to liberal Zionism. The SSM’s demands are pretty much the same liberal slogans as ST, such as “stop the war,” “all for all” (all hostages/prisoners should be freed on both sides) and for a “life with dignity.” This while not directly taking a side with the Palestinian resistance struggle. They also completely capitulate to the rotten Histadrut bureaucracy. During the 2024 Israeli general strike, their main criticism of the thoroughly pro-capitalist Zionist bureaucrats is that they should have organized a strike sooner, and that the one-day strike (supported by a wing of the ruling class) should be turned into a 48-hour one. Communists should seek common work with the SSM while exposing their concessions to Zionism and the liberal character of their interventions.

Another trend is represented by the Internationalist Socialist League, the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency’s (RCIT) section in Israel/Occupied Palestine. The RCIT supports the Palestinian resistance and calls for the destruction of the Israeli state through an Arab revolution led by a working-class party. But its interventions too often limit themselves to denouncing Israel’s crimes and declaring military support to the Palestinian resistance. Like many other leftists, the RCIT never puts forward an alternative, Marxist strategy of struggle to advance Palestinian liberation in counterposition to that of the nationalists. The other side of these politics is abandoning any perspective to split Israeli society along class lines. In this way, the RCIT liquidates the vanguard role of communists into the nationalist camp, transforming revolutionaries into mere cheerleaders of non-communist forces (see “Polemics with Revolutionary Communist International Tendency on Israel/Palestine,” Spartacist Letters No. 1, November 2024).

Lastly, among explicitly liberal and moralist leftists, we find the phenomenon of conscientious objectors, who try to convince Israeli youth to refuse service in the army. What this concretely means is sacrificing the fight to weaken the IDF from the inside through class struggle. Despite the small and marginal character of these forces, they shouldn’t be ignored. Communists must defend them against repression while making the case that the only way to destroy the Zionist war machine is by splitting the army along class lines and forming an alliance with the toilers of the whole region.

Prospects

It’s clear that the balance of forces has shifted in Israel’s favor. The Axis of Resistance has taken serious hits and the international Palestine solidarity movement is being smashed by various Western governments, with Trump leading the way. With little deterring Israel, we can expect a long period of continued aggression in different spheres, from Gaza and the West Bank to Lebanon and Syria. This will prepare the ground for a popular explosion, although the time frame can’t be predicted. Until then, however, the national bourgeois forces in the Middle East are heading toward accepting this new normal: Iran is negotiating with the U.S., the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is trying to increase its influence after Hamas’s setbacks, Egypt continues to keep its border with Gaza shut and Lebanon and Syria are abdicating defense against continued Israeli attacks.

The ceasefire agreement turned out to be just a piece of paper, and little stands in the way of Netanyahu implementing the “Trump plan” to ethnically cleanse Gaza. Despite Israel’s resumption of its military campaign, Trump and his envoy Steve Witkoff have hinted at a new ceasefire agreement. It’s likely that if any “sustainable calm” arises in Gaza, the Israeli government will try to thin out the population by offering “voluntary migration” to as many residents as possible. Going too far with complete ethnic cleansing could threaten the existence of subservient Arab regimes, specifically Jordan and Egypt, which face pressure from their populations and army rank and file to declare war on Israel. So far Saudi Arabia also feels that normalization with Israel in the current context might not be in its interests.

Amid the apparent temporary unity of the Arab regimes, the UAE stands as an outlier. Jockeying for influence over the Gaza Strip, they are mounting a campaign to marginalize Hamas. The dead-end strategy of Hamas has emboldened this pro-imperialist opposition. Within Gaza, recent protests echoed the slogans of the pro-UAE Fatah faction of Mohammad Dahlan, denouncing Hamas as “terrorists” and fomenting anti-Shia sectarianism. Recent episodes of Arab Cast, a new, UAE-funded podcast, have featured prominent Arab intellectuals and politicians calling for negotiations with Israel and supporting the UAE plan against Hamas in Gaza. If the U.S. administration and the Israeli regime find the original “Trump plan” too costly, they could settle for an agreement with the UAE and Mohammad Dahlan to administer some version of Gaza for some period of time. However, any arrangement would be racked by instability.

The Tasks of Communists

With the U.S. and Israel on the offensive and the Palestinian movement on the defensive everywhere, the overarching tasks of communists must be to struggle to put the movement on a stronger defensive footing. While many pro-Palestinian militants are still blind to the dire state of the movement, others are disappointed and disillusioned. We must reach both these layers and fight with them so that they draw the lessons of the last period, help them see the class origins of the leaders’ failed strategies and put forward an internationalist revolutionary program for national liberation.

In Gaza, the situation is extremely difficult. With Israel’s renewed genocidal campaign, communists must be at the forefront of the defense of Gaza, in a united front with other resistance organizations. It is crucial to struggle against the growing defeatist sentiment and oppose the pro-UAE, pro-imperialist and anti-Hamas movement in the Strip. While its representatives are exploiting the masses’ very real exhaustion, they are laying the ground for a surrender to Israel that can only be a catastrophe for the Palestinian people. In combatting those forces and resisting the IDF, communists must not give an inch of political support to Hamas but must constantly expose its bankrupt strategy and military tactics. Against the odds, communists must seek to keep the resistance alive and maintain pressure on the IDF in order to limit the damage of its devastating campaign.

Any victories in this struggle will not come from Gaza alone. The only way to undercut the growing defeatist sentiment and go forward is with a perspective encompassing the entire region. An anti-imperialist united front throughout the Middle East is urgently needed to confront the renewed genocidal campaign. While this need has always been imperative, its failure to materialize is entirely due to the treachery of the various regimes in the region, and to the leaders of the Palestinian movement looking to them. From the corrupt Arab rulers to the Iranian clerics and Erdoğan in Türkiye, all have shown that their priority is to maintain their brutal rule. They will not risk a significant intervention on behalf of the Palestinians.

Thus, revolutionaries must seek to build an anti-imperialist united front by reaching out directly to the masses of the Middle East and in opposition to their rulers—whatever pro-Palestinian verbiage they might utter. It is by connecting the massive support for Palestine in the region with the struggle for the most felt needs of the masses—against their hated rulers, the U.S. and Israel—that the movement can really start to shatter the status quo. This is also how sectarian, ethnic and national divisions can be overcome.

Such a front must be extended to Israeli workers. Without a rupture in Israeli society along class lines, Palestinian freedom will remain a distant prospect. Communists must wage a resolute struggle against the rest of the left by making clear that the emancipation of Israeli toilers requires a break with Zionist forces and ideology. The capitulation of most of the left to liberal Zionism is the greatest danger to the revolutionary movement. Communists must also reach the Mizrahim and seek to show that their oppression will be solved not by further embracing Zionism—as if to show that they are “good” Jews—but by rejecting it. For all Israeli workers—Mizrahim in particular—the improvement of their lives actually goes through an alliance with Arabs against the Zionist rulers.

Work in the IDF is of primary importance. The army is facing its worst refusal crisis in decades, with more than 100,000 reservists refusing duty. This shows how opposition to a prolonged war is fermenting in the ranks. Communists must go into the army and seek to channel soldiers’ discontent along class lines by exposing the true nature of this genocidal war.

In the West, the first task of communists is to realize that the movement is defeated and isolated and to understand why this is the case. The movement has been led by liberals and sometimes direct representatives of the imperialists (Democrats in the U.S., Labourites in Britain, Mélenchonistes in France, etc.). With such leaders and dominated by liberal politics, the movement failed to connect with the working class, presenting itself as a moral stance for enlightened people rather than a pole of working-class struggle. This explains why it made no significant gains. It also enabled most trade-union leaders to do next to nothing for the movement, apart from occasional solidarity speechifying. It is urgent for communists to intervene to rebuild the Palestine movement, but on a clear working-class and anti-imperialist basis. It is by connecting the question of Palestine and imperialism with the struggle for workers’ basic living conditions that the movement can become a real force. Militants must understand that pandering to liberal politicians and trade-union bureaucrats who shield the ruling class only hampers the movement.

As the winds of reaction blow in the West, activists are coming under increased repression. From Anasse Kazib in France and Michael Pröbsting in Austria to Mahmoud Khalil in the U.S., the ruling class wants to make an example of prominent militants. Rebuilding the movement must start with mounting campaigns against this crackdown, which is but one aspect of the broader ruling class drive to regiment society behind a reactionary status quo.

Since the beginning of the war, the ICL has continually fought for a Marxist strategy for the Palestinian movement, against its liberal and nationalist dead ends. Our intervention, unfortunately limited mostly to the Western world, has tirelessly warned that without a fundamental reorientation, the movement would face defeat. We particularly focused our fire on most of the socialist left. In our article “Marxists & Palestine: 100 Years of Failure—Lessons and Prospects” (Spartacist No. 69, August 2024), we wrote:

Our warnings were met with accusations of pessimism and were countered with arguments about how many people were getting involved in the movement, which seemed to ride atop an unbreakable rising tide. Unfortunately, the current dire situation has proved us correct. The first duty of every serious pro-Palestinian fighter must be to confront head-on the causes of the failure up to now. This is the first step in going forward.