No to a 2 state Palestinian bantustan. Disarm the genocidaires

For the ICJ to lodge immediate measures against the starvation and siege of Gaza

Program on Palestine, imperialism and the ‘two-state’ . Disarm the genocidaires.                                               6  - 14 Aug 2025

For an immediate end to the plan by US imperialism to expel all Palestinians from Gaza or to massacre them all

A few months ago, Trump exposed the imperialist plan to expel all Palestinians from Gaza or to kill them all off.  From the 7^th Oct 2023 this was the plan all along. The latest starvation siege since March this year is confirmation of that. The announcement by Netanyahu that Israel plans to take control of Gaza is also confirmation of the imperialist plan.

A number of countries including South Africa lodged a case at the ICJ against the genocide in Gaza. A few months ago, the SA government lodged applications for urgent measures. The starvation and mass murder by US imperialism and its zionist thugs is much worse now. Yet no approach to the ICJ by any of the countries that claim they are part of the case before the ICJ. Why? Is it all just a show to appease their supporter base?

We call for the immediate mobilisation of the masses for the ICJ to compel urgent measures to stop the blockade, the siege and the genocide by Israel and US imperialism. At the same time, we call for direct action by the masses to stop all weapons and all trade with Israel. We cannot depend on governments and the courts.  We remember 16^th August 2012 when the ANC government perpetrated the Marikana massacre. No confidence in this regime to stop the genocide against Palestinians. They have shown themselves to be on the side of imperialism.

Palestinians are among the most highly educated groups of people in the world. They also have a well-developed culture. Certainly, far exceeding anything that Israeli society can ever accomplish, it being based on thuggery and mass expulsion of Palestinians. Israel is a virtual military camp of imperialism, in charge of terrorising the masses in West Asia and subduing them.

It follows that whoever promotes a ‘two-state’ ‘solution’, is actually defending Israel and its armed thug nature, they are defending a permanent terror regime over the masses in the West Asia and Northeast Africa.

Capital must grow or die. It follows that since 1900, when the entire planet was divided among all the various imperialist powers, that capitalism has been in crisis. It opened up a period of wars, world wars, revolutions and counter-revolutions.  The period of wars followed because the only way imperialism can expand is by encroaching on the territory or market of a rival imperialist power. It follows that any independent capitalist development undermines the rule of imperialism. Also, where there is land that is held under subsistence or independent production for merely meeting basic needs, that imperialism will do all it can to convert the land to capital. This is what the past 500 + years of colonization has shown us. Colonisation of land and its conversion to capital has always come dripping in the blood of the indigenous masses who were formerly independent.

The process of the conversion of land to capital requires two processes. Firstly, it requires removal of the independent population from the land and the establishment of capitalist relations on the land. Secondly, this requires the permanent suppression of independent production and the conversion of the now landless population into a reserve army of labour. If the indigenous population is exterminated, in whole or part, capitalist relations require a proletariat. It requires a group of the working class who own no means of production and who have only their own labour to sell. This proletariat may be made up of part of the remaining indigenous population and/or part of a working class that is brought in.

What has delayed the total colonisation of historic Palestine until now has been the resistance of the Palestinian masses and the resistance of the working class around the globe, including in the imperialist centres. In the imperialist centres they bribe the masses by claiming they stand for democratic values. On the other hand, the masses in the imperialist centres have won democratic space through class struggle and often through revolutionary methods. This puts a constraint on what imperialism can publicly get away with. This is why imperialism needs a violent proxy force or forces that can do its dirty work for them, while imperialism claims that their proxies are somehow ‘independent’.

Democracy is a form of class rule. It is based on the illusion that the masses who vote are actually in control of the state. The state, however, is an instrument of violent rule by the capitalist class. All branches of the state, the parliament, judiciary, the government, the education system, including the universities, the mainstream press, are all controlled through thousands of threads by the handful of capitalists. Democratic society is split into irreconcilable interests- the capitalist class wants to keep the masses in permanent subjugation so that their profit system can continue to flourish. On the other hand, the working class, who own and control no means of production, and who have nothing to sell but their labour power, want to end the system of exploitation. The working class strives to gain political power so that they can socialise the means of production under their control. Already there is a worldwide system of production- an international socialised production but the fruit of the production is appropriated into the hands of a few capitalists.

There are many spontaneous uprisings and revolts against the capitalist system. However, the central problem today is that the leadership of the working class is in the hands of reformists, misleaders and in several cases, in the hands of dictators. In many cases the revolutionary forces are still too small to lead the struggle for working class power. There is a need, through class struggle, to rebuild a revolutionary, Socialist international party of the working class, with sections in every country. This is the path to Socialism. It will not happen spontaneously. The imperialists are in control of the military and political apparatus, and they have control of international resources to aid their worldwide suppression of the masses. They will never willingly give up power.

The war industry requires perpetual war

2001 Afghanistan and 2003 Iraq showed that imperialism began to create wars for the profits of the military industrial complex. The factor of gaining geopolitical control was subordinate to creating a market for weapons. In the case of Iraq, imperialism was already in geopolitical control but still orchestrated an invasion on fake grounds. The US has a military budget of over a trillion dollars annually. It follows that they need to create wars annually. The ever-increasing need to grow the profits of the arms industry means the need to create more and more wars every year.

In Gaza the two factors come together: one, the need to finish the total colonisation of Gaza and the West bank on the one hand and the need to create more wars every year. This is why US imperialism delivers a plane cargo load of weapons daily to Israel since Oct 7^th 2023 and why they do everything in their power to avoid a ceasefire. It is nothing to do with the political situation of Netanyahu. He is just the pawn of imperialism.

The masses in the Gaza and the West Bank are largely unarmed. In Gaza there is a guerilla resistance, but they are massively outgunned by imperialism. In fact, all the imperialist powers have engaged in the genocidal frenzy in Gaza. The French, UK, German, Japanese imperialism all want to convert all of Palestine into capital. They want their own control over Palestine but are dominated by US imperialism who want to have the major share of the control. That some of these forces make noises in favour of a ceasefire and a two-state option is to disguise in front of their own masses what their true role is. Yet, incredibly, this unarmed Palestinian population refuses to give up. However, they are suffering daily on an unimaginable scale.

A shift to the left among the masses in every country- capitalist equilibrium is breaking

The current Palestinian genocide has impelled many millions of the masses around the globe to realise the nature of US imperialism, of the other imperialists and of their own capitalist governments. There is a mass protest movement against the genocide and for Palestine and increasingly for the disbanding of the Israeli state. This movement has grown over the past two years, building on decades of resistance.

Imperialism has responded to the movement, that is tending to break the equilibrium, by the use of brute force and anti-democratic legislation to suppress the protests. It is two years and the protests are still growing. It is starting to reach the level of a political challenge. There is a need for a more concentrated exposure of the role of the political leaders, counterposing a program and posing the building of an alternative, of a path to socialist revolution.

Even while the masses are moving to the left, imperialism depends on developing counter-forces within the protest movement.

The Mamdani (Democratic party – Democratic Socialist of America candidate for mayor of New York ) and Corbyn (in the UK building support of over 400 000 in a few weeks for a new party to challenge the genocidaires) demonstrate that the masses are increasingly willing, in many parts of the world, to challenge and replace existing governments.  This shows that the masses are ready for a new alternative workers party, a combat party of class struggle. On the other hand, by both Mamdani and Corbyn supporting a ‘two state solution’, they are saving Israel from the left, for imperialism. They are turning the mass anger of the proletariat into the dead-end of bourgeois elections.  Imperialism controls the state through thousands of threads. The demands of the masses will not be achieved through parliament.

Why we reject the 2-state ‘solution’.

Imperialism and colonialism before it, has always used divide and rule as a tool for controlling the masses. Thus, after World war two for example, Korea was divided by imperialism into north and south, Yemen too, the same with Germany, East and West. The same with the partition plan by the UN of historic Palestine. In all cases, the same group of the masses were permanently divided on spurious, artificial grounds.

The masses never accepted the partition. It was imposed by imperialism and sustained by bloody violence. In South Africa we waged many years of combat against the bantustans. It was the masses in the period 1990 to 1994 that toppled the Bantustan leaders and their puppet regimes. The Yemeni masses are waging a serious combat to unite their country. Imperialism is trying by all means to maintain the artificial divisions. The PA puppet regime should be removed through mass action methods. All of imperialism and many other neocolonial regimes, when they claim that they stand for the recognition of Palestine, are actually saying they support a Bantustan for Palestinians and they support the Bantustan regime, the PA, tool of Zionism and imperialism to suppress the Palestinian masses.

The ANC (African National Congress) is the leader of the South African government. The ANC has always supported the PLO and when the Palestinian Authority (PA) was formed, the ANC supported the PA. Both the ANC and PLO were liberation movements that rested on the working class and rural poor and the aspirant middle class. The middle class interests have always dominated both these movements and parties. When the ANC came to power and when the PA was formed, these ruling parties openly sided with imperialism. When the PA attacked and killed Palestinian activists and arrested some of them, the ANC still supported the PA. The PA acts to shield the Zionist regime and acts to control the masses. The ANC still supports the PA even though it is a puppet of Zionism and imperialism.

The two-state solution is not only a protection of the violent state of Israel but it is also a protection of the PA, a tool of imperialism, to control the Palestinian masses. So when France and other capitalist states say they want to recognise Palestine, they not only support Israel but they also support a reactionary PA to control the Palestinian masses on behalf of imperialism. Cynics.

Now, many may point out the words of Mandela on the freedom of Palestinians. However this was just rhetoric. While Mandela was still president, the ANC regime signed a protocol with Israel to expand trade with it. When Mbeki was president, the ANC signed a protocol to protect all Israeli business from expropriation. The ANC government has never arrested even one of the hundreds of privileged youth from South Africa who serve in the IDF, despite the existence of anti-mercenary legislation.

Even the ICC case lodged by the SA government, starts with condemning the Palestinian resistance for the so-called crimes of Oct 7^th 2023. When the ANC was still a liberation movement, they bombed restaurants where civilians went, arguing that the apartheid military also went there. What is the difference in essence between the bombing of restaurants frequented by apartheid soldiers, by the ANC and Oct 7^th. We could argue that the bombing of restaurants by the ANC was worse than Oct 7^th. The Palestinian resistance centrally targeted IDF military bases and aimed to take captives in the area. Most of the civilians killed were shot by the IDF on Oct 7^th and 8^th 2023 through their Hannibal option.

So why did the ANC pursue the ICC case against its friend, the Israeli state? The central basis of the ICC case, although against the genocide, is a recognition of Israel as a legitimate entity. Here is the limit of the legal process because the Zionist state is being recognised  instead of being defeated by all means.  Although the ANC is pro-zionist, in deed, while pro Palestinian in rhetoric, the base of the ANC is pro Palestinian. There is a long tradition among the masses in SA, especially the oppressed masses, of support for Palestine. Even some of the middle order leaders of the ANC also support Palestine and oppose Zionism. The ANC was losing electoral support and was projected to lose its 50% majority in the 2024 general elections. At the same time, one of the biggest marches in the history of South Africa, supported by more than 150 000 protestors took place in Cape Town in November 2023. The pressure from the masses and the looming electoral loss propelled the ANC to lodge a case at the ICC, knowing full well that its opinion in advisory and has few enforcement mechanisms. Also, knowing full well that the US holds veto at the UN Security Council and would block any measure against Israel. Thus, the ICC case was forced on the ANC, otherwise it faced even further electoral loss. The democratic gains coming from the ICC is due to the masses in SA, despite the leadership of the ANC. Despite parliament declaring that the Israeli embassy should close, it is still open as the ANC government refuses to sign off its closure.

We should mobilise to ensure the total closure of the Israeli embassy and the cutting of coal and diamond trade between SA and Israel.

A democratic programme- the imperialists need to be disarmed. We reject the disarming of Palestinians and any resistance movement

It is becoming the fashion by imperialism to demand that resistance movements of the masses disarm. Let’s consider the question.

Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians, in Gaza, West Bank and elsewhere. Israel has also been murdering the masses and resistance members in Lebanon, Syria, Guatemala and Iran. They have received their weapons from US imperialism, the French, UK, German and Japanese imperialism too. US imperialism has been supplying arms for the mass murder in the DRC, Sudan, Myanmar, Somalia, Mozambique, and elsewhere. Surely it is Israel and imperialism that should be disarmed. That is a democratic question. Imperialism will not disarm voluntarily. It follows that resistance movements have every right to bear arms to wage a struggle to disarm and defeat all of imperialism. We reject the disarming of any resistance movement by forces of imperialism. We remember Sabra and Shatilla, when the PLO disarmed and thousands of unarmed Palestinians were massacred by imperialist forces. Even the UN recognises the right of resistance movements to wage armed struggle against oppressive regimes.

Why does imperialism want the resistance movements to disarm?

To exploit the class of wage slaves every capitalist regime requires that the working class is disarmed. If the working class has substantial arms, they would resist the daily robbery by the capitalist class of the surplus they as workers produce. In the USA the working class has small weapons but the state has an overwhelming control over the major weaponry. So, in this sense, the US masses are also (in relative terms) disarmed.

In West Asia, US imperialism wants to impose a disarming of the resistance such as Hezbollah and Hamas and groups that support Palestine through military means because even their limited arming imposes a limit on the direct control by imperialism. Imperialism has already succeeded in disarming the PKK in Turkey, now they want to extend it to others. Hezbollah and the Lebanese masses defeated US imperialism and Israel when they attempted to invade Lebanon in 2005. US imperialism has been working ever since to undermine this resistance. In past invasions of Gaza, imperialism has managed to wipe out a substantial part of the Palestinian resistance. It is now almost two years and they have failed, despite the most brutal methods, to break the Palestinian resistance in Gaza. US imperialism is quite aware that the Hamas leadership are willing to make a deal with them but imperialism has failed to break the spirit of the Palestinian masses in Gaza. Imperialism has also dragged out the bombing campaign to make maximum profits for its war industry. But now the political costs, such as growing political threats by the masses to their own regimes are becoming a factor. If even a left reformist regime takes root in any imperialist centre such as the UK or in Japan or in Germany, the very example could spark off a similar regime change in the US or on a broader scale. It would start to impose limits on imperialist plunder. US imperialism relies on dictatorial and reactionary regimes to enforce its domination and its rate of surplus extraction (theft of the wealth produced by workers). The reactionary forces that imperialism depend upon is directly related to the depth of the capitalist crisis and the need for ever increasing plunder of the masses of the world.

A political solution requires the working class to take political power in its own hands through mass action methods

The central problem in every state is that political power rests with an elite, the capitalists. In the imperial centres it is finance capital, the monopoly banks that control the political apparatus. In the colonies or neo-colonies, such as South Africa, the PA, Egypt, Jordan, etc, international finance capital contests control among one another for indirect control. This is why most states, despite their rhetoric, are directly supporting the genocide against Palestinians, why they support the plunder of the DRC, why they support the Sudanese state and the RSF, why they support the military in Myanmar against the masses.

Direct control by imperialism was shattered as a mechanism in the struggles for decolonisation. Indirect control by imperialism is often more effective for imperialism as their theft is hidden in many ways and the political leaders, the puppets, take the blame on their behalf. In this way, the entire world is still being plundered by imperialism.

Whenever finance capital faces a strong challenge that could threaten its rule, it tends to use fascistic methods to crush its opposition. This is why every capitalist state preserves reserve violent, thuggish forces within its ranks.

The central question therefore is how to break the grip of finance capital and establish direct political control by the working class. This means a shattering of the violent agencies of the state and the replacement with a new system of direct democracy.

We need a system of demands and independent working-class struggle formations.

Here is a draft for consideration:

1. The various committees against the genocide in Gaza and the attacks of the IDF in the West Bank, should unite into a united front of action against the war, uniting groups irrespective of religious beliefs, including those that are nominally Palestinian and those that are nominally Israeli. They should consider joint actions such as mobilising for a general strike; this general strike should include a call for the IDF members to refuse to carry out orders against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Stop the genocide and ethnic cleansing. All Palestinian captives and prisoners held in the Zionist gulags should be unconditionally freed. All the Israeli captives held in Gaza should be unconditionally freed, at the same time. Abolish the system of military detention and detention without trial.
2. All the joint committees of action against the genocide and ethnic cleansing, should, together with representatives of all refugee committees, convene a Constituent Assembly (CA) to discuss a system of equal and democratic rights between the Jordan river and the Sea, historic Palestine. Only those who want to live in peace with their Palestinian neighbours should be allowed to participate in the Constituent Assembly. Delegates should include urban and rural grassroots representatives. The IDF should be disbanded and all militias should be brought under the control of the joint action committees. All delegates to the CA should be subject to instant recall and only earn the wage of an average skilled worker. Away with the Zionist regime and the PA.
3. The Palestine action committees in Turkey, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates should give their regimes an ultimatum to immediately cease all trade with Israel. If they fail to do so then they should begin mobilisation to remove the regimes and to replace them with a direct democracy, where all imperialist assets are seized and placed under workers control and delegates are subject to instant recall and only earn the average wage of a skilled worker. All state armies should be disbanded and control of arms should rest with the grassroots committees. The grassroots committees should set up an alternate council of delegates up to the national level. This national council should take political power into its own hands. In all countries that still have links and still trade with Israel, there should be mobilisation to build direct democracy structures as a counter-power to their regimes. These direct democracy structures should enforce a total break in ties with Israel. All capitalist regimes have shown themselves incapable of ending genocide; in fact, they are supporters of imperialist war.
4. In all imperialist centres, including all states that trade in weapons with Israel, the Palestine support groups should campaign for a referendum on ending ties with Israel and in favour of active support for Palestinian democratic rights. They should also campaign for workers’ control over the war industries- not a single bullet nor single bolt for Israel; immediate confiscation of all war profits; no more debt for military campaigns; use the funds for basic needs like healthcare, housing and pension benefits; expropriate the war industries; not one penny for any wars of imperialism; for a programme of useful public works; use the materials from the war machine for useful, peaceful programs. Form committees for Palestine and against imperialist war in all areas and workplaces; formation of independent, working class party and the formation of independent grassroots committees. Mass action to remove any regime that still supplies weapons to Israel, to genocidaires in Sudan, DRC, Myanmar, etc. Replace the imperialist and capitalist regimes with direct democracy formations that are based on delegates who are subject to instant recall and earn a wage of a skilled worker. The national council of direct democracy delegates should take power into its own hands. All deals and agreements with genocidaires to be made public. Active training urban and rural workers in arms so they can disarm imperialism; replace the standing army with the armed militias that are under the control of the grassroots committees. Expropriation of all imperialist assets including their banking assets; to be placed under direct workers’ control.

 15.8. 2025 Workers International Vanguard League www.workersinternational.org.za