Palestine: Imperialist complicity, failings of the British Left

Framing the narrative

Given this, the current article focuses and limits itself to elaborating on the nuances associated with specific questions, such as why Israel is necessary for imperialist nations and what led to the rise of Hamas. Lastly, what are the shortfalls of the British Left, particularly in addressing the theory of the national question?

To begin with, instead of framing narratives around humanitarian perspectives, it is essential to push narratives from the standpoint of ‘Justice’, which is rooted in the national question and right to self-determination of Palestinians. Political solidarity would be a hollowed concept that remains in symbolism’s peripheries if not stated.

As a result, the long-term interests of justice would be marginalised and limit us to talking about violence and attributing blame, thus denying the vantage point of justice to evaluate the settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

An analysis of the issue of this scale must proceed with unearthing historical, political, and structural nuances, not by exigencies of morality and moral condemnation of immediately visible violence. Unwavering support for Israel from the imperialist nations must be for political, economic, and historical reasons.

As we proceed, I will situate the rise of political Islamist groups such as Hamas and the Islamic Brotherhood in the imperialist policies of marginalising secular Arab nationalism of the 1950s.
Finally, I will end the article by explaining the inefficiencies and theoretical bankruptcies of the British Left that built a hollow solidarity. This article attempts to be polemical, meant to stir a debate on national questions and should not be construed as an attack on any political ideology or organisation.

Imperialist games over oil

Historically and contemporaneously, the Middle East has been a battlefield for imperialist games of asserting domination. Its global strategic importance lies in the location of the world’s most significant and strategic commodity: oil.

Thanks to both world wars, America emerged as a leading imperial power to take the imperialist reins of the Middle East from Britain and France. At the same time, colonial liberation movements were sweeping across the global south and in the Middle East, which consequently brought secular nationalist governments into power.

For example, Nasserrism in Egypt represented the economic nationalistic ambitions further emulated by the regimes of Iraq, Syria, Algeria, and Libya. Mossadegh of Iran and Nasser of Egypt shared the radical political intent and vision of economic nationalism to seal the participation of imperialist nations and their corporations in their respective national home markets.

This was achieved by promoting a public sector-led growth strategy by nationalising oil and other raw materials. Nationalization hurt the interests of imperialist nations for the following reasons: It hurt the profitability of imperialist foreign companies, depriving imperial nations of political control over production and supply through their companies.

Lack of political control also increased the potential threat of inflation within the imperialist markets. Inflation causes social instability and weans the value of wealth stored in the foreign currencies of the imperialist nations.

However, despite threats to long-term political and economic interests, US imperialism initially supported secular nationalist regimes to ward off the threat of communism. After eliminating the dangers of communism, secular Arab nationalism took on the imperialist interests by attacking the tutelages of Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

The Arab challenge

Secular Arab nationalism shot the legitimacy of monarchies by calling for the formation of republican regimes. To illustrate, Egyptian Nasserism actively involved itself in the collapse of the monarchy in Yemen. Adopting socialist planning for state-led development increased privileged ties with Moscow. Importantly, it saw Israel as an enemy but also an anchorage for furthering imperial interests.

The American imperialist project to dominate the Middle East goes through Israel and by achieving the balance of power in favour of Israel. Israel’s function as a bulwark and gendarme for furthering American imperialist interests emerged in the above historical and political juncture of challenges to USA-led imperialism.

Thus, the USA and its junior partners like Britain and France in their imperialist alliance not only support Israel through economic aid but also support its military.

In return for its loyalty to the interests of imperial nations, Israel is given a free, political, and diplomatic hand in the settler colonialist project of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. The fruitfulness and importance of the support to Israel has manifested in Israel’s crushing defeat of both Egyptian and Syrian armies.

Thus, Israel fulfilled Gendarme’s role against regimes that oppose American interests. In return, it seeks American economic, political, and military support in its colonial ambitions of denying Palestinians their statehood.

The above-provided context explains why Israel’s genocide of Palestinians continues unabatedly with the collaboration of imperialist nations. Any analysis which locates the steadfast support to Israel from the perspective of Zionist lobbies in imperialist countries and not principally situating to the material interests of the imperial powers would be totally wrong.

Political Islam and Hamas

Political Islam in the Middle East is not the outcome of random development or spontaneous assertion of the collective will of Muslims. It is a careful political project of the US in alliance with the reactionary ruling classes of Arab society.

Political Islam is not only reactionary in the context of women, sexuality, gender, and religious minorities but, importantly, an ally of imperialism. Politically, it maintains relative autonomy from imperialist powers. It keeps the relationship of the dual character of collaboration and confrontation.

Egypt’s Islamic Brotherhood is a representative example of this dual character! It has no political presence in the sphere of production and class conflict. It undermines the importance of such disputes and restricts itself to the sphere of education, health, and charity, as its primary goal is not secular emancipation of the masses but Islamist indoctrination and advancing exploitation of local masses in the service of imperial and domestic capital.

Birth of reactionary groups

Like Western orientalists, it emphasises the political assertion of the ‘authentic’ Islamic social Self through promoting discourse on the clash of civilisations. Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and Taliban are the creations of imperialist powers, fermented with the help of reactionary Arabs.

For example, the Muslim Brotherhood was created by imperialists, reactionary Arab monarchies to act as counter-reactionary forces to fight communism and Arab economic nationalism, democracy, and secularism.

The ideology of Muslim brotherhood derived from Syed Qutub and Hassan al Banna are products of Maududism, which is fostered by Saudi Wahhabism and spread by imperialists. When Nasser banned the Muslim Brotherhood, the Saudis gave them a haven and facilitated their safe return to Egypt after the death of Nasser.

In Palestine, Israel covertly promoted Hamas to counter the growth of Fatah, PFLP, and other secular organisations. But Hamas’s growth should be mainly attributed to the capitulation of the Palestinian secular left rather than to imperialists and Zionists.

Capitulationism and submission to imperialist political machinations through the Oslo, Madrid, and Camp David Accords contributed to the disillusionment of the masses. As a result, Hamas found a social and political base.

Hamas-Palestine contradiction

Hamas’s emergence as a political vanguard didn’t emerge in a vacuum or because of the assertion of Muslim identity. Objectively, dehumanised Palestine masses support Hamas only to the extent of the political fight against Israel. Hamas neither has domination nor hegemony over the Palestinian masses.

For example, when Hamas imposed a compulsory dress code for women, Palestinian women fought against this imposition and asserted their relative political autonomy from Hamas.
Moreover, Palestinians aspire all political factions to be united and fight for a single goal of national liberation from settler colonialism. To illustrate, Palestinians in the West Bank went on hunger strikes, seeking the collaboration of Hamas and PLO.

As progressives, we should condemn the reactionary political Islam of Hamas, but condemning unthinkingly without situating and explicating nuances of conditions that favoured its emergence and other political dynamics is not just sheer intellectual dishonesty but also intellectual bankruptcy.

Vacuous protests

Campaigns of the British left independently and under the name of Palestine solidarity lacked all these nuances; by not bringing historical and political dynamics, it blindly went ahead with the protest. Protests based on humanitarian and political sentiment are passive, whereas solidarity would be proactive and instrumental in the fight against imperial politics.

In London, we only witness protests in the context of rage and emotion, not solidarity. Rage without political content creates toothless political imagination and reduces politics to moralism and humanitarian sympathies.

A further implication suggests that the inability to understand the specificity of national oppression leads to morally expressive politics of agitation. When we examine various slogans such as “intifada until victory” and “socialist intifada”, there is no political or social content to back the slogans.

It exposes the character of the impoverished politics of the Marxist Left in Britain. Historically, reformism, with the absence of political education in revolutionary workers’ politics, dogmatism, and economic struggles of wage raise without political ideology, has destroyed the potency of working-class movements and the political spaces to develop questions of international solidarity.

Ideological confusion

Most importantly, the British Left is ideologically bankrupt and intellectually infantile. Consequently, it confuses the strategy of national liberation struggles with socialist struggle. Conflating class questions with national questions, the British Left has confused the masses with their rhetoric of slogans without any theoretical content.

Also, their documents or programmatic evaluations must explain significant questions, such as what national oppression means, the principal determinant in determining it, and why it happens.

A nation forms as a historically constituted, stable community based on a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture. Nations came into existence with capitalism. Before that, there were no nation-states. Any attempt to understand the formation of a nation-state from the perspective of culture or language would be ahistorical and unscientific.

Whether it is Palestine, Kashmir, or Scotland, the national question is a political and economic conception arising from capitalism’s emergence. Nation states are a consequence of creating the home market with a degree of presence of capitalist development as an essential condition.

The nation constitutes all classes, from the bourgeoisie, petty bourgeoisie, rich peasants, poor peasants and propertyless working classes in rural and urban areas. All classes witness national oppression.

National oppression

Though national oppression can be manifested or mediated through cultural, ethnic, racial, or religious discriminations, these manifestations or epiphenomenons are not principal determinants to analyse or reach the conclusion of national oppression.

The principal factor is whether the oppressed nation’s ruling class or classes, i.e., the bourgeoisie, landlords, rich peasants, or a combination of classes, can maintain or assert their political control or independence over its market through its political representatives, such as political parties.
This is the “Differentia specifica”, which differentiates national oppression from other oppressions, such as class oppression, gender oppression, and tribal oppression of dispossession driven by primitive accumulation.

In this context, it is imperative to understand that the oppressor state’s action on behalf of its ruling classes is not merely instrumentalist. The state maintains relative autonomy from the ruling class or classes to preserve the long-term interest of exiting the capitalist mode of production. National oppression emerges when the oppressor nation forcefully, in political & militaristic terms, denies political independence to the ruling classes of oppressed nations.

Differentia specifica

Why does national oppression happen? Those in power deprive the ruling classes of oppressed nations of their political independence to maintain exclusive access and control over their markets. The left in Britain doesn’t identify the above “Differentia specifica”.
Consequently, it makes the conception of national oppression superfluous. Without this understanding, it conflates various questions and calls for a socialist revolution, such as the call for the slogan of socialist Palestine.

This call reduces external national oppression to the class question of internal class struggle and the question of internal class enemies in a political sense. Thus, by missing this nuanced analysis of differentiating the national liberation struggle from the socialist struggle, it neglects the political relationship of the oppressor nation with the oppressed nation.

Further, moving from a general theoretical analysis of the national question, it lacks a specific understanding of the question of the settler colonial case of Palestinians, too. To conclude, the British Left suffers from conceptual overlapping and a lack of concrete knowledge of the related specificities of settler colonial oppression of Palestine.

(Hasan Arun, an engineer-turned-economic historian, is currently pursuing economics research at one of the Russel Group Universities in the UK. Views are personal.)