The Israeli rulers repress and discriminate against Palestinian workers and farmers, and use non-Palestinian working people as cannon fodder in their wars of expansion against neighboring countries and their civil war against the Palestinians. Among Israel’s Jews, those dark-skinned people whose families came to Israel from other Middle Eastern or North African countries face discrimination and make up a disproportionate share of the country’s wage workers.

The key to progress for the Palestinian people and for all the working people of the country is a revolutionary struggle to overthrow Israel’s capitalist regime, which represents the interests of a small, superwealthy minority. This fact will become apparent to many more workers and farmers as the political and economic problems of Israeli and world capitalism deepen.

The October 1987 stock market crash, the unpayable debts crushing semicolonial countries, the soaring indebtedness of corporations, and the mounting difficulties of imperialist financial institutions, from big banks to insurance companies, are all symptoms of the approach of a devastating social and economic crisis, including a world capitalist depression. As this crisis develops, there will be social and political upheavals in the imperialist countries, as well as in the semicolonial countries--already devastated by an economic crisis--of Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

The efforts of the capitalists on one side and the workers and farmers on the other to protect their interests in the crisis--to find a way out--will lead to the sort of huge class confrontations not seen for decades in the imperialist countries. Israel’s capitalist economy, already shaken and dependent on billions of dollars from the United States each year, will be extremely vulnerable to this crisis.

The potential that exists for explosive and revolutionary social struggles in Israel in the future has been signaled by the growth of conflicts and polarization in that country over the last two decades. The 1982 invasion of Lebanon had far less popular support than the 1967 conquests and inspired some massive protests. Israel’s capitalist parties have had increasing difficulty in forming a stable government. Tactical divisions in the ruling class over how to respond to the Palestinian revolt and other issues are growing sharper.

The coming social and economic crisis will impel workers in Israel to attempt to forge their own independent organizations to fight for their interests. Today the main union federation in Israel, the Histadrut, is actually one of the country’s biggest businesses, and the so-called Labor Party is controlled top to bottom by big business. To fight back in the coming crisis, Israeli workers will have to join forces with Palestinians, who have been leading the way in forging unions and other independent organizations to combat the Israeli regime.

Israeli working farmers are already being strangled by growing debts to the government and bankers. Moves to reduce their living standards and take away their land will drive them to fight. To be successful they will have to battle alongside the Palestinian farmers, who have decades of experience fighting confiscation and debt slavery.  
 
Fight for basic democratic rights
Israeli workers and farmers will be forced to fight for the most basic democratic rights. As class polarization and clashes intensify, the Israeli rulers will take steps toward extending the regime of "force, might, and beatings" that they have been trying to impose in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Palestinian workers and farmers, who are waging a battle against this repression today, will be in the forefront of resistance to these moves.

The struggle for basic democratic rights is bringing Palestinians into an intensifying confrontation with the Israeli government. Concessions to these demands would threaten both the superprofits capitalists gain from exploiting Palestinian workers and the rulers’ grip on the land and resources that were stolen from the Palestinian people. The Israeli rulers may yield ground on some of these demands to the massive Palestinian mobilizations, but they will never stop trying to roll back any gains the Palestinians make.

The Palestinian struggle to end military rule and secure political rights, land, self-determination, and other basic democratic demands points toward a struggle to topple the Israeli regime. To put an end to the bloody wars waged by the Israeli rulers and to defend themselves from the devastation that the developing capitalist economic crisis will threaten them with, the workers and farmers need to overturn this capitalist regime.

The key to victory for the workers and farmers in the coming battles against the rule of the Israeli capitalists and their government is unity. The perspective of forging a democratic, secular Palestine--where Christians, Jews, Muslims, and others will live together in freedom and equality--will aid vanguard fighters among the workers and farmers in their efforts to unite the exploited and oppressed in the battle to oust the Israeli capitalist regime....

First and foremost, a democratic, secular state means ending the oppression and discrimination against the Palestinians. It means recognizing the right of the Palestinians forced to live abroad to return and reclaim their rights as citizens. It means putting an end to the discriminatory "law of return." This law allows anyone whose mother is Jewish or who is recognized as a bona fide convert to Judaism to settle in Israel with the rights of a citizen. But millions of Palestinians, who were born there in many cases and whose families had lived there for many generations, are barred from returning.

Radical land reform is imperative to enable returning Palestinians whose families were stripped of their land to resume farming if they wish, and to provide sufficient land to those in the West Bank and Gaza who have been victimized by the regime’s policies of confiscation and economic discrimination.

A secular state is one that promulgates no particular religious belief and gives no special privileges to any religious body. Establishing such a state means abolishing the privileged position held by the Jewish religion and religious hierarchy in Israel today. Instead, unfettered freedom of religious belief or nonbelief must be won for Jews, Christians, Muslims, and others.

In the coming battles, the Palestinian people fighting for their national rights will be joined by hundreds of thousands of workers and farmers fighting to overturn the rule of the Israeli capitalist class. The increase in the percentage of Palestinians who are workers has greatly reinforced the social weight of the exploited classes among the Palestinian people, and in Israel as a whole. This places workers and farmers in a stronger position to lead the revolution that will put an end to oppression by the Israeli regime.

Every step in this direction places working people in a better position to advance to the establishment of a workers’ and farmers’ government in Palestine. The revolution will open the road to putting an end to capitalist oppression and exploitation in Palestine, as part of the worldwide battle of workers and farmers to forge a communist future.
 
 
Related articles:
Tel Aviv intensifies assault on Palestinians
For a democratic, secular Palestine
Protesters condemn brutal Israeli repression  
 
 
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