Bulletin N°61 2025 The support affirmed for Palestine by many "left-wing" or workers' movement organisations takes very diverse or even contradictory positions among themselves.
According to the Revolutionary Communist Party, support for the Palestinian resistance should instead be based on an understanding of the class interests at stake at the local, regional and even global level, that is to say, on the nature and meaning of the opposition between the interests of the exploiting and dominant classes, representing the old society to be overthrown, and the future interests of the exploited and oppressed.
Grasping the essence of the Palestinian question thus requires, in our view, mobilizing the Marxist method in order to develop a materialist and dialectical analysis, the only one capable of firmly grounding a political position and a practice, a militant action that is not merely empty agitation devoid of any real impact on social reality. This is therefore by no means a theoretical discussion aimed at confronting the situation in Palestine with immutable Marxist-Leninist dogmas, but rather a necessary political undertaking that must, in particular, draw creatively upon the lessons of historical experience.
This implies taking into account the Palestinian national question, intimately linked to the colonial question, and understanding Palestine's central role in the imperialist world today. We must not consider the objectives of the Palestinian Resistance solely through the lens of its daily struggle, that is, through its current successes and difficulties, but we must recognize that the Palestinian Resistance must be understood and supported within the historical movement of revolution worldwide. And within this framework, partial failures and even temporary defeat have always been part of the struggle, part of the experience of peoples and their vanguards, which alone can contribute to the maturation of the revolutionary project.
However, this position is far from being unanimous among those who claim to be part of the Revolution or even the international communist movement.
On the Trotskyist side
Most Trotskyist organizations do not recognize the Palestinian national fact, considering only the division of societies into classes. The NPA-Revolutionaries, for example, while proclaiming its solidarity with the Palestinians in leftist rhetoric, and in reality viewing them only as "victims" of Zionism, denies and opposes their national aspirations, considering their national struggle a manifestation of "chauvinism," an obstacle to the class struggle. Establishing a false symmetry, the NPA-Revolutionaries thus asserts that " the Palestinian leaders not only failed to fight to reverse the trend of widening the gap between 'Palestinian workers' and 'Israeli workers,' but have themselves contributed to widening it. " Opposed to recognizing the specific character of the Palestinian national fact, the NPA-Revolutionaries thus clings to the illusory and mystifying expectation of building a "unity of the working class between Israeli and Palestinian workers "!
Stemming from its orthodox defense of the Trotskyist dogma of permanent revolution, Lutte Ouvrière (Workers' Struggle) has always affirmed its purist rejection of the national question in general and the tasks of national liberation that flow from it. LO has therefore consistently demonstrated its hostility to national liberation struggles, stigmatizing the "bourgeois nationalism" of their leadership. While it speaks out publicly against colonial repression, LO displays a purely abstract internationalism, rejecting the obligation for communists to support national liberation struggles against imperialism, including our own. It is therefore not through omission that LO, for example, refuses to recognize and defend the Kanaks' right to self-determination (and LO even refuses to speak of Kanaky, knowing only New Caledonia). LO claims to support peoples against repression or aggression, but is always the first to condemn, in a sterile manner, the armed organizations that lead the fight. The same is true, therefore, with regard to the Palestinian national question in particular. In Palestine, today as yesterday, LO, which certainly recognizes "Israel's war of oppression and colonization," refuses to recognize the just war of national liberation of the oppressed nation. LO's denial of the national question in Palestine translates into a denial of the necessary destruction of the Zionist state so that a free Palestine can finally truly exist, from the Sea to the Jordan. It is also LO's usual economistic and pessimistic vision that prevents it from understanding and recognizing the revolutionary potential of the Palestinian national question, which However, it will be resolved solely through the liberation struggle waged by its fighting organizations.
However, within the Trotskyist movement, there is one notable exception. The Lambertists, a historical current within Trotskyism, take into account the Leninist conception of the nation and have long held a position in favor of the national liberation of Palestine. On November 20, Lucien Gautier, leader of the Independent Workers' Party (POI), declared at a conference: "The only solution in Palestine, and there is no other, is to put an end to Zionism, to establish a Palestine on all the historical territory of Palestine. That is the question being posed today. A single state in which Jews and Arabs can live as equal citizens. "
Within the international communist movement
As we have written on numerous occasions, a strong divide exists between organizations claiming to be part of the international communist movement. While some organizations, such as the Revolutionary Communist Party, analyze imperialism as the current stage of capitalism and consider it to be the scene of inter-imperialist confrontations, whether commercial or military, direct or indirect; others believe that there is only one imperialist bloc and that "imperialism" is limited to this Western imperialist bloc, and that China and Russia are not imperialist powers and are fighting for a so-called multipolar world that would oppose the unipolar world dominated solely by the USA.
All of these people speak of supporting the Palestinian people, sometimes mentioning genocide, occasionally using the word "colonization" without explicitly defining it, and adhering to UN resolutions—in other words, to the pseudo-two-state solution. For example, the Pole of Communist Renaissance in France (PRCF) expressed itself in this way on October 14, 2025, in an article in its online journal. While the Trump plan and Macron's role are firmly condemned, the article concludes: " The PRCF strongly reiterates that a just and lasting peace can only emerge from the strict application of international law and the fulfillment of the legitimate national rights of the Palestinian people. " The very concept of "just and lasting peace" is a smokescreen behind which all those who do not denounce Zionism hide. Moreover, the word itself is absent from the entire PRCF text. And since then, there has been no condemnation of the carte blanche given to Trump and his recolonization plan by the abstention of China and Russia.
It is crucial to understand that our major disagreement with these comrades stems from their failure to grasp the centrality of the Palestinian cause. Considering, for example, the current anti-imperialist government of Venezuela, they view the world as a battleground, whether military or otherwise, between unipolar and multipolar powers (dubbed anti-imperialist), in which Palestine is merely one arena among many. They fail to distinguish between an imperialist war like the one in Ukraine and the Palestinian people's struggle for national liberation. Consequently, they choose to ignore the true significance of the colonial question and, therefore, Zionism.
Other parties within the international communist movement share a common analysis of the imperialist stage, characterized by the domination of finance capital and a world rife with the contradictions of capitalism and inter-imperialist conflicts, in which colonization and anti-colonial struggles play a crucial role, whether in the "old-style" form, as seen in Palestine, Western Sahara, and Kanaky, or in a neo-colonial form. Twenty-six of these communist and workers' parties recently met in Athens, at the invitation of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), to commemorate the October Revolution. Our party was present and widely reported on this event. During the meeting, we emphasized the central role of Palestine and clearly stated our position: " Peace in this region of the world will not be possible as long as the Zionist state, which has established apartheid and practices ethnic cleansing, exists in its current form." The only possible future is for the Jewish and Arab populations to live side by side in a single secular state .
Nevertheless, even among all these parties with a correct analysis of imperialism, conceptions of the Palestinian question are diverse. The final resolution simply states, “ We condemn the genocide of the Palestinian people and the prolonged occupation of the Palestinian territories by the State of Israel, ” without specifying which territories these are; and many of these organizations fail to mention the central question of Zionism, its very nature, when discussing Palestine, which ultimately places them closer to the reductive position of a people victimized by unjust domination than to that of a people struggling for their liberation.
The specific case of the Revolutionary Communist Party of France (PCRF) is worth examining. In an article in issue 190 of their newspaper, Intervention Communiste , entitled "What Palestinian State Should Be Built?", the comrades clearly state their position: " Our party [...] advocates the recognition of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital. " It is interesting to read the justification for this position: " The primary reason for defending two states, for our party, is first and foremost the protection of the Palestinian people. Due to uneven development, Israeli monopolies are far more powerful than the Palestinian bourgeoisie, which is stateless and fragmented by exile, though it does exist. In this sense, any single-state project overestimates the superstructure alone (laws, the state, ideology) while disregarding the real power exercised by the classes." Under current conditions, the creation of a single state would only benefit Israeli capitalism and perpetuate the oppression of the Palestinian people, who are deprived of such power, even if this single state were called "Palestine." The Palestinians must therefore possess their own state in order to be able to exercise self-determination. This is a completely different reason from those usually put forward by proponents of the pseudo two-state solution: "realism" and alignment with Ramallah's collaborators. That said, it also completely ignores the question of the refugees' return. Furthermore, it fails to address the colonial question in the specific case of the replacement colonization that characterizes Zionism, which, once again, is not analyzed in the article. To believe that a truly independent Palestinian state could emerge alongside the existing Zionist colonial state demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of what the Zionist entity is. A single Palestinian state will necessarily no longer be a colonial state, the situation will be transformed, and to presume what the "Israeli capitalists" would do is to make plans based on pure fantasy, especially since the capitalists dominating the Zionist colonial state are mostly from the USA or the EU.
But above all, it is clear that national liberation is relegated to a secondary issue: " In the case of Palestine, the strategic question is that of socialist construction and a break with global imperialism, the tactical question being, like a link in the chain of the ultimate goal: the self-determination of the Palestinian people for their state and their borders ." Of course, for the Revolutionary Communist Party (PRCF), the ultimate goal is the construction of socialism. However, this construction cannot be achieved without the national liberation of Palestine, which is today the primary and essential objective. Without exaggerating, let's say that the PRCF's position is similar to that of Lutte Ouvrière (LO), which, ignoring the anti-colonial struggle and the national resistance, tells us that the only way for Palestinians to escape colonization is through socialism.
In conclusion
The observation we make concerning the colonial question and the particular case of Palestine, its global significance, must be part of the discussions urgently in the communist movement, especially between parties making the same analysis of imperialism, outside of the nonsense about unipolar/multipolar duality.
The Revolutionary Communist Party is not alone in its position, neither in the world (the Palestinian Communist Party thanked us for our intervention in Athens) nor in France where the organizations which make up the Unitary Campaign for the Liberation of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, such as the League of Revolutionary Youth (LJR) or the Union for Communist Reconstruction (URC) have positions very close to ours.
This is why we constantly reiterate that this framework of the CUPLGIA* is essential for uniting all those who support the Palestinian liberation struggle, summarized in the slogan "Palestine will be free from the river to the sea," all those who understand the global importance of the Palestinian cause, who do not see the Palestinian people as victims, but understand the deep political roots of the Zionist enterprise of conquering Palestine. As Patrick Bobulesco said: " True solidarity with the Palestinian people requires abandoning this passive and victimized view in order to recognize them as a people active in their own history, struggling against Zionism, imperialism, and reaction, for their national liberation—a long struggle whose centrality and strategic importance for our own emancipation we must acknowledge. "
Now more than ever, we need to build a gathering of all those who support the national liberation of Palestine and its armed resistance, to make our militant contribution, in France against our capitalists and their supporters, to "a free Palestine from the river to the sea".
*United Campaign for the Liberation of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah