Intro Main Coordinator: Contrary to its usual practice, through today the revolutionary world organization ICOR has not issued a resolution on the current war in the Middle East and on solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle. For the first time in the history of the ICOR we have not yet been able to come to a unified resolution. There is a fundamentally unified position against the state terror of Israel. This corresponds to the fact that virtually all organizations of the ICOR are actively engaged in solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle. In Germany, donations are being actively collected and 15,000 euros have already been transferred to Gaza for medical care. Controversies have developed over the assessment and permissibility of public criticism of political forces in Palestine such as Hamas and Jihad. We want to publish and discuss the common ground and the contradictions in this issue in order to clarify them. This builds on an online newspaper published by the ICOR in March 2023 entitled "The Palestinian Liberation Struggle." The contradictions that have emerged must be clarified with great thoroughness, care, seriousness and respect.

Consensual passage in the original draft resolution

There is a consensus on the following passage from a draft ICOR resolution that has been expanded by a few proposals:

“Stop state terror and war against the Palestinian people!

Worldwide solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle!

Stop the destructive bombardment of Gaza!

ICOR resolutely condemns and abhors the imposition of martial law, the brutal bombardment, the complete blockade of the Gaza Strip and the deployment of ground troops by the ultra-right-wing Israeli Netanyahu government.

The shocked Zionist state now goes over to unrestrained ruthlessness, proclaims the state of emergency and war to accelerate the massacres of the Palestinian people of the Gaza Strip, from West Jordan to Lebanon, and its expanding colonial occupation that has been going on for years. The ground offensive launched by Israel has taken the Gaza war to a new level. 11,000 people, two thirds of them children or women, have died in a hail of Israeli bombs and shells. 1.5 million people have been forced to flee. Israel's imperialist aggression is increasingly turning into genocide against innocent civilians. The bombing of hospitals in Gaza, the call for people to evacuate the entire northern Gaza Strip and the bombing of the Jalabiah refugee camp are among the most horrific massacres of the war. An immediate end to this bloody war! The government has already cut off electricity to the Gaza Strip. Now water and food supplies are also being cut off. Cutting off electricity to 2.2 million people will and aims at killing masses of people or completely drive them out of the region. The fact that Israel even has the power to do so highlights the daily and structural oppression of Palestinians in Gaza.

In all the past years, and even more so with the Netanyahu government, which is, however, not fundamentally different from the "opposition" politicians, the Zionist settlement policy robs the Palestinian people of their land, tramples on the Palestinian people's self-determination and right to live to the point of genocide, and spreads a racist, inhuman supremacist mania with the Zionist ideology.

All of this would not be possible without the support of the imperialist governments, first and foremost of American imperialism, but also of the imperialist EU in economic, military and political terms!

Resolute worldwide resistance is necessary against all this!

The attack of Hamas in alliance with other forces is taken by the Israeli government as a pretext to unleash a war that can expand to a conflagration in the entire region.

The organizations of the ICOR are united in standing up resolutely for the right of self-determination of the Palestinian people!

Protest resolutely against the state terror of the Netanyahu government!

The Palestinian people have the right to resistance against the occupation. The Israeli occupying army and paramilitary groups kill people every day, occupy land not belonging to them, and have been harassing the Palestinian people for decades. They carry this on systematically contrary to countless UN declarations.”

Main Coordinator: What are the controversial points of view?

The point at issue is the assessment in particular of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and the question whether they are part of a Palestinian liberation struggle, or whether they should be publicly criticized, or whether that is a divisive act and a withdrawal of solidarity:

A whole range of organizations consider Hamas and Jihad to be reactionary, quite a few to be fascist. They criticize the fact that inhuman massacres of civilians took place in Israel in connection with the attack on 7 October, which cannot be justified by pointing to Israel's state terror. They emphasize that there can be no cooperation of revolutionaries with fascist organizations and that, instead, proletarian internationalism is the strong point of the movement.

Others consider the organizations to be reactionary, but see them as part of the Palestinian resistance and consider public criticism to be withdrawal of solidarity.

A root of the controversy is also whether the imperialist background of the conflict is limited to US imperialism, which undoubtedly – there is general agreement on this – is the main warmonger. Or whether Iran, Qatar, Turkey and other also (new) imperialist powers are pulling the strings and must be combated. This stands in contrast to the thesis that one cannot and must not fight against all imperialists or reactionary forces simultaneously if they support the Palestinian cause.

A number of statements on the issue have already been published by individual organizations on this website.

Comrades from the International Coordination Group (ICC) who are themselves exponents of controversial views (MLPD and PPDS) have been trying for weeks to find a consensus for an ICOR resolution with two unified compromise proposals. But a really strong majority has not been achieved for either proposal. However, such fundamental issues within the ICOR cannot be settled with narrow majority votes.

First compromise proposal

The first compromise proposal, in addition to the consensus outlined above, was as follows:

“The partnership and conciliatory attitude of the collaborationist political Islamist Hamas and Islamic Jihad with the reactionary, colonialist, fascist political Islamist regimes in the region such as Iran and Turkey and with the imperialists has been growing for years. Without revolutionary democratic forces coming to the forefront within the forces of the Palestinian national liberation struggle and their rise to the leadership of the movement, this glorious struggle for freedom cannot overcome the bourgeois obstacles in front of it, moreover, cooperation with all revolutionary forces in the region and in the world becomes sacrificed for the sake of the interests of the imperialist powers. Liberation movements must never adopt the methods of their opponents such as massacres of civilians.

The liberation of the Palestinian people, which cannot be realized without the overthrow of the occupying state of Israel and the racist apartheid regime of the bourgeois political forces that link their existence to this colonial state, will only be possible through the united struggle of the peoples aiming for full equality, voluntary unity and socialism.

The most important allies are the workers and the broad masses in the world in an anti-imperialist movement for democracy, freedom and socialism! The liberation struggle of the Palestinian people can take advantage of contradictions in respect to tactics and must fight to gain allies, but it only has prospects if it stays independent from nationalist and reactionary-fascist forces, and ultimately pursues the prospect of socialism. This is also a harsh experience from the Iranian revolution after the overthrow of the Shah.

End martial law, withdraw all occupation forces from Palestine!

Solidarity with the liberation struggle of the Palestinian people!

Let us actively stand up for their right to resist occupation and oppression!

Freedom for all democratic political prisoners!

Long live proletarian internationalism in the struggle for democracy, freedom and socialism!”

Second compromise proposal

The second compromise proposal in addition to the consensus outlined above, in essence a proposal by CPA ML Australia, was as follows:

“The ICOR supports the right of all oppressed peoples to choose their own leading organizations, but it also has the duty to examine the different directions from the class point of view and to judge them if possible. The current resistance of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip includes, on the one hand, Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). Hamas and the PIJ have ties to (ultra)reactionary regimes such as Iran and Turkey, both of which oppress large segments of their own populations and, in the case of Turkey, bomb the liberated Rojova area in northeastern Syria. But the resistance also includes progressive and revolutionary secular organizations such as the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The revolutionary democratic forces and leadership in the Palestinian liberation movement will unite, strengthen and advance the Palestinian national liberation struggle for freedom, democracy and socialism and overcome the obstacles of the Zionist, imperialist and reactionary forces. Liberation movements must not adopt the reactionary methods of their opponents such as massacres of civilians.

The liberation of the Palestinian people, which cannot be realized without the overthrow of the occupying state of Israel and the racist apartheid regime of the bourgeois political forces that link their existence to this colonial state, will only be possible through the united struggle of the peoples aiming for full equality, voluntary unity and socialism.

The most important allies are the workers and the broad masses in the world in an anti-imperialist movement for democracy, freedom and socialism! The liberation struggle of the Palestinian people can take advantage of contradictions in respect to tactics and must fight to gain allies, but it only has prospects if it stays independent from nationalist and reactionary-fascist forces, and ultimately pursues the prospect of socialism. This is also a harsh experience from the Iranian revolution after the overthrow of the Shah.

End martial law, withdraw all occupation forces from Palestine!

Solidarity with the liberation struggle of the Palestinian people!

Let us actively stand up for their right to resist occupation and oppression!

Freedom for all democratic political prisoners!

Long live proletarian internationalism in the struggle for democracy, freedom and socialism!”

Send us well-founded contributions to the discussion for publication

I consider it absolutely necessary to continue the debate in the international revolutionary and anti-imperialist movement. At the same time we cannot wait to become active – and we do not. Every ICOR organization is called upon to develop a strong solidarity with the liberation struggle of the Palestinian people on the basis of revolutionary, Marxist-Leninist theory, its own analyses and previous positions, and at the same time to conduct the struggle for the unification of the revolutionaries with a proletarian culture of debate. Discuss these issues and send us well-founded contributions to the discussion for publication!

Monika Gärtner-Engel

Main Coordinator of ICOR