International Socialists

Today, in the West Bank and Gaza, hundreds of Palestinian youths daily declare their willingness to die fighting for their people's liberation. The fighters of the Intifada use rocks and guns and grenades, and also, tragically, suicide bombings.

 

Media commentators - perfectly understanding of the huge suicide rates in countries like New Zealand - are incredulous at the monstrous idea that people would blow themselves up for a cause.

 

But many young Palestinians feel they have nothing to fight with but their own bodies. They have been betrayed, not only by the oily promises of the UN, but by the policies of their own leaders who preach restraint in the face of settlements and massacres, who promise peace but only deliver subjugation.

 

In the wake of Jenin, Palestinians shook their fists at Israel and the world, and said we will keep fighting, the suicide bombers will keep coming, you will never beat us.

 

But the tragedy is that the Palestinians do have a choice. As the Israeli troops massacred civilians and fighters alike in Jenin, the maligned "Arab street" erupted. Millions across the Middle East demonstrated and struck in solidarity with the Palestinians.

 

For those who support the Palestinian struggle - that is, for people opposed to imperialism and oppression - it is not enough to shudder at suicide bombings. We have to fight, however we can, for an alternative to that strategy of impotence.

 

That is, for a strategy that bases itself on mass resistance, on the struggle of workers and the oppressed in the Arab countries and around the world - an alternative that can defeat Israel and its imperialist backers. This is no pipedream. The resilience of the Palestinians who despite everything keep fighting is only equalled by the enduring support that every instance of that resistance sparks. And it is the Arab working class which holds in its hands the very resources that make the Middle East a constant source of conflict.

 

Only by looking to the power and solidarity of Arab workers can ordinary Palestinians be won to the idea that their heroism and determination can result, not in the desperate impotence of another suicide bombing, but in a liberated Palestine.