ISL Declaration Against Trump and Netanyahu´s “Deal of the Century”

1. On Tuesday, January 28, US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the details of the “Deal of the Century” that they had been preparing since Trump’s inauguration to “solve” the Palestinian conflict. There is no deal, but a unilateral presentation of terms of surrender to the Palestinians, who have not participated in any negotiation and have boycotted the US initiative since Trump moved the US embassy to Jerusalem. It implies the consummation of the Zionist colonization of the entire Palestinian territory, burying even the appearance of the deceptive “two States” project that imperialism had sustained since the Oslo accords. The International Socialist League (ISL) condemns this aberrant colonial offensive and calls for an international campaign to surround the Palestinian people with solidarity.

2. The “Deal” provides for the imposition on the Palestinian people of all the expansionist objectives of the racist and genocidal State of Israel, and destroys any possibility of establishing a Palestinian State. It recognizes Israeli settlements in the occupied territories and allows their annexation along with 30% of the West Bank, including the entire border with Jordan; it establishes the capital of Israel in a unified Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty. The Palestinian “State” it proposes would be reduced to a scattering of dispersed and divided ghettos, entirely surrounded by Israeli territory, with its capital on the “outskirts” of East Jerusalem, no security forces of its own and entirely dependent on Israel in its security, economy, transit, access to water and other necessities. Marwan Abdulal, Palestinian People’s Liberation Front (PFLP) politburo member, asserted that what Trump says is not a declaration of peace but war.

3. Trump and Netanyahu´s “Deal of the Century” intends to consummate the colonial, racist, genocidal project of ethnic cleansing that began with the establishment of the State of Israel under imperialist protection in 1948. Since Al Nakba (the catastrophe), as it is called by the Palestinians, when more than 700,000 people were expelled from their homes and entire villages were massacred, Israel has maintained a permanent policy of expansion. It has advanced against the Palestinian people through wars, state terrorism, massacres, ethnic cleansing and colonial settlements. Violating all international laws and UN resolutions, it has reduced the Palestinian territory to a reduced and divided part of the West Bank, militarily occupied by Israeli troops, and what amounts to an open-air prison in the besieged Gaza Strip. Meanwhile, Arab and Christian Palestinians in the State of Israel are treated as second-class citizens, especially since the Knesset legislated that self-determination in Israel is reserved exclusively for Jewish citizens. The “Deal of the Century” finally abandons the “two states” solution lie that imperialism has held for decades, to openly support the Israeli colonial project.

4. The unconditional support that Israel has enjoyed from imperialism since its foundation, and that Trump comes to confirm with this “Deal” is due to the role the Israeli State plays as imperialism´s colonial enclave in the Middle East. Throughout the decades, Israel has acted as the unconditional gendarme of imperialist economic and geopolitical interests in the region.

5. Despite the bloody advance of the genocidal State of Israel, and the capitulation of Palestinians´ historical PLO leadership, as well as of the Arab bourgeois states of the region, with the recognition of the State of Israel and the acceptance of the “two States” solution since the Oslo agreements, the Palestinian people have put up and will continue to put up heroic battles in their defense. The different intifadas have produced generation after generation of dedicated fighters. “The Great March of Return” that thousands of young Palestinians have carried out since 2018 confirms that the resistance will not give in.

6. The International Socialist League condemns Trump and Netanyahu´s “Deal of the Century”. We call on the world´s workers and all left and democratic organizations to mobilize and launch an international campaign to surround the Palestinian people with solidarity against this new Israeli and imperialist attack.

7. We declare that the “Deal of the Century” confirms the impossibility of the “two States” solution. Only the destruction of the genocidal State of Israel and the establishment of a single, democratic, secular and non-racist State in the entire territory of historic Palestine, can be the starting point for the liberation and self-determination of the Palestinian people and for peace in the Middle East. In turn, this will only be possible with the revolutionary mobilization of the Palestinian people and the Arab peoples of the region, with the solidarity and support of the international working class. And it will only be sustainable with an anti-capitalist perspective oriented towards building a Middle Eastern Federation of Socialist States.

Down with the “Deal of the Century”!
Down with the Zionist State of Israel!
For a single, democratic, secular and non-racist Palestine, with right of return for all refugees!
For a free Palestine, a socialist Middle East!

January 29, 2020