By E.K. Ibsen
Being an anarchist acting in solidarity with the Palestinians and against the Israeli occupation, the issue of states inevitably comes into question; however, the complexities of the issue are not easily addressed from a traditional anarchist perspective. Beginning with the first Intifada and everyday since, anarchist-like actions have been used to react to the situation. The first Intifada between 1987-9 upheld many anarchist tendencies; the uprising was organized through the people, detached from the PLO, and involved many non-violent actions like mass demonstrations, political graffiti, tax refusals, strikes and boycotts. Today, the International Solidarity Movement is a Palestinian-led organization that uses international presence to moderate the reactions of IDF soldiers and to influence international public opinion. The organization upholds many anarchist trends such as its decentralized operative model, grassroots emphasis and short-term, reactionary focus. Other organizations like Ma’avak Ehad, Food not Bombs and New Profile are all organizations that facilitate anarchist action inside of Israel (that is, a force dedicated to the eradication of an expanding Israeli state). These groups uphold a multi-issue platform, and connect the occupation with the broader problems of today like militarism, patriarchy, poverty, sexism, racism, homophobia, pollution, consumerism and even animal liberation. In 2003, the initiative Anarchists Against the Wall (AAW) was founded and has a coherent focus: The Wall - or the ‘separation barrier’, as the Israeli government and Defense Forces like to call it - stands not only to remind the Palestinians living within the West Bank of the forty two year illegal occupation of their people and land, but it also serves as a reminder to the international community of the consequences that come of borders, nationalism, and nation-states.
Eighty seven years ago, the League of Nations, an organization which was far from being democratically representative of the people they claimed to embody, upheld the Balfour Declaration and wrote the decision to have the British Mandate of Palestine responsible for the “establishment of a Jewish national home…and also for safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion.” By 1947, the United Nations, another international organization that shows little respect to true democracy and representation, made a life-altering de¬cision for millions when they decided to partition the land into Jewish and Arab states with a UN controlled Jerusalem. The outcome of this was numerous civil and state wars, massacres, millions of refugees both internally displaced and emigrated, and the occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank—the remaining Palestinian territories. Today, Palestine is not only crippled from this ongoing illegal occupation and blockade, which is sustained by the material and diplomatic aid of Western nations, but now also from the fragmentation that divides Palestinians over how to respond to this inhumanity.
As anarchists, we wish not to see a one, two or three state so¬lution. We believe that a no-state solution would hold the best possible chance of peace and prosperity for both Arabs and Jews, and that these necessary, fundamental human rights, which arise out of anarchism, must extend past Palestine and Israel and unto all nation-states today. We believe that the establishment of a Palestinian state, compatible with today’s reality, would only mean another form of submission involving a comprador bourgeois (capitalist) leader who would ultimately serve Israel and the West through the free market economy and neoliberal exploitation. We contest the idea that the rulers and ruled within a nation have any common interests; we reject Palestinian nationalism just as we reject Zionism. Nationalism is simply an ideological device intended to create a false sense of unity between antagonistic classes, and an aversion towards different states thereby diverting our attention away from our true oppressors. All humans should have the right to live wherever they freely choose regardless of race or religion.
To bring attention to such false choices that nationalism pres¬ents to us, anarchists fully support both the inhabitants of Pal¬estine and Israel in having a fulfilling life without states or state warfare. This support means total hostility towards all those who oppress and exploit the situation: the Israeli state and the IDF, and the Western (i.e. North American, Western European) governments and international corporations that supply its fuel. The only real solution will arise from a collective, bottom-up revolution based on the fact that globally, we have nothing but our ability to learn and our desire to live. What this comes down to, along with all of the malevolencies of today, is that our entire patriarchal capitalist system, which thrives off of war, oppression and nationalism, needs to end.
Until that time comes, however, we anarchists recognize the contraction we embody, and insist that solidarity with the Palestinian people is imperative even if it comes at the cost of inconsistency and contradiction. In the words of Uri Gordon, an Israeli anarchist, “a Palestinian state, capitalist, corrupt or pseudo-democratic, would in any event be less brutal than an occupying Israeli state… [and] the everyday acts of resistance that anarchists join and defend in Palestine… are immediate steps to help preserve people’s livelihoods and dignity. ”
E.K. Ibsen is a student at the University of Western Ontario, as well as a member of Common Cause, an anarchist organization with chapters in London, Hamilton, Toronto and Ottawa. This past December, she participated in the Gaza Freedom March - an international effort to break the seige of the Gaza Strip. Along with thousands of other international actvists, she was denied entry to the Strip by the Egyptian security forces
