Kali Akuno
January 2013
Self-determination - that is the right and ability of a people to determine their own destiny economically, politically, and socially – is absolutely necessary for the exercise of “genuine” national sovereignty and independence. In reality however, very few of the 193 nation-states that exist within the present imperialist world-system exercise any serious degree of self-agency, let alone self-determination. And it goes without saying that none of the worlds remaining stateless peoples’ and nations do – like the Kurds, Saharawi’s, Basques, Chamorros, Puerto Ricans, Xicanos, New Afrikans, or the First Nations of North America to name just a few.
The challenges of attaining genuine self-determination and
independence in the imperialist world-system are on full display in the case of
the Palestinians. The Palestinian people have been waging a valiant struggle
for national liberation since 1917, when the British occupied historic
Palestine following the defeat of the Ottoman Caliphate during the first
inter-imperialist war of the 20th century (i.e. WW I). Since that
time the Palestinians have suffered the indignities of being a geo-strategic way
station for the British and United States empires, and the victim of a Zionist
settler-colonial project that has served as the primary military garrison of
both empires in the southwest Asian and North African regions. And they have
suffered wave, after wave of forced displacement and ethnic cleansing at the
hands of the Israeli state and the Zionist colonizers. The first wave was 1936
– 1949, which concluded with Palestinian Nakba and the imperialist recognition
of the state of Israel. The second was from 1967 – 1973, which resulted in the
Israeli occupation of the United Nations mandated Palestinian territories. And
the third and present wave started in 1991 with the negotiations that halted
the first Intifada and lead to the Oslo compromise, which formally turned the so-called
occupied territories into a full-fledged neo-colony of the Israeli state.
However, in spite of the tremendous odds stacked against
them in the form of US imperial domination and Zionist colonization, the
Palestinian people have developed a strong national identity and a national
liberation movement that has been able to wage and sustain a protracted
struggle for self-determination. The Palestinian national liberation movement
has been able to survive the fragmentation of diaspora, political sectarianism,
international isolation, and countless betrayals. The movement has also been
strong (and strategic) enough to gain international recognition of its people’s
right to self-determination and an independent state on three separate
occasions. Once in 1974, when the UN recognized the Palestinian Liberation
Organization (PLO) as the sole representative of the Palestinian people and reaffirmed
the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and national independence.
Again in 1988 when the PLO declared an independent state that was recognized by
94 politically independent nation-states in the UN system. The most recent acknowledgement
occurred on Thursday, November 28th, 2012, when 138 of the 193
members states of the UN recognized Palestine as a non-voting member nation[1].
Despite the strength of the Palestinian liberation movement
and its international recognition within the UN system, the Palestinian people
are sadly far, very far, from exercising any serious degree of self-determination.
This is demonstrated by a few concrete facts: the Gaza strip is the world’s
largest open air prison; more than 40% of the West Bank has been colonized by
Zionist settlers[2];
the Israeli government controls the fundamental movements of the Palestinians
and nearly all of the entry and exit points into the territories occupied in
1967; the Palestinian economy is wholly dependent on the Israeli economy and
the charity of the UN and major donors (i.e. various states, religious
charities, and individual philanthropists); and both of the essential resources
needed to sustain life, water and power, are controlled by the Israeli
government. The recognition of statehood under these conditions is more
symbolic than substantive in any concrete sense.
Where the statehood declaration might have some concrete
relevance is in the arena of international politics. Although the statehood bid
was very contentious amongst the Palestinians[3],
it appears that despite all of the above listed limitations, Mahmoud Abbas, FATAH,
and the leadership of the Palestinian Authority (PA) advanced the initiative
because they believed that it was a strategic means to potentially isolate the
Israeli state and force the US government and the European Union (EU) to adjust
their historically intractable position on Israel in an increasingly
multi-polar world. Whether this political gamble will pay off remains to be
seen. What is clear however is that, as of November 28th, 2012 Palestinian
self-determination can no longer be equated with Palestinian statehood.
So, how can self-determination be attained? Like most of the
colonized and oppressed nations that have attained self-determination (if only
for fleeting moments, like the Haitians in 1804), the Palestinians will realize
self-determination primarily by relying on their own efforts and initiatives – self-reliance.
When the Palestinians are able to operationally unite as a people (in this case
starting by overcoming the divides separating the party factions and uniting
the party bases with the initiatives of the social movements and popular
forces), leverage this political unity into economic and military power (with
all the internal class struggle this entails), and utilize this economic and
military power to defeat the colonial system and its benefactors, then and only
then, will self-determination be attained.
This is not a new script, and not one unknown to the
Palestinian national liberation movement. This strategic (but broadly
oversimplified) course of action was employed in one form or another by virtually
all of the national liberation movements around the world over the past two
hundred and fifty plus years. However, building and sustaining this type of
unity and strength is no easy task. Political unity, even in the best of times,
is always a temporary phenomenon. It is constantly stressed and strained by
internal divisions relating to class, kinship, sexism, geographical
consciousness, religion, and personal ambitions. Externally it is challenged constantly
by competing ruling class rivalries, national or ethnic competitions over
resources, religious imperatives, etc. So, maintaining the level and depth of
political unity needed to attain national liberation through protracted
struggle is a constant process of unity-struggle-unity.
Self-determination is also highly contextual. As all peoples
and nations exist in relationship with other peoples and nations, there are
social and natural (in terms of resources) limits to self-determination. When
exercised in a truly democratic fashion, self-determination helps to facilitate
the peaceful political co-existence between nations and peoples, and maintains
balances in the economies and natural resources used between them which acts as
a barrier to the exploitation and oppression of one nation by another. When
abused, self-determination has been employed as political tool to justify aggressive
expansion in the forms of colonization and imperialism, which facilitates all
the forms of subjugation that come with it, including ethnocentrism and white
supremacy, patriarchy, and exploitative socio-economic systems like tribute
societies (European feudalism is an example) and capitalism.
One critical contextualizing factor in the realization of
self-determination is external relations. Making and having good friends and
allies can be a decisive factor in the success or failure of a peoples’ struggle
for self-determination. This is especially true in cases where the oppressed
nation is fighting an enemy that is stronger militarily and economically. Good
allies can help offset the strengths of the enemy in numerous ways. For
instance a good ally can allow a liberation movement to use its territory as a
rear base from which to operate from, as Guinea and Senegal did to aid the
PAIGC (in English this translates into the African Party for the Independence
of Guinea and Cape Verde) in the liberation of Guinea-Bissau in the 1960’s and
70’s. Or engage in joint struggle against a common enemy to disperse its forces
and weaken it, as the liberation movements of Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau
and Cape Verde did in the 1960’s and 70’s against Portuguese colonialism.
Many of the current national liberation movements - like the
Kurds, Saharawi’s, New Afrikans, etc. – have a fair amount of international
allies. But, given the current balance of forces within the imperialist
world-system, few of these allies are willing to openly challenge US
imperialism or jeopardize their relations with the US and the emerging
sub-imperialist powers within the system (like China, India, Brazil, etc.) in
support of these movements, so their support is typically more symbolically
strategic than materially and politically substantive. This strategic symbolism
was on full display on November 28th, 2012 with the Palestinian
statehood vote. The Palestinians have the sympathy of the vast majority of the
governments of the world, but, few of these governments are willing to support
the Palestinian movement with the material assistance it needs to successfully
confront Israeli colonialism and US imperialism (and the few that are, like
Baathist Syria and the Iranian Islamic Republic, are confronting major regime
change or destabilizing campaigns being directed at them by US imperialism and
its reactionary allies).
In a reactionary period such as the one we’re presently in, where should the peoples’ movements for self-determination seek friends and allies? The most substantive answer one can perhaps give is from the other peoples’ movements still struggling for self-determination and national independence, the social movements aligned with these struggles (like reparations in the case of New Afrikans or Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions in the case of Palestine), and the social movements addressing trans-national solidarities (like the Pan-Afrikan, Pan-Arab, and Indigenous peoples movements), or regional (like the anti-NAFTA and School of the Americas movements) and global (like global warming) issues.
In a reactionary period such as the one we’re presently in, where should the peoples’ movements for self-determination seek friends and allies? The most substantive answer one can perhaps give is from the other peoples’ movements still struggling for self-determination and national independence, the social movements aligned with these struggles (like reparations in the case of New Afrikans or Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions in the case of Palestine), and the social movements addressing trans-national solidarities (like the Pan-Afrikan, Pan-Arab, and Indigenous peoples movements), or regional (like the anti-NAFTA and School of the Americas movements) and global (like global warming) issues.
Segments of the Palestinian movement have been advancing
elements of this strategic approach for well over a decade. Perhaps the clearest
examples are the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and Stop the
Wall. These forces have built a broad network of international alliances and
supporters that concentrate on disrupting the Israeli economy and isolating the
Israeli state through strategic campaign initiatives. These forces recently launched
an initiative intended to expand the scope and scale of this strategy. The
initiative was the World Social Forum Free Palestine, which was held in Porto
Alegre, Brazil from November 28th through December 1st,
2012.
The World Social Forum Free Palestine initiative was
intended to unite the social movements of the world that have been relating to
the convergence process of the World Social Forum (WSF) over the past decade
with the Palestinian social movements in historic Palestine and throughout the
diaspora. In reality, the initiative proved to be much more complicated. A
degree of synergy with elements of various international social movements was
attained at the WSF Free Palestine. But, a greater degree of it was stymied by
disagreements relating to how the social movements of the world wanted to
relate to the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Brazilian government, both of
which occupied a center stage in this thematic WSF.
Social movements throughout the world are becoming more
skeptical of the Worker Party (PT in Portuguese), which is currently the party
presiding over the Brazilian government, due to its numerous compromises with
trans-national capital to deepen the capitalist penetration of Brazil in the
effort to turn it into a regional hegemon and a global economic powerhouse.
Even more are weary of the Palestinian Authority, due to the role it has played
as part of the Oslo Agreement signed by the PLO, to contain many of the
grassroots social movements and popular uprisings of the Palestinians since
1994. The involvement of the PA and the PT dampened the enthusiasm and
mobilization of many of the social movement allies of the Palestinian
liberation movement throughout the world, which in turn limited the impact of
the WSF Free Palestine.
What the example of the WSF Free Palestine demonstrates is
how challenging it is for social movements to work with national-states and
proto-states (as in the case of the PA), and vice versa, in a reactionary
period such as the one we’re currently in. There are a few current examples,
like the Bolivarian revolutionary process in Venezuela and the attempted Indigenous
transformation of Bolivia, where some aspects of the contradictions inherent in
this relationship have been struggled through in a positive fashion. But, for
the most part, this contradiction is one of the major challenges of our time,
particularly as it pertains to the question of oppressed nations and peoples
attaining self-determination, as there are few, very few, governments that are
willing to support revolutionary movements (either domestic or international)
in their efforts to transform human society.
The Palestinian national liberation movement, as one of the
most advanced national liberation movements in the world, has a tremendous
amount to offer and teach to other national liberation and revolutionary
movements throughout the world. This short essay was an attempt to gleam some
of these lessons and share them from the perspective of a partisan of the New
Afrikan Independence Movement (NAIM)[4],
which is also struggling with many of the same issues, contradictions, and
limitations as the Palestinian movement. But, of all the lessons the
Palestinian liberation movement has to offer, I think the most fundamental
lesson is to never give in and never quit. No matter the odds, not matter the
enemy, and no matter how bad things appear in the wider world. Where there is
unity to build organization, capacity and social movement, coupled with the
will to take on the odds and challenges, oppressed peoples’ can and ultimately
will find a way to exercise their self-determination and live in dignity in our
ever-changing world.
[4]
The New Afrikan Independence Movement is one of the three dominant tendencies
within the historic Black Liberation Movement (BLM) that seeks
self-determination, national independence, and sovereignty for Afrikan people
over portions of the Southeastern territories now claimed by the United States
government.
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