updatet June 2025, original text from December 2023 – 12 reading minutes
For over 20 months, Israel has been committing genocide in Gaza. In facts, this means over 55,000 dead, over a million starving, destruction of schools, hospitals, universities, libraries, homes and places of worship, and almost the entire infrastructure. Israel has now officially announced its intention to expel the Palestinian population and permanently occupy most of the Gaza Strip. It is supported in this by Western imperialists, led by the United States and Germany. Not only does Israel’s genocidal policy meet with broad approval, but in imperialist countries such as Germany, solidarity with Palestine is criminalised under the pretext of „combating anti-Semitism“. This goes hand in hand with deeply racist policies and incitement against migrants, who are portrayed as the perpetrators and carriers of so-called ‘imported anti-Semitism.’
We hereby propose 10 demands for the Palestinian resistance and the solidarity movement in Germany in the struggle against these conditions.
1. An immediate end to the genocide in Gaza! Lift the blockade! Withdraw all IDF troops from Gaza and the West Bank! Free all prisoners!
Despite various ceasefires, which have been repeatedly broken by Israel, the genocide in Gaza continues, with the IDF murdering civilians, destroying all infrastructure, blocking aid deliveries to the Gaza Strip and thus directly causing a famine. The immediate end to the brutal and war criminal attacks on Gaza is more than just a demand for a new ceasefire! An indefinite ceasefire and the passage of aid deliveries are essential for the survival of the population in the current situation, but this does not end the occupation; it merely means that the current conflicts are frozen. What we also do not demand is the demilitarisation of the Palestinians, because the right to self-defence and the struggle for freedom must also be enforced militantly. All IDF troops must leave Gaza and the West Bank; they are oppressive troops who enforce the rule of the State of Israel by any means necessary. The withdrawal of the IDF and the demand for an immediate end to the killing must be enforced unconditionally! We stand for the release of Palestinian prisoners. Approximately 4,500 Palestinians, including many children and young people, were already in Israeli prisons before 7 October 2023. Since then, however, thousands more have been arrested. Those who have been released report abuse and torture in most cases.
2. Down with apartheid and all restrictions on the freedom of Palestinians. For complete legal equality for all inhabitants between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River! Nationalisation of all land ownership and granting of the right of return to all Palestinians worldwide.
Palestinians are third-class citizens in Israel and the occupied territories; they are cheap labour, not equal before the law, and are systematically oppressed in both the social and economic spheres of their lives. Israeli institutions, both state and non-state, decide on house building, housing and, in Gaza, on electricity, water and raw materials. Checkpoints, hours of checks, house searches, raids and arrests are part of everyday life for Palestinians. The occupied West Bank is being carved up and freedom of movement is severely restricted. Settlers carry out pogroms under the protection of the IDF and drive Palestinians from their land. Settlers are subject to Israeli law, while Palestinians are subject to military law. That is why apartheid must be dismantled and all restrictions on freedom must be lifted. We demand complete equality for all people on the ground and the right of return for all displaced Palestinians. The basis for this is the socialised ownership of the means of production, land, factories and offices, as well as equal access to health, education and housing, coordinated through a democratic plan. That is why we are fighting for a socialist solution based on the common ownership of the land and all important means of production.
3. For a united secular socialist Palestine, with equality for all its citizens, Israeli and Palestinian, as part of a socialist federation of the Middle East. For a new Arab Spring!
The liberation of the Palestinian people and the freedom of the peoples of the Middle East from Western domination and exploitation require the revolutionary overthrow of Israel as a racist state and its replacement by a single bi-national state for both its Palestinian and Israeli-Jewish peoples. This does not mean the expulsion of the Israeli population or its destruction as a nation. The ‘two-state solution’ is in reality dead. Its recognition in words exists as a fig leaf for Israeli aggression. For the United States and Western European states, it justifies continued support for Israel, and for reformist parties such as the British Labour Party, it allows them to save face with their Muslim voters without committing themselves to the Palestinian resistance. It is the task of the Palestinians, as well as the working classes and oppressed peoples of the surrounding countries, to overthrow the Israeli state. The latter have an important role to play in this. It is they who must confront their dictators and rulers, for neither the Khomeinis, the Sissis nor the Erdogans of this region have any interest in a liberated Palestine. There needs to be a second Arab Spring, in which workers in the surrounding countries organise against their oppressors and overthrow them, open the borders to Gaza and, under joint control, provide aid and support the struggle on the ground.
Ultimately, a democratically planned economy controlled by the working class is the only way to rebuild Gaza and the West Bank in the interests of their inhabitants and to fulfil the Palestinians‘ right of return, while guaranteeing the right to self-determination for all nationalities (e.g. the right to speak their own language). On the other hand, the liberation of Palestine can only be achieved by overthrowing the regimes in the region which, if they do not collaborate directly with Israel, do not offer any serious resistance to the Zionist state or even tolerate it because they see their own population’s solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle as a threat to themselves.
4. For the right of Israeli soldiers to refuse to fight in Gaza and the West Bank. Disband the bourgeois army and police and form democratic workers‘ militias that join the Palestinian resistance!
The struggle against genocide and Zionism itself must also be taken up within Israeli society. However, the policy against the Palestinians enjoys broad support among the Israeli population, including the Israeli working class, which can only maintain its standard of living thanks to Western economic and military aid that Israel receives because of its role as an outpost of imperialism in the region. In order to break the Zionist unity, it is therefore necessary to weaken the material support for this state based on oppression and expulsion to such an extent that even sections of the Israeli-Jewish working class realise that Zionism does not bring security, but only permanent racism and subordination to a state based on colonial expulsion. Even if we must not make ourselves dependent on internal developments in Israel, it is nevertheless right to fight now to lead as many Israeli workers and oppressed people as possible to break with Zionism.
To this end, it is important to support the few conscientious objectors and anti-Zionists in Israel. Building an anti-Zionist opposition in Israel is a necessary condition for the abolition of the military and police and for the liberation of the Israeli working class. We are already seeing small signs of this, with anti-Zionist Jews around the world helping to drive and support the protests. In Israel, it is the task of progressives and revolutionaries to break away from pro-Zionist and state-supporting organisations such as the Histadrut a „yellow“ (pro bourgeois) trade union, to replace them with joint organisations with their Palestinian brothers and sisters, and to openly show that the war is not in the interests of Israeli workers but in the interests of the ruling class. For example, it is obviously more important to the Israeli government to push ahead with the destruction of the Palestinians than to secure the release of the hostages. The class struggle must not be put on hold in favour of the supposed ‘defence of the fatherland.’
5. For the creation of an independent communist workers‘ party of Palestine, based on trade unions and regional committees, to put an end to the subordination of the Palestinian left to Hamas and Fatah!
In order to fight for a free, secular and socialist Palestine, as well as for the demands mentioned above, it is necessary to unite the most progressive forces in a party that is based on councils and committees, enforces these demands and gives the movement a political programme. The struggle for national liberation must be linked to the social and economic demands of the working class, such as a decent minimum wage, women’s rights and LGBTI+ rights! There must also be a break with the policies of Hamas and Fatah. Both have shown often enough that they have no strategy to win the liberation struggle and that they ultimately do not care about the interests of the Palestinian masses. Fatah has elevated itself to the role of colonial administrator in the Palestinian Authority and openly cooperates with Israel to crush protests against the occupation and genocide. But Hamas also relies on Iran and the so-called ‘axis of resistance’ as its allies, rather than on the masses of workers and small farmers in the Middle East. It does so because it ultimately expresses the class interests of the Palestinian bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeois layers, but in doing so it leads the resistance into a dead end. We stand for the interests of workers, small farmers, youth and women, which must be enforced not only against the Zionist occupation, but ultimately also against the Palestinian capitalists!
1. Immediate stop to all arms deliveries, stop military, economic and diplomatic support for Israel! Away with the warships off the coast of Gaza! For trade union action to block military equipment!
The German arms industry has long been a favourite supplier of war materiel to Israel. An analysis of statistical data from 2011 to 2022 shows that Israel ranks fourth among all countries to which Germany exports arms. Since the outbreak of war, these figures have exploded once again: compared to the previous year, the volume of arms exports has already increased more than tenfold! Germany is the second largest arms exporter to Israel and accounts for a third of all arms deliveries. On the one hand, it is a horrific thought that German corporations are enriching themselves from the murder in Palestine. On the other hand, these deliveries are also subsidised by taxpayers‘ money, because supporting forces of order such as Israel and maintaining conditions of semi-colonial dependence and exploitation by imperialism is German ‘national interest’. Preventing all this is our best chance here in Germany to oppose the war in Palestine and put international solidarity into practice. Workers in logistics and the arms industry have no interest in the oppression of their class brothers and sisters in Palestine. They must be won over to strikes, blockades and protest actions! Blockades of arms deliveries, such as those in Genoa, Marseille and many other ports around the world, show the way forward!
2. Stop the criminalisation of the liberation struggle! No more bans on demonstrations and lift those imposed on Samidoun, PFLP, Hamas and PKK!
While the AfD, Holocaust-denying Nazis and anti-Semitic ‘Querdenker’ (so called ‘lateral thinkers’, right wing conspiracy theorists) were allowed to take the streets under police protection to promote their ideology, solidarity demonstrations and commemorative events for the victims of the war in Palestine were banned left and right. Where they do take place, they are accompanied by police harassment: people are beaten, arrested and charged. We have long seen how the German state translates its foreign policy interests into domestic policy, for example with the ban on the PKK, through its repression of the Kurdish freedom movement. Now, Palestinian resistance organisations are also increasingly being banned, whether they are left-wing, such as Samidoun or PFLP, or religious fundamentalists such as Hamas. Even though we have a lot of criticism of these groups, do not share their ideologies and reject their tactics, we oppose their ban by the German state. Overcoming the reactionary leadership of the resistance struggle in Gaza will only be possible as part of this struggle, not through state repression by Israel or Germany.
3. Stop deportations now! Against the hypocritical pretext of anti-Semitism for a racist asylum policy! Form anti-racist self-defence committees against attacks by cops and fascists!
4. Open borders and citizenship rights for all who flee war, poverty and climate destruction!
We are currently witnessing how the right to asylum is being systematically undermined and abolished in Europe. Flight routes are being blocked, border controls are being tightened and even introduced within the Schengen area, refugees are being crammed into overcrowded camps and deported to war and crisis zones. Proposals to make a commitment to the state of Israel a condition for naturalisation or the announcement that supposedly anti-Semitic refugees must ‘finally be deported on a large scale’ are a cynical attempt to cast this rejection of fundamental human rights in a morally positive light. We oppose this with the demand for freedom of movement for all! In the struggle for this, it is necessary that the trade unions finally open up and promote the unionisation of refugees!
5. For Palestine solidarity groups at universities, schools, in workplaces and trade unions that organise nationwide!
In order to advance the Palestine solidarity movement in Germany, we must succeed in anchoring ourselves in broader sections of the youth and working class. Although the vast majority of Germans reject genocide, it is often only the same milieus that take the streets against this genocide. One reason for this is that many people in Germany are not confronted with the struggle against genocide in their everyday lives. They often reject it, but do not really know what they can do. One way to break this isolation is to establish Palestine solidarity groups in schools, universities and workplaces, i.e. where we spend our daily lives. Actions can range from BDS at universities, calls for solidarity and blockades of arms deliveries in companies, to the fight against racist teaching content or discrimination against Palestinians and Muslims in schools. The movement at universities in particular has shown that such a foundation can be established and that new layers of people can be drawn into the struggle. If we want to break support for Israel, we must take up the fight against genocide and imperialism everywhere we spend our daily lives and organise this nation- and worldwide!
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