Ran Greenstein - Anti-Colonial Resistance in South Africa and Israel - Palestine - Identity, Nationalism, and Race-Routledge (2022)

Anti-Colonial Resistance in
South Africa and Israel/Palestine
This book provides a comparative historical study of the rise and evolution of
anti-colonial movements in South Africa and Israel/Palestine. It focuses on the
ways in which major political movements and activists conceptualised their
positions vis-à-vis historical processes of colonial settlement and indigenous
resistance over the last century.
Drawing on a range of primary sources, the author engages with theor-
etical debates involving key actors operating in their own time and space.
Using a comparative framework, the book illustrates common and divergent
patterns of political and ideological contestations and focuses on the rele-
vance of debates about race and class, state and power, ethnicity and nation-
alism. Particular attention is given to South Africa and Israel/Palestine’s links
to global campaigns to undermine foreign domination and internal oppression,
tensions between the quests for national liberation and equality of rights, the
role of dissidents from within the ranks of settler communities, and the various
attempts to consolidate indigenous resistance internally while forging alliances
with other social and political forces on the outside.
This book will be of interest to scholars in the fields of African History,
Middle East History, and African Studies, and to social justice and solidarity
activists globally.
Ran Greenstein is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the

University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa.
Routledge Studies in the Modern History of Africa
This series includes in-depth research on aspects of economic, political, cultural

and social history of individual countries as well as broad-reaching analyses of
regional issues.
Themes include social and economic change, colonial experiences, inde-
pendence movements, post-independence governments, globalisation in Africa,
nationalism, gender histories, conflict, the Atlantic Slave trade, the environment,
health and medicine, ethnicity, urbanisation, and neo-colonialism and aid.
Forthcoming titles:
Photography and History in Colonial Southern Africa

Shades of Empire
Lorena Rizzo
Women’s Lived Landscapes of War and Liberation in Mozambique

Bodily Memory and the Gendered Aesthetics of Belonging
Jonna Katto
Rethinking White Societies in Southern Africa

1930s–1990s
Duncan Money and Danelle Van Zyl-Hermann
Colonialism, Ethnicity and War in Angola

Vasco Martins
Anti-Colonial Resistance in South Africa and Israel/Palestine

Identity, Nationalism, and Race
Ran Greenstein
For a full list of available titles please visit: www.routledge.com/Routledge-

Studies-in-the-Modern-History-of-Africa/book-series/MHA
Anti-Colonial Resistance
in South Africa and
Israel/Palestine
Identity, Nationalism, and Race
Ran Greenstein
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 Ran Greenstein
The right of Ran Greenstein to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978-0-367-03041-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-30497-7 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-02005-6 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9780429020056
Typeset in Bembo
by Newgen Publishing UK
newgenprepdf
Contents
1 Introduction 1
2 The Communist Party of South Africa 14
3 The Rise of African Nationalism 35
4 The Palestinian Communist Party, 1919–1948 58
5 Palestinian-Arab Nationalism before 1948 79
6 South Africa: The Apartheid Era 100
7 Israel/Palestine Post-1948: Dispersal and New Beginnings 148
8 Post-1967: Resistance, Occupation, and Civic Struggle 175
9 Comparisons and Conclusions 226
Index 234
1
Introduction
This book examines the South African and the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts from
a comparative perspective, with a focus on political and conceptual challenges
to colonial settlement and rule, posed by radical nationalist and left-wing
movements. It looks at the two cases within the historical context of European
colonialism, imperial expansion, white settlement, indigenous resistance, and
decolonisation campaigns. In so doing it covers political and theoretical debates
on such issues as race and class, power and identity, strategies of domination,
and oppositional social mobilisation. The colonial context provides a historical
setting for the study, but beyond it unfolded global processes of class, identity,
and state formation, which operate in similar though not identical ways under
colonial, non-colonial, and post-colonial conditions.
A comparative strategy for the study of South Africa and Israel/Palestine
may take different forms, and a specific focus is needed for any concrete inves-
tigation. Several possible ways to proceed with the task exist: a giant “compare
and contrast” exercise, in which two cases receive equal attention; the deploy-
ment of one case in order to highlight the specific features of the other (and
vice versa); alternatively, a focus on one case and the use of the other to illus-
trate an overall argument; and, in more partisan than academic vein, the study
could be used to score debating points, as is frequently done with this specific
comparison. Developing political arguments in scholarly work is a legitimate
practice, of course, as long as it does not involve a selection of evidence in order
to lend support to pre-conceived political positions.
Models of historical phenomena, such as colonialism or ethno-nationalism,
can be useful in setting cases within a global framework, but they rarely have
distinct laws of motion or specific theoretical dynamics, nor do they usually
display a unique configuration of social forces. General colonial models cannot
account for the variety and shifts in the internal dynamics of colonial societies,
across space and time, and models based on one/two specific cases are inad-
equate as they tend to capture the unique features of such cases with the use
of abstract terminology that does not advance theory. To illustrate the point, let
us look at two models: settler colonialism and Colonialism of a Special Type,
known in South Africa as CST.
DOI: 10.4324/9780429020056-1
2 Introduction
The settler-colonial model identifies a cluster of societies in which colo-
nial rule was combined with large-scale immigration of European settlers.
Politically, it focuses on resilient forms of domination entrenched by settlers.
Facing resistance from indigenous people, settler- dominated societies were
shaped by political conflicts that provided them with a sense of shared destiny.
Solidarity between indigenous groups, slaves, and other marginalised people
was the counterpart of that process.1 With that said, the extent to which this
model is useful historically and theoretically is less obvious.What is the problem
with settler colonialism as a historical concept?
Its strongest point is also its weakest: it is applicable to a great diversity of
conditions. It can be applied to societies in which settlers overwhelmed the
indigenous population to the point that it became negligible, no more that
2–3% of the population in the United States of America (USA), Canada, and
Australia. The prospect of reversal of settler domination disappeared there as
a result. In other places –Kenya, Rhodesia, Algeria, Mozambique, and South
Africa –indigenous people remained the bulk of the population and the main
source of labour power. They continued to pose a fundamental challenge to
settler rule for many decades until they managed to overthrow it.
Slavery featured in some cases –the USA and colonial South Africa –but
not in others. European settlers retained legal and political links to the mother
country in Algeria, Kenya, Rhodesia, and Portugal’s African colonies, but they
became independent in the USA, South Africa, Canada, and Australia, at times
as a result of violent intra-colonial conflicts. In some countries most settlers
left the territory after independence –Algeria, Mozambique, Angola, and
Rhodesia –but substantial numbers stayed on in Namibia and South Africa.
And, where they became numerically dominant, settlers consolidated their rule,
marginalised indigenous people, and incorporated them in a qualified manner
into the new polity after they had ceased to pose a demographic threat. Where
indigenous people remained a substantial group, legal-racial distinctions were
usually retained.
Indigenous resistance strategies have differed too: attempts by “natives” to
integrate as individuals on an equal basis in some societies (late colonial South
Africa, for example), maintenance of pre- colonial identities and modes of
organisation in others, formation of nationalist movements on the new terrain
created by colonial settlement, and alternatively a focus on race based on the
legacy of dispossession and slavery. Envisaging settlers as part of a future society
varied as well, from a total rejection to embracing them as members of the new
society. Diverse geo-historical trends coexisted with various degrees of incorp-
oration of urban natives compared to rural populations, and modes of direct and
indirect rule that continued to shape African societies into the post-colonial
period.2
Settler colonialism, just like colonialism in general, is compatible then
with different demographic ratios, divergent trajectories of indigenous-settler
relations, diverse relations between metropolitan centres and settlers, different
destinies of settlers in the post-colonial period, and social structures that varied
Introduction 3
from reliance on white labour, and indentured immigrants from Europe, India,
and China, to slavery in Africa and its diaspora, and indigenous labour subor-
dination. In brief, settler colonial societies do not move in the same direction –
consolidation of settler rule or, conversely, its demise, as a result of resistance,
incorporation, or exclusion –nor do they exhibit distinct sociopolitical dynamics
over time, in the relations between race and class, for example, ideology and
power, religion and ethnicity, land and labour. In this respect, settler colonialism
cannot be treated as a theoretical model; rather, its numerous manifestations are
themselves in need of theoretical analysis. At best, it may provide a starting point
for substantial historically specific investigations.
While the settler-colonial model is not specific enough, CST is too specific
to serve as a model that extends beyond its historical origins in South Africa.
It emerged through efforts by the South African Communist Party to identify
the unique features of race-based rule whereby Europeans exercised domin-
ation from within the country they had settled rather than from outside of it.
Using Marxist concepts, it defined South Africa as a society exhibiting spe-
cific features: shared class interests of foreign and domestic capital in exploiting
native labour, absence of a black bourgeoisie, links of urban black labour to
the countryside. South Africa was regarded as a local manifestation of global
processes of colonial expansion and rule, though with its own unique history.
In a key statement from 1962, discussed in detail in Chapter 6, the Party
defined South Africa under apartheid as “a new type of colonialism”, in which
“the oppressing White nation occupied the same territory as the oppressed
people themselves and lived side by side with them”. Combining the languages
of race, class, and nationalism, it went on to describe “white South Africa” as a
highly developed advanced capitalist state, with “Non-White South Africa” as
its colony, displaying similar characteristics to colonial territories throughout the
African continent. Its system of racial oppression could be overthrown through
a “unified struggle of national liberation and working class movements”, poten-
tially including settlers who had no entrenched interest in white monopoly
capitalist domination, despite being junior partners in the exploitation of the
black population.
In methodological terms, CST was the point of departure for the analysis. It
identified distinctive features of colonial rule in South Africa –internal locus of
domination allied historically with external forces –while taking two further
steps: reaching outward to deploy concepts that were not tied to any specific
location –capitalism, class structure, land, labour relations, and revolution –and
reaching inward to detail the specific ways in which these global concepts were
manifested locally. There was a built-in tension between the two moves: the
more a model reached out to global concepts, the less useful it was in local
analysis. The more detailed it became in addressing local specificities, the less it
could function as a general model.
Is apartheid a more suitable theoretical term then? That is unlikely: it is even
more historically specific than CST and it has no distinct conceptual apparatus.
It emerged in 1948, though building on existing terminology and practices
4 Introduction
of segregation. The extent to which it could apply to earlier periods in South
Africa is not clear. Can it be regarded as a theoretical concept at all?
Historically, apartheid referred to a multi-pronged regime combining colo-
nial dispossession, class exploitation, and racial discrimination. Its three core
dimensions –land, labour, and race –reinforced each other. Over time, the legal
machinery associated with racial distinctions became an obstacle to social and
economic stability and growth, and eventually was discarded, removing thus the
racial-political logic that made South Africa unique. However, inequalities on
the basis of land and labour remain central to post-apartheid society. It is pos-
sible to speak about apartheid today in the social or class sense, but not in the
legal sense of the past.
Conceptually, the apartheid model focuses on the formation of a unified
but internally unequal society, which gives rise to struggles over rights and
resources.These struggles involve divisions within groups and alliances between
them. It differs from the settler-colonial model which retains a core distinc-
tion between indigenous people and settlers. Politically, these models move in
opposite directions: on the one hand, seeking to overcome the barriers imposed
by apartheid by building political alliances across the colour line; on the other
hand, mobilising to reverse settler expansion. Labour, social equality, and pol-
itical inclusion are central to the anti-apartheid thrust. Land and indigenous
resistance are central to the anti-settler thrust. By definition, reversing apartheid
means a challenge to its group categories and boundaries, while reversing settler
colonialism may entail the opposite –reinforcing these boundaries to enhance
indigenous consolidation and resistance.
Models deal with ideal types, of course, not with historically concrete cases.
Apartheid in South Africa was a product of a racially shaped process of industri-
alisation superimposed on pre-existing colonial relations formed by European
settlement and indigenous dispossession. Race in the USA today is a product
of a history of genocide, slavery, cross-border expansion, and immigration,
while race in Britain is a product of immigration from former colonies after
the demise of empire. The concrete relations between land, labour, power, and
identity in each case are best seen in the global framework of colonialism which
produced diverse outcomes over its 500-year operation.
How can we deal with societies that fall within this framework? I address the
multiplicity of colonial and post-colonial societies with a four-track approach:
• Examining them within the context of centuries-long history of expanding

trade, market and production networks, colonial conquest, consolidation of
empires and nation states, and rise and transformation of ideologies of race,
ethnicity, and nationalism;
• Studying them on their full historical specificity without imposing artifi-
cial boundaries between classes of cases;
• Deploying general analytical concepts instead of idiosyncratic models,
which may serve as useful political labels but are theoretically without
much substance; and,
Introduction 5
• Engaging in selective comparisons in order to highlight the general and
unique features of different cases by examining them against each other.
In using this approach, we must consider that
colonial power, like any other, was an object of struggle and depended
on the material, social, and cultural resources of those involved. Colonizer
and colonized are themselves far from immutable constructs, and such cat-
egories had to be reproduced by specific actions.3
In fact, how settlers and indigenous people defined themselves, constructed or

dismantled boundaries between groups over time, retained and modified pre-
and post-encounter identities, using “native categories of the past” rather than
“analytic categories of the present”, is of central interest in the study of the rise
and demise of colonialism, and resistance to it.
Identity formation is a process that involves shifting notions of what con-
stitute groups, and where the boundaries between them are located. We
cannot take “Blacks”, “Whites”, “Jews”, “Arabs”, for granted, as if they reflect
long-lasting and unchanging ways for people to refer to themselves and to
others. These categories, frequently seen as natural and mutually exclusive, are
constructed in a historical process that needs to be understood and analysed as
it unfolds in the course of social and political struggles, with outcomes that are
contingent rather than necessary.4
The notion of Native Categories used by Cooper above is important. In this
work I focus on how contemporary actors understood and assigned meanings
to their own situations, and how they conceptualised their own conditions and
the challenges they faced.When examining analytical and practical categories –
colonialism and settlement, indigeneity and foreign rule, self-determination and
historical rights, race and class –the ways in which these concepts were defined
by local actors, who used them in their strategies of political organisation and
resistance, are crucial.
Of course, activists and movements do not engage in theoretical discussions
in the same way that academics do. But, in both South Africa and Israel/
Palestine political forces frequently engaged in analysis for purposes of edu-
cation, advocacy, and mobilisation. That was the case for left-wing movements
with a Marxist orientation (Communist Parties in particular) and also for
activists of a liberal and nationalist orientation. Their analytical efforts shaped
the roads they took, the ways they understood their own social and political
positions and acted on them, and the alliances they entered with other forces
(indigenous, settler, local, regional, and global) to further their aims.
In this context we need to pay particular attention to subjugated voices.
Most analysis of colonial situations focuses on imperial powers and settlers, their
interests, concerns, and strategies, not on those standing in opposition: indi-
genous people, slaves, labourers, and peasants.The problem here is not primarily
moral or political but scholarly: the ways in which subaltern actors organised
6 Introduction
socially and politically during the colonial encounter shaped their options,
opportunities, and challenges, and affected how dominant groups formulated
their own policies in return. Their perspectives are essential to the unfolding
narratives, which is why their voices occupy central place in this work.
This book aims to highlight how the main left-wing and indigenous nation-
alist movements came up with analyses of and strategies for resisting colonial
rule on its various manifestations in the two cases of interest here –South Africa
and Israel/Palestine during the 20th century. It looks at the ways in which these
movements conceptualised their conditions of existence and operation in their
own words, using as far as possible primary sources and original documents.
I focus on questions of anti-colonial theory and practice without aiming to
cover all relevant perspectives and every single movement of note. For reasons
of space and time, some perspectives were selected for inclusion and others had
to be left out despite offering interesting insights worthy of discussion too.
Above all, this is a study of ideas generated by political movements and
intellectuals and activists working with them, rather than a study of organisations
and historical events, though these provide an essential framework for the ana-
lysis. Colonial strategies of domination and settlement processes lurk in the
background, of course, but are rarely discussed directly as the focus is elsewhere,
on resistance which is frequently unsuccessful but never futile.
Classical Theoretical and Political Reflections

A formative theoretical discussion of colonialism from a socialist perspective
was conducted early in the 20th century by the Second International. German
theorist Karl Kautsky distinguished between “work” and “exploitation” col-
onies: the former were “settled by members of the working classes of the
motherland, craftsmen, wage workers, and, particularly, peasants”, who wished
“to escape economic or political pressure, and to found a new home for them-
selves free from such pressure”. Such colonies relied on the labour of settlers,
“not on the labour of subdued natives”. Exploitation colonies, in contrast, were
“settled by members of the exploiting classes of the motherland”, who went to
the colonies
not in order to find a new home, but in order to forsake the colony when
they have squeezed enough out of it; not to escape pressure at home,
but in order to become capable of exerting even greater pressure in the
motherland.
Such colonies relied on “plundering or forced labour of the natives”.

Kautsky went on to say that work colonies were possible only in “very thinly
populated regions, in which a very primitive mode of production predominates,
perhaps hunting, which requires immense territories to support a single indi-
vidual”. In heavily populated territories, the settlers would find no room, “and
they would not find the freedom they demand” because they would encounter
Introduction 7
“private property in land, ground-rent, state and military structures, which they
had sought to escape”. As work colonies originated in the effort to escape class
domination, he added, they did not rest on the exploitation and oppression
of the natives, but on the settlers’ own work, though “these have led everywhere
to the repression, and often to the complete destruction of the natives”.
In his definition of work colonies, Kautsky included the USA, Canada, South
Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Australia, and South Africa. A quick glance would raise
questions about the motivations of settlers and the extent to which they indeed
used their “own” labour. South Africa in particular stood out as a place where
settlers engaged in various practices of slavery, dispossession, genocide, and use
of coerced local and imported labour. It combined features from both cat-
egories, as well as a third one, in which “communist relations predominate on
the land”, and therefore
incoming capital first requires the artificial, forcible creation of the situ-
ation which will make the population an object of its exploitation. This
means that the natives have to be expropriated, forced to work, in order to
provide profit for capital.
Rejecting colonialism as “no more than foreign domination, racial domin-

ation”, Kautsky saw an independent future for “the most advanced colonies”
(Egypt, India), with their “vigorous national movements”, urban intelligentsia
and a budding industrial proletariat. Other colonies would embark on their
own struggles against foreign rule.5
In a subsequent attempt to position colonialism in a Marxist framework,
Rosa Luxemburg examined the context of global capital accumulation. She
regarded settlers in South Africa as farmers who, “not content with robbing
the natives of their land”, built their economy “like parasites on the backs of
the Negroes, compelling them to do slave-labour for them and corrupting
and enervating them deliberately and systematically”. They drove the natives
to the north “just as the American farmer had driven the Red Indian West
before him under the impact of capitalist economy”. In fact, she said, white
farmers and colonial capitalists were competing for the natives “for their land
and their labour power”. They differed in methods only: “the Boers stood for
out-dated slavery on a petty scale, on which their patriarchal peasant economy
was founded, the British bourgeoisie represented modern large-scale capitalist
exploitation of the land and the natives”.
Putting it in theoretical terms, in South Africa capitalism displaced other
modes of production: “Historically, the accumulation of capital is a kind of
metabolism between capitalist economy and those pre-capitalist methods of
production without which it cannot go on and which, in this light, it corrodes
and assimilates”. Capital could not accumulate without the aid of the non-
capitalist sector, nor could it tolerate its “continued existence side by side with
itself ”, so it sought the progressive disintegration of the non-capitalist sector to
make accumulation possible.6
8 Introduction
Whereas Luxemburg used the process of capital accumulation to frame
imperial rule,Vladimir Lenin identified it as
that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and

finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired
pronounced importance … in which the division of all territories of the
globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.
This led to the intensification of “the yoke of national oppression and the
striving for annexations”. National oppression gave rise to “growing resistance
of the peoples who are awakening to national consciousness”. Their goal was
“the creation of a united national state as a means to economic and cultural
freedom”.
To facilitate emancipation, Lenin asserted the right of nations to self-
determination and statehood: “the tendency of every national movement is
towards the formation of national states … we must inevitably reach the con-
clusion that the self determination of nations means the political separation of
these nations”. Referring to multi-national empires, Lenin called for “complete
equality of rights for all nations; the right of nations to self-determination”.
Specifically, this applied to groups occupying a distinct territory within a pol-
itical framework that was imposed on them –such as Ukrainians and Poles in
the Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires –and to nations dominated by
colonial empires.7 On that basis he called on European workers to “demand
freedom of political separation for the colonies and nations oppressed by ‘their
own’ nation”.8
Unlike Lenin, Luxemburg was sceptical of the emancipatory potential of
anti-colonial nationalism. Modern imperialism was “both a necessity and a
condition of development for capitalist world powers”. Old colonialism in
the Americas was based on plunder of natural resources for the benefit of
empires, not on rational exploitation to benefit capitalist production. Settler
freedom enabled “independent development of capitalism” by “breaking the
rotting fetters of political dependence”. Anti-colonial movements led by
settlers were progressive even if they gained their freedom at the expense
of indigenous people and slaves. Later-day colonisation though, “created
a dependence which is much less superficial than the previous one” and
made [progressive] capitalist development irreconcilable with “true inde-
pendence of all nationalities”. Breaking up the global system into national
units hampered economic development. The right to self-determination, she
argued, was “a completely hopeless, and historically speaking, reactionary
undertaking”.
Luxemburg’s approach was formed in the context of minority national-
ities in the Russian, German, and Austro-Hungarian empires, not that of over-
seas imperialism. But, she raised crucial questions for a critical examination of
national self-determination:
Introduction 9
who is that ‘nation’ and who has the authority and the ‘right’ to speak for
the ‘nation’ and express its will? How can we find out what the ‘nation’
actually wants? Does there exist even one political party which would not
claim that it alone, among all others, truly expresses the will of the ‘nation,’
whereas all other parties give only perverted and false expressions of the
national will?9
These questions continue to pose a challenge to the nationalist logic which

hinges on the existence of a unified group seeking independence from foreign
rule, as if that were a natural form of organisation uniting its members regard-
less of internal social and political differences. We cannot take group formation
and identity for granted. Seen in national, ethnic, racial, and religious terms,
this is a topic explored further in the book: how did groups of people come
to identify themselves as members of larger collectives, how did they use such
identifications to further their struggles, to mobilise for action, and to campaign
for change? This matter needs to be studied concretely in a historical manner.
Lenin’s Theses on the National and Colonial Questions, adopted by the Second
Congress of the Communist International (Comintern) in July 1920, included
a call to analyse the specific historical and economic conditions that shaped
the national question, not merely follow abstract principles. At the same time,
two imperatives were outlined: (1) the need to “emphasise the explicit separ-
ation of the interests of the oppressed classes, of the toilers, of the exploited,
from the general concept of the national interest, which means the interests of
the ruling class”, and (2) the need to “emphasise the equally clear division
of the oppressed, dependent nations which do not enjoy equal rights from the
oppressing, exploiting, privileged nations”.
Reconciling the two imperatives was not easy: the first called for class
distinctions within national movements while the second ignored internal class
divisions. Referring to oppressed and oppressing “nations” rather than classes
implied that unified national interests existed. Calling for “union of the workers
and toiling masses of all nations and countries in the common revolutionary
struggle for the overthrow of the landlords and of the bourgeoisie” was a step
towards highlighting class discourse and undermining the language of nation-
alism. Tensions between class and nation were unresolved.
One Leninist principle that remained constant was the need for “direct support
to the revolutionary movements in dependent nations and those deprived of
their rights”. In societies with “more backward, predominantly feudal, patri-
archal or peasant patriarchal character”, Communist Parties “must support the
revolutionary liberation movements in these countries by their deeds”. At the
same time, “unconditional struggle must be carried out against the reactionary
and medieval influence of the clergy, the Christian missions and similar elem-
ents”, including movements linked to local nobility and landlords: “support
for the peasant movement in the backward countries against the landowners
and every form and remnant of feudalism is particularly necessary”. But,
10 Introduction
Communists had to “unconditionally maintain the independent character of
the proletarian movement”.
Thesis 11 is of particular relevance for this book: criticising the “deception
committed by the imperialist powers with the help of the privileged classes in
the oppressed countries”, the thesis defined “the Palestine affair” as
a gross example of Entente imperialism and the bourgeoisie of the country

in question pooling their efforts to deceive the working classes of that
oppressed nation [Jews]. Zionism in general delivers the Arab working
population of Palestine, where Jewish workers only form a minority, to
exploitation by Britain, under the cloak of the creation of a Jewish state in
Palestine.10
As discussed in Chapter 4, this was the foundation of the Communist perspec-

tive on Israel/Palestine: regarding Zionism as a colonial enterprise, in which
Jewish workers were implicated as collaborators with imperialism against their
own interests and wishes.
While Lenin tried to reconcile national liberation with social revolution,
M.N. Roy focused on the differences between the two, which were growing
“further and further apart with every day that passes”. One was a “bourgeois-
democratic nationalist movement, which pursues the programme of political
liberation with the conservation of the capitalist order”; the other was “the
struggle of the property-less peasants for their liberation from every kind of
exploitation”. The Comintern’s role was to develop the class consciousness
of the colonial masses “towards the overthrow of foreign capitalism”. Roy
went on to assert that “the real strength, the foundation of the liberation
movement, will not allow itself to be forced into the narrow framework of
bourgeois-democratic nationalism in the colonies”. But, he cautioned, ini-
tially the anti-colonial campaign had to be carried out according to the pro-
gramme of “purely petty-bourgeois demands, such as distribution of the land”,
without the leadership of the struggle falling “into the hands of the bourgeois
democrats”.11
In the following Congress of the Comintern in 1921, Roy argued against
a uniform policy for the non-Western world since “Eastern countries vary
greatly in their political, economic, industrial, and social conditions”.12 His ideas
featured in the Theses on the Eastern Question, adopted by the Fourth Comintern
Congress in 1922, which distinguished between countries where commer-
cial capital became dominant (such as India and Egypt) though feudal and
bureaucratic forces retained power, and countries in which feudal-patriarchal
relationships had not yet disintegrated to separate the native aristocracy from
the masses (Mesopotamia and Mongolia). In the former, traditional elites were
an obstacle to mass struggle against imperialism, while in the latter case they
could form part of that struggle. In both, the main task was to achieve national
unity and political independence, based “on the degree to which a given
national movement is capable of breaking all its ties with the reactionary-feudal
Introduction 11
forces, and thus win over the broad working masses and give expression in its
programme to their social demands”.
While supporting “every national-revolutionary movement against imperi-
alism”, the Comintern added that the masses had to break away from “all those
who seek conciliation with imperialism in order to maintain their own class-
rule”. Initially, bourgeois intellectuals formed the vanguard of anti-colonial
movements, but as workers and peasants were drawn into the struggle and
asserted their class interests, conservative social forces would withdraw from
it. Communists had a double task: to fight for radical resolution of the tasks
of a bourgeois-democratic revolution, “aimed at winning political independ-
ence”, and to “organise the worker and peasant masses in struggle for their par-
ticular class interests”, using internal contradictions in the nationalist bourgeois
camp. Thus, an anti-imperialist united front could be formed. Such an accom-
modation with the national bourgeoisie was necessary in order “to achieve a
breathing spell in the revolutionary struggle for liberation against imperialism”,
provided that it did not hamper the struggle against collaboration between
imperialism and the native ruling classes, aimed at preserving the latter’s class
privileges.
Communist parties in metropolitan countries, the theses maintained, had to
organise “systematic ideological and material assistance for the proletarian and
revolutionary movement in the colonies”, and to oppose the colonial mentality
of privileged European workers in the colonies.These workers had to work with
“indigenous proletarians” and win their trust through specific demands, such as
equal pay and labour protection. The focus was on indigenous people: white-
settler Communist organisations in places such as Egypt and Algeria were seen
as a “hidden form of colonialism”.13
These sentiments echoed points made by Comintern president, Zinoviev, in
the Baku Congress of the People of the East in 1920, where he said:
The task of the more civilized, more literate, more organized workers of
Europe and America is to help the backward toilers of the East … to help
them in the only way they can: by teaching them to master weapons and
to direct these against the white, civilized beasts of prey who sit in the
counting-houses and banks of London and Paris.
Zinoviev made little distinction between colonies and independent countries

located in “The East”, such as Turkey, Persia, and China, seen alongside the
British colony of India. He focused on the European-led world revolution and
the central role of the Soviet Union. In a patronising tone, he continued:
We must support this Turk and help him, and wait for a real people’s revo-
lution to arise in Turkey, when veneration for Sultans and other survivals
will all at once depart from his mind. I must, as the elder brother, hasten this
movement, says the advanced worker. I will support the present national-
democratic movement of the Turks, says the Communist worker, and at the
12 Introduction
same time I consider it my sacred duty to call upon the Turkish peasants,
the Persian peasants, and downtrodden, oppressed working peasants of the
entire East … to teach them the simple truth that we need real economic
equality between all men and real brotherly unity between all who live by
their labour.14
Nationalist movements in independent states that remained subordinate

within the global system were seen as forces for radical change, within limits.
The Congress declared support for “general-national revolutionary movements
which seek to free the oppressed peoples of the East from the yoke of foreign
imperialists”, but noted that success for nationalist movements “would not in
the least signify the emancipation of … peasants and workers from oppression
and exploitation of every kind”.15 A resolution, Theses on Soviet Power in the
East, asserted the need for further action, whereby the Eastern peasantry would
“develop their revolution to the dimensions of a huge agrarian peasant revolu-
tion, as a result of which the land must pass into the possession of the working
people and all exploitation must disappear”. Nationalist and ethnic conflicts
would disappear when the toiling masses “join forces to destroy the power
of their oppressors, both foreign and native”, and relations between different
countries change from exploitation to “reciprocal support and aid”.16
The manifesto of the Congress called on “the Peoples of the East” to embark
on a holy war, “under the red banner of the Communist International”, against
the common enemy –imperial Britain –to end “the division of mankind into
oppressor peoples and oppressed peoples, for complete equality of all peoples
and races” regardless of language, skin colour, and religion. That task would be
realised through “the unity of all the peasants and workers of the East and of the
West, the unity of all the toilers, all the oppressed and exploited”. Britain was
condemned for having proclaimed “independent Moslem countries to be its
colonies, driven from the land the Arabs who have owned it for centuries”, for
taking land and oilfields, and “stripping the Arabs of all means of livelihood”. In
Palestine specifically, it was accused of “acting for the benefit of Anglo-Jewish
capitalists” by driving “Arabs from the land in order to give the latter to Jewish
settlers”, and then inciting them “against these same Jewish settlers, sowing dis-
cord, enmity and hatred between all the communities, weakening both in order
that it may itself rule and command”.17
As will be shown in Chapters 2 and 4 in particular, these reflections of a the-
oretical and political nature shaped the perspectives and practices of Communist
parties in our two cases, starting with the Communist Party of South Africa,
formed in 1921, dissolved in 1950, and reconstituted in 1953 as the South
African Communist Party. Chapter 3 tells the story of the rise of African nation-
alism in the first half of the 20th century, from the aftermath of the Anglo-Boer
war to 1948 and the beginning of the apartheid era. Chapter 4 is dedicated to
the Palestinian Communist Party of the British Mandate period, and Chapter 5
pursues the parallel story of the Palestinian-Arab national movement in the
same period. Chapter 6 discusses the apartheid era in South Africa, with a focus
Introduction 13
on the African National Congress (ANC), its alliance with the Communist
Party and the Africanist and Black Consciousness alternatives to it. Chapters 7
and 8 return to Israel/Palestine, from the formation of Israel and the Nakba of
1948, through the 1967 war and the rise of the armed Palestinian resistance,
to the Oslo process of the 1990s and beyond. Chapter 9 picks up the different
historical threads and seeks to draw comparative conclusions.
Notes
1 A. Davis, Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a
Movement (Haymarket Books, 2016).
2 M. Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism
(Princeton University Press, 1996).
3 F. Cooper, Colonialism in Question:Theory, Knowledge, History (University of California
Press, 2005), p. 17.
4 S. Hall, The Fateful Triangle: Race, Ethnicity, Nation (Harvard University Press, 2017).
5 K. Kautsky, Socialism and Colonial Policy (1907), in www.marxists.org/archive/
kautsky/1907/colonial/.
6 R. Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital (1913), in www.marxists.org/archive/
luxemburg/1913/accumulation-capital/ch29.htm.
7 V. Lenin, The Right of Nations to Self- Determination (1914), www.marxists.org/
archive/luxemburg/1909/national-question/ch01.htm.
8 V. Lenin, The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self- Determination
(1916), www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/SRSD16.html.
9 R. Luxemburg, The National Question (1909), www.marxists.org/archive/luxem-
burg/1909/national-question/ch01.htm.
10 V.I. Lenin, Theses on the National and Colonial Question (1920), www.marxists.org/
history/international/comintern/2nd-congress/ch05.htm.
11 M.N. Roy, Supplementary Theses on the National and Colonial Question (1920), www.
marxists.org/history/international/comintern/2nd-congress/ch04.htm.
12 M.N. Roy, Theses on the Eastern Question (1921), www.marxists.org/archive/roy/
1921/roy03.htm.
13 Theses on the Eastern Question (1922), www.marxists.org/history/international/
comintern/4th-congress/thesis-on-eastern-question.htm.
14 Baku Congress of the Peoples of the East, First Session (1920), www.marxists.org/
history/international/comintern/baku/ch01.htm.
15 In www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/baku/ch04.htm.
16 In www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/baku/ch06.htm.
17 www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/baku/manifesto.htm.
2
The Communist Party of
South Africa
With the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910 as a dominion of

the British Empire, modern South Africa in its current boundaries came into
being. For the most part it retained the system of racial segregation that had
existed before then, with minor provincial variations. In essence, South Africa
was established as a unified country in which only white people enjoyed full
citizenship, while different black groups were subjected to various restrictions
on the exercise of political power, social rights, and freedom of movement,
organisation, occupation, and residence. That remained the case until 1994.
The origins of the Communist movement in South Africa go back to 1915
when members of the South African Labour Party (SALP) left in protest against
its support for Britain in the First World War and formed the International
Socialist League (ISL). Although the war was the main reason for the break-up,
differences regarding the “native question” also emerged.The Labour Party was
the voice of skilled and supervisory white workers, largely of British origins,
whose professional and social position was premised on the existence of subor-
dinate unskilled black people. It rejected industrial unionism which organised
all workers in a given sector, regardless of the level of skill. Many of its members
practised craft unionism open only to skilled workers who jealously guarded
their privileged position. Politically, it opposed equal rights for black workers.
The ISL started moving away from that stance under the influence of two of
its leaders, David Ivon Jones and Sidney Bunting. Initially, this was done with
the use of vague terminology. An editorial in The International, the ISL’s pub-
lication, discussed the 1915 split and asserted that “an Internationalism which
does not concede the fullest rights which the native working class is capable
of claiming will be a sham”. Addressing the native question, it said, “in con-
sonance with Socialist principles”, would shake South African capitalism to its
foundations. Racial equality was therefore essential: “Not till we free the native
can we hope to free the white”.1
In its first conference, in January 1916, the ISL called for “the organisation
of the workers on industrial or class lines, irrespective of race, colour or creed,
as the most effective means of providing the necessary force for the emancipa-
tion of the workers”. Bunting urged the League to support “the abolition of all
forms of native indenture, compound and passport system; and the lifting of the
DOI: 10.4324/9780429020056-2
The Communist Party of South Africa 15
native worker to the political and industrial status of the white”. Many members
regarded that as too extreme, and a qualification was added to read: “meanwhile
endeavouring to prevent the increase of the native wage workers, and to assist
the existing native wage workers to free themselves from the wage system”.
The fact that black workers were a permanently proletarianised population, like
white workers, was not accepted by members fearful of the competition offered
by rural migrants. Many black migrant workers shared that sentiment.2
In a major theoretical statement from December 1917, the ISL appealed to
the self-interest of white workers:
In all countries the influx of cheap labour is used as a whip wherewith to

beat the whole of the working class. In South Africa the cheap labourer,
being black, is doubly resented by the higher paid worker … The suicidal
prejudice of the white workers against the coloured workers is the only
native problem.
Solidarity was the answer for labour competition:
White standards are not in danger from the ambition of the native to
improve. White standards are endangered by the attempts to keep him
down. White standards will not be saved in South Africa by the White
Labour Policy. White standards will only be saved by the Black workers
organising industrially.
Black labour was cheap because it was degraded, “to the level of serfs and
herded cattle for the express use of capital”. For that reason, the cause of Labour
demanded “the abolition of the Pass, the Compound, and the Indenture: and
as the native workers gain in industrial solidarity, demands for them complete
political equality with their white fellow workers”. It was the only way for
the entire class to march united, “to their common emancipation from wage
slavery”.3 Solidarity was essential: “While the black worker is oppressed, the
white worker cannot be free”.4
The Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA)

By 1921, the ISL together with small radical groups in Johannesburg and
Cape Town had united to form the CPSA, which joined the Communist
International. David Ivon Jones, the Party’s main theorist, became its represen-
tative until his death in 1924. In his presentation to the Executive Committee
of the Communist International (ECCI), he provided a ground-breaking ana-
lysis of the conditions under which South African radicals operated, similar in
some respects to Luxemburg’s discussion of the relation between the capitalist
and non-capitalist sectors. Titled “Communism in South Africa”, it highlighted
the affinities and tensions between race and class as organising principles, an
issue that remains central to debates all the way to the present.
16 The Communist Party of South Africa
South Africa was the epitome of the global class struggle, Jones said. Nowhere
else did “white skilled and dark unskilled meet together in one social milieu
as they do in South Africa”. And, nowhere else were the problems so acute of
“two streams of the working class with vastly unequal standards of life jostling
side by side, and the resultant race prejudices and animosities interfering and
mixing with the class struggle”.5 Defining black South Africans as “a race of
labourers”, he identified the Native Reserves (Bantustans/Homelands of the
future) as
cheap breeding grounds for black labour –the repositories of the reserve
army of native labour –sucking it in or letting it out according to the
demands of industry. By means of these territories Capital is relieved of the
obligation of paying wages to cover the cost of the labourer of reproducing
his kind.6
White workers were not partners in the class struggle, as their “conscious-
ness of class is, so far, fitful and easily lost”. They are used to “lord it over” the
unskilled natives as their social inferiors: “The white miner’s duty is almost
wholly that of supervision”, and he regards his subordinates as belonging to
another world:
As workers whose functions are wholly different in the industrial world,

there is hardly any competition involved; indeed, the white miner is as
much interested as the Chamber of Mines in a plentiful supply of native
labour, without which he cannot start work.
Under such conditions, class consciousness among white workers was

“somewhat narrow and professional”, based on their status as labour aristocracy
rather than on similarity as workers with the native masses. But, the migration
of destitute Afrikaners from the countryside into the towns, and “equality in
wretchedness” between poor white and black people in urban slums, increased
the size of the working class and offered some hope of reduced race prejudice
among them.
Among native workers, “tribal feuds” declined with the struggle for liveli-
hood, and the rise of militancy among “raw recruits”, migrant workers from all
over southern Africa. Their conditions could not be addressed by a nationalist
struggle carried out by a “small coterie of educated natives [who] feel they have
a special claim”.7 They were a loosely organised body composed of “the chiefs,
native lawyers, native clergymen, and others who eke out a living as agents
among their compatriots”. They could not attract the masses and would be
eclipsed by new forces:
the growing class organisations of the natives will soon dominate or dis-
place the ‘Congress’. The national and class interests of the natives cannot
be distinguished the one from the other. Here is a revolutionary nationalist
movement in the fullest meaning of Lenin’s term.8
But the revolutionary movement was weak, Jones said, dependent on few
activists “from the thin upper crust of Labour aristocracy”. Due to political
backwardness, the natives were not able to supply militants to the Communist
movement. The immediate needs of white unionists threw “the more diffi-
cult task of native emancipation into the background”. The native workers’
movement was “spasmodic” and neglected. A new focus on the native question
was needed: “a special department, with native linguists and newspapers”. But
such efforts required large funds, which were not available.
In a letter to Leon Trotsky, Jones highlighted the co-existence of “a rela-
tively small well paid white proletariat and a relatively big poorly paid native
proletariat”, thus replicating global conditions: “a united European industrial
proletariat, and huge masses of African and Asian producers of raw materials”.
The African “mass of cheap workers” were essential to the prospects of social
and political change:
The emancipation of white workers of South Africa depends upon the

awakening of the native proletariat which will also be a significant factor
in advancing the collapse of world capitalism. These native workers are a
perfect material for the Socialist revolution [but require ‘mental awakening’
through education] … The white proletariat of South Africa is for the
most part impenetrable for the revolutionary propaganda, while the native
masses are still sleeping.9
The Party was forced “by the logic of the class struggle” to highlight
the need for solidarity with native workers in its propaganda among white
workers: “while the native workers remain unorganised, the white workers
lag at the stage of Class Collaboration; and between the two, the Communist
movement hangs fire”. The small number and transient nature of white
activists meant that it was difficult for them to raise class consciousness and
build a movement among the natives. Thus, it was necessary to “urge upon
the Comintern that the African Negroes, like the Indians, should come dir-
ectly under its initiative … This primitive mass is waiting to be stirred”.10 This
meant investing in training black activists, publishing in local languages, edu-
cating workers at night schools, and generally shifting attention from white
skilled workers to Africans, who were unskilled and unorganised but possessed
great revolutionary potential.
The focus on the role of black workers, and the calls “to establish the
widest and closest possible contact with workers of all ranks and races”, in the
first instance “the industrial masses, who must provide the ‘storm troops’ of
the Revolution”, and then “the rural toilers”,11 ironically came at a time that
witnessed the racially exclusive white worker movement reaching its greatest
level of militancy against capital and the state and their plans to expand the use
of black workers in the mining industry. That was the Rand Revolt of March
1922, notorious for one of its key slogans: “Workers of the world, unite and
fight for a white South Africa!”
The Party opposed, of course, calls for a White South Africa and it cautioned
white workers that it would harm their cause: “There is not and never was
a white South Africa, and when you shout for it, you are dangerously near
shouting for just the black labour country capitalism has made of South Africa”.
Black workers were not the enemy. Rather, it was “the class and system that
gives the palm to labour cheapness. Modern capitalism cannot raise wages. It
is sick, and cannot pull itself together except by yet further cheapening labour,
by yet further reliance on the cheapest labour”. In a bizarre appropriation of a
white supremacist language, the Party asserted:
There is no remedy for the situation, there is no future for the white
workers, under capitalism. Communism alone can make South Africa a
white man’s country, in the sense that Communism alone can secure to
every worker –whatever his colour –the full product of his labour. Only
when that is secured will a white man be safe: only then can you begin to
talk of a ‘white South Africa’.12
The Rand Revolt captured the dilemma the Party was facing: the radical
action undertaken by white workers against capitalists and the state was an
instance of labour militancy and deserved support. But, the Revolt aimed to
confine black workers within a ghetto of cheap unskilled labour, which the
Party opposed on grounds of solidarity and equality. In the immediate term it
seemed crucial to side with white workers against capital but without endorsing
their racial attitudes and exclusionary practices. It was not an easy task within
the explosive setting. Jones regarded it as a crucial event, which left the door
open to two developments: it might be “the last revolt of a non-revolutionary
[white] working class driven to arms by the very insecurity of their economic
position over against the native masses”. This would doom the prospects of a
Communist Party based on white militants. On the other hand, political revul-
sion might result in a Labour-Republican block, which the Party could join, as
it would open new political opportunities.13 Such a block did emerge in 1924,
but it was founded on notions of white supremacy and had no interest in any
alignment with the CPSA.
Between Class and Race

It is important to realise that South Africa was considered by the Comintern as
part of a broader set of concerns, involving colonial and racial issues.These were
discussed at its Fourth Congress in 1922, in which a resolution on the “Black
[or Negro] Question” was adopted. Lumping together the different themes of
colonial rule in Africa and the legacy of slavery in the USA, the Caribbean,
and Latin America, it argued that imperialist competition for African resources
and labour, and anti- imperialist movements of Asian and Muslim peoples,
“have awakened racial consciousness among millions of Blacks” throughout the
world, notably in the United States, who were prepared “to play an important
role in the liberation struggle of the entire African race”: Black Americans,
especially in the North, were thus positioned “in the vanguard of the struggle
against oppression in Africa”.
In a curious conflation of the languages of race and class, the resolution
defined “the international struggle of the Black race” as a struggle “against cap-
italism and imperialism”.Whereas in Europe, Asia, and America it was “workers
and peasants” who were “victims of the imperialist exploiters”, with Blacks it
was the case for all of them with no class distinctions, as they rose up against
“racial oppression, social and economic inequality, and intensive exploitation
in industry”. The Comintern thus claimed to represent not only “subjugated
white workers in Europe and America”, but also “the oppressed Coloured
peoples of the world”. It supported “the international organisation of Blacks in
their struggle against the common enemy”. At the same time, it fought together
for “the equality of the white and Black races, and for equal wages and equal
political and social rights”.14
Sidney Bunting of the CPSA regarded the Theses as irrelevant to Africa and
the Caribbean, as they were based on the notion that black and white workers
performed similar tasks but were prevented from joining the same unions. In
South Africa, “the class of work done by the bulk of the negroes is mark-
edly distinct from that done by the bulk of the whites”, and therefore separate
unions were natural. The point was to insist on principles –equal pay for equal
work, solidarity, and joint industrial organisation where workers shared space
and working conditions –rather than on a single mode of organisation. Race
prejudice, Bunting argued, was not the main reason behind the absence of
class unity. Rather, it was “the result of competition in the labour market”, the
problem of ‘cheap labour’ in particular. It raised the questions: “How can the
better paid workers of European race be expected to unite with the cheaper
labourers who take the bread out of their mouths? And on the other hand, how
can the cheap labourers cooperate with the better paid worker who habitually
becomes their masters’ accomplice” in “keeping them in their place”?15
Of interest here is Bunting’s take on national liberation movements that
addressed racial inequality, which he defined as “hardly practical politics”, with
similar dismissal of “a peasant movement with any hope of success … among
the coloured peoples”. In his view, only workers organised on a class basis
could form a “revolutionary movement of the subject races”. At best, nation-
alist movements could act as stepping stones towards revolutionary class unity,
but it was
as workers that whites and natives find their point of contact as well as
of repulsion. The proletarian movement is, or eventually becomes, the
strongest revolutionary weapon in every country; it is the One ‘Feste Burg’
[Mighty Fortress], now and hereafter, of the oppressed and exploited of the
whole world.16
Alongside class, race continued to play a role in the Comintern’s activ-
ities in Africa, the Caribbean, and the USA. The association between race and
class was central to such efforts as was competition offered by race-centred
movements such as those led by Marcus Garvey and W.E.B Du Bois. Garveyism
in particular posed an alternative to Communism due to its militant image that
appealed to young radical activists. The most important black union in South
Africa, the Industrial and Commercial Union (ICU), was influenced by the
Garvey movement and was a site for intervention and recruitment of members
for the Party, as well as a sometimes-hostile competing organisation.
The Comintern created various bodies to address colonialism and race,
including the Negro Commission that was active in the 1920s and 1930s. It
aimed to bring together left-wing, radical nationalist, and racial movements, in
opposition to European domination.The different bases for mobilisation –race,
class, colonial subjugation, and nationalism –created tensions and opportunities
for alliances both globally and locally.
As Bunting put it in his address to the CPSA congress in October 1924,
the Party had two tasks in the world movement. First, in South Africa, a class
task, “to bring the European and the helot [black] workers together in a united
army”, and second, a nationalist and continent-wide task, “to assist the native
people on their own account to throw off the Imperial yoke”. The two tasks
could go together as “an anti-capitalist or anti-imperialist Pact”.17 In other
words, in Africa nationalism was a viable foundation for political mobilisation
but in South Africa itself class remained the prime basis for it. Bunting defined
South Africa as “a miniature of the world”. From a global perspective,“coloured
labour stands to European in much the same proportion as it does here, and the
estrangement and absence of co-operation between them is even more com-
plete”. South Africa thus served as a model, and success there could solve “the
whole problem of world labour unity”. The absence of a black bourgeoisie in
South Africa made a separation between democratic/nationalist tasks on the
one hand, and socialist tasks on the other hand, artificial. The labour struggle
would provide a solution to the national and race questions as well.
Interestingly, both DI Jones and Bunting regarded the South African race/
class configuration as a microcosm of global conditions, with implications for
imperial territories, the rest of Africa, the Caribbean, and the USA.This enabled
exchanges between activists in all those places with a view to developing a joint
theoretical perspective on questions of race, class, and colonialism. In contrast,
as will be seen in Chapter 4, debates in and about Israel/Palestine in the same
period were usually specific to conditions in that country, with limited rele-
vance for other situations.
The Native Republic Slogan (Rise and Demise)

The primacy of class in the CPSA’s approach began to change in 1927, due to
local and global considerations. On a visit to the Comintern, James La Guma said:
we should concentrate upon the native masses. We have been taxing our
minds to formulate a platform that will rally the workers around the
Communist Party.We have failed so far because we have all these conflicting
elements to reconcile.The trouble is that if we formulate a platform to rally
black workers there is a danger of alienating the white.18
In response, Comintern General Secretary, Nikolai Bukharin, called on the

Party to “make demands, such as a demand for a Negro republic independent of
the British empire, or in addition for autonomy for the national white minor-
ities”.19 This was the start of a campaign that was to change the face of the Party
for the rest of its history, with the configurations of race, class, and nationalism
occupying central programmatic place.
A few months later the ECCI adopted a formal resolution on South Africa,
arguing that despite the Party’s small size (400 members, 50 of whom were
black), the state-led campaign against natives offered it “an immense field to
develop its influence amongst these peasants and workers”, and its chief field of
activity must lie there. An important task followed: without reducing its work
among white people,
IT IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY to pay particular attention to the

native section of the population and in particular to reverse the propor-
tion of whites and natives in the Party membership figure: in addition, the
Party should do everything possible to help the native comrades into the
leadership of the Party.
The Party “should put forward as its immediate political slogan an inde-
pendent black South African Republic as a stage towards a Workers’ and
Peasants’ Republic with full autonomy for all minorities”.20
Few things stand out in the resolution: South Africa was seen as part of the
colonial world despite its status as an independent country; it was linked to the
notion of race through the use of the term “black” rather than “indigenous”
or “African”; and, in calling for full autonomy for minorities, the resolution
posed the question in nationalist terms, with an undertone of race and ethnicity,
instead of using class terms as implied by reference to “workers and peasants”.
Of importance was the explicit introduction of stages, thus suspending the
struggle for socialism as an immediate goal. In all these respects the resolution
signified a radical change in orientation.
In the following period the resolution was subject to discussion by the
CPSA leadership, with most members, black and white alike, rejecting it as
reflecting insufficient knowledge of the situation in South Africa. The lead-
ership was concerned that it would alienate white workers, that it would be
interpreted as a concession to Garveyism and encourage anti-white sentiments,
and that, in the absence of a mass-based nationalist movement, it would give
power to chiefs. In other words, it would undermine class consciousness and
make working-class unity impossible by treating workers on the basis of their
racial origins as distinct and incompatible groups.
The discussion of the black republic must be seen in the context of overall
Comintern policy. A core document at its Sixth Congress, in July–August 1928,
included a section on “The Negro Question” that addressed racial issues.21 In
the US South, it said, where “compact Negro masses are living”, the slogan of
the Right of self-determination for Negroes! was essential. Black Communists
had to explain to fellow workers and peasants “that only their close union with
the white proletariat and joint struggle with them against the American bour-
geoisie can lead to their liberation”, and that only a revolutionary victory would
solve the agrarian and national questions of the South “in the interests of the
overwhelming majority of the Negro population of the country”. This implied
a class-based strategy, but with a distinct race-based slogans and campaigns.
A few months later, in October 1928, the Comintern adopted a resolution
on “The Negro Question” in the United States, focusing on the slogans of “full
social and political equality for the Negroes”, with “the right of the Negroes
to national self-determination in the southern states, where the Negroes form
a majority of the population”. The struggle for equal rights and the slogan of
self-determination had to link up with “the economic demands of the Negro
masses, especially those directed against the slave remnants and all forms of
national and racial oppression”. They had to combine “all demands of the
Negroes with the economic and political struggle of the workers and the poor
farmers”. This class/race balance shifted when seen from a global perspective,
in relation to “the Negro questions and struggles in other parts of the world”.
Black people everywhere were “an oppressed race”. Whether a minority in the
USA, or a majority in South Africa, or nominally independent in Liberia, “the
Negroes are oppressed by imperialism”. Links thus existed between the “revo-
lutionary struggle of race and national liberation from imperialist domination
of the Negroes in various parts of the world”. Black revolutionaries in the
USA, the resolution said, “will be able to influence and direct the revolutionary
movement in all those parts of the world where the Negroes are oppressed by
imperialism”. What precisely enabled black American activists to play the role
of a vanguard of world struggles was not explained, though.22
A subsequent Comintern resolution from October 1930 focused on the spe-
cific position of Black Americans, as
an oppressed nation, which is in a peculiar and extraordinarily distressing

situation of national oppression not only in view of the prominent racial
distinctions (marked difference in the colour of skin, etc.), but above all
because of considerable social antagonism (remnants of slavery).
These conditions were distinct. Added to them was the internal divide
between the South, dominated by peasants and agricultural labourers, and the
North, dominated by low-skilled industrial workers. The struggle for equal
right applied to both, but in the South there was another dimension giving
rise to the slogan of “The right of self-determination of the Negroes in the
Black Belt [Alabama and Mississippi]”, where they constituted a majority of
the population.23
The revolutionary expectations evident in these resolutions were misplaced
in the USA, where black people were a minority in the country as a whole
and even in the South. Claims to be playing a crucial role in global liber-
ation were vastly inflated. South Africa was different though, in that the entire
country had a majority of “the Negro masses”, who were “subjected to most
brutal forms of racial and class oppression”, and who suffered “simultaneously
from pre-capitalist and capitalist methods of exploitation and oppression”. The
Party’s duty, said the Comintern’s Sixth Congress in its Theses, was to work for
the “complete equality of rights for the Negroes, for the abolition of all special
regulations and laws directed against Negroes, and for confiscation of the land
of the landlords”. It was obliged to fight “every racial prejudice in the ranks of
the white workers and to eradicate entirely such prejudices from its own ranks”,
actively campaigning for “an independent native republic, with simultaneous
guarantees for the rights of the white minority”.24
Following the Sixth Congress, a specific resolution on The South African
Question was adopted by the ECCI, dealing in detail with the same themes.25
It asserted “the almost complete landlessness of the Negro population”, the
absence of a “Negro bourgeoisie as a class”, although there existed “a thin strata
of Negro intellectuals who do not play any essential role in the economic and
political life of the country”. Black people were concentrated in the lower ranks
of the working class: “the great disproportion between the wages of the white
and black proletariat continues to exist as the characteristic feature of the colo-
nial type of the country”. With landless peasants and workers –the constitu-
ency for a socialist revolution –forming the bulk of the black population, they
became “the chief field of activity”. The Party had to orient itself primarily to
“the native toiling masses while continuing to work actively among the white
workers”. Internally, this meant “bringing the native membership without delay
into much more active leadership of the Party”, locally and centrally. While
fighting against legal discrimination, the Party was urged to combine that with
the general slogan of “an independent native South African republic as a stage
towards a workers’ and peasants’ republic, with full equal rights for all races,
black, coloured and White.”
Setting aside the conceptual conflation of race and nation, the Comintern
used class as an internally contradictory concept, uniting and dividing workers
on different sides of the colour line. This was difficult to act on, and the
CPSA was criticised for not understanding “the revolutionary importance of
the mass movements of the native workers and peasants”. It carried out “a
correct struggle for unity of the native and white workers in the trade union
movement”, but its opposition to the Native Republic slogan hampered its
ability to focus on the “restoration of the land to the landless and land-poor
population”. The resolution guaranteed rights to white workers, provided they
realised that “they constitute national minorities” and joined the native struggle.
Given that South Africa belonged to its indigenous people, the Party’s main task
was “to influence the embryonic and crystallising national movements among
the natives” and transform them into grassroots-based “national agrarian revo-
lutionary movements against the white bourgeoisie and British imperialists”.
Pretending that only class really mattered, the Comintern continued, meant
failure to understand the revolutionary importance of the national and agrarian
questions, which would lead to “the building up of a solid united front of all
toilers against capitalism and imperialism”.
The Native Republic formula had a few variations but its thrust was clear:
focusing on class without taking race into consideration was misguided. White
workers would not sacrifice their privileges for the sake of class solidarity, and
black workers would not focus on labour issues if dispossession and discrimin-
ation were not addressed.The CPSA had to compete with the African National
Congress (ANC) and ICU for mass support, and work from within to radicalise
them. Its class-specific activities would continue but relegated to the backstage
and replaced by a new focus on national liberation.
From today’s perspective, all that may sound obvious, but in the 1920s –the
height of the colonial period in Africa –notions of majority rule and native
government were radically disruptive of the existing political order. The CPSA
delegation to the 1928 Comintern Congress worried it would set up a “race
war” and undermine class solidarity. With an emphasis on the need for white
and black “common fight against the bourgeoisie”, it proposed a change to
the slogan: “An Independent Workers’ and Peasants’ South African Republic
with Equal Rights for all Toilers Irrespective of Colour, as a basis for Native
Government”.26 The amendment was rejected as it defeated the rationale of
shifting focus to the national liberation struggle.
South African delegates to the Congress, Sidney Bunting and Eddie Roux,
asserted the key role of the industrial proletariat: “where a native movement,
proletarian or nationalist for that matter, has no chance for the present of being
an armed movement, it must depend on its industrial weapons, on strikes and
on political struggles”.27 There was no reason why methods of struggle applic-
able elsewhere should not be used. Black workers were a class, albeit with links
to the countryside, not undifferentiated “native masses”. The Comintern, said
Bunting, harped “too exclusively on the national chord in colonial matters”,
disregarding the masses as not proper proletarians, replicating in that way the
prejudices of white workers in South Africa. Black workers may be called
“uncouth, backward, illiterate, degraded, even barbaric”, he said, but “they
work, they produce profit, and they organise and will fight. They are the great
majority, they have the future in their hands, and they are going to rule not only
in the colonial countries, but in the world”. Both black and white workers “can
contribute very powerfully to the weakening of British imperialism”.28
Roux, going far beyond Bunting in dismissing the importance of race and
nationalism, made a distinction between South Africa and other colonial coun-
tries, such as India and Egypt, and even West Africa, in which a national struggle
“led by the native bourgeoisie and embracing all sections of the population” was
considered a stage apart from a socialist revolution. South Africa, he argued, was
different due to the absence of a national bourgeoisie and the crucial role played
by white Communists in the development of a “native labour movement”. As
a result, if the CPSA succeeded in training the necessary number of “capable
native organisers”, it could grow into a mass party and even lead the native
movement of the entire African continent, with no nationalist stage. There was
no need for “the laborious and (from the point of view of the revolution)
dangerous process of building up a native bourgeois nationalist movement the
leadership of which must be displaced before the proletarian revolution can be
achieved”.29
In essence, said Roux, the Native Republic slogan presupposed the presence
of a native bourgeoisie and the absence of a white working-class as an ally of
the native struggle. The slogan was useless if not combined with a class-based
Soviet government: “for the African is an exploited proletarian not a petty
bourgeois shopkeeper”. In a subsequent statement, Roux explained the shock
experienced by the new slogan, as it was a reversal of the entire previous policy:
The various strikes and uprisings of the white workers have been conducted
under the slogan of a ‘white South Africa’ … Against this slogan our Party
raises the cry: ‘Not a White South Africa, but Africa for the workers, black
and white.’ The resolution of the ECCI now means that we must inscribe
upon our banner ‘Not a White South Africa, but a Black South Africa’.This
is mere perversity, not dialectical materialism.30
The objections by the South African delegates were ignored and the CPSA
was faced with the task of implementing the new policy. The programme
adopted at its conference on New Year’s Day 1929 used some formulations
derived from the Resolution. It asserted its own credentials since its early days,
as an active champion of “complete political and industrial equality for the black
man, declaring for working class unity irrespective of colour”. This resulted, it
claimed, in “drawing into its ranks an overwhelming majority of native workers
and also peasants” with “the largest Negro membership of any Communist
Party in the world”. Addressing “The Native National Cause”, it declared:
the Party devotes special attention to the national cause of the native people
as such, not indeed in the sense of a campaign ‘to drive the white man into
the sea’, but in the Leninist sense of underlining the prime importance of
supporting movements for complete national liberation of colonial peoples.
It was not a deviation from a class focus as “race emancipation and class
emancipation tend to coincide”. So, “the conception and realisation of native
rule merges into that of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Republic, non-imperialist,
non-capitalist, non-racialist, classless and in effect Socialist”.
These verbal gymnastics meant that while the Party formally adopted the
Native Republic slogan, it subverted it in practice: if racial and national slogans
merged into socialism, they became indistinct, and the class focus was retained.
If “all the toiling masses, whether native or otherwise” were in charge, “under
the leadership of the working class”, the specific “native” character of the
Republic effectively lost its distinct meaning.31
The battle over the implementation of the new line reflected internal
disagreements. Many members were concerned that it would abandon the best
organised section of the working class (skilled white workers) and blur the line
between the Party and African nationalist organisations. How to combine class
and race concerns was the challenge. Two years of intense debate followed. To
stop internal squabbling, the Comintern set down the line: “An Independent
Native Republic means, primarily, the return of the land to the landless popula-
tion and those with little land, which is impossible without revolutionary liber-
ation from British imperialism and the organisation of a revolutionary workers’
and peasants’ government”. Condemning the “Right opportunist mistakes” of
the Party, the Comintern elaborated:
In a country like South Africa, where the overwhelming majority of the

population consists of peasants, the revolution, in its first stages, can be
only a bourgeois democratic revolution, carried out by the peasants and
workers under the leadership of the latter. But the nationalist revolu-
tionary movement in South Africa can be victorious and bring about an
Independent Native Republic only under the leadership of the working
class … [and] its vanguard being organised into an independent class revo-
lutionary Party, having for its aim the complete carrying through of the
nationalist revolutionary struggle, and, as the subsequent stage, the socialist
revolution. The South African Communist Party must be such a Party.
Why a revolution carried out by peasants and led by workers should be

called “bourgeois” was not explained, especially when the native bourgeoisie
existed only “in an embryonic form”. Nor was it clear how the wish to
skip the nationalist stage and proceed directly to socialism could possibly be
labelled “right-wing”. In any event, admonished the Comintern, the Party
failed to understand and act upon the balance of the two tasks –nationalist
and socialist:
The white members of the Party, who have not yet cast off the remnants of
white chauvinism, do not understand the nationalist tasks of the revolution,
and try to reduce the whole of the struggle of the South African proletariat
to a purely proletarian class struggle, while the Native members, who are
still influenced by petty-bourgeois-peasant nationalism, on the contrary do
not understand the tasks of the proletarian class struggle, and try to reduce
the struggle to a nationalist-revolutionary movement. The whites do not
understand the necessity for the hegemony of the proletariat in a nation-
alist revolution. The Natives do not understand the necessity for the dicta-
torship of the proletariat in the social revolution.32
With total failure on the part of both white and black Party members, it is
no wonder that Comintern officials, who had never set foot in the country,
had to come to the rescue and instruct local activists on the way forward. Their
recipe was bold:
In this situation it is the task of the Party to take the initiative in preparing
strikes, to win the leadership of all economic struggles, and to convert
local partial struggles into wide class battles developing into mass political
struggles, in which the agrarian masses of the peasantry are assisted and led
by the workers of the towns against the land-owners, the employing class
and the Government, the whole struggle culminating in the agrarian revo-
lution as a stage towards a Workers’ and Peasants’ Government.
All that, despite the fact that the Party’s contact with “the basic masses of
Native workers” was so weak that it was “practically isolated from the spon-
taneous movement of the masses, and it drags at the tail of that movement”.33
The December 1930 conference officially acknowledged “the mistakes of
the past” and declared its commitment “to avoid such errors in the future”.This
meant fighting “the Right Wing danger”, as expressed in “lack of faith in the
revolutionary capacity of the Native masses”. Practically, the most important
step taken by the Party in its quest to lead the masses was to expel those who
expressed doubts about the Native Republic, Bunting foremost among them.
That, together with continued factional clashes, pushed it into a downward
spiral that led to a loss of most members and many leaders (white and black).
Only by the late 1930s had a measure of stability been restored.
In a sectarian mode, the Comintern launched a fierce attack on “the national
reformists” (African nationalist organisations and unions), as “agents of the
imperialist slave owners, although in words they hide behind the interests of
the toiling masses”. The way to deal with them was by “merciless exposure” of
their reactionary role, which was meant to allow the Party to present itself as
“the champion of the national revolutionary liberation movement”.34 These
sentiments were echoed by the Party in mid-1932, bizarrely looking at a
long list of African political initiatives not as positive signs of growing pro-
test against oppression but as indicating “the increased activities and dema-
gogic manoeuvres of the national reformists and powerful chiefs which aim to
stem the revolutionary tide and to strengthen the regime of the slave rulers”.
These and other initiatives undertaken by “social fascists” were meant to extend
“counter revolutionary influences” over the masses and amounted to “betrayal
of the revolutionary people”.35
Ironically, the growing claims to being the sole revolutionary force in South
Africa and the fierce attacks on the ANC and other African movements were
made when the Party was at its weakest, with membership figures declining to
less than 100. While it was losing support among former and potential allies,
internal conflicts were increasing, reflecting differences of strategy as well as
racial tensions.36 From a comparative perspective it is clear that intra-Party
conflict did not revolve around personalities or issues specific to South Africa.
Such conflicts erupted in the Palestinian Communist Party in the same period,
as discussed in Chapter 4. In both cases, outside intervention gave rise to and
exacerbated internal disputes, forcing the Party to shift a locally determined
course in order to meet an external agenda driven by Soviet factional concerns
that had little to do with local realities.
A letter written to the leadership by Moses Kotane, Party General Secretary
in the early 1930s, identified the problem as being “too Europeanised”:“beyond
the realm of realities, we are simply theoretical and our theory is less connected
with practice”. The terminology and analysis were unsuitable to African
conditions, unrelated to local concerns, and unable to engage people on the
ground. Kotane’s conclusion was that the Party needed to become more
Africanised, “speak the language of the Native masses” and gain first-hand
understanding of their concerns. Without abandoning its global links, the
Party had to
become South African not only theoretically, but in reality, it should be a

Party working in the interests and for the toiling people in S Africa and
not a party of a group of Europeans who are merely interested in European
affairs.37
Kotane’s admonition was directed not only at members too involved in

European-based theories and debates, and he made it clear this applied to
white and black members alike, but –indirectly –at the Comintern’s inter-
vention. Instead of starting out with local conditions, it imposed a set of
principles and slogans derived from other realities, largely irrelevant to South
Africa. The more the Party adopted Kotane’s approach and immersed itself in
local conditions, needs, and concerns, the more it became responsive to real
challenges and opportunities, and the more it gained support from its constitu-
encies. That lesson waited until the 1940s though for full realisation. In retro-
spect it is clear that it revived the Party’s prospects as an actor on the national
scene, in its own right as well as a partner, contentious at times, of the African
nationalist movement in South Africa, as discussed further in Chapter 3. And,
it managed to do that while retaining its non-racial composition, that is, to
Africanise itself while retaining a substantial white membership.This was a feat
that the Palestinian Communist Party of the same period did not manage to
achieve without breaking up into its ethno-national components, as discussed
in Chapter 4.
In the meantime, in the mid-1930s, the Party continued to mock “the
national reformists”. In a 1934 pamphlet titled What Is the Native Independent
Republic?, the Party attacked the ANC, ICU, and others for supposedly telling
natives to “submissively bear all their privations and misfortunes, so that the
European oppressors will condescend to notice their humility and will cease
to oppress the Natives”. It should be clear, it added, that “only by driving the
imperialists (the land owners and mine owners) out of the country and making
the Native people of South Africa independent will the peasants get back their
land”. It cautioned:
it is impossible to drive out the imperialists without waging mass armed

struggle against them, without an anti-imperialist revolution. So, the Native
Independent Republic for which the Communists call upon the toilers to
struggle, first and foremost means the anti-imperialist revolution, i.e., the
driving out of the imperialists and the national liberation of the country.
Since native society was not homogeneous, different social groups would
play their own roles in the process: tribal chiefs were exploiters who helped
“the imperialists to exploit and suppress the Native people”. They would
not become allies of the revolution. The native bourgeoisie should “help the
working class and the peasantry to throw off the yoke of imperialist oppression”,
but this was not happening in South Africa, just as it did not happen in other
colonial territories, such as India, Indochina, and Egypt. Despite taking a stand
against discriminatory policies that restricted its activities, “when the toilers
rise to a determined struggle against imperialism, the Native bourgeoisie will
not be with them”. Only the proletariat was fully revolutionary, as a leading
force allied “with the majority of the Native toiling population, the peasantry”.
Native intellectuals, who “cannot expect anything from imperialism”, should
join them.
If the revolution would lead to land redistribution and nationalisation of
capitalist property, what would be the difference between the Native Republic
and socialism? That was to be decided by class struggle, said the pamphlet:
whether the workers and peasants, with the Communist Party at their
head, will succeed in seizing power after the overthrow of the rule of the
imperialists or whether Kadli [Kadalie], Guemedi [Gumede], Seme and Co.
[ANC and ICU leaders], the agents of the Native bourgeoisie and chiefs
will seize power.
The latter would “undoubtedly enter into an alliance with the white bour-
geoisie remaining in the country” and use power to “again enslave the toilers”.
To prevent that, a government of the proletariat and the peasantry was needed,
led by “the Party of the working class –the Communist Party”. It would work
for “a revolutionary dictatorship against the white bourgeoisie remaining in the
country and against the resisting tribal chiefs and the Native bourgeoisie … [as]
a revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry”.38
Such wild rhetoric was unlikely to endear the Party to its intended audi-
ence. Increased isolation was the result rather, and it led to growing calls for a
new approach. Kotane and Roux led efforts to shift direction to a strategy of
working with other organisations for shared goals, as allies in the struggle for
defending democratic rights, not as enemies to be denounced in a feat of revo-
lutionary zeal. For two years in the mid-1930s, an intra-Party dispute continued,
involving appeals to the Comintern to intervene and resolve it. During that
time, a massive shift had taken place: the Seventh Comintern Congress in
1935 adopted the United Front as a key strategy against the rising Nazi-Fascist
danger. The new line put an emphasis on alliances with democratic forces both
in the European metropolis and its colonies, thus enhancing the arguments of
the Kotane-Roux faction in favour of a more moderate-practical approach.
Return to Mainstream Resistance Politics

An international Commission convened to resolve the dispute dismissed the
“scholastic discussion”, as a result of which the Party “almost completely ignored
and has disdained in a passive sectarian manner the developing movement of
the workers, the Native peoples and the poor whites”. Members were told to
work on a programme based on the “concrete demands of the Native peoples,
the workers of all races, the poor whites, all the toilers”. This meant concen-
trating on work in the trade unions, and “the defence of the rights, interests
and demands of the Native population”.39 A Programme of Action proposed
the slogans of Bread and Work for all workers; Land for native people, poor
whites and toiling farmers; Freedom, Rights, and Liberties for all; Down with
Fascism.40
With that new line, the Native Republic was laid to rest. It was replaced
by a non-sectarian national programme under the slogan “Equality, Land and
Freedom”, which focused on the “struggle against the worsening of the polit-
ical, economic and social conditions of the Native and non-European people”,
in collaboration with other movements such as the National Liberation League
and the All-African Convention.41 It emphasised the importance of enlisting
“the sympathy and support of the white toilers to strive to bring about the
organisational unity between non-European and white toilers in the struggle
for national and class emancipation”. The timing was right as it coincided with
a revival of mass mobilisation and of the ANC after a period of lull in activity
in the early-mid 1930s, as discussed in Chapter 3.
The CPSA’s programme, with Kotane at the helm, focused on mobilisa-
tion to enhance the “freedom of the Non-European peoples in the political,
economic, and cultural spheres of South African life”. The national liberation
struggle was “the most urgent task that awaits the South African working class
and democratic movements”. While workers of different racial affiliations
enjoyed privileges compared to Natives, the trend was to reduce them all to the
same level: “The capitalist wants ‘cheap’ labour and thousands of white workers
are to-day earning little more than the Non-Europeans”. Segregation and the
colour bar served to blind workers to their shared class interests: “Every step
taken to separate the workers in different groups must clearly accentuate the
absence of unity between them, and therefore further weaken each section in
its attempts to maintain and advance its standard of living”.
Recognising that each racial group had specific concerns (land and segre-
gation for Africans, trade and movement for Indians, rights beyond the Cape
for coloureds), they were united in “wanting more education, better health
and medical services, adequate old age pensions and unemployment benefits,
the right to enter any branch of employment, whether in government service
or industry, and the right to vote and stand for elections”. Alongside other
organisations, the Party said, it was “ranged without hesitation or qualification
on the side of the Non-Europeans”. At the same time, it called for “absolute
unity between the European and Non-European workers. Without such unity
it will be impossible to maintain independent workers’ policy and class struggle
in the face of the attempts of the ruling class to lower the standards of the
workers of all races”.42
With the dissolution of the Communist International in May 1943, the CPSA
re-affirmed its local character, as “a product of the South African working class
movement, defending the interests of the workers and oppressed nationalities in
South Africa”. It pledged “to bring about one united working class movement
in South Africa, co-operating with the labour organisations of other countries
in a common struggle for a Socialist order of society”.43 Its first task was to draw
in “thousands of the members of each racial and national group”, providing
socialist education, “and organising them for work among their own people”.
This included closer contact with Afrikaners, building the Party among white
workers, and recruiting “Africans, Coloured and Indians, who are ready to enter
upon a new phase of struggle for liberation from the oppression of the colour
bar system” – all this, “in close alliance with the rest of the Labour movement
and the national organisations of the Non-Europeans”.44
A new programme adopted in January 1944 defined the CPSA as “a political
party of the working class”, whose goal was the establishment of “a Socialist
Republic based on the common ownership of the means of production and the
rule of the working class and providing equal rights and opportunities for all
racial and national groups”. It went on to specify that in South Africa “a large
part of our wealth is under the control of foreign imperialist interests which
annually take millions out of the sweat and toil of the people of this country”,
a system maintained by “a political structure which keeps millions of people in
subjection, denying them the most elementary political and social rights”. The
fight therefore was to “remove all these disabilities which hamper the full devel-
opment of our people. We must undertake the daily struggle for higher wages,
freedom from imperialist control and democratic rights for all”. In political
terms, the Party worked for “the establishment of an independent, democratic
Republic in which all adults, regardless of race, colour or sex, shall have the
right to vote for and be elected”. All national groups had the right to use their
language in all spheres of public life. All restrictions on education, movement,
trade, union organisation, and social services had to be revoked, and the land
redivided, “to ensure equitable distribution among poor farmers and landless
agricultural labourers”.45
With the rise of Africanism as a major force shaping the ANC and resist-
ance politics in general, as discussed in Chapter 3, and the drift to the right
on the white political scene, the Party re-asserted the centrality of democracy,
since the restriction of the vote to the white minority perpetuated “the present
backward and oppressive form of society”. A campaign was needed to extend
the franchise to all and defeat “the extreme reactionary and pro-fascist forces
represented in the Nationalist Party”. In that context, there was no alternative
to the struggle for direct representation: indirect representative structures for
Natives could not achieve any useful goal and had to be abolished.46
But, instead of extending democracy, the whites-only national elections
that took place in mid-1948 led to the victory of the National Party and the
beginning of the apartheid era, defined as “a most serious blow to the demo-
cratic and progressive movement in South Africa”.47 The Communist Party, in
response, called upon the unions, “the progressive movement and the Non-
European liberatory movement, and all who value democracy”, to close ranks
and “pursue the struggle for the extension of full political and citizenship rights
to every man and woman in South Africa which is the only final guarantee that
freedom will survive and flourish in our country”. The alternative to nation-
alism and race prejudice was
the road of expanding economy and wider democracy, of greater oppor-

tunities for all races and an extension of political rights to all citizens … a
common struggle for the defence and extension of existing rights.To create
a wide democratic front which will put an end to nationalist tyranny, race
oppression, and the menace of Fascism.48
Notes
1 “The Parting of the Ways”, editorial in The International, 1st October 1915, in South
African Communists Speak (Inkululeko Publications, 1981), p. 21.
2 “The First Conference of the League –Enthusiasm, Harmony, Diversity”, The
International, in ibid., p. 26.
3 “International Socialism and the Native –No Labour Movement without the
Black Proletariat”, in ibid., p. 32.
4 “The Bolsheviks are Coming”, leaflet from late 1918/early1919, in ibid., p. 40.
5 “Communism in SA”, by D.I. Jones, presented to the ECCI on behalf of ISL, 29th
March 1921, in ibid., p. 41.
6 Ibid., p. 50.
7 Reference to the South African Native National Congress, renamed the ANC in
1923, discussed in Chapter 3.
8 Ibid., pp. 53–4.
9 Letter from D.I. Jones to L.Trotsky, 2nd June 1921, in South Africa and the Communist
International: A Documentary History,Volume 1: Socialist Pilgrims to Bolshevik Footsoldiers,
1919–1930, edited by A. Davidson, I. Filatova,V. Gorodnov and S. Jones (Frank Cass,
2003), p. 72.
10 Statement of the South African Delegation to Comintern, 16th July 1921, in ibid.,
pp. 75–6.
11 Manifesto of the Communist Party of South Africa, 30th July 1921, in www.
sahistory.org.za/archive/manifesto-communist-party-south-africa-sacp-30-july-
1921-cape-town.
12 “ ‘White South Africa’, Two Voices”, The International, 27th January 1922,
www.sahistory.org.za/ a rchive/ d ocument- 7 - w hite- s outh- a frica- t wo- voices-
international-27-january-1922.
13 Statement of D.I. Jones to ECCI, 25th March 1922, in South Africa and the Communist
International, p. 98.
14 Theses on the Black Question, 1922, www.marxists.org/history/international/comin-
tern/4th-congress/black-question.htm.
15 S. Bunting, “The ‘Colonial’ Labour Front”, 23rd October 1922, in South Africa’s
Radical Tradition: A Documentary History, Volume 1: 1907–1950, edited by A. Drew
(UCT Press, 1996), pp. 51–2.
16 Ibid., p. 54.
17 Minutes of Third Congress CPSA, 27–30th October 1924, in South Africa and the
Communist International, p. 137.
18 Statement of J. La Guma to the Presidium, ECCI, 16th March 1927, in ibid., p. 153.
19 Remarks of Bukharin to the Presidium, ECCI, 16th March 1927, in ibid., p. 155.
20 Resolution of Politsecretariat of ECCI, 22nd July 1927, in ibid., p. 161 (Emphases
in the original).
21 Theses on the Revolutionary Movement in the Colonies and Semi-Colonies (1928), in
www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/ColNatQ6.htm.
22 The Negro Question in the United States, 1928, http://www.marx2mao.com/Other/
CR75.html.
23 The Negro Question in the United States, 1930, www.marx2mao.com/Other/CR75.
html.
24 www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/ColNatQ6.htm.
25 In www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/sections/sacp/1928/com-
intern.htm.
26 Amendment to “Native Republic” proposed by CPSA delegation, 25th August
1928, in South Africa and the Communist International, p. 189.
27 Statement presented at the Sixth Comintern Congress by S.P. Bunting, 23rd July
1928, in South Africa’s Radical Tradition, p. 77.
28 Ibid., p. 80.
29 “Thesis on South Africa”, presented at the Sixth Comintern Congress by E.R.
Roux, 28th July 1928, in ibid., pp. 81–4.
30 “The New Slogan and the Revolutionary Movement among White Workers in
South Africa”, presented at the Sixth Comintern Congress by E.R. Roux, 30th July
1928, in ibid., pp. 85–6.
31 Programme of the Communist Party of South Africa, adopted at the Seventh
Conference of the Party, 1st January 1929 www.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.
php/site/q/03lv01538/04lv01600/05lv01606/06lv01608.htm.
32 “How to Build a Revolutionary Mass Party in South Africa: A Letter from the
Executive Committee of the Communist International”, Umsebenzi, 19th December
1930, in South Africa’s Radical Tradition, pp. 116–17.
33 “Building the Leninist Party –important decisions of the Johannesburg
Conference”, Umsebenzi, 9th January 1931, in South African Communists Speak,
p. 115.
34 Letter from ECCI to Central Committee, CPSA, 20th June 1931, in South Africa and
the Communist International: A Documentary History,Volume 2, Bolshevik Footsoldiers to
Victims of Bolshevisation, 1931–1939, edited by A. Davidson, I. Filatova,V. Gorodnov,
and S. Johns (Frank Cass, 2003), p. 12.
35 Resolution of the CPSA, July 1932, in ibid., p. 32.
36 See documents in ibid., pp. 49–62.
37 Letter from M. Kotane to Politbureau, CPSA, 23rd February 1934, in ibid., pp. 80–2.
38 Communist Party of South Africa, “What Is the Native Independent Republic?”,
1934, in South Africa’s Radical Tradition, pp. 196–211.
39 Resolution of the Secretariat of ECCI on the Situation in CPSA, 17th March 1936,
in South Africa and the Communist International,Vol. 2, pp. 186–7.
40 Programme of Action Proposed to the CPSA, 19th March 1936, in ibid., pp. 200–10.
41 Communist Party of South Africa Plenum Held from 5th to 8th April 1936, in
South Africa’s Radical Tradition, pp. 239–40.
42 Draft Programme of the Communist Party of South Africa, 1940, in ibid., pp. 316–21.
43 “Dissolution of the Comintern”, Statement issued by the Central Committee of
the CPSA, 3rd June 1943, in South African Communists Speak, p. 180.
44 Extract from “The Struggle for Freedom, Equality and Security”, report of the
Central Committee to the Communist Party conference in Johannesburg, published
in Freedom, January 1944, in ibid., p. 184.
45 Programme of the Communist Party of South Africa, adopted at the national con-
ference in Johannesburg in January 1944, in ibid., pp. 188–90.
46 “Resolution on the Struggle for Democracy”, adopted at the national conference
of the Communist Party held in Johannesburg, January 1948, in ibid., pp. 196–7.
47 “The Lesson of the Election Result”, statement by the Central Committee of the
Communist Party published in The Guardian, 3rd June 1948, in ibid., pp. 197–8.
48 “Bar the Road to Fascism! A Call to the People of South Africa”, issued by the
Central Committee of the Communist Party, 23rd June 1948, in ibid., pp. 198–200.
3
The Rise of African Nationalism
More than a decade before the rise of Socialist opposition to white supremacy,
African nationalism had started to challenge the regime that emerged at the turn
of the 20th century, in the aftermath of the Anglo-Boer war. One of the first
actions of the new post-war administration was to convene the South African
Native Affairs Commission (SANAC) in order to streamline its policies –leg-
acies of the constituent elements of British colonies and Boer republics –with
regard to “the native question”. The Commission sought the views of indi-
genous people and representative organisations, among which was the South
African Native Congress, a Cape-based organisation that eventually formed,
together with other regional structures, an overall South African movement.
In a 1903 statement to the Commission, the Congress asserted “the loyalty of
the Native people of South Africa” and the absence of reason to fear from their
independence (referring to separatist “Ethiopian” churches), since the “black
races” were conscious of their “obligations towards the British race” and had no
interest in “foolish notions of political ascendancy”. The Natives applied them-
selves to the new conditions “imposed upon them by Christianity and civilisa-
tion with a common faith in the necessity of British rule, as the best and most
liberal system for the Government of the various tribes and the settlement of
their conflicting interests”. There was no “Native problem”, it continued, only
the problem of just governance. There was a need to preserve the “ascendancy
of the whites in a country inhabited by a preponderating coloured race, such as
the Bantu”, but with the formula of “equal rights to all civilized men”, applied
to the entire territory.
On the question of labour, central to the concerns of economic and pol-
itical interest groups, the statement drew attention to the need for individual
contracts that protected the rights of all parties involved. Labour shortages
prevalent after the war were due to harsh working conditions, which made “a
deep impression on the native mind”. While employers sought cheap labour,
“the labouring man has not, in this or any other country, had a satisfactory
interpretation of the term”. Paying a “living wage” would be central to dealing
with the reluctance of ”native labour” to work in the mines and on farms, the
Congress said.
DOI: 10.4324/9780429020056-3
36 The Rise of African Nationalism
Alongside labour, land was a major concern. The Congress called for
protecting native people in their tenure and individual rights. In particular, it
decried the confiscation of large tracts of land from the Natives in Natal, who
were “to remain in future as squatters on land formerly held by them, giving
their services without payment to the farmers for the right of occupation”.
That was a double disadvantage: losing their land and being forced to work
without pay for new owners.
All individuals should be treated based on their merits and not as members
of groups, the Congress noted: just as the idea of native unity to overturn white
rule was misguided, due to “traditional tribal disunity”, so was “the conception
of uniting the white races in a league against the Native as a class”. White unity
should not be based on “the political extinction of the Native element”.1 It
is clear from the statement that the British Empire was seen as a force for the
good compared to the white settlers, whose main objective was to prevent an
extension of any rights to natives outside of the Cape.
The highly respectful language used by the Congress was calculated to
ensure that they did not appear as an unruly mob that might pose a threat to
white rule and civilisation. The theme of British benevolence was constant
in coming decades, aimed at mobilising the Imperial authorities and public
opinion in support of native rights, almost invariably without success. A second
theme distinguished between Christian African elites and the masses. It was
pursued in a more ambiguous manner: African political leaders used it as a basis
for claiming their rights as equals but also downplayed it in order to assert the
representative nature of their leadership.
Who was able to speak on behalf of the Natives? Martin Lutuli of the Natal
Native Congress, appearing before the SANAC in 1904, claimed African leaders
were “the voice of the Natives”, concerned with “the welfare of the Native
population under the Government” and with the need to “let the Natives be
free in everything, let them buy lands if they like, if they are able to, and let them
trade in the towns or out of the towns”. But, he conceded that only literate
Christian Natives were represented by his Congress, though it aimed to speak
for those living under traditional rule as well.
Land and education seemed to be prime concerns for him. Although not
living in an urban location or communal land himself (on a mission station
rather), he was in favour of maintaining the status of communal tenure for
the time being, but suggested that in the long run individual tenure would be
better:
everyone should have a little piece, and know where he is, because in future
there will be many troubles, and we are afraid that in time to come the
Government might sell it, and the European might buy it all, and buy the
Native’s also, and he will not have anywhere to stay.2
Land was raised in another testimony, by representatives of the Native

Vigilance Association of the Orange River Colony, who complained about
The Rise of African Nationalism 37
not being able to buy land in the areas of the former Boer Republics (unlike
the British colonies of the Cape and Natal): “We say that it is the desire of all
our Natives to have a piece of land, either on a farm or in a town, and that
they should not be prohibited from buying land wherever they think fit”.
But, they confined their wish to fall under general law to “the enlightened
people”. People who were “under Native law in the true sense of the word”
were still “in darkness”. Equal rights were not for “those who are still at the
back, but for all those who are showing their progressiveness in their mode
of living”.3
The distinction between the modern or civilised and the tribal came up
repeatedly. Members of the Ethiopian Catholic Church in Zion asked for voca-
tional training in traditional communities, which would make people active
rather than lazing about in the kraals, making “Kafir beer”. They needed to be
taught “how to work” and be “brought up to a higher standard”. Segregation
was wrong as a permanent policy even if separation between races was justified
at the time: “when we are educated we can be united and we can be one with
the white all over”, having the same political and social rights “when our people
are educated to such a standard”. Natives would live with white people but
it would not be for us to govern the white people, but to be with them.
We are under the whites, and I do not think we would ever come up to a
standard like them to govern the white people.4
Union and South African Native National Congress

(SANNC)
The SANAC hearings did not meet the expectations of indigenous leaders.
Petitions submitted to British institutions were met with indifference. In
the face of failure by colonial authorities at home or abroad to address their
grievances, African leaders started organising on the new terrain created by
the post-war accommodation between white forces, which took the shape of
the Union of South Africa. A key element in that was the need to overcome
divisions and unite “all the dark races of this sub-continent”, as Pixley ka Isaka
Seme put it in October 1911, calling for a Native Union:
The demon of racialism, the aberrations of the Xosa-Fingo feud, the ani-
mosity that exists between the Zulus and the Tongas, between the Basutos
and every other Native must be buried and forgotten; it has shed among us
sufficient blood! We are one people.
The goal was to gather leaders, intellectuals, and associations “to formally estab-
lish the South African Native Congress as a National Society or Union for all
the Natives of South Africa”.5
The first major challenge facing the SANNC, formed in 1912, was the
Natives Land Act of the following year that divided the country into white
and native areas, and restricted the latter –defined as members of “an abori-
ginal race or tribe of Africa” –to only 7% of the country’s territory. A peti-
tion to government by the Congress’s president, Reverend John Dube, asserted
that it “represents practically all the native tribes of South Africa” who never
“suffered an act of greater injustice … which is more likely to embitter the
hearts of the most loyal native subjects against the Union Government”. The
Act aimed “to compel service by taking away the means of independence and
self-improvement. This compulsory service at reduced wages and high rents
will not be separation, but an intermingling of the most injurious character of
both races”. The practical result was that people were “driven from the places
dear to them as the inheritance of generations, to become wanderers on the
face of the earth”.6
A fuller assessment of the Land Act was issued by the Congress in 1916.
Segregation on its own was not seen as a problem if it were applied on “an
equitable basis”. But the land allocated for residence and cultivation was “inad-
equate for permanent settlement or occupation in proportion to the needs of
the present and future Native population”. Not only was it insufficient in size
but also “selected on the barren, marshy and malarial districts”, especially in the
northern provinces. It aimed to reduce
the Bantu people as a race to a status of permanent labourers or subordinates

for all purposes and for all times with little or no freedom to sell their
labour by bargaining on even terms with employers in the open markets of
labour either in the agricultural or industrial centres.
And, it violated the laws of nature “that every man is a free agent and has a
right to live where he chooses”. Since “partial territorial separation of the races
already obtains in every sphere of life in the urban and rural places”, there was
no need for “artificial legislation” to further it.7
A much less diplomatic view was offered by one of SANNC’s founders,
Sol Plaatje, in his 1916 book Native Life in South Africa, when he asserted that
“Awaking on Friday morning, June 20, 1913, the South African Native found
himself, not actually a slave, but a pariah in the land of his birth”. He went on:
“in no Colony are the native inhabitants treated with greater injustice than in
South Africa”. Addressing British audiences, he said:
It never occurred to us that the spread of British dominion in South

Africa would culminate in consigning us to our present intolerable pos-
ition, namely, a helot age under a Boer oligarchy. But when an official
Commission asks Parliament to herd us into concentration camps, with the
additional recommendation that besides breeding slaves for our masters,
we should be made to pay for the upkeep of the camps … the only thing
that stands between us and despair is the thought that Heaven has never
yet failed us.8
Heaven provided little help though, and neither did the British monarchy
despite repeated petitions calling for its intervention to ensure that “all races
and Nations will be treated fairly and with justice”. Congress submitted that
“the black inhabitants of this land who are Your Majesty’s subjects, on account
of their race, colour, language and creed, live under a veiled form of slavery”.
Their freedoms were restricted, and they were denied the opportunity to
dispose of their labour, to trade, and to advance themselves as they wished.
Referring to the Protectorates of Basutoland, Swaziland, and Bechuanaland
that “never surrendered their tribal land and their sovereign rights”, it added
with regard to the
desire for independence amongst white races in South Africa under the
form of Republicanism, it is recorded that we shall never consent or tol-
erate such independence without the consent of the Native inhabitants
who are quite content to remain under British Rule.9
But British rule was gone forever, and white settlers remained in charge.
They were impervious to complaints and felt no nostalgia for liberal British
rule. This situation gave rise to new modes of resistance that went beyond
petitions and submissions, even if those remained part of the arsenal of black
political activism. When protests against the Pass Laws –controlling movement
of Africans around the country –erupted in 1919, SANNC activists said
they had tried “to get redress through making representations from time to
time for the alleviation of the grievous difficulties under which the natives
in the Transvaal laboured, but all their efforts had been without avail”. Their
grievances were grouped into two main categories: “The denial of the rights
of citizenship” and the colour bar that amounted to the denial of “the rights of
ordinary human beings”.10
The discrepancy between the relative freedoms granted to natives in the
Cape, especially those who qualified for the franchise by virtue of educa-
tion and property, and harsh restrictions on movement, land occupation,
and employment, affecting natives in the provinces of Transvaal and Orange
Free State, remained a source of agitation. So was the need for greater soli-
darity between Africans in the different parts of the country. The SANNC
Constitution of 1919 highlighted issues that “affected the whole Bantu people
in South Africa”, seeking to represent “the Native problem in all its various
phases and ramifications”, and unite existing bodies working for “the promo-
tion and safeguarding of the interests of the aboriginal races”. It sought to
encourage action among “all tribes and clans of various tribes or races and by
means of combined effort and united political organisation to defend their
freedom, rights and privileges”. Aiming to become broadly representative of
the entire black African population, the Congress combined a call to “heredi-
tary kings, princes and chiefs”, and the “elected representatives of the territories
and the protectorates”, which included South Africa itself alongside the British
protectorates of Lesotho, Swaziland, and Botswana (which eventually gained
independence in the 1960s).11
Parliamentary hearings on the proposed formation of the Native Affairs
Commission in 1920, which was meant to play an advisory role to government,
raised the issue of membership.Veteran activist John Tengo Jabavu proposed that
two native members be included, and was asked if choosing from among only
some “native races” would not be a problem: If white men “who know them and
sympathise with them and who are impartial” were selected, the natives might
not mind that, the argument went, “but if natives belonging to their particular
races were not appointed they would have no confidence at all in the committee.
Is there not a danger of that?” The idea that “friends of the natives” would be
able to convey the opinions and concerns of the natives better than their own
representatives, who would be likely to engage in inter-tribal feuds, may seem
bizarre. But, given the focus on the issue by SANNC and other organisations, it
looked reasonable to its proponents. Jabavu dismissed the concern with internal
feuds in his response:“as long as there is a native on any committee they [natives]
are satisfied and where such is not the case you will find trouble”.12
Representation remained a crucial issue. Reverend ZR Mahabane of the
Cape Native Congress called for direct yet separate representation through
“native constituencies [that] should return native members to Parliament”. He
was opposed to “social equality with the white man, because I know we are not
equal”, but saw “no danger in equal rights. I would give the same franchise to
the white and the native” with no distinction “on the lines of colour or the state
of civilisation”. But, he conceded, the best course would be to have separate
constituencies because “it will be very hard for the white people of this country
to agree to that fusion”. Still, he said:
the state of dissatisfaction in the native mind is more dangerous than the
native outnumbering the white people in Parliament, because even if they
outnumber the white people in Parliament, the native would never be able
to outclass the white man intellectually … [and] the word of the white
man would always carry the day.
Thus, a system whereby racial groups selected their own representatives was
best.13
Representation was not the only or main concern. In a 1920 collection of
essays, titled The Black Problem, intellectual and activist DDT Jabavu outlined
the causes and “cure” of the “Native Unrest”. The immediate cause of unrest,
he argued, were economic conditions:
The Natives have been far harder hit by the prevailing high prices of the
strictest necessities of life, than has been the white man … in most cases
today the wages earned by a black man cannot buy his food and the barest
needs of life. It should be remembered too that the labourers in the Rand
and elsewhere are there to raise money not only for their personal needs
but also for the support of their people at home.
The solution was “revision of the scales of wages by employers everywhere”,

otherwise “blacks will be obliged to learn the methods of white trade-unionists
and be gradually drawn into socialistic organisations to compel the employers
to pay at their dictation”.
Politically, he argued, black people were disenfranchised and lacking in
trust that white people would come to their help: “they must look to them-
selves for salvation”. That led to the formation of several organisations, pri-
marily the SANNC, “which to-day represents the strongest single volume of
Native feeling in the Union”. Jabavu noted a long list of grievances, topped by
the 1913 Natives Land Act, which entrenched “the political disabilities of the
aborigines in this country”, including the Pass Laws designed to repress and
humiliate natives in the Northern provinces. He added: “this system enslaved
the Native, and the Union [of South Africa], instead of palliating its incidence,
has not only continued it, accentuated it, but has actually threatened to make it
universal”. It resulted in “a general Passive Resistance movement” in numerous
places. The legal system made the sense of racial injustice stronger as “Natives
do not fail to notice that Europeans get off lightly and quietly in crimes against
Natives, such as murder and rape, while Natives are unmistakably punished with
the utmost rigour of the law amidst press trumpeting and fanfare”.
Socially, the native was “practically not recognised as a citizen entitled to a
place under the sun”, particularly in the Northern provinces:
In stores he has to wait until all whites are served; in public offices, he is
bullied by officials, in markets his stock and produce are by tacit agreement
earmarked for low prices; his sugar cane is not accepted at the Zululand
mills; evening curfew bells restrict his freedom of movement among his
friends and he is cut and snarled at throughout his life.
Urban conditions were harsh:
people live in squalid surroundings, shockingly overcrowded, these quarters

being favourable breeding beds for disease and epidemics. From their nature
they are cesspools of drunkenness and demoralisation. Conveniences are
distant. Sometimes nonexistent; water is hard to get; light is little; sanita-
tion bad; while there are no common laundry buildings, no gardens, no
amusement halls or clubs.
Insecurity of tenure, both in the urban and rural areas, made it unlikely that
natives would invest in their houses and neighbourhoods, and improve them.
This abysmal state of affairs (made worse by chaos in the education system,
and discrimination by the civil service), said Jabavu, gave rise to “Bolshevism and
its nihilistic doctrines”, and attacks on Christianity as “a white man’s religion”,
to be replaced by “a religion of our own, an original, independent African reli-
gion suited to our needs”, and calls to unite for freedom: “opposing the white
man tooth and nail as he has taken our country and made us economic slaves”.
Nationalist agitators were using that “to stir up the populace to desperate acts”,
and it worked because people were “landless, voteless, helots; pariahs, social
outcasts in their fatherland with no future in any path of life … the white man
has everything, they nothing”. A new group of responsible leaders was thus
needed in order to prevent “an anarchist disruption of this land”.14
Other activists were less concerned with the disruptive potential of protest
and focused on the need for internal unity. Reverend Mahabane urged natives
to sink “their petty, weakening and destructive differences purely on racial or
tribal personal lines” and unite “all their labour and political forces under one
great national organisation embracing all the various Bantu tribes of Southern
Africa”. The main task, he argued, was to ensure justice and rights, especially
the “right of rights, the right of direct representation”. The implementation
of a colour bar, which denies natives representation, was “the source of all the
unrest, discontent and ill-feeling that exists” among non-Europeans, and there
could be no peace without addressing the issue. Black people were treated as
“child races”, and reduced to “utter voicelessness and votelessness, hopelessness,
powerlessness, helplessness, defencelessness, homelessness, landlessness, a condi-
tion of deepest humiliation and absolute dependency”. In short, they were sub-
ject to “political slavery”.The way forward was “full and free co-operation of all
the white and black races of the land and of all classes and conditions of men”.15
This assertion of rights, to secure residence, land, and representation, was a
constant theme for African political movements, the ANC in particular. In its
1923 conference (in which SANNC adopted its new name), it called for unre-
stricted right to “a place of abode”. It reclaimed the notion of “equal rights for
all civilised men south of the Zambesi” and urged the extension of equal rights
to all regardless of race, class, creed, and origin. Direct representation was not
a demand for universal franchise, however. Different formulas were raised for
enhancing representation without consensus on how that could be achieved.
Many intellectuals and leaders believed political power could not be taken by
force and had to be acquired through dialogue and negotiation with white
politicians, in a process involving compromises to assure them that blacks posed
no threat to white well-being and safety. Congress thus urged Parliament “to
make provision for some adequate representation of the non-European races
domiciled within the borders of the Union of South Africa”.16
The Fight against the Native Bills

This concern with representation was expressed again in the following year’s
conference, with a decision to go beyond appeals to white politicians to
launch “a vigorous campaign for the removal of the colour bar in the Imperial
Act constituting the Union of South Africa”, working together with “other
non-European associations, political, industrial, educational or agricultural”.17
This quest for enhancing the presence of Africans suffered a serious blow
by developments, with Prime Minister Hertzog’s initiative aimed to reduce
representation, abolish the qualified Cape African franchise, and replace it
with a system of indirect representation of Natives throughout the country.
The following decade focused on Hertzog’s plans. In November 1925 he
gave a landmark speech in the Free State town of Smithfield, in which he
outlined proposals for re-configuring political and social relations between “the
European” and the “Native”, followed by address to the Governor-General’s
Native Conference in December 1925, and later on in 1926 by a set of Bills
presented to Parliament.
Hertzog saw the Native Conference to which he was speaking in 1925 as
a forerunner of a future country-wide consultative council that would give
Natives a voice in governance on a segregated basis. In his view it was best
for all that “as far as the occupation of land is concerned the Native should be
separated from the European”. Territorial segregation was possible only on the
basis of “necessary land” obtained “by purchase or lease”.That meant extending
the area reserved by the Natives’ Land act of 1913. However, he added, this
would not clash with Natives’ continued work in white towns and on white
farms. Segregation would not be absolute, as he did not believe “there should be
two kraals –one for the sheep and the other for the goats”. Excluding natives in
that way would have been unthinkable as the prosperity of white-owned mines,
farms, industry, and homes, hinged on guaranteed access to cheap black labour,
then and throughout South Africa’s history.
In Native Areas, Hertzog said, councils would comprise chiefs and elected
representatives, and they would not become independent but rather fall “under
the leadership of the Government”, similarly to municipalities with defined
rights and responsibilities. A Union Native Council would allow an add-
itional layer of representation as “the Natives’ Parliament”. White people (“the
European portion of our population”) opposed granting Natives the vote, he
asserted. And, although prepared to agree “that the Native should determine
the method and personnel of the Native Council”, they demanded sole say
when it came to Parliament. However, noted Hertzog, Natives could have an
indirect voice in Parliament through Europeans “entrusted with the care of
Native interests”, elected directly by Natives “independently of the white vote”.
They would speak and vote on all matters except for the principle of represen-
tation itself. Importantly, he added, the abolition of the Cape African fran-
chise would not affect the Cape coloured vote, since coloured people “owe
their origin to the white man”. They resided among Europeans, spoke the
same languages, did not live under tribal conditions, and could not be treated
as Natives. This was not a cause for resentment on the part of Africans, he
said: “there is no injustice done when different grazing is given to sheep than
that given to the cattle”.18
Most respondents did not challenge the principle of segregation itself but
raised some issues with its application. DDT Jabavu emphasised the need to
allocate more land to African Natives to enable territorial segregation by pro-
viding enough space in which to develop and practice self-governance, and Sol
Plaatje argued for selecting more representatives to be elected by Natives to
the national council than Hertzog’s proposed figure of seven but did not argue
against the idea itself. What was not discussed much at the time, but later on
became a central issue of contention, was the trade-off in the proposals: more
land, and more national-level indirect representation, in exchange for the abo-
lition of the Cape franchise. The significance of the franchise issue was not in
its impact on electoral results, as African voters were a small portion of the
electorate. Rather, abolishing the Cape franchise meant that even a limited
expression of direct representation was not to be tolerated, and there was no
prospect of its extension to the rest of the country. The struggle became defen-
sive in nature, to prevent limitation of rights rather than promote their expan-
sion. The entire strategy of the two previous decades –keeping the (meagre)
privileges intact while working to improve on them gradually within existing
frameworks –was put into serious doubt.
At the 1926 meeting of the Native Conference, greater focus on the concerns
of representation and land was evident. Prominent activist R.V. Selope Thema,
disputed the notion that there were two nations in need of separate represen-
tation: “It was impossible to evolve a Nation within a Nation. They could not
have a separate Bantu Nation and a separate European Nation in South Africa
so long as the two races live side by side”. Natives were not confronted by
different issues, he said. They needed a voice within state institutions, not a
return to tribal conditions. That was a concern with regard to land as well.
To buy land Natives would have to prove their ties to a specific territory and
lineage, and the Bill would inevitably drive progressive Natives back into tri-
balism. For Jabavu the issue was not the need for uniform national policy, but
government’s refusal to allow “Natives of a lower status to rise to the higher
status of the Cape”. Its policy rather was “to bring down the best to the level of
the worst”. It was wrong to say that
the uplift of the black man meant the downfall of the white … however
highly civilised the black man became he could never stand up against the
white. The latter had had too long a start –the engines of war were at his
disposal.
The safest policy was to “convince the Natives of the justice of every pro-
posal and to give them liberty to develop to the best of their ability”. Racial
segregation was not inevitable: “In the West Indies white and black live happily
together –there is no fear of the black man there. In America negroes are living
amicably with the whites with full opportunity to develop. If the Government
wished white dominance to endure the best way was to give fair play to the
black man”.
Unsurprisingly, the conference rejected the abolition of the Cape franchise
which emanated “from the mistaken fear on the part of the European public
that white civilization and white supremacy will be endangered”. And, without
opposing indirect representation, it regarded it unacceptable as a substitute for
the Cape franchise. In addition, it rejected the restrictions on access to land
(buying, settling, cultivating) on the basis of tribal affiliation, “as it will retard
progress and civilisation among the Bantu people”. In fact, the proposal that
both the allocation of land and the procedure for indirect representation would
be handled on a tribal basis, thus imposing a collective tribal identity on all,
including educated urban natives regardless of their self-identification, was a
concern expressed by many delegates.19
Disappointment with Government’s move away from the quest for direct
representation did not quash all hopes for a reversal of policy. When DDT
Jabavu testified on behalf of some associations (but not the ANC) in Parliament
in 1927, he contrasted “the ideals of the liberal Cape and the inflexible Northern
Provinces habituated to governing their subject races” firmly. To alleviate white
anxieties over social equality, he proclaimed:
we seek political equality not for social intercourse but in order to rise in
our economic and political circumstances. We cannot thrive economically
until we have our due share to the land rightly adjusted. And we cannot
obtain our land rights until we get a direct voice in Parliament.
Since natives were “inextricably bound up with Europeans in our territorial

occupation of the land”, segregation would remain a “physical impossibility”.
Like many of his peers Jabavu rejected any return to tribalism as unfeasible:
African tribal rule has undergone such disintegration that it can never be
re-established among detribalised Natives … It is useless to urge tribal com-
munism [meaning communalism] as our ultimate goal in face of the Union
Act based on British individualism, which is the enemy of communism.
On the contrary, Africans were moving away from the past:
We are ranged on the side of civilisation. Our interests are intertwined with
civilised interests. We would not like to go back naked to the kraals and
live a barbarous life. We have renounced that life once and for all … The
Europeans regard us as a solid block of undifferentiated barbarism and the
Europeans as a solid block of innate capacity to govern; whereas the div-
ision is not on these lines. The division is between civilisation and ignor-
ance, which may be found in both blocks.
But, he added, Hertzog’s Bills would have the opposite effect, “calculated
to block the progress of those who like to advance and dam them back to the
slough of ignorance”.The only sound policy was “to open the gates of freedom
for self development rather than to make temporary measures of a repressive
character”, causing ill will and resentment”.20
It is important to recognise that what Jabavu regarded as progressive and
civilised was shaped by a rather conservative perspective that sought assimila-
tion into British cultural norms, based on Christianity, Western-style educa-
tion, nuclear family life, and urban conditions. It was not shared by all. As J.T.
Gumede, ANC President, said:
there are two wings to Bantu movement for political and economic eman-
cipation from the tyranny of European rule, the conservative and the
radical. These wings are absolutely necessary for our progress. They are the
right and left wing of a great movement … [that] work together harmoni-
ously for the good of our oppressed people.21
The key strategy was to cater to the demands of different constituencies,

fighting the consequences of the segregation policies advanced by government,
among which were “compulsory return of urban Africans to their Reserves
which are already crowded to overflowing because of the natural population
increase”, and “prevention of contact between Black and White because the
Africans tend to assimilate in a very short time the education and culture of
the White people and often excel in it”. These steps resulted in arresting the
progress of educated Africans, “turning them back into darkness and ignor-
ance, with no understanding or knowledge of enlightened government such as
would enable them to demand a share in the running of the country”.The only
way forward was for the African to recognise that “salvation and success lies in
his own efforts and in unity”.22
Gumede, who represented left-wing forces within the ANC, close to the
Communist Party, clearly went beyond the assimilationist quest of Jabavu
(shared by others in the ANC). Instead, he linked South African protests to
the “rising of oppressed peoples against their exploiters”, and anti-imperialist
struggles in China, Java, and India. These were linked in turn to the economic
crisis affecting the capitalist world at the time. Polite appeals to the British were
useless, he said, “we have now to rely on our own strength, on the strength of
the revolutionary masses of white workers the world over with whom we must
join forces”. That approach centred on the demand –made initially by the
CPSA as discussed in Chapter 2 –for “a South African Native Republic, with
equal rights for all, but free from all foreign and local domination”.23 His report
gave rise to a “storm of protest”, and he was removed from the leadership. But,
the themes it outlined became central as more radical perspectives emerged in
the 1940s. Gumede was ahead of many of his peers, who “trusted in the good-
will of the white race and its sense of justice”, only to have that trust betrayed,
as the ANC recognised later on.24
As noted for the Communist Party in Chapter 2, but for different reasons,
there was a lull in activity in the early 1930s. ANC President, Pixley ka Isaka
Seme, attributed it to lack of internal unity in the movement and the country
at large, and growing distrust between the tribal “heathens” and urban Africans.
He saw no reason why educated Africans “should throw away their tribal
connections and [express] so much desire to be regarded as being detribalised
natives”. There was a need for what black activists in the USA called Race
Pride, solidarity of the educated and skilled leaders with their less advanced
fellow black people. A false sense of superiority towards the rural masses, Seme
said, left educated natives vulnerable, victims of their own quest for European
cultural norms and material standards. A new generation of activists was chal-
lenging traditional practices and customs instead of strengthening the old but
still viable institutions and reinforcing them with new blood.25
The political standoff of the late 1920s/early 1930s that prevented Hertzog
from proceeding with his Native Bills was broken with the Great Depression,
which forced greater unity of white political forces. A merger between
Hertzog’s National Party and the South African Party of Jan Smuts led to the
rise of the United Party as the central power in the Fusion government of
1934. The resulting sense of urgency among African activists highlighted the
need for a unified response, shaping the politics of resistance. It had become
clear by then that polite appeals were not an effective means of protest. A new
stage opened up with intensified political mobilisation and a call to convene
the “most important and representative National Convention of chiefs, leaders
and other representatives of all shades of religious, educational, economic and
political thought among the African people of the four Provinces of the Union
of South Africa”.26
The All African Convention (AAC)

The outcome took the shape of the AAC of December 1935, with 400
delegates from all over the country meeting in Bloemfontein to reject segrega-
tion as unjust and impractical, “opposed to the facts of the South African situ-
ation”. What was needed instead was a focus on “political identity”, to ensure
“the ultimate creation of a South African nation in which, while the various
racial groups may develop on their own lines, socially and culturally, they will
be bound together by the pursuit of common political objectives”. The exten-
sion of citizenship rights to all groups was essential to this project, recognising
though that “the exercise of political rights in a democratic State demands the
possession, on the part of those who enjoy them, of a reasonable measure of
education and material contribution to the economic welfare of the country”.
Interestingly, even at that stage, not all delegates rejected out of hand sep-
arate representation for natives or land allocation on a segregated racial basis,
though they did challenge the limited nature of these as proposed in the Native
Bills –not enough land, not enough powers, not enough participation.27 The
tension between fitting into the system on an improved but separate basis, and
upending it altogether by demanding complete equality and removal of all
restrictions, remained, as did the distinction between political integration and
social and cultural separation.
Another option was raised, that of a separate state. Selby Msimang, General
Secretary of the AAC and long-time ANC activist, called the Native Bills “a
Magna Carta for White South Africa”, and posed two alternatives for ongoing
struggle.The first was to accept that Africans were not part of the South African
community and that “between the European and ourselves there is no longer
any community of interests”. If that was the case, and white people chose “to
segregate us from them territorially, economically, politically”, Africans could
demand “a complete segregation on a fifty-fifty basis” to enable them to sep-
arate and exercise “political, economic and social independence”.
The other option focused on consciousness rather than politics, using “the
power of the soul, the indestructible something that is in man –the Sword of
God”. Through organisation and education of the masses, “removing mental
inactivity”, the outcome would be liberation: when “our people are con-
scious of their fate, then shall we hope and begin to see visions and to dream
the dreams of freedom”.28 How elusive dreams would affect material reality
remained a vague promise, though, not just back then but in later Africanist and
Black Consciousness projects as discussed in Chapter 6.
In an emergency meeting held in Bloemfontein in June 1936 after the enact-
ment of the Bills, attended by more than 200 delegates, AAC President DDT
Jabavu outlined a set of fundamental principles to guide future action, which
included the following: “Segregation and colour bars must go; alternatively we
want a separate State of our own where we shall rule ourselves”. Economic
repression also had to go, he added: “if we but knew our power we could hold
up the industries that depend on our labour in one day”. Finally, “selfishness
must go”. Traditional Africans “used to smell out and destroy all abnormally
acquisitive individuals as a danger to society. By this crude method we guar-
anteed all men a chance to have food, shelter and clothing without prejudice.
This is a lesson we Africans can teach Christendom”.29 This meant fighting for
equality, but in terms that were not linked to the specific content of the Bills or
to a concrete plan of action.
In a similar vein, the AAC’s Programme of Action expressed “profound dis-
appointment with the Government” in enacting the Bills “without due regard
to the views of the African people”. And, with regard to the Land Act, it said
presciently, long before the apartheid Homeland policies of the 1960s and 1970s:
in so far as it will drive large numbers of Africans now on European farms

and in urban areas into the already congested Native Reserves and into the
meagre released areas set aside for, and already largely in Native occupation,
[it] will accentuate the precarious economic status of the African people.
Politically, it reaffirmed its commitment to “common and citizenship rights

for all” and called for continued working for that goal.30 These sentiments did
not translate clearly into a concrete plan of mobilisation and action, however.
An attempt to devise such a plan was undertaken by the AAC in a December
1937 meeting aiming to establish the Convention as a permanent body, and
shape “the African races of South Africa as a national entity and unit [that]
should henceforth speak with one voice”. The body was open to all “African
religious, educational, industrial, economic, political, commercial and social
organisations” wishing to affiliate with it. Dozens of such organisations attended
the meeting. Its objectives were to “act in unity in developing the political and
economic power of the African people” and serve as “the united voice of the
African people on all matters affecting their welfare”. Seeking to give concrete
form to its principles, the AAC opposed “segregation in all its forms”, demanded
“the abolition of racial barriers in existing trade-unions and in industry, as
well as race prejudice generally”, rejected forced removals, supported “franchise
for the Africans” and “representation by indigenous Africans” in all political
institutions, called for allocating sufficient land for the needs of the African
population and removal of all restrictions on land purchases. It supported “equal
pay for equal work” regardless of race, the abolition of the Pass Laws, and many
other social demands related to education, health, agriculture, business, and
welfare.31
Coming up with a comprehensive list of goals was not enough, of course.
A strategy of effective political and organisational action was needed. And that,
in turn, required consistent grassroots work and political alliances. The AAC
itself was not equipped for the task since it was an umbrella structure with
limited resources, relying to a large extent on members of other organisations,
above all the ANC. The ANC was not very active in that period either. At
its 1939 conference it adopted a resolution, requesting government “respect-
fully” to repeal “all differential legislation so that the African is ruled under
the General laws of the country”, and “strongly” urging that trade unions of
African workers be given “the same recognition and rights” as all other workers
unions. It also adopted the principle of a “non-European United Front”, to
mobilise coloured people and people of Indian origins alongside Africans, but
that seemed to have had no practical impact.32
World War and Its Aftermath

The situation of war in Europe and north Africa, in which South Africans took
part even though it was waged thousands of miles away, slowed down political
activity in the country. But as the war continued, conditions started to change.
ANC President, Dr. A.B. Xuma outlined the organisation’s policy in August
1941, proclaiming it “the mouth-piece of the African people of the Union of
South Africa” that stood for “racial unity” and “the improvement of the African
people, politically, economically, socially, educationally and industrially”. In that
context it sought to unite people by overcoming tribal, clan-based, and racial
divisions, to represent its constituency and help formulate “policy on Native
Affairs” for Government and Parliament. The concrete demands included
“right of franchise to Africans”, the “removal of all industrial and commer-
cial restrictions against the African”, eligibility for all social welfare benefits,
“adequate land for Africans in rural and urban areas”, abolition of the Pass
Laws, and provision of good-quality education facilities. These rights required
of Africans to “organise, unite, close ranks, work and fight”. Every constitutional
means could be used to advance those claims, Xuma concluded in urging his
audience into action.33
In a more formal vein, these goals were set forward in the ANC Constitution,
adopted in December 1943 at its annual conference:
To protect and advance the interest of all Africans in all matters affecting
them; To attain the freedom of the African People from all discriminatory
laws whatsoever; To strive and work for the unity and co-operation of the
African people in every possible way;To strive and to work for the full par-
ticipation of the African in the Government of South Africa.34
Of greater importance, the conference adopted one of the most significant

documents in the history of the anti-colonial liberation movement in South
Africa, Africans’ Claims in South Africa. It made the case that the Atlantic Charter,
adopted by the Allied Powers as a blueprint for post-World War arrangements,
be applied “to the whole British Empire, the United States of America and to
all the nations of the world and their subject peoples”. With specific regard to
South Africa, the document urged that it “grant the just claims of her non-
European peoples to freedom, democracy and human decency”, since “charity
must begin at home”.
In a core section, the authors (a 28-person committee) addressed the Charter
principle by principle and offered their views from continental African and
South African perspectives. Among points raised in the Atlantic Charter was
“the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they
will live” and the wish “to see sovereign rights and self government restored
to those who have been forcibly deprived of them”. In response, the African
Claims document asserted the need to consider “the political rights and status
of minorities and of Africans now held under European tutelage”. In other
words, address conditions in colonised territories, in Africa in particular, where
“European aggression and conquest has resulted in the establishment of Alien
governments which … are not accountable to the indigenous inhabitants”.
While some parts of Africa were ready for independence from foreign rule, in
others, “where there are the peculiar circumstances of a politically entrenched
European minority ruling a majority European population”, the demand was
for “full citizenship rights and direct participation in all the councils of the
state”, most urgently in South Africa.
It was not only political control that was at stake. The document expressed
concern with continued “exploitation of African resources to the detriment
of her indigenous inhabitants and the enrichment of foreigners”. With labour,
“collaboration between all nations in the economic field must include con-
sideration of the interest of labour as well as of capital, and that all workers,
including African workers, must be fully and directly represented in this collab-
oration”. Specifically, this required “the removal of the Colour Bar; training in
skilled occupations; remuneration according to skill; a living wage and all other
workers’ benefits; proper and adequate housing for all races”.
Attached to these comments was a Bill of Rights, setting out the core
demands for the post-war period, beginning by declaring the right to “full
citizenship rights such as are enjoyed by all Europeans in South Africa”. In con-
crete terms, this meant: “Abolition of political discrimination based on race …
the extension to all adults, regardless of race, of the right to vote and be elected
to parliament” and other representative institutions, as well as “the right to equal
justice in courts of law”. Beyond specific demands, there was an overall call in
the name of the African people, who “regard as fundamental to the establish-
ment of a new order in South Africa the abolition of all enactments which
discriminate against the African on grounds of race and colour”. The policy
of segregation was condemned on all its aspects, as it was designed “to keep
the African in a state of perpetual tutelage and [it] militates against his normal
development”.35
Rise of the Youth League

Equally important was another document issued a few months later, in March
1944, by the ANC Youth League. The ANC, led by veteran activists, made
gradual changes to its stance, while the Youth League moved in a new direction
inspired by global developments. In the name of Africanism, it urged Africans to
“struggle for development, progress and national liberation so as to occupy their
rightful and honourable place among nations of the world”, and in particular
African Youth, to become “united, consolidated, trained and disciplined”. The
problem of South Africa, as they saw it, was that
the contact of the White race with the Black has resulted in the emer-
gence of a set of conflicting living conditions and outlooks on life which
seriously hamper South Africa’s progress to nationhood. The White race,
possessing superior military strength and at present having superior
organising skill has arrogated to itself the ownership of the land and
invested itself with authority and the right to regard South Africa as a
White man’s country.
The African, “who owned the land before the advent of the Whites, has been
deprived of all security which may guarantee him an independent pursuit
of destiny”. He was defeated in battle “but refuses to accept this as meaning
that he must be oppressed, just to enable the White man to further dom-
inate him”.
White people, the Youth League asserted, “view South African problems
through the perspective of Race destiny; that is the belief that the White race
is the destined ruler and leader of the world for all time”. In response, it was
imperative for the African too “to view his problems and those of his country
through the perspective of Race”. Africans wished to be free citizens in South
Africa, and they realised that “to trust to the mere good grace of the White
man” will not free them:
no nation can free an oppressed group other than that group itself. Self-
determination is the philosophy of life which will save him from the disaster
he clearly sees on his way –disaster to which Discrimination, Segregation,
Pass Laws and Trusteeship are all ruthlessly and inevitably driving him.
Although the ANC was “the symbol and embodiment of the African’s will
to present a united national front against all forms of oppression”, said the
Youth League, it did not advance the national cause in “a manner demanded by
prevailing conditions”. It deserved criticism for the “weaknesses in its organ-
isation and constitution”, its “erratic policy of yielding to oppression, regarding
itself as a body of gentlemen with clean hands”, and for “failing to see the
problems of the African through the proper perspective”. As a result, the ANC
became “an organisation of the privileged few”, afflicted by “reactionism and
conservatism”, removed from “actual touch with the needs of the rank and
file”. The challenge was to re-build the movement from within, with the Youth
League taking the lead, inspired by the “the spirit of African nationalism; the
spirit of African self-determination”. They added: “we believe that the national
liberation of Africans will be achieved by Africans themselves”. Useful ideas
could be borrowed from foreign sources but “the wholesale importation of
foreign ideologies into Africa” was rejected. The “unity of all Africans from
the Mediterranean Sea in the North to the Indian and Atlantic oceans in the
South” was asserted as “Africans must speak with one voice”.
By way of formulating concrete plans, the goals set by the Youth League
included consolidating itself organisationally as well as a progressive group
within the ANC, winning over other Youth organisations “to create national
unity and consolidate the national unity front”, persuading other African
organisations to work with the ANC, developing theories of African urbanisa-
tion and land tenure, and making “a critical study of all those forces working for
or against African progress”.36
Central to the concerns of the Youth League, as part of its Africanist orienta-
tion, was the need to develop an independent perspective and maintain freedom
of action. Responding to an invitation to join the Progressive Youth Council, a
CPSA-aligned movement, they rejected it by saying:
there is a yawning gulf between your policy or philosophical outlook

and ours. We are devoting our energies to the preparation for the greatest
national struggle of all time, the struggle for national liberation. Our stu-
pendous task is to organise, galvanise and consolidate the numerous African
tribes into one homogeneous nation. We are alarmed and startled by the
bitter and painful realisation that these 150,000,000 African blacks have
for centuries slumbered or lain dormant in the dark Continent. We con-
sider that the hour struck that these black African masses as an organised
powerful force be made effective or that their voice be heard and felt in
international affairs.
Non-European unity was fine, but Africans could only co-operate “as an
organised self-conscious unit”.37
In a subsequent statement by Anton Lembede, outlining the League’s per-
spective for which he was a main contributor, he defined it as “a new spirit of
African nationalism”, based on few principles:
(1) Africa is a blackman’s country. Africans are the natives of Africa and they
have inhabited Africa, their Motherland, from times immemorial; Africa
belongs to them (2) Africans are one. Out of the heterogeneous tribes, there
must emerge a homogeneous nation,
united “irrespective of tribal connection, social status, educational attainment

or economic class”. They had to lead themselves, and cooperation with
others could only take place “between Africans as a single unit and other
Non-European groups as separate units”. The divine destiny of Africans was
“National Freedom” that would allow them to escape “impending doom and
imminent catastrophe of extermination”; without it they will not survive
“Satanic forces”: diseases, infant mortality, moral and physical degeneration, and
spiritual degeneration manifested in “abnormal and pathological phenomena as
loss of self confidence, inferiority complex, a feeling of frustration, the worship
and idolisation of white men, foreign leaders and ideologies”. Africans were
“naturally socialistic”, and national liberation would herald “the era of African
socialism”. The immediate task, however, was national liberation.38
These notions were reinforced by another theorist of Africanism, A.P. Mda:
The Africans are a conquered race, their oppression is a racial oppression,

in other words, they do not suffer class oppression. They are oppressed by
virtue of their colour as a race –as a group –as a nation! In other words,
they are suffering national oppression.
However, their nationalism was different from that of the Nazis or the
fascists and their local equivalents, the Afrikaners of DF Malan; it was the
“pure Nationalism of an oppressed people” that aimed to establish a “People’s
Democracy” where all men will have rights and freedoms simply by virtue
of being men.39 In retrospect, the similarity between such ideas and those of
the future Pan-Africanist Congress and the Black Consciousness Movement is
remarkable, as discussed in Chapter 6.
The Youth League Basic Policy document of 1948 outlined the primacy
of race and nationalism over class in a more formal language: Africans “suffer
national oppression in common with thousands and millions of oppressed colo-
nial peoples in other parts of the world”. All of Africa had to be freed from
foreign rule and the way to achieve that was to create liberation movements
based on inner strength and solidarity. Alongside that, political action aimed to
achieve “true democracy” in which “all the nationalities and minorities would
have their fundamental human rights guaranteed in a democratic Constitution”.
African identity was not a key to political privileges, only to equality.
In more concrete vein, the League called for “the re-division of land among
farmers and peasants of all nationalities in proportion to their numbers” –a
convoluted formula that kept racial boundaries but also challenged them –the
abolition of industrial colour bars so “workers of all nationalities” should have
equal access to skills and jobs, and an economy that would “eliminate discrim-
ination and ensure a just and equitable distribution of wealth among the people
of all nationalities”, and “give no scope for the domination and exploitation
of one group by another”. Shifting between an individual and collective lan-
guage was a feature of the nationalist discourse. None of the clauses related to
education mentioned mother tongues though, as if the notion that English
would dominate was taken for granted. African culture was mentioned as an
essential component in assimilating the best elements from different cultures,
to allow Africa to make “her own special contribution to human progress and
happiness”. What that contribution might be was not specified, however, nor
was there any mention of cultural content of any kind.
The Youth Manifesto identified disunity as a key problem affecting the anti-
colonial movement. A unified effort to overthrow European rule offered the
possibility of a compromise with Europeans, if they abandoned domination,
agreed to equitable division of land, and helped democracy. But, since dom-
inant groups do not give up their privileges voluntarily, that would require “a
long, bitter, and unrelenting struggle” under the banner of African nationalism.
Having rejected the “extreme and ultra revolutionary” stream of nationalism
associated with Marcus Garvey’s notion of “Africa for the Africans” and “Hurl
the Whiteman to the sea”, the League recognised that “different racial groups
have come to stay” but that “the basic structure of South African society” must
change to make “relations that breed exploitation and human misery” disappear.
Only Africans had the necessary numbers and moral and political standing to
demand and achieve liberation. Coloured people could join the struggle, on a
separate basis, as could people of Indian origins, as long as they did not seek
to undermine African liberation. But, European settlers had no role to play,
with their vested interest “in the exploitative caste society of South Africa”.
Progressive voices among them were negligible and ultimately counted for
nothing. It was a waste of time to rely on them for inspiration or help.
Somewhat obliquely, the League went on to reject certain groups that
claimed to be involved in the liberation struggle as “pseudo-nationalists”, “fas-
cist agents”, and “vendors of foreign method”.The last term referred, no doubt,
to the Communists, who sought to impose set formulas that served “to obscure
the fundamental fact that we are oppressed not as a class, but as a people, as a
Nation”. Importing methods and tactics from Europe “might harm the cause
of our people’s freedom, unless we are quick in building a militant mass liber-
ation movement”.40
The principles outlined by the 1948 Manifesto served as a foundation for
the ANC’s Programme of Action adopted at its December 1949 conference,
after the beginning of the apartheid era. It called for national freedom and
political independence. This entailed “the rejection of the conception of seg-
regation, apartheid, trusteeship, or White leadership”. Africans demanded self-
determination, like all other people, it said. In practical terms, that meant “the
abolition of all differential institutions” especially created for Africans, using in
that effort the weapons of “immediate and active boycott, strike, civil disobedi-
ence, non-co-operation” and other such measures, including national stoppage
of work for one day as an immediate step.41
The rejection of differential institutions referred specifically to the Natives’
Representative Council, a body created in 1937 as part of the Hertzog Bills.
Initial enthusiasm for the possibility of national-level representation for Africans
had dissipated by the 1940s, as it became clear that the Council had no powers,
not even advisory ones. As a result, it suspended its operation, claiming popular
support for the move:
The view has been expressed that this experiment in political segregation
has been given a fair trial by the African people during the last decade, and
that the time has come for them to recognise that the experiment has failed
and to embark upon a boycott of the scheme.42
Prime Minister Smuts suggested giving Councillors “a measure of execu-

tive authority” in the Native Reserves, making the Council entirely a body
elected by natives, linking with local bodies in urban areas to make it more
representative, and recognising black trade unions but on a segregated basis.The
Councillors’ response was not welcoming, seeing the concessions as “no radical
departure from the established Native policy of the country”.43 For Dr. Xuma
they were being asked in effect “to administer their own domination, discrim-
ination and oppression”.44
With the rise of the apartheid government, and the adoption of the ANC
Programme of Action in the following year, the matter of separate representa-
tion seems to have been put to rest. New conditions called for a new approach,
to be implemented in the 1950s, as discussed in Chapter 6.
Notes
1 “Questions Affecting the Natives and Coloured People Resident in British South
Africa”, statement by the Executive of the South African Native Congress, 1903, in
From Protest to Challenge,Volume 1: Protest and Hope 1882–1934, edited by T. Karis and
G. Carter (Hoover Institution Press, 1972), pp. 18–29.
2 Testimony of M. Lutuli of the Natal Native Congress, before the SANAC, 28th May
1904, in ibid., pp. 29–34.
3 Testimony of the Rev. E.T. Mpela and others of the Native Vigilance Association
of the Orange River Colony, before the SANAC, 23rd September 1904, in ibid.,
pp. 34–9.
4 Testimony of the Rev. S.J. Brander and others, of the Ethiopian Catholic Church in
Zion, before the SANAC, 4th October 1904, in ibid., pp. 39–42.
5 “Native Union”, by P.I. Seme, in Imvo Zabantsundu”, 24th October 1911, in ibid.,
pp. 71–3.
6 Petition to the Prime Minister from Rev. J.L. Dube, President of SANNC, 14th
February 1914, in ibid., pp. 84–6.
7 Resolution against the Natives Land Act 1913 and the Report of the Natives Land
Commission, by the SANNC, 2nd October 1916, in ibid., pp. 86–8.
8 S. Plaatje, Native Life in South Africa, 1916.
9 Petition to King George V. from the SANNC, 16th December 1918, in From Protest
to Challenge, Vol. 1, pp. 137–42.
10 “Pass Law Resisters, Native Case Stated”, report on interviews with SANNC
members, 1st April 1919, in ibid., pp. 106–7.
11 Constitution of the South African Native National Congress, September 1919, in
ibid., pp. 76–82.
12 Testimony of J.T. Jabavu before the Select Committee on Native Affairs, 15th June
1920, in ibid., pp. 110–13.
13 Testimony of Rev. Z.R. Mahabane before the Select Committee on Native Affairs,
15th June 1920, in ibid., pp. 115–18.
14 D.D.T. Jabavu, The Black Problem (Bookstore, Lovedale), 1920.
15 “The Exclusion of the Bantu”, address by Rev. Z.R. Mahabane, 1921, in From
Protest to Challenge,Vol. 1, pp. 290–6.
16 Resolutions of the Annual Conference of the ANC, 28th–29th May 1923, in ibid.,
pp. 297–8.
17 Resolutions of the Annual Conference of the ANC, 31st May 1924, in ibid.,
pp. 298–9.
18 Proceedings and Resolutions of the Governor-General’s Native Conference, 1925
in ibid., pp. 172–80. Livestock metaphors clearly were a favourite with Hertzog…
19 Proceedings and Resolutions of the Governor-General’s Native Conference, 1926
in ibid., pp. 180–96.
20 Testimony of Professor D.D.T. Jabavu and others before the Select Committee on
Subject of Native Bills, 30th May 1927, in ibid., pp. 202–12.
21 “To All Leaders of the African People”, statement by J.T. Gumede, President, ANC,
7th September 1927, in ibid., p. 304.
22 “What do the People Say?”, Editorial in Abantu-Batho, ANC publication, 26th
January 1928, in ibid., pp. 304–6.
23 Report on the Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the ANC, 3rd May 1930,
in ibid., pp. 308–10.
24 “ANC Calls for Passive Resistance”, statement in Umteteli wa Bantu, 27th June 1931,
in ibid., pp. 310–12.
25 “The African National Congress –is it Dead”, pamphlet by P.I. Seme, 1932, in ibid.,
pp. 313–15.
26 “A National Convention”, statement by the Rev. Z.R. Mahabane, in Bantu World,
18th May 1935, in From Protest to Challenge, Volume 2: Hope and Challenge 1935–
1952, edited by T. Karis and G. Carter (Hoover Institution Press, 1973), p. 13.
27 The All African Convention Proceedings and Resolutions, 15th–18th December
1935, in ibid., pp. 31–46.
28 H. Selby Msimang, The Crisis, (March 1936), pp. 13–14.
29 Minutes of the All African Convention, edited by D.D.T. Jabavu, June 1936 (Lovedale
Press, 1936), p. 45.
30 Ibid., p. 14.
31 Policy of the All African Convention, in Minutes of the All African Convention,
(December 1937), pp. 29–35.
32 Resolutions of the ANC Annual Conference, 15th–18th December 1939, in From
Protest to Challenge,Vol. 2, pp. 154–5.
33 “The Policy and Platform of the ANC”, statement by Dr. A.B. Xuma in Inkululeko,
August 1941, in ibid., pp. 168–71.
34 Constitution of the ANC, 16th December 1943, in ibid., pp. 204–8.
35 Africans’ Claims in South Africa, African National Congress, (Johannesburg, 1943).
36 Congress Youth League Manifesto, March 1944, in From Protest to Challenge, Vol. 2,
pp. 300–8.
37 Letter from the ANC Youth League (Transvaal) to the Secretary (Ruth First) of the
Progressive Youth Council, 16th March 1945, in ibid., p. 316.
38 “Policy of the Congress Youth League”, article by A.M. Lembede, in Inkundla ya
Bantu, in ibid., pp. 317–18.
39 Letter on the Youth League, from A.P. Mda to G.M. Pitje, 24th August 1948, in ibid.,
pp. 319–21.
40 Basic Policy of Congress Youth League, Manifesto issued by the ANC Youth League,
1948, in ibid., pp. 323–31.
41 Programme of Action, statement of policy adopted by the ANC Conference, 17th
December 1949, in ibid., pp. 337–9.
42 “Reasons why the Natives’ Representative Council in the Union of South Africa
adjourned”, Pamphlet published by Prof. Z.K. Matthews, November 1946, in ibid.,
pp. 224–33.
43 Report of interview by some NRC members with Prime Minister J.C. Smuts,
8th–9th May 1947, in ibid., pp. 233–57.
44 Statement on the Prime Minister’s Proposals, by Dr. A.B. Xuma for the ANC, 11th
May 1947, in ibid., pp. 257–8.
4
The Palestinian Communist Party,
1919–1948
In many respects the history of the Palestinian Communist Party paralleled

that of the Communist Party of South Africa discussed in Chapter 2: formed
by white-settler activists, faced with the challenge of indigenisation, having to
deal with a hostile colonial power and to balance a class and identity focus,
while being subject to contradictory nationalist tensions as well as external
Soviet pressure. There were differences too. The settlement project in Israel/
Palestine was an ongoing process with uncertain outcomes as it grew in inten-
sity during the period, while South Africa had settled into a relatively stable
pattern of colonial domination by the beginning of the period. Jewish settlers
and indigenous Arabs occupied a similar legal position vis-à-vis the British
authorities in Palestine whereas white CPSA members shared the privileges
of other white people in the country. In both places Communists supported
indigenous nationalist movements, but while the focus of the Palestinian-Arab
struggle was on halting and, if possible, reversing Zionist settlement, African
nationalists largely sought equality within existing South African political
structures.
Perhaps the crucial distinguishing feature of the Palestinian Communist
Party1 was its roots in the Zionist labour movement, for which Jewish immi-
gration and land settlement were central. It worked in the context of British
support for the Jewish National Home, as outlined in the Balfour Declaration
of 1917 and codified in the 1920 League of Nations’ Mandate for Palestine.
Operating initially under the name Socialist Workers Party (MPS in Hebrew),
the Party adopted global revolutionary principles and regarded itself as part of
a vanguard of Jewish socialists, not restricted to Palestine. It combined support
for settlement with the realisation that the bulk of Jewish workers worldwide
would continue to organise in the Diaspora for a long time to come.2 The Party
aimed to retain a balance between the imperatives of Zionism and Communism
but that proved impossible. The nationalist focus of labour Zionism clashed
with the anti-colonial thrust of the Comintern, with its injunction to members
to support all anti-colonial liberation movements.
At the Second Congress of the Comintern in 1920, Michael Cohn-Eber,
MPS representative, argued that Bourgeois Zionism “must necessarily enter the
service of British imperialism” and was to be opposed “as sharply as possible
DOI: 10.4324/9780429020056-4
The Palestinian Communist Party, 1919–1948 59
under all circumstances”. But, there was another kind of Zionism, not driven
by the wish to set up a state, “least of all with the support of British imperi-
alism”. As part of a global process of “rendering the Jewish masses productive”,
immigration from dense Jewish population concentrations was taking place,
bringing some of them to Palestine. That was a natural process, he said, just like
immigration to other countries, and it needed to be regulated to allow “rational
use of the natural resources in the lightly populated colonial countries”, and
“appropriate application of the hitherto unused or very badly used human
labour power in industry”.
In Palestine and all over the Middle East, the MPS was “the only prole-
tarian communist group that fights British imperialism under the most difficult
conditions”, Cohn-Eber said, and thus had “the task of leading the working
masses of the Arabian Orient in this struggle”. The Jewish bourgeoisie was
first to introduce modern capitalist forms of exploitation into the country and
Jewish immigrant workers were “the only modern, truly propertyless prole-
tariat which is for that reason filled with class consciousness and inspired by
the revolutionary will to fight”. Arab agricultural workers, employed by Jewish
landlords and Arab effendis, were not full-time proletarians since they owned
land. The MPS was their “natural champion” and had to “draw them into the
revolutionary struggle and fill them with proletarian consciousness”.3
In putting the small group of Jewish workers (a couple of thousands at
the time) at the political centre, not only in Palestine, but also in the entire
region, Cohn-Eber was presenting a picture detached from reality, similar to
South African Communists who focused on the skilled white working class,
as discussed in Chapter 2. Further, he neglected to consider the colonial
context within which they operated. The Comintern leaders were not well
informed about Palestine and the Middle East, but they were aware that Jewish
immigrants –including the socialists among them –enjoyed British protection.
As a result, the Comintern declined to make any distinction between “bad”
bourgeois and “good” proletarian Zionism.
In light of that, when the MPS applied for membership of the Comintern,
its representative Yaakov Meirson sought to distance it from Jewish labour
organisations: “Our party draws a line separating it from all other parties oper-
ating in Palestine, in that it is a territorially-based party which sees no place
for national socialist parties”. By relying on the Comintern, the Party could
“distinguish itself more clearly from all the other Jewish and Arab parties that
are socialist in name but nationalist in spirit”.4 In contrast to other ethnic-based
movements, he said, the MPS was open to Jews and Arabs who lived in the
territory, though in practice its Jewish members were in the majority. Eager
to present a radical image, Meirson failed to disclose that there were no Arab
members of the Party at the time. His opposition to further Jewish immigration
and settlement in the country, and support for Jewish-Arab class struggle against
British rule, represented a position that alienated many Party members who
regarded Palestine as a destination for immigration of Jewish workers. They
were not ready to abandon their affiliation to the Jewish labour movement or
60 The Palestinian Communist Party, 1919–1948
commit to territorial politics which would doom settlers to remaining a tiny
minority in the country.5
The Comintern welcomed the Party as “the beginning of the revolu-
tionary workers movement in Palestine”, but criticised its links to the Left
Poalei Zion movement, which opened an independent process of admission
to the International.6 That movement regarded Palestine as a place in which
the Jewish masses could transform themselves into a productive and progres-
sive population, while uplifting Arab workers who were victims of reactionary
incitement, and were “so backward economically and culturally, that it is very
easy to make of them a pawn in the hands of feudal and bourgeois nationalist
‘liberation movements’ of the sheikhs and effendis”. England created an atmos-
phere “of chauvinist and religious conflicts” hampering the development of
class society and strengthening reactionary forces in the country.7
In its response, the Comintern defined the attempt to concentrate the Jewish
masses in Palestine as “utopian and reformist” and called for opposition to
Zionism. It asserted that the theme of Palestine was not only “nationalist and
petty-bourgeois but counter-revolutionary in its effect, if the broad working
masses are moved by this idea and so diverted from an effective struggle against
their Jewish and non-Jewish capitalist exploiters”.8
Interestingly, the Comintern was concerned more with the impact of
Zionism on Jewish workers in Eastern Europe than with colonialism and con-
flict in Palestine, a dimension that was absent from its similar approach to white
Communists in South Africa. But, events on the ground in Palestine intervened
to place the MPS at the centre of attention. The 1921 riots, which saw attacks
on Jewish neighbourhoods and settlements in various parts of country, were
triggered by a clash in Jaffa between rival May 1st demonstrations. It involved
Jews only but was witnessed by Arabs and acted as a trigger for attacks on Jewish
targets. In the words of the Haycraft Commission of Enquiry:
the disturbance of the peace in Jaffa was in the first instance provoked by
the demonstration of the MPS … taking into consideration the strained
condition of Arab feeling, it was unwise to risk trouble by allowing a gen-
erally detested, although numerically small body of Communists to carry
on any sort of propaganda among this already uneasy population. No one
wanted them, and now that the danger has been realised the most notorious
have been deported.
The Haycraft Commission called the MPS a “group of extremists” who

placed “class warfare above the claims of race or nationality”. Its march was
no more than a “minor provocation” in itself but it acted as “a spark igniting
explosive material”. The background was Arab grievances against the Jewish
National Home policy, which threatened to make Palestine fall under Jewish
domination. In its fear of Jewish immigration and settlement,
practically the whole of the non-Jewish population was united in hostility

to the Jews. During the riots all discrimination on the part of the Arabs
between different categories of Jews was obliterated … [They] became
merged in a single identity, and former friendships gave way before the
enmity now felt towards all”.9
The 1921 Jaffa events marked the Party as a prime enemy of the Zionist-led
Jewish community (known as the Yishuv). By mid-1923 it had consolidated its
move away from Zionism towards an anti-colonial strategy centred on alliance
with progressive Arab forces, without abandoning the quest to make inroads into
Labour Zionism’s basis of support among immigrant Jewish workers. In 1924 it
was admitted to the Communist International as its Palestine section, adopting
the name Palestinische Kommunistische Partei (PKP). The use of Yiddish was
in defiance of the Zionist insistence on using Hebrew as the medium of public
communication. It played a dual role –distancing the Party from the Zionist-
led Yishuv, while intensifying its Jewish character and making communication
with local Arabs and non-European Jews difficult. Both Jewish languages were
equally unintelligible to the Arab masses. In contrast, English, as the dominant
language of local politics and a global instrument of power, was never contro-
versial in the South African context.
Yishuvism or “Zionism without Zionism”

The key task facing the Party in the 1920s was that of re-directing its campaign
and recruitment drive towards the Arab majority of the population, without
neglecting its Jewish constituency. The Party’s work among Arabs was inhibited
by the general low levels of literacy, class organisation and consciousness in the
country, Party members’ lack of familiarity with local culture and language, and
above all by their foreign origins. Most members owed their presence in the
country to Zionism, even if they had largely renounced it after having arrived
there. In some respects, the Party was part of the organised Jewish community,
which remained its main constituency for much of the period. As the commu-
nity actively facilitated further Jewish immigration and land settlement, affili-
ation with it created serious tensions with the Party’s anti-colonial messages, in
a way that was not replicated in South Africa with its already well-established
relations of colonial domination.
Since the Arab national movement regarded Jewish immigration and con-
sequent demographic shift as the main threat to its quest for independence, as
discussed in Chapter 5, the Party faced a critical dilemma. If it opposed immi-
gration and settlement, that would have undermined the position of its Jewish
members and its own existence. If it accepted those as Jewish national rights,
that would have alienated it from the Arab national movement. The solution
it found was Yishuvism –a novel approach developed by its foremost leader
in the 1920s, Wolf Averbuch. It rejected Zionism politically, as a movement
aiming to bring all Jews to Palestine and build a Jewish state there. But, it
accepted the Yishuv as a legitimate community that would grow and develop
due to ongoing immigration, independently of the Zionist project, in the same
way that immigrant Jewish communities elsewhere developed at the time.
The result was a strategic combination of two components: participation
in Yishuv activities –elections to municipal councils, cultural events, union
membership, and cooperative life –supplemented by campaigns against the
exclusionary aspects of Zionist policies, particularly the Conquest of Labour
(replacing Arab with Jewish workers) and Conquest of Land (displacing Arab
tenants and replacing them with Jewish cooperative settlements). The strategy
aimed to radicalise Jewish immigrants and push them beyond Zionism, while
showing Arabs that dissident Jews could become allies.10
That strategy, which Nahman List called “anti-Zionist Zionism” or “Zionism
without Zionism”, helped it gain support in the mid-1920s, but it was at odds
with the Comintern’s line, which focused on support for “every national revo-
lutionary movement against imperialism”, and on mobilising the colonial
peasant and working masses in an “anti-imperialist united front” for national
liberation. Communists of European origins were supposed to assist the locals,
not build their own parties:
The creation of separate European communist organizations in the colonies

(Egypt, Algiers) is a concealed form of colonialism and only helps imperi-
alist interests. The creation of communist organizations on this national
basis is incompatible with the principles of proletarian internationalism.11
This injunction clearly applied to South Africa, but it was not obvious how it
applied to Jews in Palestine, who were neither native to the country nor citizens
of the colonial power, and who did not enjoy privileged political status as indi-
viduals or control over the indigenous population. They differed from similar
groups in “normal” cases of colonial rule. Their settlement project was made
possible due to the British Mandate, but it started before it and continued after
it. They were immigrants but claimed historical rights to the territory. They
acquired land but did not have the coercive capacity needed to take it by force.
Unlike cases of European settlement elsewhere, including South Africa, their
project did not rely on cheap labour of indigenous people.They sought political
power at the expense of the locals but aimed to do that independently of the
imperial framework, if possible. In their own eyes they were redeeming the land
of their ancestors while bringing benefits to its residents. They exhibited some
of the features of colonial-type conquest but not others.
For Arab nationalists these distinctions were immaterial: all Jewish immigrants
were foreign to the country, having arrived there through a colonial process
aimed at establishing a Jewish National Home at the expense of the true owners
of the land. They had no legitimate political rights in the country, which was
Arab in essence.12 Their socialist credentials were of no interest. Faced with
such rejection, the Party had to change its orientation and image and radically
distance itself from the Yishuv, if it wished to gain support from the Palestinian-
Arab community. This imperative was the foundation for a decade-long debate
over the contentious policy of indigenisation, known in the local context as
Arabisation.
The Quest for Indigenisation

From its inception, the discrepancy between the Party’s anti-colonial approach
and its settler origins was a feature of its existence. All its leading members came
from Eastern Europe, with its vibrant Jewish labour movement and familiarity
with socialist theory and practice. Some of them took part in the Russian
Revolution and were seasoned activists. Not having been exposed to colonial
issues before, they found it difficult to grasp the gap between their self-image
as a revolutionary vanguard and the way they were perceived by local people.
In their view, no similar group of socialist cadres was to be found in the entire
region. And yet, they were new to the place, did not speak its dominant lan-
guage, and were regarded as intruders.They tried to make up for these deficien-
cies by studying Arabic and the history of the region, and made gains in that
respect, but remained outsiders.13
A change in the composition and orientation of the Party became essen-
tial. The first resolution of the ECCI on Palestine, in 1923, highlighted the
conditions of “a semi-feudal backward country, under a unique form of Zionist
colonization, promoted by imperialism”, which allowed the Arab national
movement to unite the indigenous population behind it. The national front
would fracture due to contradictory class interests, the Comintern predicted,
and it was imperative for the Party to play a role by exposing “mercilessly
the traitorous role of the feudal, land-owning elements, who seek to com-
promise with British imperialism”.The Party had to work among the peasantry
to create a movement for agrarian revolution, cooperate with the radical urban
and rural intelligentsia, and support “nationalist elements of the urban and rural
bourgeoisie” who took part in the struggle. At the same time, it had to expose
the inherent “lack of consistency and hesitation” of those forces. The practical
task was “to intensify its activity among the urban Arab proletariat and peas-
antry” to help them become effective in a mass struggle against Zionism and
imperialism. Specific tasks regarding class organisation were outlined for Jewish
workers but not national liberation tasks.14
The Party gave repeated assurances regarding its efforts to recruit Arab
workers but recognised that progress was slow and difficult. Of major concern
were the conditions of Arab workers, “divided and dispersed in settlements”,
mostly illiterate “and under the influence of Muslim sheikhs, who encourage
among them fatalism and resignation to their difficult conditions, passivity and
apathy”. The admission of difficulties was accompanied by inflated assertions of
success in “overcoming the conservative loyalties, obtuseness and submissive-
ness of the Arab toiler, burning the poison seeds of national hatred and hos-
tility out of his soul and consciousness”, and thus becoming “a real territorial
Communist centre in the country”, attracting “all the honest and revolutionary
forces from among the toilers of the country’s peoples”.15
A 1926 ECCI resolution opened with the assertion that “the centre of
gravity of the PKP’s activity must be among the Arab toiling masses”.The Party
also had to “help increase the discontent of the toiling Jewish population” with
British policy and grow “its ideological and organisational influence among the
Palestinian proletariat” by linking its struggle with that of the Arabs “against
imperialist oppression”.16 But all that faced a crucial obstacle, “hypertrophy
and expansion of energy in one pole, namely the Jewish one, and atrophy in
the other pole, that is: weak development of activity among the Arab prole-
tariat and peasantry”. The Party continued to dedicate “99% of its work” to
activity among Jews and was a territorial party on paper only. While praising
the Party for its gains among Jewish workers, the Comintern scolded it for
not directing “maximum attention” to Arab workers. A built-in contradiction
was evident: Yishuvism facilitated making inroads among Jews by focusing on
their concerns (jobs, housing, and working conditions). A shift to focus on Arab
national goals helped the Party gain Arab support but also meant alienating
many Jewish activists and potential supporters.
Throughout the period, the Party’s fortunes among Jewish workers
experienced ebb and flow based on the visibility of the national conflict, which
stood in inverse relationship with the Party’s appeal to Jews on a class-based
agenda. It suffered loss of support after each wave of nationalist violence (1921,
1929, 1936), and some success in periods of relative calm (mid-1920s, early
1940s). Its solidarity campaigns with Arab tenants, dispossessed after their land
had been bought by Jewish agencies from absentee landlords, increased hostility
towards it. Members were attacked and evicted from Yishuv institutions, lost
their jobs, and were arrested and deported from the country. The PKP’s atti-
tude was self-defeating, argued Menahem Elkind, a pro-Soviet activist but not
a Party member:
as long as the PKP upholds its position regarding the Jewish national
question in Palestine, not only can it not expect to become a mass party
enjoying the support of Jewish workers, but on the contrary, it is seen
by the vast majority of Jewish workers as a hostile party [dooming it to
isolation].17
The Party and the Comintern saw all Zionist forces as allies of British imperi-
alism. In that sense Zionism was similar to settler movements in South Africa
and colonial outposts elsewhere, but there was a crucial difference between
these situations. White workers in South Africa, French workers in Algeria,
Portuguese workers in Mozambique, all directly benefited from the exploit-
ation of black workers, as employers of domestic labour, as holders of super-
visory positions, as citizens with privileged access to social and political rights.
Their class interests were incompatible with those of their black counterparts.
In Palestine, Jewish workers did not exploit Arab labour directly, nor did they
generally occupy a privileged position in the workplace and in society and
polity at large. Potentially, they could become allies, if only they were free
from exclusionary nationalist ideologies and separatist practices. But, the bal-
ancing act attempted by Yishuvism, which sought to reconcile the rejection of
Zionism with political work among its adherents, could not be maintained for
long due to the rise of nationalist separatism. It had collapsed by the end of the
1920s. Local events in Palestine, combined with global shifts within the world
communist movement, forced the Party to modify its positions and move in a
different and more contentious direction.
The 1929 Uprising and Arabisation

Increasing tensions between the Jewish and Arab communities over access to
holy places resulted in an outbreak of country-wide clashes in August 1929, in
which hundreds of civilians were killed.18 The Party was caught unaware by
these events which exposed its isolation from growing nationalist sentiments
among the masses. The Comintern, experiencing the messianic fervour of
the period with its expectations of revolutionary insurrections in the colonial
world, used that opportunity to push forward indigenisation/Arabisation in a
decisive manner. The relatively civil debate over strategies gave way to acri-
monious struggles, accusations, and splits during the 1930s, in ways similar to
developments in the CPSA at the same time, as discussed in Chapter 2.19
The “Third Period”, as the Comintern called it, saw accentuation of the
“contradiction between the growth of the productive forces and the con-
traction of markets”, giving rise to intra-imperialist wars and “gigantic class
battles”. Growing antagonisms in the world system were expressed in acute
contradictions in capitalist countries, intensified class struggle, and colonial
revolts in Asia and the Middle East. Palestine was seen in the context of
North Africa and the Middle East, where “the rise and growth of the urban
proletariat” due to “the greater penetration of foreign capital into these coun-
tries”, was followed by the peasantry, which gradually and slowly was “being
drawn into the struggle”. Communists needed to “give a revolutionary char-
acter to the existing peasant movement” and base themselves on the native
proletariat.20
From that analysis derived the PKP’s task as set out by the Comintern:
transforming itself from a predominantly Jewish Party into a force uniting the
Arab majority of the working class and the peasantry together with the Jewish
proletariat in “a common struggle against imperialism, against the feudal and
reformist Arab nationalists”, and against the Jewish bourgeoisie and Zionist
agents of imperialism.21 Against this background, a clash erupted between the
Party and the Comintern following the outbreak of violent attacks throughout
the country in August 1929, as discussed in detail in Chapter 5. In line with
its distinction between the Zionist movement and the Jewish population,
the PKP rejected armed attacks against civilians. It condemned violence and
pointed to tacit collaboration between reactionary British, Zionist, and Arab
forces, aimed to divert the masses from the anti-imperialist struggle into bloody
inter-communal fighting: “Muslim masses were used by the imperialist gov-
ernment, with the help of wealthy Arabs, friends of imperialism, and the help
of the sheikhs and effendis, to commit slaughter and senseless murder of their
brethren”. That tacit alliance was responsible for the bloody events.22
The Party recognised the debt crisis of impoverished rural people, which
served as a social background to the riots, but criticised the “terrible savagery”
of the massacres and “pogroms”, a result of incitement by “dark reactionary
forces”.The main task moving forward was to “re-direct the peasant movement
on its pogromist tendencies” and transform it into “a progressive agrarian revo-
lutionary campaign”. Religious and nationalist fanaticism on all sides served
to distract the masses from their just demands, which could be realised only
through a united Jewish-Arab struggle against imperialism, free of pogroms.23
That view was rejected by the Comintern as expressing a right- wing
deviation,
an underestimation of revolutionary possibilities, open or hidden resistance

to the Arabization of the party, pessimism and passivity with regard to work
among the Arab masses, fatalism and passivity on the peasant question,
failure to understand the role of Jewish comrades as assistants but not as
leaders of the Arab movement; exaggeration of the influence of the reac-
tionary bourgeoisie, large landlords, and clergy on the Arab masses … and
resistance to the slogan of a workers’ and peasants’ government.
Evaluating the uprising as a “pogrom”, and hidden resistance to Arabisation,

were “manifestations of Zionist and imperialist influence on the communists”,
it concluded.24
There were problems with the Comintern’s analysis: the anti-imperialist con-
tent of the riots was very weak (no attacks on government forces or protests
against British policies), while the anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish component was
prominent.The riots bypassed new urban centres where the bulk of the working
class was located. Calling on the Party to join the uprising amounted to a shift to
seeing Zionism as the main colonial force in the country, not merely as an ally
of imperialism. Many members regarded that as capitulation to Arab nationalism
and resigned or were expelled. Crucially, if the centre of political resistance had
moved to the illiterate rural masses, who regarded Zionism and all Jews as elem-
ents of the same overall enemy, there was no space for urban Jewish working-
class activists in that struggle, and Yishuvism was no longer relevant.
A year later, a secret letter sent by the ECCI to Party members asserted that
the “Jewish bourgeoisie is the main agent of British imperialism in Palestine”,
and that “counter-revolutionary Zionism is the main mechanism of British
imperialism in the country”. The British made “the Jewish national minority,
which immigrated into the country, into an instrument of oppression of the
indigenous Arab population”.25 The PKP, the letter said, failed to under-
stand the importance of the national question on its deep agrarian nature. It
focused its efforts on the Jewish national minority, which stood as “a privileged
layer, against the Arab masses”. Jewish workers, “a proletariat of a privileged
minority”, had to “move closer to the Arab toiling masses and assist them in
their struggle for national liberation from colonial slavery”. A struggle against
its own bourgeoisie was the only guarantee that the Jewish proletariat’s interests
could be protected.26
A new element was thus introduced into the Party’s discourse. Jews in
Palestine were recognised for the first time as a national minority. There was
tension between regarding the Jewish community as an intruder, in line with
the Arab nationalist view, and regarding it as a force to be recruited for the
struggle, in line with an internationalist view. Musa Budeiri concluded that the
Party abandoned Socialism and replaced it with “recognition of the national
character of the struggle”, elevating “national liberation” above “social eman-
cipation”.27 But in fact, the Party continued to juggle the two goals. Of long-
term interest was that a settler group was defined in national terms, albeit as a
minority, and not merely as part of a colonial force or a privileged caste, a nov-
elty not usually found in other situations such as South Africa.
The December 1930 Party congress, informally known as the Arabisation
Congress, emphasised the colonial aspect of the conflict. It criticised the former
leadership as having lived in a “Jewish ghetto”, failing as a result to define Jews
in Palestine as a “special dominant minority”. It accused the leadership of over-
estimating the role of the Jewish minority as a progressive force and under-
estimating the potential of Arabs, whose national struggle acquired “a special
form”. The Party needed to expose Jews in Palestine who had become “the
main instrument of oppression wielded by the British occupiers against the
indigenous Arab population”. It warned Jews that “anti-colonial revolutions by
oppressed people in the colonies have always been accompanied by destruc-
tive attacks on national minorities who collaborated with colonialism”, but
also assured them that if they participated in the struggle against colonialism
and Zionism alongside Arab colleagues, they could expect a resolution of the
national problem, realisation of their rights as a national minority in Palestine,
and the revival of their national cultural heritage.28
This radical tone verged on the endorsement of armed attacks on civilians,
or at least accepting such attacks as inevitable. Harsh positions were adopted
on a range of issues: Jewish immigration to Palestine was redefined as political
in nature, aimed at relocating a trained Zionist vanguard to seize the country.
Jewish workers were urged to provide armed support to tenants fighting dis-
possession and help them expel Jewish settlers. At the same time, they were
expected to continue to use their membership in Zionist institutions to cam-
paign from within and “influence the greatest mass of Jewish workers and recruit
them to the internationalist-proletarian struggle”.29 The logic of the new line
was spelled out in a publication based on the Congress resolutions: “the anti-
Zionist movement emerges in the form of an anti-Jewish movement”, allowing
reactionary forces to turn Arab grievances into “a struggle against the Jewish
national minority as a whole”. It was wrong
to regard imperialism, Zionism, and the Jewish population solely as one

organic whole (which, for the time being, they are with regard to the Arab
masses), among whom there are no internal contradictions which under-
mine these oppressive forces from within.
Therefore, the Party needed to side with the Arab national struggle and
exploit internal Jewish- Zionist contradictions in order to recruit allies for
the anti-colonial camp. It was not giving up on its Jewish constituency, only
assigning a lower priority to it.30
The decisive shift in orientation towards the Arab population came against a
background of global changes: intensified conflict in Europe, pitting the rising
Nazi and Fascist regimes against the Soviet Union, and leading to a Communist
shift to the Popular Front policies in 1935; a massive wave of immigration from
Germany, which more than doubled the Jewish population in Palestine and
built up its military, industrial and institutional structures; and a growing sense
of desperation leading to militant Arab action in the face of impending loss of
the country. The Revolt of 1936–39, a sustained resistance campaign, marked
the decade. The Party used new opportunities to promote Arab cadres who
could immerse themselves in the Palestinian struggle in a way not open to their
Jewish colleagues. However, the forced departure of many experienced Jewish
leaders and cadres depleted the Party’s organisational resources and left it ill-
prepared to deal with new challenges.
A frank “top secret” evaluation of conditions two years after the Arabisation
congress showed that most Arab members were new with weak links to the
working class and the peasantry and limited political education. This hampered
their ability to play a leading role in mass mobilisation. Progress was reported
in modern urban centres –Haifa, Jerusalem, Tel-Aviv, and Jaffa –but the trad-
itional core of the country remained off-limits: Nablus, Nazareth, Jenin, and
Gaza were highlighted as inaccessible targets.31 The Comintern not only praised
the Party for its commitment but also scolded it for not pursuing Arabisation
in a more vigorous manner. A new leadership was needed, it said, from which
the old Jewish cadres who proved incapable of embracing Arabisation would be
removed to allow the Party to benefit from the radicalisation of Arab politics
in the country.
In retrospect, it is not clear what the Party could have done to increase its
support. It expressed its solidarity with the plight of indebted peasants and
dispossessed tenants, defended Arabs against attempts by Zionist labour activists
to evict them from Jewish-owned workplaces, and told Jews that sticking to
conquest policies would engender violent Arab reaction and endanger their
safety. But all this was to no avail. Partly this was due to highly aggressive rhet-
oric that alienated Jewish audiences. When addressing Arab audiences, it used
rhetoric in line with nationalist media and political movements. But it was not
clear how to reconcile that with the call for class –rather than national –mobil-
isation, and how some Jews could become part of a struggle that seemed to be
directed against all of them. In that sense the PKP’s approach was self-defeating.
It distinguished between Jewish workers and their leadership, but this helped
neither in making Jews feel they had a potential role to play, nor in making
Arabs convinced that Jewish workers were potential partners rather than sworn
enemies, as nationalist propaganda had it.
The Popular Front Policy and the Arab Revolt

An important dimension was added to this dilemma with the Popular Front
policy of the Comintern, launched at its Seventh Congress in July–August
1935, which prioritised unity of democratic forces against Fascism.32 The precise
shape of the front was to be decided by local actors, which led to contradictory
policies in Palestine: its Arab national movement regarded the struggle against
Jewish settlers as the primary task. As a committed anti-colonial force, the Party
supported that struggle. On the other hand, Fascism was a global enemy, and
Jewish workers were potential allies against it, although Arab nationalists had no
interest in working with them. A clash between the anti-imperialist and anti-
Fascist imperatives of the Communist movement was inevitable
This became clear with the outbreak of the 1936 general strike and the sub-
sequent Arab Revolt, which combined boycotts, civil disobedience, and armed
struggle, as discussed in Chapter 5. It was waged around the central demands
of the national movement: end to Jewish immigration, end to land sales to
Jews, and a representative government as a stage towards national independ-
ence. The campaign made Jewish and Arab communities further remote from
each other politically and socially. Growing physical segregation hampered the
Party’s ability to operate as the only mixed political organisation in the country.
Physical communication became almost impossible, movement was restricted,
and intensified nationalist feelings made relationships very difficult to sustain
even among members. The Party’s support for the Revolt resulted in a rift
between the leadership and Jewish rank and file. Tensions were building up,
leading to the formation of the Jewish Section of the Party in 1937 as a body
responsible for work with Jewish members and constituencies.
That was an unprecedented step. Many Communist parties were initially
dominated by members of settler, immigrant, or ethnic minority backgrounds,
but changed later due to internal dynamics and external pressures to reflect
demographic realities, as happened with the CPSA, discussed in Chapter 2. To
move in the opposite direction was very rare. But, in a country divided between
two hostile groups, each with its own “national” identity, applying the Popular
Front policy was bound to lead to conflict. Although created in order to enable
work under conditions of enforced segregation, the existence of a separate
Jewish Section resulted in growing distance between the leadership and Jewish
members.33 This division was quickly consolidated into different positions.34
What was the essence of the dispute between the Party and the Jewish
Section? The Section argued that Arabs could reach an agreement with
settlers based on “full democratic rights for the entire population of Palestine”
and “national, cultural and religious autonomy for the Jewish section of the
Palestinian population”.35 The Party also supported equal rights for Jewish
residents of the country but not autonomy for the Jewish community. This set
of questions –were Jews in Palestine a national community, what rights did
they have, and what were the prospects for political alliances across national
boundaries –became the central concern. For the Jewish Section, the funda-
mental problem was the tendency to conceptualise the two sides as internally
consolidated and mutually exclusive camps: Arab progressives and Zionist reac-
tionaries. The result, they said, was complete isolation from the Yishuv, hostility,
and desertion of dissident members. Armed action was legitimate when carried
out as part of a mass struggle, the Section argued, but amounted to disastrous
terrorism when undertaken by individuals alienated from their community.
The Party’s analysis, said the Section, used tactics that pushed Jewish workers
into the arms of their reactionary leadership. Armed attacks on the Jewish
community triggered a response in kind, growing militarisation of the Yishuv,
and marginalisation of progressive forces within it. Seeing the Jewish com-
munity as a unified reactionary mass was mirrored by failure to recognise that
the Arab camp included reactionary elements linked to global Fascist forces,
having Amin al-Husseini in mind. In response, the Party insisted that Fascist
inclinations did not change the progressive nature of the anti-colonial revolt.
A mass movement fighting against imperialist domination deserved support
regardless of its leadership.
The underlying point in the debate was the national character of the Yishuv.
Had it become a full-fledged community entitled to national rights, as the
Section argued? For the Party leadership that was not the case. It recognised
that the Jewish people worldwide had legitimate needs, but these were different
from Zionist demands in Palestine, which were part of a campaign to conquer
the land by dispossessing the Arabs, impose Hebrew by force, and undermine
Yiddish –the language of the Jewish people globally. Zionism was anti-national
in a dual sense: it distanced Jews in Palestine from Jews elsewhere, and it separated
them from their Arab neighbours. It undermined the national aspirations of
both groups. Only an anti-Zionist and anti-imperialist movement could satisfy
the true national interests of Jews in Palestine and globally, said the Party.
The suppression of the Revolt coincided with the outbreak of the World War
in 1939, and later on the Soviet military alliance with Britain and the United
States. The focus on the anti-Fascist global war created a temporary basis for
unity between different elements in the Party, as all other issues were set aside.
The Party told members: “We have no interest currently in fighting Zionism as
such”, only fighting expressions of the Zionist movement that hamper “the war
effort, assisting the Soviet Union, and forming a militant anti-Fascist communal
[Jewish] front”. Further: “The question of conquest of labour and land is not
relevant today”, as the task was to recruit the Zionist labour movement to the
general war effort. Among Arabs, the Party aimed at “liberating the masses from
Fascist influences, inserting anti-Fascist and progressive national consciousness
into the Arab liberation movement, creating an anti-Fascist atmosphere and
activating the masses and the national movement in support of Soviet Union
and the war against Fascism”.36 Whether the Party had the capacity to achieve
any of these aims remained in doubt.
With that the Party made a crucial shift: if the goal was an anti-Fascist
alliance of progressive forces across national boundaries, the conflict was no
longer colonial in nature. The indigenous nature of the Arab population and
the foreign origins of the Jewish population did not change, of course, but did
not seem to matter any longer. This shift alienated the large group of left-wing
Arab intellectuals and activists who moved closer to the Party during the 1930s,
when it supported the Arab national struggle fully. They rejected an uncritical
support to the national movement’s leadership but continued to identify with
the national liberation struggle.They regarded the Party as weak and indecisive,
constantly shifting between the two national communities. Internal divisions
intensified with the growing feeling that the World War would force a decision
regarding the country’s future.
Towards Partition
Tensions within the Party came to a head in 1943, with disputes over the
balance between work in the two communities. The dissolution of the
Comintern in May 1943 meant that no external force could intervene to curb
open expressions of nationalism. Effectively, that was the end of the attempt to
maintain the unity of the Party across national boundaries. Unlike South Africa,
where racial differences overlapped with class inequalities, in Palestine ethno-
national conflicts had distinct dynamics that made it more difficult to bridge the
gap between activists of different backgrounds.Three formations emerged: PKP
was the name of one of them, but it consisted of Jewish members only and
was not a direct continuation of the Jewish-Arab party. Another Jewish-only
organisation was the Communist Educational Association (later re-named the
Hebrew Communist Party), led by former Jewish radicals Tzabari and Slonim.
The most important new formation was the National Liberation League (NLL),
with Arab members only, which did not define itself as Communist.37
The NLL was created by activists who became affiliated to the Party in
the late 1930s and early 1940s. They were dissatisfied with what the discourse
of the time termed Nationalist Deviations. There was a crucial distinction
here though: the Jewish “deviation” involved moving closer to core Zionist
positions, while the Arab “deviation” was expressed in uncritical support for the
nationalist leadership. The NLL had no problem with the core Arab national
positions: it identified with them but with a focus on grass-roots popular
efforts. In that way, its socially progressive orientation was linked to its nation-
alist agenda. In its view, mobilising workers, peasants, students, and intellectuals
was the only way to overcome the dominance of clerical and feudal elements,
who sacrificed national interests for the sake of their personal and class benefits.
The League defined itself as the left wing of the national movement rather
than the Arab wing of the Communist movement, an important distinction that
allowed it to claim membership in the national camp. It was a way of distancing
itself from the PKP, which continued to use the Communist label that helped
it gain legitimacy in the Yishuv due to the role of the Soviet Union in the war
against Nazi Germany. There was no symmetry between the two factions: the
NLL asserted its Arab nature upfront while the PKP did not define itself as
Jewish (though it had no Arab members). The NLL was ambiguous in rela-
tion to its Communist origins but did not disguise its Soviet sympathies. For
the PKP, affiliation with the Soviet Union was essential as it was central to its
appeal; for the NLL it was marginal to its base of support, which relied on the
novel approach it brought to Arab politics –free of traditional family links and
the corrupting influence of property, power, and connections.
Palestine was an Arab country fighting for independence, said the NLL. The
Jewish minority deserved equal rights but had no collective political claim to
the country. The League distinguished between the Zionist movement and the
Jewish community. Zionism was colonial and reactionary whereas local Jews
were a community with internal class divisions and diverse interests, some of
which could be reconciled with those of Arabs. The struggle was against the
Jewish community’s Zionist leadership, not against the Jewish masses.While this
view clashed with the mainstream Arab position (which regarded Jewish settlers
as outsiders, not entitled to rights in the country), the NLL shared other core
demands of Arab nationalism: an end to Jewish immigration and land transfers,
and independence to the country.38 Whether Jews had national rights, in add-
ition to civil rights, was not clear. On the one hand, in October 1945 the League
committed itself to safeguarding the National interests of the Arab people living
in the country while guaranteeing at the same time, and not in contradiction,
full civil rights and democratic freedom for the Jewish community now res-
iding in Palestine. But, it continued, “We recognize the right of the Jewish
community to develop whatever legitimate just national interests, Jews living
under a democratic regime, would be eager to realize”.39 The content of those
interests and the form they might take were not specified, however.
Uniquely among Arab parties, the NLL empathised with the plight of
European Jews, faced with antisemitism and genocide. It argued that the Arab
national movement failed to grasp the fears that drove Jews to immigrate to
Palestine, lumping them all as illegal settlers. Only by recognising Jews as citi-
zens in an independent country could opposition to Zionism drive a wedge
between ordinary Jews and their reactionary leadership. By accepting the
demographic consequences of Zionism –the right of immigrants to equal
citizenship –the NLL effectively abandoned the colonial analysis. It no longer
regarded the Jewish community as foreign but neither did it see as entitled to
national self-determination: “Zionist slogans for immigration and a Jewish state
become non-feasible with the right of the people for self-determination and
freedom from all reactionary fetters”.40
During the same period, the PKP was moving towards integration in the
organised Yishuv. While it opposed partition and called for independence of
the country, it did that from a bi-nationalist perspective. Its Tenth Congress
in November 1946 was told by Meir Vilner that “two peoples live in this
country and their interests are shared”. Neither an Arab nor a Jewish state
was viable: “Jews and Arabs live together in all parts of the country. Territorial
or economic separation is impossible”. The only solution to the problem was
to establish “an independent Jewish-Arab democratic state, in which Jews and
Arabs will enjoy full equality”.41
On that basis the PKP sought to re-unite with the NLL. Both rejected the
notion that Jews were an alien group and that a solution would require their
majority to depart from the territory. Opposing partition as unviable and reac-
tionary, while maintaining separate national organisations, clearly was a contra-
diction that undermined the quest for a unified solution for the country. It
seems that the main reason for the failure to reunite was the same reason the
split occurred in the first place: Arab left-wing activists were accepted as legit-
imate by their national movement only when they ceased associating in the
same organisation with Jewish activists, regardless of how progressive and sup-
portive of the national cause the latter were. Reunification would have made
the work of the NLL in the Arab community impossible.
There was a clear logic here. The emphasis on the separate national identity
of Arabs and Jews was shared by all political trends in Palestine. It was recognised
by all international forces. The debate was over its political implications. Arab
nationalists saw it as an outcome of a colonial process that should be reversed, as
discussed in Chapter 5. The NLL agreed that the origins of the problem were
colonial but regarded the settlement process as irreversible and acknowledged
that Jews had to be granted equality as individuals, without changing the nature
of the country itself. The PKP took another step and accepted the legitimacy
of the Jewish community perceived as a national group, with associated rights.
Arab nationalists and Jewish communists were consistent, then, while the NLL
had to reconcile its contradictory position, between Arab nationalism and
democratic equality.
With all their differences, the PKP and NLL shared a crucial aspect of their
identity: loyalty to the Soviet Union. In May 1947, the Soviet delegate to the
UN recognised for the first time that “the population of Palestine consists of
two peoples, the Arabs and the Jews. Both have historical roots in Palestine.
Palestine has become the homeland of both these peoples”. A just solution
therefore had to address “the legitimate interests of both these peoples”, in the
form of “an independent, dual, democratic, homogeneous Arab-Jewish State”,
based on equal right “for the Jewish and the Arab populations”. However, if
relations between Jews and Arab “proved to be so bad that it would be impos-
sible to reconcile them and to ensure the peaceful co-existence”, the alternative
would be “the partition of Palestine into two independent autonomous States,
one Jewish and one Arab”.42
Initially, the PKP ignored the mention of partition.43 In his testimony to
the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), General
Secretary Shmuel Mikunis said that “both the Arab and Jewish peoples of
Palestine fight for their just elementary rights for national independence, for an
independent, free and democratic Arab-Jewish Palestine”. Rejecting partition,
he proclaimed: “Palestine should be constituted as an independent, democratic,
bi-unitarian state, which means, a single state inhabited and governed by the
two peoples, Jews and Arabs, having equal rights”. His colleague, Meir Vilner,
asserted that Palestine was “a colonial country subjugated by foreign rule and
thirsting for freedom. The real issue of the Palestine question lies in the clash of
interests between British Imperialism and the population of this country, Arabs
and Jews alike”. He did not mention Zionism, as a colonial movement or an ally
of imperialism: “30 years of British rule in our country is the main reason for
the present relationship between Jews and Arabs”.The solution was recognising
“the right of both peoples to independence in a single free and democratic
Palestine, based on the principle of full equality of civil, national and political
rights”. In response to a question, Mikunis added that on all basic issues
the Communist Party of Palestine and the League for National Liberation
[NLL] are of the same opinion. It means our common fight for independ-
ence, for a democratic state, for an abrogation of the Mandate, for evacu-
ation of the troops and against partition of the country.
That they were separate entities, despite such agreement, was “a question
of organization which has nothing to do with the success or lack of success in
cooperation”.44
Even more than the PKP, the Hebrew Communist Party (also known as
Communist Union) positioned itself firmly within the Yishuv. It rejected the
notion of a bi-national democratic state because it ignored the national devel-
opment of the Jewish community, which was not a minority but an inde-
pendent society with its own economy, language and national psyche, entitling
its members to national rights, not merely civil-democratic minority rights.
The logical organisational conclusion from that situation was to have separate
communist parties, as indeed was the case at that time.45 In its presentation to
UNSCOP, the Communist Union called for a solution that “will safeguard
both peoples against the danger of domination and will solve the problem of
majority and minority”. Basing a state on one of the nations in a binational
situation inevitably would lead to the denial of rights to the other nation, which
would then respond with the use of “economic and political boycott up to
armed uprisings, bloodshed and mutual massacres”. Partition was not a viable
solution either. A Jewish state with a large Arab minority would replicate the
same problem “of majority and minority as existing in the non-partitioned
Palestine”. This would entail unequal distribution of resources, broken relations
with neighbouring countries, and continued hostility, leading to “a typical
police State, as it will have to suppress a large national minority”.
The alternative was “territorial federalism”, creating “an independent,
democratic united State, common to both Jews and Arabs, built on full national
and political equality for both its nations and on full democratic rights for all
its inhabitants”. For that to work, “the fear of domination should be removed,
sufficient guarantees against national domination should be given”. Since the
right of self-determination could only be exercised on a territorial basis, a joint
State of Jews and Arabs “should be composed of territorial districts possessing
regional authorities of their own; being equally represented at the supreme
Government institutions”.46
In mid-October 1947 senior Soviet diplomat Semyon Tsarapkin recognised
that the intensity of the conflict between Jews and Arabs made partition of
the country inevitable. Within a couple of days the PKP adopted that pos-
ition.47 The NLL continued to regard it as an unjust solution48 and blamed the
Arab leadership for making partition more likely due to its opposition to Arab-
Jewish cooperation. By rejecting the rights of Jewish residents, the League said,
the Arab leadership ruined the chances of an alternative solution that could gain
international support, such as a federal state.49 Both plans –partition and fed-
eralism –meant abandoning the colonial mode of analysis in practice, as they
recognised Jewish settlers as equal citizens. The Soviet position proved impos-
sible to resist for long, however, and by December 1947 the NLL had joined
the PKP in support of partition, despite ongoing opposition from some of its
leading members.50
Once the Soviet Union and the United States agreed on a course of action,
the road was clear for UN General Assembly resolution 181 of 1947, which
partitioned the country into independent Jewish and Arab states. The ensuing
military conflict and creation of the State of Israel in May 1948 led to the
Palestinian Nakba –the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Arabs from
the areas allocated to Israel, as well as from territories occupied by its forces
during the war. The rest of the country that was allocated to the Arab state fell
to Egypt (the Gaza Strip, which remained under occupation until 1967) and
Jordan (the West Bank, which was annexed formally in 1950 and its residents
were granted citizenship).
In its last statement, the Central Committee of the NLL blamed “the racial
hostility in Palestine that was nurtured and deepened by British imperialism
with the support of Arab and Jewish reaction” for the war and resulting chaos
and destruction.The Communist movement,“which always headed the struggle
for an Arab-Jewish front against imperialism and for freedom and independ-
ence”, failed to create a unified force. The League recognised that its “sep-
arate national organisational structure” deprived it of a correct understanding
of changing realities in the country, particularly the rise of a new Jewish nation-
ality, which deserved the right to self-determination alongside the Arab people
of the country. This self-criticism, the NLL said, created a basis for the revival
of a unified movement on the basis of the institutions of the Israeli Communist
Party (Maki), and on the basis of the NLL institutions in the Arab territories
of Palestine (including areas such as Nazareth which were temporarily –it was
believed at the time –occupied by Israeli forces).51 In response, the Central
Committee of Maki confirmed that the conditions were ripe for the inte-
gration of NLL branches and members into the Israeli Communist Party and
its leadership.52 Members in the West Bank re-grouped to form the Jordanian
Communist Party in 1951.53 The Hebrew Communist Party joined Maki in
December 1948 but left later to join the Zionist mainstream. Maki operated
until 1965, when it was split again on ethnic-national grounds, as discussed in
Chapter 7.
By the end of the Mandate period, the Palestinian Communist movement
had completed a circle: from working within a Zionist framework initially to
gradually distancing itself away from the Zionist movement and its institutions
in the 1920s to having experienced a radical break from the Yishuv with
Arabisation in the 1930s, but moving back towards the mainstream in the 1940s.
Even the NLL, which obviously had nothing to do with Zionism, eventually
accepted the legitimacy of the Jewish Yishuv as a full-fledged national commu-
nity rather than a settler enclave or a colonial outpost as was the case for other
white-settler groups elsewhere in the colonial world.
In South Africa at the same time, white settlers were offered equality in an
African-dominated environment, if they agreed to shed their privileged racial
status, but were not accorded recognition as a distinct national group. In con-
trast, Jews in Palestine were granted global recognition as entitled to a distinct
political status, and that recognition inevitably affected local relations as well.
While the Palestinian nationalist mainstream continued to reject national rights
for local Jews, the left-wing currents came to accept that as an inevitable con-
cession to the new realities that emerged in the country.
Notes
1 The term “Palestinian” initially referred to territory, not to an ethno-national identity.
2 E. Margalit, The Anatomy of the Left: The Left Po’alei-Zion in Eretz-Israel 1919–1946
(IL Peretz Publishing House, 1976), pp. 32–64, in Hebrew.
3 Fifth session, 28th July 1920, in www.marxists.org/history/international/comin-
tern/2nd-congress/ch05.htm.
4 Protocol of the Meeting of the ECCI, 21st September 1920, in L. Zehavi, Apart or
Together: Jews and Arabs in Palestine According to the Documents of the Comintern, 1919–
1943 (Keter, 2005), pp. 25–32, in Hebrew.
5 For debates over the Jewish socialist and settlement focus, and the gradual abandon-
ment of the Poalei Zion legacy by the MPS on its way to becoming the PKP, see
Margalit, The Anatomy of the Left, pp. 65–94.
6 In Zehavi, Apart or Together, p. 32.
7 Memorandum of the Poalei Zion Bureau to the Communist International, April
1921, in Y. Peterzeil (ed.), The Struggle in the International Proletarian Arena: Poalei Zion
Collection,Vol.1, 1907–27 (Ringelblum Institute, 1954), p. 113, in Hebrew.
8 Extracts from an ECCI Statement on the Decision of Poalei Zion, 25th July 1922,
in J. Degras, The Communist International 1919–1943, Documents, Vol. 1, 1919–1922
(Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1955), p. 366.
9 Palestine, Disturbances in May 1921. Reports of the Commission of Inquiry (HMSO,
Cmd. 1540, 1921).
10 N. List, “Tzadak Hakomintern…” Part 4, Keshet, 24 (1964), pp. 111–16, in Hebrew.
11 Theses on the Eastern Question adopted by the Fourth Comintern Congress,
November 1922, in Degras, The Communist International, Vol. 1, p. 393.
12 On Palestinian- Arab nationalism, see Chapter 5. Also, R. Khalidi, Palestinian
Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (Columbia University
Press, 1997), pp. 145–75; Y. Porath, The Emergence of the Palestinian-Arab National
Movement, 1918–29 (Frank Cass, 1974), pp. 31–69.
13 S. Bashear, Communism in the Arab East, 1918–1928 (Ithaca Press, 1980).
14 ECCI, Resolution on Work in Palestine, 10th May 1923, in Zehavi, Apart or Together,
pp. 40–1.
15 Memorandum by PKP Representative to the Comintern [by Averbuch], 7th
16 ECCI, Resolution Regarding the Report on the PKP, 26th June 1926, in ibid.,
pp. 83–4.
17 Letter to the ECCI by M. Elkind, “On Gdud Ha’avoda (Left) in Palestine”, 13th
September 1927, in ibid., p. 117.
18 H. Cohen, Year Zero of the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1929 (Brandeis, 2015).
19 Other cases of ‘indigenisation’ are discussed in A. Drew, “Bolshevizing Communist
Parties: The Algerian and South African Experiences”, International Review of Social
History, 48 (2003), pp. 167–202; E. Sivan,“Slave Dealer Mentality and Communism”,
in Interpretations of Islam (Darwin Press, 1985), pp. 207–47.
20 Extracts from the Theses of the Sixth Comintern Congress on the International
Situation, 29th August 1928 in J. Degras, The Communist International 1919–1943,
Documents:Volume 2, 1923–1928 (Royal Institute, 1960).
21 Letter from the ECCI to the CC of the PKP, 25th March 1929, in Zehavi, Apart or
Together, p. 169.
22 Leaflet issued by the CC of the PKP, 1st September 1929, in ibid., p. 174.
23 “The Bloody War in Palestine and the Working Class”, September 1929, in ibid.,
pp. 175–89.
24 ECCI Political Secretariat, “Resolution on the Insurrection Movement in
Arabistan”, 16th October 1929, in Zehavi, Apart or Together, p. 203. Partial English
Translation in J. Degras, The Communist International 1919–1943, Documents:Volume
3, 1929–1943 (Royal Institute, 1960), pp. 76–84.
25 ECCI Political Secretariat to PKP, 23rd October 1930, in Zehavi, Apart or Together,
p. 235.
26 Ibid., p. 240.
27 M. Budeiri, The Palestine Communist Party 1919–48: Arab & Jew in the Struggle for
Internationalism (Haymarket books, 2010), p. 35.
28 Resolutions of the Seventh Congress of the Palestinian Communist Party, in
Zehavi, Apart or Together, pp. 251–76. A 1934 Soviet translation, Documents of the
Programs of the Communist Parties of the East, is reproduced in I. Spector, The
Soviet Union and the Muslim World, 1917–1958 (University of Washington Press,
1959), pp. 111–80.
29 In Zehavi, Apart or Together, p. 272.
30 “The Struggle against Zionism”,Theses adopted by the CC of the PKP, 1931, in T.Y.
Ishmael, The Communist Movement in the Arab World (Routledge, 2005), Appendix 4.
31 Report by Fred [aka Avigdor, Yehiel Kossoi], 1st March 1933, in Zehavi, Apart or
Together, pp. 290–9.
32 On the Popular Front policy, see the 1935 speech by Georgi Dimitrov, General
Secretary of the Comintern, in www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/
works/1935/unity.htm.
33 The Party was led at the time by Radwan al-Hilu (known as Musa), the General
Secretary, and he was supported mainly by Simha Tzabari and Meir Slonim –both
indigenous Jews fluent in Arabic.
34 Discussion based on documents in J. Frankel, The Communist Movement and the
Palestine Yishuv, (Collection of documents and sources, Hebrew University, 1968),
pp. 139–60.
35 “Memorandum Submitted to the Palestine Partition Commission” by the Jewish
Section of the Palestine Communist Party, August 1938, in ibid., p. 133.
36 “Theses on the Party’s Policies and its Current Tasks”, May 1942, in Collection of
PKP Documents, June 1941 –June 1942.
37 On the background to the split, see Budeiri, The Palestine Communist Party,
pp. 98–115.
38 A. Jacobson, Between National Liberation and Anti-Colonial Struggle: The National
Liberation League in Palestine, Working Paper 3, Crown Center for Middle East
Studies, Brandeis University, August 2012.
39 Al-Ittihad, 31st October 1945, quoted in A. Jacobson, The National Liberation League,
1943–1948 (MA thesis, Tel Aviv University, 2000), p. 55.
40 Ibid.
41 Kol Ha’am, 5th December 1946, in Frankel, The Communist Movement and the
Palestine Yishuv, p. 211. Vilner’s evidence to the Anglo-American Committee of
Enquiry in March 1946 presented the same position, ibid., pp. 234–5.
42 Andrei Gromyko’s May 1947 UN speech, http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/
0/D41260F1132AD6BE052566190059E5F0.
43 Kol Ha’am, 15th–23rd May 1947, in Frankel, The Communist Movement and the
Palestine Yishuv, pp. 212–13.
44 13th July 1947 presentation, Jerusalem, http://unispal.un.org/unispal.nsf/0/77d46
8d8893712ce85256e83005fbc53?OpenDocument.
45 Ahdut, February 1946, in Frankel, The Communist Movement and the Palestine Yishuv,
p. 240.
46 Testimony of Eliezer Preminger, 17th July 1947, in http://unispal.un.org/UNIS
PAL.NSF/0/BFD2A97D81BE51D985256E9B006598DC.
47 “For real Independence”, Kol Ha’am, 17th October 1947, in Frankel, The Communist
Movement and the Palestine Yishuv, p. 229.
48 Kol Ha’am, 19th October 1947, in ibid., p. 231.
49 Kol Ha’am, 3rd November 1947 and 10th November 1947, in ibid., pp. 232–3.
50 Of the NLL leaders, Tawfiq Tubi, Emil Habibi, and Fuad Nassar supported the
resolution. Bulus Farah and Emil Tuma opposed it. Tuma recanted later while Farah
persisted and left active political life. His book From the Ottoman Regime to the Hebrew
State (2009) is full of recriminations over what he regarded as Tuma’s betrayal.
51 Statement by the CC of the NLL, end of September 1948, published in Kol Ha’am,
15th October 1948, in Frankel, The Communist Movement and the Palestine Yishuv,
pp. 244–5.
52 Statement of the CC of Maki, 5th October 1948, published in Kol Ha’am, 15th
October 1948, in Frankel, The Communist Movement and the Palestine Yishuv, p. 246.
53 The Jordanian Communist Party (JCP) was led by Fuad Nassar of the NLL and –
initially –Radwan al-Hilu of the PKP, both of whom became refugees in the West
Bank as a result of the 1948 war and Nakba. On the JCP, see A. Cohen, Political
Parties in the West Bank under the Jordanian Regime, 1949–67 (Cornell University
Press, 1982), pp. 27–93.
5
Palestinian-Arab Nationalism
before 1948
The Balfour Declaration was issued towards the end of the First World War,
after Great Britain had gained control over much of Palestine and large areas
of the Middle East that used to be part of the Ottoman Empire. It came in
the wake of decades of organised Jewish immigration and settlement activity
in the country, which led to the consolidation of a small but growing Jewish
community, spread over dozens of new rural settlements, towns, and urban
neighbourhoods. Together with the British Mandate for Palestine of 1920 it
created a new political framework in boundaries that define the territory to this
day. It thus made the incipient conflict between Jewish settlers and indigenous
Palestinian-Arabs more sharply focused on the political future of the country.
The Ottomans who ruled the country for 400 years did not see Palestine as
a foreign territory nor were they seen as foreign by local residents. There was
little room for nationalist or anti-colonial resistance when Palestinian locals
were represented and governed in the same way as other Ottoman subjects
in the region. Even with the beginning of an Arab nationalist movement,
before the First World War, the vast majority of the population remained loyal
to the Ottoman state and did not organise politically on a separate Arab or
Palestinian basis. All that changed in the post-war period, when the Middle East
was divided into different political units, administered by Britain and France
as Mandatory powers. Struggles against this form of imperial control were
waged in many places, usually under an Arab nationalist banner. Palestinians
were similar to their counterparts in the region in this respect, with a crucial
twist: their struggle targeted not British rule itself, but its role as a facilitator of
the Zionist settlement project. Zionism was regarded as a threat due to immi-
gration and land purchases, fears of dispossession and, primarily, its concerted
effort to assert political control over the country as a whole at the expense of
Palestinian Arabs.
These two components –British imperial rule and the Zionist project –
were driven by different imperatives and occasionally came into clash with one
another. Yet, from a radical perspective they became fused as forces opposed
to independence for the country in line with the wishes of its Arab majority.
How these forces could be disentangled –in theoretical analysis and political
practice –was a matter for debate between different orientations. Nationalists
DOI: 10.4324/9780429020056-5
80 Palestinian-Arab Nationalism before 1948
regarded Zionism as the main opponent, which was able to manipulate the
British to do its bidding. Leftists regarded the British as the main culprit, using
the Zionist movement to enhance their control of the region and its resources –
oil above all, but also transport routes and military bases.
Even before formalising its control, Britain had started creating a political
framework for the country in the form of the Balfour Declaration of 2nd
November 1917, which expressed sympathy with “Jewish Zionist aspirations”
and proclaimed British support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national
home for the Jewish people”, without prejudicing the “civil and religious rights
of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political
status enjoyed by Jews in any other country”.1 The Declaration recognised the
right of “the Jewish people” –an extra-territorial population rather than local
Jews –but not a Palestinian-Arab national community in the country. Rather,
it referred to a plurality of non-Jewish communities, defined by religion, who
resided in the territory but with no clear legal right to it. The Palestinian
national movement emerged largely in response to the Declaration.
Between Regional and Local Arab Nationalism

The establishment of an Arab government in Syria in the immediate post-war
period was seen as a prelude to national independence in the region. Activists
from various countries flocked to Damascus to bolster the regime against threats
to its sovereignty. The July 1919 General Syrian Congress adopted an inclusive
Arab nationalist perspective that included Palestine. It condemned
the demands made by the Zionist Jews that the southern part of our
country, i.e., Palestine, be made a National Home for the Jews, and that
Jews be allowed to immigrate to any part of our country, as they have not
the least claim thereto and their immigration is extremely dangerous to
our people and will prejudice our economics, nationalism and political
structure.
It added, “our brethren the Jews, who originally inhabited the country”, should
have “the same rights and be subject to the same obligations as ourselves”. It
demanded, “that the southern part of Syria, which is commonly known as
Palestine … should be considered as one territorial unit without any division
in any manner whatsoever”.2
The pan-Arab tendency was significant among activists in Palestine itself,
though political organisation there started with a strong focus on local
concerns. Muslim-Christian Associations were established in various cities
in 1918 to protest the implications of the Balfour Declaration. They called
on the British authorities to take indigenous rights into consideration and
refrain from determining the future of the country against the wishes of the
Arab population. They regarded the country as Arab in terms of the identity
of its inhabitants, land ownership, language, and culture.3 Organisations and
Palestinian-Arab Nationalism before 1948 81
individuals signed a petition in November 1918, identifying themselves as
“Arabs, Muslims and Christians” and claiming Palestine as “the Holy Land
of our Fathers and the graveyard of our ancestors”, a country “which had
been inhabited by the Arabs for long ages who loved it and died in defending
it”. They were willing to live with “our brothers” the Jews “in peace and
happiness and with equal rights”.4
Even as the Muslim-Christian Associations were expressing opposition to
Zionism as prejudicial to the national, political, and economic interests of Arab
residents, their 1919 Jerusalem congress –the first Palestine Arab Congress –
demanded that Palestine be considered “an integral part of Syria, from which
we were never severed, and with which we are united in race, religion, lan-
guage and economics”. Palestine, it said, should link to “the Independent Arab
Government of Syria within an Arab Union, free from any foreign influence or
protection”. Any other treaty or commitment (to France, to Zionists) was to be
considered “null and void and unenforceable”.5
The collapse of the independent Arab government in Syria, with the cap-
ture of Damascus by French troops in July 1920, forced Palestinians to redirect
attention to the local scene. The Third Palestine Arab Congress in Haifa,
December 1920, aimed to speak for “all classes and creeds of the Arab people
of Palestine” in demanding that the British “embark on the establishment of a
National Government in Palestine responsible to a representative council, to
be elected by the Arabic speaking people who were living in Palestine at the
outbreak of the Great War”. It rejected any legislation without a representa-
tive Council, opposed recognition of the Zionist Organisation as an official
body, and the application of Zionist policy: “allowing the admission of Zionist
immigrants, recognizing the Hebrew language as an official language and per-
mitting the use of the Zionist flag”. Of concern was that many Zionists were
appointed to Government offices although Palestine belonged “to the Christian
and Moslem worlds” and its administration “should not be entrusted to non-
Moslems or non-Christians”.
In a statement by the Executive Committee of the Third Congress, the
Balfour Declaration was criticised as lacking legal validity: “Countries with
their civic and other rights and privileges are the property of their inhabitants
and constitute an heirloom of the nation, handed down from father to son”.
The people of Palestine “inherited this country from their ancestors, as these
did from those who had gone before them”. Palestine, therefore, on all its phys-
ical and social aspects, was “an inalienable possession of the nation”. Further,
Zionism was not a form of self-determination: its claims were “a collection of
history, imagination, and ideals existing only in the brains of Zionists who are a
company, a commission, but not a Nation”. Jews had no separate political exist-
ence: “In Germany they are Germans, in France Frenchmen, and in England
Englishmen”. Without doubt, the Congress said, “Palestine belongs legally to
the Arabs. They inherited it from their ancestors, and have been occupying it
for more than twenty centuries.The Jews saw, knew, and accepted this fact”, and
“Palestinians remained undisturbed in the possession of their country”.
From a historical point of view, the statement continued, the Zionist claim
contained “more of poetry in it than logic”. Based on their long-forgotten
presence in the country, Jews had no more right to Palestine than the Arabs had
to Spain and Turks to the Balkans, territories they controlled at more recent
times. More practical concerns were that Zionist settlement raised land and
property prices, drove people into debt, increased labour costs, reduced local
political representation, and made administration cumbersome. “In the name
of Justice and Right”, Congress demanded that “the principle of a National
Home for the Jews be abolished”; that “A National Government be created”,
responsible to a parliament elected “by the Palestinian People, who existed in
Palestine before the War”; that “A stop be put to Jewish immigration” until
a National Government was formed; that “no new laws be created until a
National Government comes into being”; and that “Palestine should not be
separated from her sister States”.6
In all these respects it was clear that the movement was speaking as a group
confident of its status and rights as an undisputed majority of the popula-
tion, whose legitimacy and title were never in doubt. Unlike African activists,
whose quest was to be politically included in existing structures formed by
colonial forces, an uphill struggle discussed in Chapter 3, Palestinians demanded
to retain their existing powers and repel advances by new forces, whose legit-
imacy they questioned.
These positions served as the foundation for correspondence between the
British Secretary of State for the Colonies, Winston Churchill, and a visiting
Palestine Arab Delegation in 1922. Speaking as “representatives of the Arab
People of Palestine”, the Delegation called on the British government to
abandon the Balfour Declaration and change its course: “revise their pre-
sent policy in Palestine, end the Zionist condominium, put a stop to all alien
immigration and grant the People of Palestine … Executive and Legislative
powers”. Failure to do that would mean British policy smothered Palestinian
Arabs’ “national life under a flood of alien immigration”. Only “a national
independent Government” could “command the respect of the inhabitants and
guarantee peace and prosperity to all”.
The Delegation requested that the constitution for Palestine “safeguard the
civil, political and economic interests of the People”, provide for the “cre-
ation of a national independent Government”, and guarantee religious equality
and minority rights. It claimed to represent the entire “Moslem and Christian
population of Palestine”, who formed 93 per cent of the population. As for
Jews, it said, before 1917 they had “enjoyed the same rights and privileges as
their fellow Ottoman citizens”. It was only “Zionists outside Palestine who
worked for the Balfour Declaration”; local Jews were not involved, had no dis-
tinct political aspirations, and their religious and social life was the same wher-
ever they lived. Their rights were valid, as those of other residents, but could
not be extended to all the Jews of the world or override other residents’ rights:
Palestine had a native population before the Jews even went there, and this
population has persisted all down the ages and never assimilated with the
Jewish tribes, who were always a people to themselves. The Arabs, on the
other hand, have been settled on the land for more than 1,500 years, and
are the present owners of the soil.
Christians and Muslims regarded Palestine as a sacred land, and religious

sentiments “which the Jews might cherish for Palestine” were “exceeded by
Christian and Moslem sentiment for that country.”
The Delegation did not dispute Britain’s position in the region or its imperial
role, but addressed the contradictory commitments made by the British to their
Arab allies in 1915, to the French in 1916, and to the Zionist movement in
1917 (the Balfour Declaration). The dangers posed by the Zionist project were
real: it caused “division and tension between Arabs and Zionists increasing
day by day and resulting in general retrogression”. The immigrants, “dumped
upon the country from different parts of the world”, were “ignorant of the
language, customs, and character of the Arabs”. They entered Palestine “against
the will of the people who are convinced that these have come to strangle
them”. Therefore, it could not be expected “that the Arabs would bow to such
a great injustice, or that the Zionists would so easily succeed in realising their
dreams”.7 As “owners of the country”, Arabs would not accept any proposal
which placed them “on an equal footing with the alien Jews”, such as forming
an Arab Agency alongside a Jewish Agency, to help administer the country.That
would make them feel as “strangers in their own country”.8
A subsequent communication to the League of Nations in 1924 asserted,
as a core problem, the unjust nature of a National Home for Jews in Palestine,
which was “the well-established home of the Palestinian Arabs (Moslems and
Christians)”, as well as the futility of preparing its residents for independence,
“as long as the Jewish National Home policy is in progress”. Facilitating Jewish
immigration, land ownership, and employment, was done at the expense of
Arabs: “the Arab farmer is driven to the land markets with his title-deeds in
hand to sell away land at whatever price the Jewish purchaser wishes to offer”,
resulting in an “Arab unemployment crisis”. Public security deteriorated as a
result: “daily slight frictions between Arab and Jew, whose ideas, principles, cus-
toms and modes of life take diametrically divergent lines, cultivate and solidify
hatred between both communities”. The solution was a National Government,
“in which the two communities, Arab and Jewish, will be represented in pro-
portion to their numbers as they existed” before 1917.9
But that was impossible, as the Arab majority was treated “as a minority in its
own country”, while Jews were treated as full citizens. Zionism was not viable
economically, the Palestine Arab Congress said: “The Jewish colonisers have
been always subsidized, and most, if not all, of the work, was done by the Arab
workman”. Using the administration of Palestine to serve the needs of a global
Jewish population, only a small minority of whom lived in the country, was “a
unique action in the history of imperialism”. As a result, “clouds of uneasiness
and uncertainty” hovered over the country, which was brought to the “verge
of ruin”. The future was grim: “Troubles hang over the head of Palestine as the
sword of Damocles”.10 And troubles ensued indeed. An outbreak of violent
attacks engulfed the country in 1929, as discussed in Chapter 4, uniting Arabs
(especially Muslims) on the basis of “racial animosity” towards Jews due to “the
disappointment of their political and national aspirations and fear for their eco-
nomic future”.11
The Struggle over the Holy Places

Islam was central to the collective identity of the Arabs of Palestine, with
Christians forming no more than 10% of the population. At the popular level
Islam and Arab nationalism were frequently conflated. The Wailing Wall (al-
Buraq in Arabic), and the adjacent Temple Mount (al-Haram ash-Sharif) were
simultaneously Islamic and Arab symbols, just as their significance for Jews was
religious as well as nationalist. The campaign over control of the area became
a cause for political mobilisation in the 1920s inside the country and outside
it among Arabs and Muslims. The campaign culminated with Jewish nation-
alist and Muslim counter-demonstrations in August 1929, leading to attacks
on Jewish communities, especially Hebron and Safed, in which dozens of Jews
were killed by Arabs and hundreds of Arabs killed and injured by government
forces.
The tone for the 1929 events was set by the Committee for the Defense
of the Burak-el-Sharif, an organisation that submitted in November 1928 a
statement to a General Moslem Conference presided by Hajj Amin al-Husseini,
Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and President of the Supreme Muslim Council, in
which it claimed:
Whereas we, the population of the Holy Land, have been entrusted by God
with the custody of this House and His Temple, we deem it our duty to
submit to all our brethren in the East and West a statement of the danger
which threatens this Mosque owing to the ambitions of the Jews to expro-
priate it from the hands of Moslems.12
The Conference urged people to campaign against Jewish plans to extend

visiting and praying rights at the Wall.
The Islamic element, pronounced at the popular level, played a lesser role in
the nationalist version of the events, as conveyed in al-Husseini’s evidence to the
Shaw Commission of Inquiry. His testimony combined different components,
beginning with the claim that the Jewish motivation in Palestine was the take-
over of the places holy to Christianity and Islam. He used as evidence a French
book titled The Jewish Conspiracy against the Nations (translation of the Protocols
of the Elders of Zion). Muslims believed, he said,
that the Jews did not want Palestine because it is a rich country nor because
it has other amenities [attractions]… but because the only place they would
gather is round the Temple of Solomon which is and has been in possession
of the Moslems for the last 13 centuries … Other countries richer than
this country were offered to the Jews and they refused to take them, and
the Jews fell upon Palestine because of the presence of this holy place in
Palestine.13
A specific sense of alarm was caused by increase of Jewish visits to the

Wall: “In previous years the visitors used to be orthodox old Jews; now excited
[uniformed] young men came to visit it”.14 It was not Jewish tradition –
familiar and tolerated –that posed a threat, but a nationalist version previously
unknown in the country.
Moving from religious to nationalist concerns, al-Husseini asserted that in
Ottoman times Arabs had access to senior positions and representation in all
organs of state, though “they were anxious that they should have an independent
constitution in order that they should be able to restore their previous glory
and kingdom and ancient history”. They expected the British to meet their
wartime promises [the Hussein –McMahon correspondence of 1916–16] and
grant independence to the Arabs. Instead, British rule brought about a “set-back
to the hopes of the Arabs and the fear which overwhelmed them as a result of
the Zionist policy and the ambitions of the Jews and their arrogance as a result
of this policy”. When the Arabs heard of the Balfour Declaration, they were
“heartbroken”, because political rights were mentioned only “in connection
with the right of the Jews”, thus making the Mandate “inconsistent with the
pledges given previously to the Arabs”.15
In essence, he continued, British policy
adversely affects the interests of the Arabs, and aims at placing this country,
which is an Arab country, under such economic conditions, political
conditions and social conditions as will make of it a home for another
nation which will come from various parts of the world in order to com-
pete with the actual inhabitants of the country and actually take their place,
gradually get hold of the land, and introduce immigrants to the country to
such an extent that the country cannot absorb them.
Arabs would thus become a minority. In short, it was a policy of “the annihi-
lation of one section of the community in the interests of another”. Under such
conditions, he asked, how was it possible for two nations to live in one country
“when one of them, which forms the majority, believes that the other, which is
in the minority, aims at getting possession of his country and making him the
minority and increasing their own numbers?”
What was al-Husseini’s solution then? The way forward was to abandon “this
unjust, unfair and unnatural policy” and adopt a just policy “to be applied to
all the inhabitants of Palestine, without any discrimination and without distinc-
tion between any religion or race”. Politically, that meant forming “a national
representative government” responsible to “an elected and representative
council composed of representatives of all the inhabitants in proportion to their
respective numbers, and also in proportion to the different communities, and to
comply with the distinct pledges given to the Arabs”.16
The use of Islamic motifs in political mobilisation was accompanied by
an increase in the political and organisational role of the Supreme Muslim
Council. The Council did not seek to replace the national movement, how-
ever, or challenge the non- sectarian mode of political activity. The 1930s
witnessed growing co-ordination between the religious and secular wings of
the national movement, cemented by the Arab Revolt and general strike of
1936, which gave rise to a new organisational expression of the sense of national
identity –the Arab Higher Committee (AHC). Palestinian opposition to the
Jewish National Home was consistent throughout. In particular, the movement
rejected two aspects: immigration of Jews into the country and land transfer to
Jewish institutions. It urged the British to ban both. Together with the call for a
representative government, these demands formed the core of nationalist resist-
ance. As argued by Emile Ghory, secretary of the AHC, during his 1936 visit to
Britain, “the Arab sees that day by day he is being driven into the position of
a minority, and perhaps into a situation where he could be easily ousted from
the country”.
The Arab Revolt and Its Aftermath

The Arab Revolt was motivated by Jewish immigration and land purchases
which increased landlessness among the Palestinians rural masses, Ghori said.
The absence of representative institutions aggravated the frustration of elites
and masses alike:
We have been appealing to the British people and the British Government
for eighteen years.We have had no justice … The people became desperate
and hopeless.They foresaw their fate, and decided on April 19th last [1936]
to declare a general strike. That strike has developed into a revolution …
not a revolution designed to threaten the power of Great Britain, nor to
force its hand, but to ask for justice.
Speaking in the midst of a general strike, Ghory added:
The disturbances in Palestine … are not religious. Moslems and Christians

are together in this. They are not racial, because we are not anti-Semitic.
We have nothing against the Jews as Jews. We have lived with them on the
best of terms when they were persecuted in every Christian country. And
we are prepared to live with them again provided their political aims do
not go any farther.17
British rule was not a concern in itself; the Jewish National Home was. The
Arabs of Palestine could not see a way to independence of the country as
the continued growth of the organised Jewish community made the prospect
increasingly remote.
The Higher Committee replaced the Arab Executive which had become
defunct, and united all Arab political tendencies on the basis of common national
demands. That unity collapsed shortly thereafter with an outbreak of internal
violence, though factionalism did not reflect different perceptions of the basic
situation. In a memorandum submitted to the Palestine Royal Commission of
1937, the AHC spoke “on behalf of the Arabs of Palestine”, who were deprived
of “their natural and political rights”, faced with the Jewish National Home
which was liable to result in “the destruction of the Arabs as a national and
cultural entity in the country”. Arabs were affirmed as “the legitimate owners
of the country”, and the call for majority rule demanded “an independent
national government, constitutionally elected, in which shall be represented all
sections of the population”.18
Elaborating on these themes, Amin al-Husseini, the principal Arab represen-
tative, asserted: “The Arab case in Palestine is one which aims at national inde-
pendence. In its essence it does not differ from similar movements amongst the
Arabs in all other Arab territories”. It was meant as an overall project, but “the
forcible detachment of Palestine from the body of other Arab territories was a
great detriment to the Arab territories, in that it meant isolation and the pur-
suance of the Zionist policy”. British policy was pursued to “the greatest det-
riment to the national existence of the Arabs”, by reducing their presence from
93% of the population in 1917 to 70% 20 years later. In addition,“the Jews were
enabled to acquire large areas in the most fertile of Arab lands, from which Arab
cultivators were evicted. Arab villages which stood on the land were wiped
out”. As a result, “every hope which the Arabs had of obtaining independence
was frustrated”. They saw “a speedy and fundamental change in their position
and the loss of their rights”. In a short period of time Jews increased their
numbers 8-fold and their landholdings by 15 times. Their ultimate aim, added
al-Husseini, was “the reconstruction of the temple of King Solomon on the
ruins of the Haram esh Sahrif, the El Aqsa mosque, and the holy Dome of the
Rock”, all venerated in the Moslem World.
The British aimed to “realise the impossible object of establishing a National
Home for the Jews in this Arab territory, which is surrounded by an Arab
ocean on all sides”, al-Husseini said. In that way they made the Holy Land “a
scene of bloody disturbances and a permanent National Home for disorders
and riots which are inevitable as long as the administration is based on an unfair
and unjust foundation”. It was a matter of “great grief to the Arabs” as their
national existence was subjected to annihilation, a source of “deep grievance”
for them to see an “imperialistic, Zionist, spirit dominating all branches of the
Administration, legislation and economics, contrary to all principles of right
and equity”.
He continued: the main cause of the 1936 disturbances was that Arabs were
deprived of their natural and political rights.The solution called for abandoning
the Jewish National Home “which prejudiced the rights of the Arabs and
imperilled their national existence”. This meant “immediate and complete
stoppage of Jewish immigration”, and “immediate and complete prohibition of
the sale of Arab land to the Jews”. In that way Palestine would be treated as all
other countries, leading to a treaty by which “a national and independent gov-
ernment in constitutional form will be established, on which national elements
will be represented, and which will guarantee justice, progress and prosperity to
all”. It was necessary because it was impossible to place “two distinct peoples,
who differ from each other in every sphere of their lives, in one and the same
country”. Jews could live “as they always have lived in Arab Countries, with
complete freedom and liberty as natives in the country”. In response to queries
by the Commission, al-Husseini asserted that Palestine could not absorb and
digest the 400,000 Jews already there. When queried whether “some of them
would have to be removed by a process kindly or painful as the case may be”,
he answered: “We must leave all this to the future”.19
Another witness for the Arab side, Awni Abdelhadi, pointed out two contra-
dictory policies: one which had at its aim “that the Arabs of Palestine should
enjoy their full rights”, and the other was the Jewish National Home, which was
bound “to make Palestine as Jewish as England is English”. The two could not
coexist: “Any measure which affects the position of the Arabs is prejudicial to
the rights of the Arabs. No one would deny with any majority of people which
have their specific form in the country that their rights would be affected if
they are reduced or changed in any way”. It was a zero-sum game in effect, and
“there is not one nation in the world which would accept voluntarily and of its
own desire that its position should be changed in a manner which will have an
effect on its rights and prejudice its interests”.
Although Arabs regretted that Jews should be persecuted and dispersed in
various parts of the world, Abdelhadi said, and they thanked them for loving
Palestine, no one would accept that “those two things should be factors for
destroying the national existence of another people”. Arabs had “natural
rights”, to govern themselves on their own. It was “extremely detrimental to
the national existence of the Arabs to accept an additional immigrant from any
country whatever”. No negotiations were possible because Zionists were not a
legitimate force in the country: Arabs “utterly refuse to meet at the same table
with any persons who call themselves Zionist Jews”. They could not discuss
“the Jewish interests vis-à-vis Arab interests”, as if there were two distinct legit-
imate groups: “No friendship can ever be maintained between the Arabs and
the Jews so long as Zionist policy exists”. Jews had lived on peaceful terms in
the country with Arabs before, but through Zionist policies “created a cause of
racial antipathy to the Arabs which never existed at any time before”. As a result,
“Zionism and Arabism can never be united together”.20
Speaking from an Arab nationalist perspective, Izzat Darwaza argued that
the Arab case was national in essence: “The Arabs are the real and original
people of this country. They owned and possessed this country for centuries
without any interruption”, for 1,300 years, under different regimes. In all those
years, “the Arab character of the country has never changed”. Jews, in contrast
“discontinued to have any connection with this land about two thousand years
ago”, yet the British recognised their connection to it, while ignoring “the
large and strong connection that the Arabs have perpetually maintained with
the country”. A basic cause of the disturbances was “indifference shown by
Government towards the persistent endeavours by the Arabs and their struggle
for independence”. Arabs were thus justified in “sacrificing everything in their
defence of national existence”. It was crucial to understand that they objected
to immigration in principle, as it was “detrimental and prejudicial to their
national interests”. Similarly, they objected to the sale of land, not because it
deprived the fellah “of his only means of livelihood”, but because land is one
of the matters that deeply affects the existence of a nation. When a nation has
no land, no existence remains to it”. Uprooting people from their land caused
a “serious moral injury to them and to the community”. No peace could come
if Arabs were denied their “natural and constitutional rights”.21
Jamal al-
Husseini emphasised the imbalance between the way residents
and immigrants were treated: Arab inhabitants of Palestine, the overwhelming
majority for whose development the Mandate was created, were referred to as
“the non-Jewish population, a deceptive and humiliating term”. They were “to
live in Palestine as on sufferance and not of right”. In that way, the Mandate
gave an “alien race, the Jews, the right to have the country placed for them”
under conditions that would facilitate their National Home, as if they were the
majority, “while the Arab owner and inhabitant of the land is to have his reli-
gious and civil rights safeguarded”, as if they were a tolerated minority. He went
on to dismiss the argument that Jews brought economic benefit to the country
as irrelevant: “supposing they bring wealth to the country so as to make it flow
with milk and honey”, the Arab national position would be negatively affected
all the same. The Arab position is based on “their numerical strength in relation
to that of the newcomers”, but as long as the proportion of Jews to Arabs was
increasing, “the national, social and economic position of the Arabs is being
continually undermined and Arabs will not stand it”.22
The release of the Royal Commission Report in July 1937, with its call
for partitioning the country into Jewish and Arab states, while retaining a
Mandatory Zone controlled by Britain, encountered deep regret, “extreme dis-
appointment”, “profound grief ”, and “repugnance” on the part of the AHC.
The Higher Committee rejected the notion that Arabs and Jews stood as
“opposed litigants with equal rights”, since the Arabs were “the owners of the
country and … the overwhelming majority”, whereas Jews were “a minority of
intruders”. Since Arabs had “natural right to enjoy the freedom of self-rule in
their own country”, they repudiated any attempt to establish “an alien people”
and transfer to them the land “inhabited by its historic owners, the Arabs”.
A “surgical operation” –the term used in the Report for partition –would
“prove fatal to the welfare of the country as a whole”. Normally, when national
groups coexisted, the solution was majority rule and minority protection. The
British chose to alleviate the global suffering of the Jews “at the cost of our own
racial future”. Rescuing Jews “should not be a project by which the Arabs of
Palestine will be uprooted from their country and deprived of their best land to
accommodate the Jews”. To create a Jewish state where hundreds of thousands
of Arabs lived, in hundreds of villages, places of worship, and communities, was
“illogical, humiliating, impractical, and fraught with danger”. The “exchange”
of populations proposed in the report would lead to the “forcible expulsion of
the Arab inhabitants of the Jewish State and the expropriation of their prop-
erty”. That was bound to “arouse bitter resentment in Arab hearts and inspire
them with the desire to die rather than submit to such an outrage”.
What would remain in Arab hands, said the AHC, was “a mountainous and
barren region, for the most part arid and unproductive, restricted by artifi-
cial frontiers on three sides”. Therefore, Arabs “forcibly repudiate the partition
scheme in its entirety”, as “one of the greatest catastrophes that could befall the
Arab race in territories revered both as fatherland and as holy shrine”.The only
just solution was “recognition of the right of the Arabs to complete independ-
ence in their own land”, terminating “the experiment of the Jewish National
Home” and the Mandate, and replacing them by a treaty, “creating in Palestine
a Sovereign State”. An end to all Jewish immigration and land sales to Jews
should precede negotiations and conclusion of the Treaty, which would include
“protection of all legitimate rights of the Jewish population and other minor-
ities in Palestine”.23
The White Paper issued by the British in 1939, following failed negoti-
ations with Arab and Zionist representatives, accepted independent statehood
for Palestine within a 10-year period, but subjected that to conditions –par-
ticularly, shared rule by Jews and Arabs –seen by the Palestinian leadership as
unacceptable, although it recognised that some concerns were addressed. The
AHC opposed the idea that Jews as a minority could have veto power over
policies and demanded a government with representation “proportionate to
the number of Palestinian citizens in the respective populations”. Since the
White Paper required that the independent state would protect the National
Home, the AHC saw the entire scheme as unviable, since it “trespass[ed] upon
their most sacred natural rights” and could only be maintained by force. It was
“the fundamental cause of the calamities, rebellions, bloodshed and destruction
which Palestine has suffered for the last twenty years. No Arab in Palestine will
ever be prepared to recognize … a Jewish Home as a national entity”.24
Whichever guarantees of Jewish minority rights the Arab leadership was
willing to consider, it clearly saw itself as speaking for an independent national
community, indigenous to the country and to a region that was long ruled as an
integrated political unit, and a majority of its population. All that entitled Arabs
to power commensurate with their long historical and physical presence in
Palestine. Their hold on the country as its “owners” was slipping, and they used
their claims to the past to prevent it from falling out of their hands altogether.
Black South Africans too were a majority of the population and indigenous
to their country, but that country was a more recent creation, having emerged
in a process of colonial expansion, political conquest, and forcible incorporation
of disparate groups. As a result, they could not draw on a unified pre-colonial
national identity of their own, distinct from that of white settlers, to serve as
a basis for a separate political organisation, as did Palestinians in particular and
Arabs in general. For the most part, their demands were for equality within
political structures that were a product of the colonial period, not for an inde-
pendent state and political institutions of their own. That began to change in
the 1940s, but neither the Youth League Africanists discussed in Chapter 3
nor the 1950s ANC/PAC Africanists discussed in Chapter 6 had much use
for historically grounded African ideas, cultures, and institutions, whether
pre-colonial or more recent in origin. Instead, they used the notion of Africa
discursively to indicate a will to freedom and equality based on present-day
conditions, an empowering symbol to facilitate continent-wide anti-colonial
solidarity. Their hold on the usable past was weaker in comparison to that of
Palestinians but that made their future orientation stronger, as will be discussed
further in Chapter 6.
Towards Partition
With the outbreak of the Second World War discussions of independence for
the country were suspended. By the end of the war, due to the Holocaust and
the large number of Jewish displaced persons in European camps, much inter-
national opinion had moved in support of the Zionist position “that Palestine
be established as a Jewish Commonwealth integrated in the structure of the
new democratic world”.25
In an effort to influence global public opinion, the Arab Office, a group
of young activists and intellectuals, submitted a series of documents and
presentations starting at the public hearings conducted by the Anglo-American
Committee of Inquiry in 1946. It asserted its case “based primarily upon right”,
as the Palestine Arabs were “descendants of the indigenous inhabitants of the
country, who have been in occupation of it since the beginning of history”. It
was wrong to subject an indigenous majority to “alien immigrants, whose claim
is based upon a historical connection which ceased effectively many centuries
ago”. Further, Arabs opposed Zionism because its impact “diverted the whole
course of their national development”. Palestine was being cut off from Arab
countries and subjected to a different regime, thus prevented from taking part
in the general development of the Arab world. That hampered the rise of self-
governing institutions, curtailed opportunities for individuals, and demoralised
the population that was ruled by a regime with “no basis in their consent and
to which they can feel no attachment or loyalty”.
From a social and economic perspective, the submission went on,
the entry of incessant waves of immigrants prevents normal economic and

social development and causes constant dislocation of the country’s life; in
so far as it reacts upon prices and values and makes the whole economy
dependent upon the constant inflow of capital from abroad it may even in
certain circumstances lead to economic disaster.
Politically, that process was bound “to arouse continuous political unrest and
prevent the establishment of that political stability on which the prosperity and
health of the country depend”. Unrest would “increase in frequency and vio-
lence” as the demographic balance continued to shift in favour of Jews and at
expense of Arabs. Further, Arab population growth together with Jewish refusal
to employ Arabs on their lands and their enterprises would push Arabs “to the
margin of cultivation and a landless proletariat, rural and urban, comes into
existence”.
Whatever social and economic benefits have come to the Arabs from Zionist
settlement, they were “more than counterbalanced by the dangers of that settle-
ment”, and anyway they were incidental and “in no way necessary for the
progress of the Arab people”. Arabs had made progress on their own in their
countries, on a more sustainable basis, with no need for Zionists:
they are building up industries, improving methods and extending the

scope of agriculture, establishing systems of public education and increasing
the amenities of life. In some countries and spheres the progress has been
greater than among the Arabs of Palestine, and in all of them it is healthier
and more normal.
Culturally also, Zionist settlement had negligible influence:
Arab culture today is almost wholly uninfluenced by the Jews, and prac-
tically no Arabs take part in the work of Jewish cultural or educational
institutions. In a deeper sense the presence of the Zionists is even an obs-
tacle to the understanding of Western civilization, in so far as it more than
any other factor is tending to induce in the Arabs an unsympathetic atti-
tude towards the West and all its works.
Opposition to Zionist policy was shared by “all sections of the Palestinian

Arab people”. It was not confined to urban people but was also “universal
among the rural population, who stand to suffer most from the gradual alien-
ation of the most fertile land to the Jewish National Fund”. It was “not an
invention of the educated class”, though the latter assumed a leadership position
as is “their duty and function”. It was common to Muslims and Christians for
both national and religious reasons.
A solution had to satisfy certain conditions: “recognize the right of the indi-
genous inhabitants of Palestine to continue in occupation of the country and
to preserve its traditional character”, accept the principle of “responsible rep-
resentative government”, based on “absolute equality of all citizens irrespective
of race and religion”. That included “Jews who have already entered Palestine,
and who have obtained or shall obtain Palestinian citizenship by due legal pro-
cess”, to be considered “full citizens of the Palestinian state, enjoying full civil
and political rights and a fair share in government and administration”. They
would be given
the opportunity of belonging to and helping to mould the full community
of the Palestinian slate, joined to the Arabs by links of interest and good-
will, not the goodwill of the strong to the powerless, but of one citizen to
another.
In the course of time “the exclusiveness of the Jews will be neutralized by

the development of loyalty to the state and the emergence of new groupings
which cut across communal divisions”. Their communal organisation, personal
status, religious observances, schools and cultural institutions would be left
intact. In districts where they were closely settled “they would possess muni-
cipal autonomy and Hebrew would be an official language of administration,
justice and education”. However, the Palestinian State would be an Arab state,
not “in any narrow racial sense”, but because it would be based on two facts: first
“that the majority of the citizens are Arabs”, and second, “that Palestine is part
of the Arab world and has no future except through close co-operation with
the other Arab states”.26
Along similar lines, Emile Ghori of the AHC and the Palestine Arab Party
asserted that Arabs had nothing against “the Jews as Jews”. Antisemitism was
alien to them, a “European invention”. It was the policy of “political Zionism
aiming at the establishment of a Jewish National Home in Palestine” and “the
transformation of the Holy Land into a Jewish State” that were the targets
of the Arab movement in Palestine, emanating from “the patriotic feelings
and national consciousness of the whole nation”. Not only did it unify all
groups beyond family and religious divisions, but “the entire Arab and Moslem
worlds support them in any stand they may take vis-à-vis the Zionist policy”.
Zionism made the Arabs “aliens in their own homeland”. They did not accept
the “theory of parity” that threatened “their entity in their own homeland”.
They rejected the “slicing away any portion of their country”, even that of “Tel
Aviv itself ”. That was a point of principle. It did not matter whether Palestine
benefitted from “Jewish immigration, Jewish capital, Jewish enterprise, Jewish
industry”, because the case of Palestine was not an issue of “figures, statistics” of
“bread and butter”, but rather of “principles and morals … a struggle between
right and might”.
Ahmad Shuqeiri of the Arab Office (and future leader of the PLO) repeated
at length the theme of Arab identity and unity:
We are part and parcel of the Arab nation. Our country, by geography and
history, is part and parcel of the Arab world. Our future destiny, by necessity,
is part and parcel of the future of the whole Arab world.
Within that context, the Palestinian case rested on “our natural right, our
inherent right to live in our country in freedom and security, to revive our
potentialities and capacities and to contribute our full share in world civiliza-
tion and progress”. The disturbances afflicting the country, Shuqeiri said, “were
successive attempts to express our determination to exercise our natural right”.
He warned, “more extensive and violent disturbances are bound to take place,
not only in Palestine but in the whole Arab world”. Palestinians were ready
for great sacrifice “in blood, tears, and sweat” because nothing was worse than
“the status of minority under a Jewish State”, and they would respond with a
record-breaking “degree of violence” if forced into such situation. The Zionist
movement was “the greatest enemy of world Jewry, no less dangerous than the
Nazi Regime”, and to give in to its demands would move “the stage of distress
from Europe to Asia”.The result would be a backlash, leading to “Jewish home-
lessness in the Arab world”.
The most eloquent argument was made by British-Arab intellectual Albert
Hourani, speaking for the Arab Office. He asserted “the unalterable opposition
of the Arab nation to the attempt to impose a Jewish State upon it”. Such
opposition was based on
the unwavering conviction of unshakeable rights and a conviction of

the injustice of forcing a long-settled population to accept immigrants
without its consent being asked and against its known and expressed will;
the injustice of turning a majority into a minority in its own country;
the injustice of withholding self-government until the Zionists are in the
majority and able to profit by it.
Hourani acknowledged that Jewish residents had to be accommodated as

equals within an overall Arab national framework:
the only just and practicable solution for the problem of Palestine lies in the
constitution of Palestine, with the least possible delay, into a self-governing
state, with its Arab majority, but with full rights for the Jewish citizens of
Palestine.
In that framework, Jews would have
full civil and political rights, control of their own communal affairs, muni-
cipal autonomy in districts in which they are mainly concentrated, the
use of Hebrew as an additional official language in those districts, and an
adequate share in the administration.
In other words, they would gain “membership of the Palestinian commu-

nity” with Arab character, based on a majority indigenous population and links
to the Arab world.27
Hourani and the Arab Office offered a reasonable balance between majority
rule and minority rights, based on liberal political principles. It is doubtful
though that their position reflected public opinion among the majority of Arabs
in the country. The foremost Palestinian leader of the time, Amin al-Husseini,
was far less conciliatory. He was not allowed into the country after his departure
a decade earlier but reflected on the issues from exile. Writing a few years later,
he claimed to have regarded the conflict from its inception as a fight between
irreconcilable opposites, a Zionist–British conspiracy to take over Palestine and
undermine Arab national identity in the region. Unlike other such clashes, he
argued, the “enemies’ plan” was based not only on colonialism: there were
other dangerous factors –religious, national and strategic –aimed at

replacing one nation with another, completely eliminating the existence of
this [Arab] nation by putting an end to its nationalism, religion and history,
and erasing its traces, so that it can be replaced by the other nation.
Under such circumstances it was impossible to concede any ground to the

enemy, he concluded.28
In a summary of its case, the AHC published a comprehensive historical
survey that culminated by insisting “on divorcing what is called the world
Jewish problem from that of Palestine on account of the impossibility of solving
the former through the latter”. It challenged the Anglo-American Committee’s
conclusion that “placed the Arabs on an equal basis with the Jews” and made
Palestine into a state where the “national aspirations of both parties could
be reconciled”. That amounted to “sacrificing the inhabitants of the country
and the majority to an invading minority made up of various nationalities”,
contradicting principles of democracy, effecting “a far-reaching denial of Arab
rights”, and serving “Zionist interests in America and Britain”. Jews indeed
suffered, but “the Arabs had no hand and were in no way responsible” for their
plight. It would be “great injustice” to make them pay for that. There were
many other places to which Jews could go, and the attempt to bring them
together was “simply fantastic”, given that they aimed at “gathering together
into a round mass people of different races and character on the basis of reli-
gion”. The case for Arab Palestine was “simple, just and democratic”, based on
an end to Jewish immigration and land transfer, abolition of the Mandate and
the Balfour Declaration, and “recognition of the Arabs’ legitimate right to their
legitimate country”, while “safeguarding minority rights”.29
A statement by Henry Kattan, speaking for the AHC at the United Nations
General Assembly in May 1947, highlighted the threat to the Arabs of Palestine’s
“very existence as a people”. He noted that Jews and other minority commu-
nities had religious and cultural autonomy historically, but “no national or pol-
itical aims, antagonistic or hostile to the Arabs”, merging “harmoniously in the
Arab structure”, without friction, riots or disturbances. Arabs had nothing to do
with prejudice against Jews. Any other group “which might attempt to wrest
the country from its Arab inhabitants” would face the same resistance. It was
time that the policy “which has been impairing the ethnological and political
structure of the country” was brought to an end.30
Arab proposals recognised that once settled in the country, immigrants could
not be removed. They only asked that the indigenous majority “shall no longer
be suppressed in the interests of a foreign minority”. Jewish immigrants who
had been in the country legally for more than ten years and became citizens
were offered “the maximum rights of citizenship, a permanent and secure pos-
ition in the country with full participation in its political life on a footing of
absolute equality with the Arabs themselves”.That was the only way for Jews to
build a normal, moral, and healthy relationship with Arabs, the Arab Office said.
Whether all Jews who did not meet these criteria would become full citizens
in due course was not made clear.31
In a last-ditch attempt to prevent the United Nations from supporting the
partition of Palestine, Jamal al-Husseini of the AHC presented its case as “simple
and self-evident”. The Arabs of Palestine were there “where Providence and
history have placed them”, entitled “to develop their country in accordance
with their traditions and in harmony with universal conceptions of justice and
equity”. In contrast, the Zionist movement was “but an invasion that aims, by
force, at securing and dominating a country that is not theirs by birth-r ight”,
ready to “destroy the Arab structure in Palestine precipitately by successive
quick blows”, with the aid of the British. Becoming “helpless spectators” and
watching “the funeral of their national existence passing slowly before their
eyes”, Palestinians were against any solution “inconsistent with and repugnant
to their rights”.They were “solidly determined to oppose, with all the means at
their disposal, any scheme that provides for the dissection, segregation or parti-
tion of their country” or that grants a minority “special and preferential rights
or status”.32
Unfortunately for Palestinians, there was a big gap between such militant
rhetoric and their limited capacity to translate their concerns into practice,
a problem that hampered their campaign when it took a military turn in
1947–48. A critical account written by Musa al-Alami, a prominent nation-
alist activist, focused on internal causes and differences between the two sides,
exaggerated somewhat retrospectively in order to account for the decisive
Israeli victory:
The fundamental source of our weakness was that we were unprepared

even though not taken by surprise, while the Jews were fully prepared;
that we proceeded along the lines of previous revolutions, while the Jews
proceeded along the lines of total war; that we worked on a local basis,
without unity, without totality, without a general command, our defense
disjointed and our affairs disordered, every town fighting on its own and
only those in areas adjacent to the Jews entering the battle at all, while the
Jews conducted the war with a unified organization, a unified command,
and total conscription.
Palestinians were poorly armed, he said, while Jewish weapons were “excel-
lent and powerful”, serving the unified goal of winning the battle.33
The basic problem was not military, he added:“Our actions were improvised,
our conduct of affairs a chain of enormous mistakes: we had no clear objective
and no fixed policy. The natural result of all this was disaster and the loss of
Palestine”. These weaknesses afflicted the Arab nation and existing regimes: “a
disjointed political order based on dismemberment was reflected in its ranks
in battle, as was its slackness”. Al-Alami went on to criticise the actions of
Palestinians and Arabs that were “dominated by the ideas and methods of pre-
vious revolts”. These included “mass movements of general excitement and
enthusiasm”, which gave way to revolutionary bands, which depended on
“the personality, strength, and influence of their leaders”, without an overall
strategy: “no general support, no regular soldiers, no unity, no totality, no
training, no defense, no good arms”. Although the country was small, “the the-
ater of operations was split up and the direction of the struggle conducted on a
local and disjointed basis”. Faced with a unified Jewish assault, “places watched
what was happening next to them and waited their turn, and were unable to
do anything because of their preoccupation with themselves, the lack of co-
operation, and of a common command”.
Thus, “the country fell, town after town, village after village, position after
position, as a result of its fragmentation and lack of unity”. Politically too,
“we entered the struggle with no clear purpose, with no specific plan, and we
excelled at nothing except our negative stand”. Palestinians were not able to
create unity among themselves “in the face of a united enemy”. The solution
was education, democracy, science, and social progress, to modernise and unify
the people and society.
This self-critical evaluation was not shared by other leaders.Amin al-Husseini
acknowledged internal divisions but blamed them on colonialism, which
encouraged “the formation of sects, groups and factions within the popula-
tion in order to oppose their national movements”. He added that Palestinians
had been harmed by such tactics “more than their Arab brethren”, through
the arousal of “the spirit of sectarianism and religious controversy between
Muslims and Christians in Palestine”, sending armed gangs to attack Christian
villages and to “cause division and strife between the sons of the homeland”.34
Like al-Alami though, al-Husseini recognised that in the “battle against colo-
nialism and the Jews”, the Arab nation lost due to “the significant difference
between our nation and its enemies with regard to determination, preparation
and organization”.35
Although al-Alami and al-Husseini did not express that point in clear con-
ceptual terms, the crucial difference between the two sides was the mobilised
nature of the Jewish community that emerged and grew as part of a long-term
settlement project that included national, military, and institutional consoli-
dation. Palestinian Arabs, in contrast, continued their lives in a more “natural”
form, and were less able to build up the organisational and political capabilities
required to confront their opponents. As the majority of the population whose
presence had not been challenged for many centuries –since the time of the
Crusades in fact –it was difficult to instil in them the same sense of urgency
that prevailed among Jewish settlers, and that had become particularly acute in
light of the Holocaust, which eliminated a large part of their human potential
but also allowed them to mobilise international support in their campaign for
independent statehood.
Not only was the Jewish community better organised than indigenous
Palestinians, but it stood out in relation to groups of settlers in places such
as South Africa. The intensity of the transformation process, which saw Jews
growing their numbers ten-fold in less than 30 years, becoming one-third of
the population and a decisive economic and political force, is striking from a
comparative perspective. The compressed nature of the process made its impact
more powerful. To reach a similar position in South Africa, settlers took cen-
turies, in a gradual and uncoordinated process that covered much larger terri-
tory, and which incorporated indigenous groups in a subordinate position, but
also allowed them eventually to forge a new-found unity inside colonial polit-
ical frameworks, working to re-shape them from within.
It is not surprising then that Palestinians experienced a profound shock and
severe dislocation as a result. The impact of their 1948 defeat has shaped the
nature of their struggle ever since, as will be discussed in Chapters 7 and 8.
Notes
1 Preamble to the Mandate, League of Nations, 1922, p. 2.
2 In M.E.T. Mogannam, The Arab Woman and the Palestine Problem (Herbert Joseph,
1936), p. 119.
3 In A.W. Kayyali, Palestine: A Modern History (Croom Helm, 1978), pp. 57–8.
4 In A.M. Lesch, Arab Politics in Palestine, 1917–1939: The Frustration of a Nationalist
Movement (Cornell University Press, 1979), p. 86.
5 Ibid., p. 116.
6 Report on the State of Palestine, by the Executive Committee of the Palestine Arab
Congress (March 1921).
7 Correspondence with the Palestine Arab Delegation and the Zionist Organisation, presented
to the British Parliament in June 1922, cmd. 1700 (London, 1922).
8 Letter from the President of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Arab Congress
to Herbert Samuel, British High Commissioner for Palestine, 9th November 1923,
in Minutes of the Fifth Session (Extraordinary) of the Permanent Mandates Commission of
the League of Nations, Geneva 23rd October to 6th November 1924, pp. 173–4.
9 “Report on the State of Palestine during the Four Years of Civil Administration”
by the Executive Committee of the Palestine Arab Congress, 6th October 1924, in
ibid., pp. 166–73.
10 Memorandum to the League of Nations, from the Executive Committee, Palestine
Arab Congress, 12th April 1925, in Minutes of the 7th Session of the Permanent
Mandates Commission, Geneva, 19th to 30th October 1925, pp. 160–4.
11 Report of the Commission on the Palestine Disturbances of August 1929 [Shaw
Commission], cmd. 3530 (London, 1930), p. 150.
12 Ibid., p. 32.
13 Shaw Commission, Minutes of Evidence,Volume 1, 1930, p. 499; the temple had been
at the same site as the al-Aqsa mosque.
14 Ibid., p. 502.
15 Ibid., p. 513.
16 Ibid., p. 514
17 E. Ghory, “An Arab View of the Situation in Palestine”, International Affairs, 15, 5
(September–October 1936), pp. 691–2.
18 Arab Higher Committee, A Memorandum Submitted to the Royal Commission
(Jerusalem, 1937).
19 Royal Commission of Enquiry, Minutes of Evidence heard at Public Sessions (London,
1937), pp. 292–9.
20 Ibid., pp. 300–14.
21 Ibid., pp. 314–15.
22 Ibid., pp. 316–26.
23 Memorandum by the AHC to the Permanent Mandate Commission, 23rd July 1937.
24 Reply of the Arab Higher Committee for Palestine to the White Paper issued by the British
Government, 30th May 1939. Italics in the original.
25 See the 1942 Biltmore Program, https://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/f86e0
b8fc540dedd85256ced0070c2a5.
26 “The Arab Case for Palestine: Evidence Submitted by the Arab Office”, in Documents
on Palestine, Volume 1: Until 1947 (Passia, 2007), pp. 381–7. Other testimonies in
Public Hearings before the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, Jerusalem (Palestine),
March 1946.
27 A. Hourani,“The Case against a Jewish State in Palestine:Albert Hourani’s Statement
to the Anglo-American Committee of Enquiry of 1946”, Journal of Palestine Studies,
35, 1 (Autumn 2005), pp. 80–90.
28 A. al-Husayni, “The Solutions Presented by Britain were a Chain of Deceit”,
1954, translated in Z. Elpeleg, Through the Eyes of the Mufti (Vallentine Mitchell,
2009), p. 23.
29 The Palestine Arab Case, A statement by the Arab Higher Committee, April 1947.
30 Palestine the Arab Case, statement by the delegation of the Arab Higher Committee,
9th May 1947.
31 Palestine: the Solution (the Arab Proposals and the Case on which They Rest), The Arab
Office, Washington DC, April 1947.
32 UN Ad-hoc Committee on the Palestinian Question, Press Release GA/PAL/3,
The Arab Case Stated by Mr. Jamal Husseini, 29th September 1947.
33 M. Alami, “The Lesson of Palestine”, Middle East Journal, 3, 4 (October 1949),
pp. 373–405.
34 In Through the Eyes of the Mufti, p. 27.
35 Ibid., p. 44.
6
South Africa
The Apartheid Era
Although African political organisation remained central to resistance politics

in South Africa for the entire period discussed in this book, it was linked to
other race/ethnicity-based struggles against white supremacy.That was the case
especially during the apartheid era, though even before it a landmark agreement
known as the Three Doctors’ Pact brought together leaders of the ANC and
the Natal and Transvaal Indian Congresses (indirectly the Communist Party as
well). It asserted the need for cooperation between “the non-European peoples
and other democratic forces for the attainment of basic human rights and full
citizenship for all sections of the South African peoples”, calling for full fran-
chise, economic and industrial rights, end to land restrictions, extension of free
and compulsory education to non-Europeans, freedom of movement, and the
“removal of all discriminatory and oppressive legislation”.1
With the onset of apartheid, a flurry of new restrictive legislation forced
a change in the focus of resistance, from reversing existing laws and policies
to preventing new ones from coming into effect. This applied to politically
oppressive laws, such as the Suppression of Communism Act, and to intensified
segregationist legislation, such as the Group Areas Act. An ANC emergency
meeting on 21st May 1950 defined the proposed legislation as an example of
“the determination of the white people of this country to keep the African
in permanent subordination”. It added that it was obvious that the African
people were “equally determined that they are not going to remain in that
position forever”. A national day of protest was called, in which African people
would mark “their general dissatisfaction with the position in this country” by
not going to work and regarding that day as “a day of mourning for all those
Africans who lost their lives in the struggle for liberation”.2
That call was echoed by the Youth League (Transvaal), which saw the protest
as falling in line with the “divine stirrings of discontent of the African people”
since Jan van Riebeeck’s time, through the period of colonial wars of con-
quest to the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910. That was the first
time since 1652, it asserted, that African leaders were going to stage “a forceful
opposition to our oppressors” simultaneously. If African leaders had defended
their country jointly earlier on, “Africa would have been saved for posterity”.
The planned protest was an opportunity to do things right because “no physical
DOI: 10.4324/9780429020056-6
South Africa:The Apartheid Era 101
might in the world can crush the invincible spirit of a nation”.3 The protest
took place on 26th June 1950 and was declared “an outstanding success” by
organiser Nelson Mandela.4
In the following year, a Joint Planning Council of the ANC and the South
African Indian Congress convened to coordinate the efforts of “the National
Organisations of the African, Indian and the Coloured peoples” in a cam-
paign to repeal the Pass Laws, Group Areas Act, Voters’ Representation Act,
Suppression of Communism Act, Bantu Authorities Act, and to abolish policies
restricting African access to land and cattle. These demands represented “the
just and legitimate grievances of the majority of the South African people”.
A mass campaign was planned to start on 6th April 1952, the Van Riebeeck
Tercentary, to mark “the advent of European settlers in this country, followed
by colonial and imperialist exploitation which has degraded, humiliated and
kept in bondage the vast masses of the non-White people”. Alternatively, the
26th June 1952 was proposed, commemorating the National Day of Protest of
1950, which was “the greatest demonstration of fraternal solidarity and unity of
purpose on the part of all sections of the non-European people in the national
protest against unjust laws”.
Taking into consideration political and economic conditions in the country,
the forms of struggle for the campaign were expected to include “defiance of
unjust laws” and “industrial action”. Asserting the principle that “all people
irrespective of the national groups they may belong to, and irrespective of the
colour of their skin”, were entitled to life “on the basis of the fullest equality”,
the Planning Council noted that the “campaign of defiance of unjust laws”
aimed to breach “selected laws and regulations which are undemocratic, unjust,
racially discriminatory and repugnant to the natural rights of man”. Racial
groups were subject to different regulations, and each of them was to focus on
specific concerns. For the ANC, the laws that stood out were the Pass Laws
in the urban areas and Regulations related to Stock (cattle) Limitation in the
rural areas. For Indian and coloured people, it was segregation of residential
areas and public facilities. For all of them, the Population Registration Act was
of serious concern. The chief method envisaged was “a sustained form of mass
action”, rather than industrial action, which was reserved for a later stage, unless
“conditions make its use possible on a local, regional, provincial or national
scale”.5
The demands raised by the campaign were “nothing that is revolutionary”,
said ANC President Dr. J.S. Moroka, in an address to the ANC conference in
December 1951. Rather, they aimed to facilitate “co-operation between the
Europeans and the Non-Europeans”, and thus to “minimise the occasions and
remove the causes for bad relationships between the Europeans and ourselves”.
Such demands included compulsory education “on a scale commensurate with
the African population of this land”, freedom of movement to remove the “iron
chain forged for the enslavement of the African”, freedom to perform all jobs,
a say in legislation for Africans who were “part and parcel of the soil, the cli-
mate, the rugged mountains, the meandering rivers, the vast plains, the mines,
102 South Africa:The Apartheid Era
the farms, the factories and the undulating deserts of this land”, rather than
“intruders and invaders in this land”, and political representation. Concluding
the address, he declared: “We stand for an ideal: not for a person. Our ideal is
summed up in African Nationalism”. An African church would reinforce that
ideal, as it was “in the fold of your nation –the African nation –that you come
nearer to your God than in the foreign atmosphere of European churches”.6
Together with ANC Secretary General Walter Sisulu, Moroka summed up
the new/old conditions facing Africans under apartheid:
The cumulative effect of this legislation is to crush the National

Organisations of the oppressed people; to destroy the economic position of
the people and to create a reservoir of cheap labour for the farms and the
gold mines; to prevent the unity and development of the African people
towards full nationhood and to humiliate them in a host of other manners.
Therefore, they warned, the ANC would hold protests “as a prelude to the
implementation of the plan for the defiance of unjust laws”.7 In reply to a dis-
missive response from the Prime Minister’s office, Moroka and Sisulu rejected
Malan’s notion that racial differences were permanent, not “man-made”. The
question was not biological differences, they said, but “citizenship rights which
are granted in full measure to one section of the population, and completely
denied to the other by means of man-made laws artificially imposed”, in order
to “perpetuate the systematic exploitation of the African people”.8
Evaluating the result of the campaign by the end of 1952, the ANC claimed
that it allowed it to “unite the yearnings, spirits and aspirations of the African
people” under the slogan of “Freedom in our Lifetime”. And, it led to the
creation of “a mighty National organisation with thousands of members and
thousands of Volunteers, ready to work and die in the defence of their rights
and freedom”. Through these efforts, the “false and shallow doctrine of white
supremacy” was exposed, and activists put forward “the ideal of a democratic
South Africa in which all men, irrespective of race, colour, creed or sex, shall
live a happy and free life unmarred by fear, prejudice or race hatred”. However,
serious organisational problems were identified as in need for improvement.9 It
is clear from subsequent events that the Defiance Campaign set the ANC on
the road to becoming a mass movement and played an important role in the
rise of a new generation of leaders to positions of power, the likes of Mandela,
Sisulu, and Tambo.
Mandela, who played a central role in the Defiance Campaign, became
President of the Transvaal region of the ANC. In his address to the provincial
conference on 21st September 1953, he focused on “the language of action”
adopted by the people as a result of the campaign, which witnessed an “upsurge
of national consciousness”. Defiance was a step “of great political significance”,
he said, as it “released strong social forces which affected thousands of our
countrymen. It was an effective way of getting the masses to function polit-
ically, a powerful method of voicing our indignation against the reactionary
policies of the government”. But, it resulted in intensified repression and severe
restrictions on political activity as well as union organisation.
The cumulative effect of these measures was “to prop up and perpetuate the
artificial and decaying policy of the supremacy of the white men”. There was
nothing “inherently superior about the Herrenvolk idea of the supremacy of the
whites”. All over Asia –China, India, Indonesia, Korea, Malaya, and Indochina –
imperialism was driven back by “powerful and revolutionary national liber-
ation movements”. In Africa, “the entire continent is seething with discontent”,
leading to revolutionary eruptions in many countries, and “the day of reckoning
between the forces of freedom and those of reaction” was not very far off.
Inside the country, he continued, “the general political level of the people
has been considerably raised and they are now more conscious of their
strength”. The various resistance organisations which “stood miles apart from
one another” have moved together to face the common enemy: “Today we
talk of the struggle of the oppressed people which, though it is waged through
their respective autonomous organizations, is gravitating towards one central
command”. The new “M” Plan he announced aimed to consolidate the activ-
ities of Congress with greater coordination and operation at the local level to
create a mass-based movement. There was “no easy walk to freedom”, and no
energy to waste. Action required “rooting out all impurity and indiscipline from
our organization and making it the bright and shining instrument that will
cleave its way to Africa’s freedom”.10
From the CPSA to the SACP

While the early apartheid period prompted the ANC to reshape its mode of
operation, it forced the Communist Party to re-evaluate its analysis with regard
to both the national liberation struggle and white domination, facing as it did
the threat of imminent demise. In its last conference as the CPSA, shortly before
it was banned under the Suppression of Communism Act of 1950, it defined
South Africa as standing on the verge of intense national conflict and racial
oppression that was giving rise to “exclusive nationalist consciousness” among
various groups. The absence of widespread class consciousness encouraged the
Party to avoid “facile adoption of phrases and objectives” formulated elsewhere,
and to take into consideration all “the specific peculiarities that distinguish the
country and the period in which the problem has its setting”.
South Africa was distinct, the Party said, in that it combined characteristics
of “an imperialist state and a colony within a single, indivisible, geographical,
political and economic entity”. The Non-European population had no ter-
ritory of its own and was “almost wholly integrated in the political and eco-
nomic institutions of the ruling class”. It did not develop its own bourgeoisie
that could collaborate and also compete with Imperial and settler forces. The
key political and economic positions were held by the white ruling class, which
reserved the most desirable jobs “to members of its own racial group”.Through
land dispossession and labour exploitation, “Non-European peoples have been
forcibly integrated into a common society with the Europeans”, who in turn
adopted measures “to pin the Non-Europeans down in a position of infer-
iority”. Segregation policies were meant to prevent competition with the white
ruling class: “this rigidity of the race-class divisions, the feudalistic organisation
into ‘estates’ with all Non-Europeans relegated into groups of inferior status”,
set South Africa apart both from free capitalist countries and colonies.
Capitalism developed in South Africa “on the basis of, by means of, race dis-
crimination”. Lifting racial restrictions was not an option for liberal capitalists
because it would result in the demise of capitalism itself since it could not be
replaced by a black African bourgeoisie, which was “small, fragmentary, pinned
down in the poorest areas, forced to use subterfuge and illegalities to evade dis-
criminating laws, starved of capital, and exposed to constant insecurity”. It was
not a class that could provide effective leadership. In reference to the old ANC
guard of the 1930s and 1940s –the picture changed later on in the 1950s –
the Party saw African political leaders as not grounded in class relations, being
largely “teachers, church ministers and professional men”, employed in State or
European-dominated institutions. They were “handicapped by their dependent
economic status”.Their organisations usually raised “vague, often contradictory,
and at times conciliatory” demands, thus showing “a tremendous capacity for
evasiveness and ambiguity”.
Instead of focusing on land, labour, and economic issues, “national [African]
organisations tend to take refuge in negative and defeatist tactics”, the Party said,
frequently “wrapped up in fierce-sounding revolutionary phrases” such as non-
cooperation and boycott, thus playing into the hands of white racists. In effect,
that made them “turn their backs on political struggle, isolate themselves from
the Europeans, and, in short, accept segregation”. Such racial logic inevitably
led to internal divisions: “Nationalism need not be synonymous with racialism,
but it can avoid being so only if it recognises the class alignments that cut across
racial divisions”. Added to conceptual weaknesses was the “fatal absence of dis-
cipline and organisation” of nationalist movements, a big gap between verbal
declarations and practical actions, and lack of follow-up on resolutions.
The Party acknowledged that nationalist demands such as the abolition of
the pass laws and of segregation, and the removal of land or job restrictions,
had a class dimension, but they needed to be linked to the struggle against
capitalism, “by showing that the colour bar is primarily a technique of exploit-
ation for private profit” and ensuring the role of class-conscious workers in the
national movement. A revolutionary party of “workers, peasants, intellectuals
and petty bourgeoisie, linked together in a firm organisation”, with a pro-
gramme of struggle against discrimination, was needed, “in alliance with the
class conscious European workers and intellectuals”. The goal of such a party
would be “national liberation, that is, the abolition of race discrimination”, and
it could work with the Communists: “it is for us to develop in the workers of
all races a positive class consciousness, based on the unity of the African, Indian,
European and Coloured proletariat against capitalism and for Socialism”.11
Addressing white people specifically, the Party asserted that it was largely up
to them, as those with a monopoly on political rights, to decide “whether the
struggle is to be peaceful, or whether it will involve all South Africa in bitter,
costly and violent conflict”.12
Although the Party was dissolved in 1950, it was secretly reconstituted three
years later as the South African Communist Party (SACP). Before and after
that development, many members continued to operate in other frameworks
such as the ANC, engage in debates about analysis and strategy among them-
selves, and in public. Michael Harmel, perhaps the Party’s chief theorist, argued
in his analysis that white classes in South Africa were no different from their
counterparts in the developed world, while Africans and non-white groups
were similar to other colonised populations in their “colonial” living standards,
denial of political rights, and disrupted economic and cultural development.
As a result, “the relationship between the white rulers of South Africa and the
non-white masses is essentially imperialistic”. There were two nations in South
Africa, “occupying the same state, side by side in the same area. White South
Africa is a semi-independent imperialist state: Black South Africa is its colony.
This almost unique dualism of South Africa has its roots in our history”.
Following in the footsteps of Kautsky, discussed in Chapter 1, Harmel
distinguished between colonies where Europeans came “to get rich quick
and go home”, leaving “the native populations, for the most part, in the
possession of their lives, and much of their land”, and other colonies where
settlers organised “ruthless warfare against the indigenous peoples”, using force
to deprive them of “their ancestral land”, all but exterminating them. In the
first type, “the imperialists leaned heavily on the pre-capitalist ruling classes
(feudal princes and tribal chiefs) as a means of maintaining their hold and pre-
serving stability”, hampering development along capitalist lines; in the second
type, settlers “brought with them fully developed capitalist relationships and
techniques”. Once they overcame the resistance of the indigenous populations,
“the newly-conquered territories provided ideal conditions for the very rapid
development and expansion of capitalism”. He did not specify but India and
Nigeria might have been examples of Harmel’s first type, while Canada and
Australia were of the second type.
South Africa belonged to neither of these types, Harmel said. Settlers worked
largely on the basis of pre-capitalist relations and “they were not strong enough
to completely dispossess, still less to eliminate, the vigorous African tribes”.
Against that background, with the rise of diamond and gold mining in the late
19th century,“South Africa came dramatically and overwhelmingly into the pic-
ture of modem capitalist imperialism” but needed “a mass, stable, cheap labour
force of the colonial type”.That called for reshaping the political and economic
system: whites were entrenched “as a privileged oligarchy, providing a stable and
reliable basis of government” and Africans “were dispossessed of most of their
remaining land and squatting rights, pauperized and driven by a complex of
economic and legal measures, backed up by a massive police and administrative
system, to sell their labour-power at sub-economic rates”. Modern South Africa
was thus founded on “the subjection of the non-European population and the
super- profits derived from the colonial- type exploitation of their labour”,
making it both “an imperialist state and a colonial country”.
The entire system was challenged by the growth of a liberation movement
with specific features, “a movement of workers and peasants, professional
people, middle and commercial classes”, in which the progressive working-
class tendency played a leading role. The absence of an indigenous bourgeoisie
and the presence of “the imperialist oppressor” inside the country, gave rise
to core demands for democracy, equal rights and opportunities for all, not
for “national independence”. The economic content of national liberation in
South Africa centred on demands for redistribution of resources rather than
bourgeois-liberal demands, due to “the virtual exclusion of the non-white
peoples, especially the Africans, from the commercial and other opportunities
which the development of imperialism afforded to a small minority in other
colonies”.13
Although Harmel emphasised that the national question had to be taken
seriously, not merely as a derivative of the class question, he paid no attention
to any national content in the common meaning of culture, language, ethnic
heritage, and values. That was the norm in Marxist theory at the time, with
few exceptions, such as Lionel Forman, who was a sole voice arguing for the
importance of culture and language as legitimate expressions of national iden-
tity, despite the use made of them as divisive concepts by the apartheid regime.
Most other participants in exchanges on the topic focused on national liber-
ation as the struggle for equality of rights uniting all oppressed groups in South
Africa, seeing ethno-cultural nationalism as a force of separation.14
In a major statement, Party leader Moses Kotane urged a shift away from a
focus on the “backward and reactionary ideology of the Nationalist [Afrikaner]
leaders”, which aimed to impose “a crude system of White supremacy and
Non-White inferiority”. Of greater importance, he argued, were the historical
roots of the system in “the basic structure of South Africa”, with its “predom-
inance of financial and gold-mining groups in alliance with the big farming
interests”, generating “vast super-profits derived from the exploitation of the
Non-White masses, who are regarded purely as sources of cheap labour”. In
other words, he urged a focus on apartheid as a class system rather than a racial
ideology. The white middle and working classes were given privileges “with a
view to buying their support” and maintaining the stability of the system. The
Afrikaner Nationalists who gave rise to apartheid pushed to an extreme ten-
dencies that had existed already for decades.
The way forward, Kotane said, was not to return to a milder form of White
supremacy but to emancipate the majority of the people from “oppression and
serfdom” by creating a multiracial democracy. The only force that worked for
that was “the national liberation movement of the Non-European peoples”.
White Liberals and reformists were on the retreat while the alliance of the
ANC and South African Indian Congress “held the fort for democracy and
rallied the people to resistance”, with “the biggest and most important mass
action ever carried out by the oppressed people of South Africa”.
The presence of “disrupters” who caused division and confusion in the ranks
of mass movements, inside the Congress organisations and outside of them,
was a problem, even if these were not meant to offer a uniform perspective
but rather act as “united fronts of all sections of an oppressed nationality who
seek liberation and democracy”. To overcome internally destructive exchanges,
Kotane pointed out to the proposed “Congress of the People of South Africa
to draw up a Freedom Charter”, as a step to be taken towards “uniting the
great majority of the people of this country against Fascism and opening the
way forward for a democratic South Africa”. It was particularly important to
mobilise the rural masses, “the landless millions in the countryside”, who were
“crying out for land, freedom and a better life”. It was the duty of the urban-
based liberation movements to help them organise “peasant associations and
agricultural workers’ unions to struggle for more land and higher farm wages,
for the right to security and freedom from pass laws, forced labour and other
forms of oppression”.
The role of white people was another issue Kotane raised. Many were
unhappy with apartheid policies, he said, but felt unable to challenge them.
The nominal opposition of the [white liberal] United Party and its media were
busy trying to reach a compromise with the Afrikaner Nationalists, to create
an impression of stability and harmony and thus “protect capital investments
and to encourage overseas financiers to invest more capital in South Africa”.
The Congress of Democrats [COD], consisting mostly of white former CPSA
members, was not big enough to pose an alternative on its own. The struggle
against the apartheid regime required an alliance between white progressives
and “the great Non-White democratic majority” to create “a movement of
people who are bound together by common ties, not of colour or language but
of principle”. Principles of freedom, rights, and equality would be enshrined in
a Freedom Charter to be realised “when the basic colour bar structure of South
Africa has been abolished and replaced by a people’s democratic state”.15
The Freedom Charter and Africanism

The idea of a Freedom Charter was raised earlier at the ANC’s annual confer-
ence in December 1953. It took more than a year of grassroots organising to
culminate in the Congress of the People in Kliptown, Johannesburg on 25th–
26th June 1955. The Charter became the banner of the Congress movement
in coming years. In the name of “We, the People of South Africa”, it declared
that “South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white”. The people,
who were “robbed of their birthright to land, liberty and peace by a form of
government founded on injustice and inequality”, wished to live “in brother-
hood, enjoying equal rights and opportunities”. That could be ensured only by
“a democratic state, based on the will of all the people”, without distinction “of
colour, race, sex or belief ”. Under the slogan The People Shall Govern! It called
for the right to vote for all, ensuring that “the rights of the people shall be the
same, regardless of race, colour or sex”. All National Groups Shall Have Equal
Rights! it said, calling for “equal status in the bodies of state, in the courts and
in the schools for all national groups and races”. All people should have “equal
right to use their own languages, and to develop their own folk culture and
customs; All national groups shall be protected by law against insults to their
race and national pride”.
A long list of social demands ensued. Under the call The People Shall Share in
the Country’s Wealth! it included the demand that “the mineral wealth beneath
the soil, the Banks and monopoly industry shall be transferred to the ownership
of the people as a whole”, and under the call The Land Shall be Shared Among
Those Who Work It! a list of specific demands regarding land was included, pri-
marily that “restriction of land ownership on a racial basis shall be ended, and
all the land re-divided amongst those who work it, to banish famine and land
hunger”. Further demands for human rights, work and security, learning and
culture, housing, health, food, peace and friendship, followed, ending with the
declaration: “These freedoms we will fight for, side by side, throughout our
lives, until we have won our liberty”.16
Two questions became central to debates about the Charter. The first
was whether it qualified as a socialist programme, a concern raised both by
right-wingers and Africanists. In response, Nelson Mandela called it “a revolu-
tionary document” because the changes it called for could not be won without
“breaking up the economic and political set-up of present South Africa”.There
was a need for “stubborn and determined mass struggles to defeat the economic
and political policies of the Nationalist Government”, based on “the concrete
and immediate demands of the people from area to area”. But, he added, it
was not “a blue-print for a socialist state”. Rather, it was “a programme for the
unification of various classes and groupings amongst the people on a demo-
cratic basis”. The Charter did not contemplate “profound economic and pol-
itical changes” of a socialist nature. Its declaration “The People Shall Govern!”
envisaged transfer of power not to any single class but “to all the people of
this country be they workers, peasants, professional men or petty-bourgeoisie”.
Breaking up monopolies and turning over “the national wealth of the country”
to the people would “open up fresh fields for the development of a prosperous
Non-European bourgeois class”. As a result, “trade and private enterprise will
boom and flourish as never before”, offering “immense opportunities for an
over-all improvement in the material conditions of all classes and groups”.17
The question of socialism was of particular concern for many because it was
linked to another, more pressing issue –the role of the Communist Party and
generally of white intellectuals and activists in the formulation of the Charter
and the struggle as a whole. This was reflected in debates over the meanings of
the notion of “the People”. Different conceptualisations of “the People” co-
existed in the Charter, ranging from seeing it as a unified entity to a binary div-
ision between black and white (on an equal basis), to multiple national groups
and races –terms that might have been synonymous –with their languages and
cultures, to a focus on individuals. Whether groups, however defined, had col-
lective rights beyond the rights of members as equal citizens was not discussed
explicitly. Of interest here is that the call for the meeting was made by “four
bodies, speaking for the four sections of the people of South Africa” albeit
working together in the same movement. That was a reference to the four
racial groups defined by the state, each with its “own” Congress. And yet, the
core apartheid idea of racial divisions as the basis for the social and political
order was challenged.18 How to reconcile the existence of groups in practice,
without recognising them as legitimate or natural categories, was a question
that remained without an obvious answer for years to come.
Lionel “Rusty” Bernstein, Member of the Communist Party and compiler
of the Charter, said in retrospect that the most famous sentence in the docu-
ment, “South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white”, was the least
controversial part of the document for him, but it triggered a bitter dispute that
eventually resulted in a split in the ANC between non-racialists and Africanists.19
The former adopted a vision that encompassed all South Africans regardless of
their background. As prominent academic and activist Z.K. Matthews put it:
The nationalism which we express is not the narrow nationalism which

seeks to exclude others from South African nationhood as we are excluded
today but a broad nationalism which is all-inclusive, with no position of
special privilege for any group such as we find is the case in this country
today. The right of self-determination which we claim is not a right to set
up some sort of Bantustan in some undefined and undefinable place, but a
right to equal opportunity in all spheres of life in South Africa as a whole.20
Africanists, in contrast, focused on indigenous people as the moral core of

the nation and rejected any dilution of their role in the struggle. With the
ANC becoming merely one of “the Congresses” that represented different
racial groups, rather than a voice for Africans only, it seemed to some as if
it were losing its distinctive identity.21 Already in the early 1950s a group of
young members began to challenge the direction taken by the ANC towards
forming alliances with organisations such as the South African Indian Congress,
which played a role in the Defiance Campaign. Unlike Mandela and his Youth
League comrades, who moved to senior positions in the mainstream movement,
other activists stuck to undiluted Africanism.They regarded the ANC as having
fallen under the control of the banned Communist Party, which was supposedly
using well-funded publications and Front organisations (such as the COD),
as well as considerable financial resources to entice fickle African leaders to
follow its lead. That the Party, in their view, was controlled by wealthy Jews and
Indians, contemptuous towards Africans, did nothing to endear it in their eyes.
Communism thus became a code word for the undesirable influence of non-
Africans in what was essentially a struggle for the national liberation of African
people in their own homeland.22
Leading Africanist Potlako Leballo defined the struggle as “both nationalist
and democratic”, involving “the restoration of the land to its rightful owners –
the Africans”. That definition divided combatants into “the conquered and the
conquerors, the invaded and the invader, the dispossessed and the dispossesor”.
The national struggle had to do with rights rather than numbers, and both sides
were “held together by a common history and are, in the struggle, carrying out
the task imposed by history”. For whites, the task was “the maintenance and
retention of the spoils passed on to them by their forefathers”, and for Africans,
“the overthrow of the foreign yoke and the reclamation of ‘the land of our
fathers’ ”. At the same time, the struggle was also for democracy. Africans were
both “the rightful owners of the land” and the majority of the population. The
ANC leadership and its allies were preoccupied with the democratic aspect of
the struggle “to the total exclusion, nay even the open renunciation and denun-
ciation of the Nationalistic” aspect.23
That the ANC abandoned the nationalist aspect of the struggle was not a
coincidence, Africanists said, but rather the result of a hostile takeover of the
Congress movement by the COD, which sought “to destroy what the African
people have laboured so hard to create”. The “Kliptown Charter” was not a
Charter of Africans “for the simple reason that the African is not prepared to
forfeit his claim to his fatherland as the Kliptown Charter basically implies”
with its notion that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white.
To accept that would be “to betray the struggle for independence waged not
only here, but by African Nationalists throughout Africa”. The struggle was
not racial but national, “the struggle of the indigenous oppressed group against
an alien oppressing group” waged over “the control of the machinery for the
upholding of material interests”. It was a “clash of economic interests between
an alien ruling class and an indigenous subject class”, but not an orthodox class
struggle: “It is a national struggle. The African nation has been organised into a
national organisation to guide and control its national liberation movement. It
is, therefore, evident even on a theoretical basis our national form of organisa-
tion is unassailable”.
Against this basic notion, the mainstream ANC sought “to pervert African
nationalism or to destroy its purpose”. It talked about race, which was a “myth”
or “fetish” or “illusion”. Socially, race was “a subtle weapon in the service of
vested interests”. African Nationalism recognised only one “race”, the Human
Race. Therefore, argued the Africanists, they recognised
only our interest, the National interest to which every other interest,
whether of the individual or group is secondary and subservient. To the
African Nationalist co-operation can only be National Co-operation in
the service of one and indivisible interest, Namely, Afrika, our Fatherland.
There were no “racial minorities”, only “national minorities”, which “the

one and indivisible interest, Afrika, takes into account and seeks to accommo-
date on the single and minimum condition of subservience to itself ”.
Africanist opposition to the Freedom Charter centred on the claim that it
was not a genuine ANC document, representing the interests of the oppressed
people of South Africa, but rather a product of “those of the oppressing aliens
in it”, emanating “from the Vodka Cocktail parties of Parktown and Lower
Houghton [wealthy Johannesburg suburbs]”, where members of the COD lived
as “part of the ruling class in South Africa”. Ostensibly they fought for “pro-
gressive” South Africa but in reality they were “concerned with the mainten-
ance of the status quo”, as were members of the South African Indian Congress,
part of “the Indian Merchant Class”, who were politically repressed but not
economically oppressed, being “an exploiting alien group”. The Charter failed
to realise that recognising the existence of a European national group or an
Asian one in Africa was “a serious anomaly, a contradiction in terms”. For alien
nationals to become African nationals, Africanists said, they had to “restore the
control of the country to the Africans and be nationalised by them”.24
Following an acrimonious process of separation, the Africanists left the ANC
to form a competing movement, the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC), which
had its inaugural congress in April 1959. In his opening speech, PAC President
Robert Sobukwe placed the organisation firmly as part of “the entire nation-
alist movements in Afrika”, which were “the core, the basic units, the individual
cells of that large organism envisaged, namely, the United States of Afrika; a
union of free, sovereign independent democratic states of Afrika”. For that,
White supremacy had to be destroyed, which was what “the nationalists on the
continent are setting out to do. They all are agreed that the African majority
must rule”. Africanists, he said, believed “there is only one race to which we all
belong, and that is the human race”. However, many national groups existed
in South Africa, with their own historical experiences: Europeans were “a
foreign minority group, which has exclusive control of political, economic,
social and military power”. They dominate, exploit, and dispossess the African
majority. Alongside them there is “the Indian foreign minority group”. Unlike
Europeans, they did not come to Africa “as imperialists or colonialists, but as
indentured labourers”.They were an oppressed minority, but the merchant class
among them, which provided their political leadership, became “tainted with
the virus of cultural supremacy and national arrogance”.
Africans were the indigenous group and majority of the population, “the
most ruthlessly exploited and [they] are subjected to humiliation, degradation
and insult”. The African masses constituted
the key and centre and content of any struggle for true democracy in South
Africa. And the African people can be organised only under the banner
of African nationalism in an All-African Organisation where they will by
themselves formulate policies and programmes and decide on the methods
of struggle without interference from either so-called left-wing or right-
wing groups of the minorities who arrogantly appropriate to themselves
the right to plan and think for the Africans.
In this way they could establish a genuine democracy “in which all men will
be citizens of a common state and will live and be governed as individuals and
not as distinctive sectional groups”.
Sobukwe rejected the idea of South African exceptionalism, which called
for a special solution, as South Africa was “an integral part of the indivisible
whole that is Afrika”. Its history fostered group prejudices and hostilities, and
the notion of multi-racialism would replicate “these very antagonisms and
conflicts … pandering to European bigotry and arrogance”. It was a way of
“safeguarding white interests, implying as it does, proportional representation
irrespective of population figures”. In that sense it was “a complete negation of
democracy”. The PAC supported rather a “government of the Africans by the
Africans, for the Africans, with everybody who owes his only loyalty to Afrika
and who is prepared to accept the democratic rule of an African majority being
regarded as an African”. There was no need for minority rights for groups,
only individual rights, with “the most equitable distribution of wealth” aiming
at “full development of the human personality and a ruthless uprooting and
outlawing of all forms or manifestations of the racial myth” –in summary, “an
Africanist Socialist Democracy”.25
The pan-Africanist Manifesto, adopted at the founding congress, provided a
historical background for the conquest and liberation of Africa, regarding South
Africa in that context:
For exactly three-hundred and seven years today [since 1652], the African
people have been criminally oppressed, ruthlessly exploited and inhumanly
degraded. They have in the past, as they do now, declared themselves for
freedom. They reject white domination in any shape or form.
For them, “there can be no room in any way or in any part of Africa for any
non-indigenous peoples who deny to the indigenous populations their funda-
mental right to control their own material and spiritual interests effectively”.
However, a section of the black leadership [ANC] fell under the influence of a
section of the white ruling class [COD] and
is fighting for the maintenance of the status quo. It is fighting for the
‘constitutional guarantees’ or ‘national rights’ for our alien nationals. It has
completely abandoned the objective of freedom. It has joined the ranks
of the reactionary forces. It is no longer within the ranks of the liberation
movement.
For particular criticism the Manifesto targeted the notion that South Africa
belonged to all who lived in it, black and white, which meant treating as equal
“the foreign master and his indigenous slave, the white exploiter and the
African exploited, the foreign oppressor and the indigenous oppressed … the
subject Africans and their European overloads”. There was a need to create “an
effective bulwark against the forces of imperialism, colonialism, herrenvolkism
and tribalism, and as a sure and lasting foundation for an Africanist Socialist
democracy”. Africans would “not tolerate the existence of the other national
groups within the confines of one nation”. It was imperative “that all individuals
must owe their first, and only, loyalty to the African nation”. In South Africa,
African nationalism was the force upholding “the material, intellectual and spir-
itual interest of the oppressed people” by consolidating “the bonds of African
nationhood on a Pan-African basis”, implementing the fundamental principle
that “the dominion or sovereignty over and the dominion or ownership in the
whole territory of the continent rest exclusively and inalienably in the indi-
genous peoples”.26
The ANC dismissed the Africanist criticisms as “a crude appeal to African
racialism as a reply to White arrogance and oppression”. It was “inverted
racialism, foreign to the spirit and traditions of the African people, and more
in line with the Afrikaner Nationalist Party than with the progressive liber-
ationist nationalism of Congress”. Africa and its peoples suffered too much from
racialism and the “master race” ideology to adopt racial exclusiveness doctrines,
said Walter Sisulu. But, he acknowledged that many shared the belief that “the
salvation of our people lies in a fanatical African racialism and denunciation of
everything that is not African”. In South Africa, “where the Whites dominate
everything, and where ruthless laws are ruthlessly administered and enforced”,
it was natural that anti-white hostility would grow: “In certain circumstances,
an emotional mass-appeal to destructive and exclusive nationalism can be a
dynamic and irresistible force in history”.27
Joe Matthews of the ANC and SACP pointed out that the Africanists
claimed to be a national movement but instead of unifying the ranks they were
dividing them. Normally, nationalists “sink their political, religious and other
differences in the interests of the struggle”. They do not start witch-hunts of
“communists” or “Charterists”. Instead of creating a movement, the Africanists
were “disrupters of the national movement in the interests of the ruling class
which they assist objectively”.28 Instead of seeking to draw potential oppos-
itional forces into a united front against apartheid they were doing the opposite,
driving away those who were not part of the African majority by denying
their rights after independence. This had nothing to do with preserving the
privileged position of dominant minority groups, “exercised at the expense
of the majority”, since the aims of the African people “can clearly not be to
replace the present set-up with one in which minorities are suppressed”.29
In its first annual conference after the split, in December 1958, the ANC
re-asserted its commitment to alliances. Given that the whites-only elections
of that year returned the apartheid government to power, in an even harsher
version under Hendrik Verwoerd’s leadership, there seemed to be “no force in
the white community in any foreseeable future that will defeat the Nationalist
Party”. Only the combined struggle efforts “of the oppressed non-whites,
working with white freedom lovers on the basis of equality, mutual respect and
friendship” could defeat apartheid, said Albert Luthuli.
Luthuli embraced multi-racialism explicitly: “Our noble calling is to create
spiritually homogeneous multi-racial communities resting on a broad cultural
base enriched by the cultural variations making up our multi-racial society: a
kind of Unity in Diversity”. Africans had no desire to dominate others “by
virtue of the superior numbers of our racial group”. Rather they worked for
“the corporate multi-racial society in which the criterion of recognition as a
citizen will not rest on class or racial considerations but on loyalty to multi-
racial South Africa on the basis of democratic universal suffrage”. The ANC
was opposed to “a racial majority masquerading as a democratic majority, as it is
opposed to a minority of any kind, racial or otherwise, dominating over others
because, for some reason, it seized the full control of the State”.
Without mentioning the Africanists by name, Luthuli clearly had them in
mind when he said that recognising the multi-racial reality must find expres-
sion in “a co-operation in the struggle that embraces all progressive liberation
forces”. It made sense strategically and it was a principled point:
even with the potential at our command to go it alone in the struggle for
freedom, respect for other freedom lovers in other racial groups in our
country would demand that we invite them to be our comrades-in-arms in
the fight for freedom, if we are to co-operate with them as equals and with
a deeper appreciation and trust of one another in the truly free democratic
South Africa we are working for. Such a co-operation, born of comrade-
ship in the struggle would be the surest guarantee against the arrogance,
now and after victory, of would-be political exclusivists-dictators. There is
no other way by which we can show our earnest and concern for the cre-
ation of a democratic multi-racial South Africa.30
After its formal launch the PAC did receive an explicit mention in a report
submitted to the ANC’s 1959 annual conference. The report asserted the need
to balance between the imperative of unity in the anti-apartheid struggle and
that of separate representation for groups with distinct concerns stemming
from “oppression of a special sort”, particularly Africans whose “immediate
grievances, aims and outlook … daily needs and aspirations” were not iden-
tical to those of other groups, “however identical their long-term aim of liber-
ation might be”. The way forward was “the way of separate but allied fraternal
organisations” to meet both the specific needs of each group and allow joint
effort against the common enemy. The Africanists misrepresented this inter-
racial cooperation as dilution of the voice of Africans, but their primary goal
was to sow confusion among them in order to undermine the ANC, rather than
engage in militant struggle.31
The PAC did highlight at the time the Status Campaign, fighting the sense of
inferiority inculcated among Africans and seeking to “exorcise this slave men-
tality, and to impart to the African masses that sense of self-reliance which will
make them choose ‘to starve in freedom rather than have plenty in bondage’
… and assert their personality”.The campaign aimed to respond to insulting or
belittling language used to address black people, such as calling adults “boys”,
and in that way free the minds of Africans: “once the mind is free, the body
will soon be free. Once white supremacy has become mentally untenable to
our people, it will become physically untenable too, and will go”. Sobukwe
regarded the issue as more important than bread and butter concerns, which
treated the African as an “economic animal”: it was only those “who have been
herrenvolkenised by their herrenvolk environment, people who have no idea
whatsoever of the African personality, who can expect us to be lick-spittles in
order to get more crumbs from the oppressor”.32
The Status Campaign had not got off the ground by the end of the year,
when another cause was adopted by the PAC, the anti-Pass campaign, which the
ANC had already highlighted as a central concern for 1960. Both organisations
were responding to growing mass anger towards restrictions on movement, edu-
cation, and land, imposed by the apartheid government, which was moving in
the opposite direction to the rest of the continent, where a process of decolon-
isation was proceeding apace. As British prime minister, Harold Macmillan, put
it in his 1960 speech to the South African Parliament, nationalism has become
a global phenomenon, “awakening of national consciousness in peoples who
have for centuries lived in dependence upon some other power”. Macmillan
noted “the strength of this African national consciousness” which took different
forms in different places but was “happening everywhere”. He added:
The wind of change is blowing through this continent, and, whether we

like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact. We
must all accept it as a fact, and our national policies must take account
of it.33
In that context, the PAC announced a national campaign of protest, when

people were expected to present themselves for arrest for not carrying the passes
(permits) required of Africans to be allowed to move around white-designated
areas. That was done on very short notice, a few days only before 21 March
1960, a date chosen to upstage the planned ANC campaign, scheduled to begin
10 days later. The PAC anticipated a spontaneous eruption of mass country-
wide protests that would result in breakdown of the system of domination, but
popular response was evident in a few places only, most notably in Sharpeville,
south of Johannesburg, where marchers were met by police bullets that killed
69 of them in the infamous Sharpeville Massacre. The regime followed up by
declaring a state of emergency, arresting hundreds of activists from all oppos-
ition movements and, two weeks later, banning both the ANC and PAC. The
stage was thus set for a new phase of activism.
From MK to Rivonia and Exile

Proclaiming resistance movements unlawful started a process of driving
activists underground and into exile. The growing sense that all avenues of
legal activism were closed forced a move towards other means of resistance,
above all armed struggle, though the Congress movement continued to pursue
mass mobilisation and public pressure while it was still possible. For its part,
government continued to entrench its support among the white population
with a referendum to make South Africa a republic by 31 May 1961, thus
fulfilling a long-held Afrikaner Nationalist wish to sever ties with the British
Commonwealth. In response, the All- in African conference was convened
by the ANC and affiliated groups in Pietermaritzburg in late March 1961. It
declared “that no Constitution or form of Government decided without the
participation of the African people who form an absolute majority of the popu-
lation can enjoy moral validity”.34 A letter from Nelson Mandela to Verwoerd
urged him to call “a sovereign national convention representative of all South
Africans, to draw up a new non-racial and democratic Constitution”, to discuss
all national issues and “work out solutions which sought to preserve and safe-
guard the interests of all sections of the population”. If government failed to do
so, “country-wide demonstrations would be held on the eve of the Republic in
protest”, and a policy of non-cooperation would be put in place.35
A follow-up letter by Mandela, sent on 26th June 1961, warned Verwoerd of
an impending “full-scale and country-wide campaign for non-co-operation”.
He was given a choice: “accede to our demands and call a National Convention
of all South Africans to draw up a democratic Constitution, which will end the
frightful policies of racial oppression”, possibly saving the country “from eco-
nomic dislocation and ruin and from civil strife and bitterness”. Alternatively, he
could stay the course. But, said Mandela, “we shall never cease to fight against
repression and injustice, and we are resuming active opposition against your
regime”. This, with the knowledge that government would “unleash all its fury
and barbarity to persecute the African people” to no avail, since “no power on
earth can stop an oppressed people, determined to win their freedom”.36
Fully aware that there was no chance of a positive response, or indeed any
response to his letter from Verwoerd, Mandela issued a statement on that day,
announcing a new stage in the struggle “to make government impossible”.
That was to be a campaign of non-cooperation without giving details of tasks,
demands, and methods. The issue was phrased in general terms as the cause of
the oppressed and exploited masses:
We furnish the sinews of agriculture and industry. We produce the work

of the gold mines, the diamonds and the coal, of the farms and industry,
in return for miserable wages. Why should we continue enriching those
who steal the products of our sweat and blood? Those who exploit us and
refuse us the right to organise trade unions? Those who side with the gov-
ernment when we stage peaceful demonstrations to assert our claims and
aspirations?
In response, “The entire resources of the Black people must be mobilised

to withdraw all co-operation with the Nationalist government. Various forms
of industrial and economic action will be employed to undermine the already
tottering economy of the country”. International sanctions were needed as
well. Mandela himself was going underground, but he added: “I will not leave
South Africa, nor will I surrender. Only through hardship, sacrifice and militant
action can freedom be won. The struggle is my life. I will continue fighting for
freedom until the end of my days”.37
Without completely abandoning the quest for mass mobilisation, Mandela
and colleagues continued to pursue a different course of action, preparation
for armed struggle, which had started already after Sharpeville and culminated
in December 1961 with the launch of Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the
Nation, known as MK). Its Manifesto, of which Mandela was the principal
author, promised to “carry on the struggle for freedom and democracy by new
methods”, complementary to the actions of the established movement with
which it identified: “our members jointly and individually, place themselves
under the overall political guidance of that movement”. Why was it necessary
to form a new organisation? Because the policy of non-violence had become
untenable:
The time comes in the life of any nation when there remain only two
choices: submit or fight. That time has now come to South Africa. We shall
not submit and we have no choice but to hit back by all means within our
power in defence of our people, our future and our freedom. The govern-
ment has interpreted the peacefulness of the movement as weakness; the
people’s non-violent policies have been taken as a green light for govern-
ment violence.
There was a need to respond. The choice to abandon non-violence was

not made willingly, MK said, but they had no other option in view of the
government’s resort to martial law and use of force against peaceful protest,
as it did in Sharpeville: “Umkhonto we Sizwe will be at the front line of the
people’s defence. It will be the fighting arm of the people against the gov-
ernment and its policies of race oppression. It will be the striking force of the
people for liberty, for rights and for their final liberation!” MK asserted that
it always sought “to achieve liberation without bloodshed and civil clash”,
and still did, and it would continue to work in the best interests of the people
of this country, “black, brown and white”, whose future happiness and well-
being could not be attained “without the overthrow of the Nationalist
government, the abolition of white supremacy and the winning of liberty,
democracy and full national rights and equality for all the people of this
country”.38
It may not have been a coincidence that the armed campaign was launched
only after the Nobel Prize acceptance speech of ANC President, Albert Luthuli,
so as not to upstage him. He was not a pacifist though, making his support for
radical change clear, as “there can be no peace until the forces of oppression are
overthrown”. Africa was in the midst of a struggle for change, he said:
Our people everywhere from north to south of the continent are reclaiming
their land, their right to participate in government, their dignity as men,
their nationhood.Thus, in the turmoil of revolution, the basis for peace and
brotherhood in Africa is being restored by the resurrection of national sov-
ereignty and independence, of equality and the dignity of man.
And that process was “orderly, quick, and comparatively bloodless”, relative
to similar movements in European history. Freedom was “pursued by millions
of our people with revolutionary zeal, by means of books, representations,
demonstrations, and in some places armed force provoked by the adamancy
of white rule”. All these means aimed “to end alien rule and race oppression”,
as part of “a long tradition of struggle for our national rights”, going back
300 years: “Our history is one of opposition to domination, of protest and
refusal to submit to tyranny”.39
MK is frequently referred to as the armed “wing” of the ANC, but initially it
was a joint initiative of senior ANC and SACP activists whose operations were
not necessarily mandated by their respective organisations. The SACP was first
to explore armed initiatives, but no direct line led from that to the formation
of the MK and its High Command headed by Mandela. The precise organisa-
tional affiliation of members was less important than their position in the team,
and the question of Mandela’s membership in the Communist Party, which has
come up at various points in time over the last 60 years, and has never been
answered conclusively, is of limited interest in any event.40
Of more importance is the theoretical rationale of the new course under-
taken by the movement. A number of articles in The African Communist started
to prepare readers for that shift. For Michael Harmel, “the illusion of non-
violence as a universal and unvarying principle has all but disappeared. Today
almost everybody but the most unrealistic and dogmatic of pacifists acknow-
ledges” that, as President Bourguiba said, “in the national liberation struggle all
methods are respectable”. It was possible to achieve freedom from colonial rule
in Africa with the use of non-violent means, Harmel agreed, but less likely
with “the presence of large White minorities, with powerful vested interests,
privileges and monopolies, enjoying strong links with foreign imperialism, and
subjecting the African populations to ruthless oppression and terror”, as was the
case in Algeria, Kenya, and the whole of Southern Africa. Non-violent transi-
tion was unlikely where “colonialism of a special type prevails, with a powerful
monopoly finance-capitalist class of local Whites” enjoying the support of a
privileged population of three million, who related to the black majority as
imperialist countries relate to their colonies abroad.41
A subsequent article, written after the launch of MK and probably in response
to internal criticism, asserted that old methods were no longer sufficient “in a
situation where every democratic demand or criticism is treated as an act of
rebellion and treason”. Peaceful means remained the main method, but a more
forceful approach was needed: “In a word –before the racialist oppressors can
be made to listen to reason their ears must be opened by speaking to them in the
only language they can understand”. The struggle was a long-term prospect, and it
would be “an academic and mistaken approach for revolutionaries to observe
events in a detached spirit awaiting the situation where ‘conditions are ripe for
insurrection’. While adventurism and ‘playing with revolution’ are always to be
avoided”, Harmel said, experience in other countries such as Cuba and Algeria
showed that building armed forces, however small to begin with, was
itself a tremendously important factor, helping to ripen and mature the

revolutionary crisis, to create the conditions for victory, to act as the deton-
ator of repercussions and reverberations far beyond the calculations of those
who forget the revolutionary spirit of the masses, who attempt to gauge
the outcome of a people’s struggle against tyranny merely by counting the
size and fire-power of the units which each, at the beginning, is able to put
in the field.42
In other words, the logic of struggle could be seen only in the framework of
the overall analysis of South Africa and the strategy necessary for changing it.
That overall framework was provided later in 1962 in a key theoretical
document of the period: The Road to South African Freedom. Building on earlier
statements, the SACP defined South Africa as a system of “colonialism of a
special type”, in which “the oppressing White nation occupied the same ter-
ritory as the oppressed people themselves and lived side by side with them”.
White South Africa displayed “all the features of an advanced capitalist state in
its final stage of imperialism”, while Non-White South Africa displayed “all the
features of a colony”.These included “extreme national oppression, poverty and
exploitation, lack of all democratic rights and political domination by a group
which does everything it can to emphasise and perpetuate its alien ‘European’
character”. All these were similar to colonial territories:
Non-White South Africa is the colony of White South Africa itself. It is

this combination of the worst features both of imperialism and of coloni-
alism, within a single national frontier, which determines the special nature
of the South African system.
All white people enjoyed privileges in South Africa, but capitalists bene-
fitted the most. Therefore, “the system of colonial domination over and
robbery of the non-White masses is not in the genuine, long-term interest
of the workers, small farmers, middle-class and professional elements”, who
were the bulk of the white population.Yet, many of them were “systematically
indoctrinated with the creed of White superiority”, and imagined themselves
as part of the ruling class, acting “as a tool and an accomplice in the main-
tenance of colonialism and capitalism”. Among Africans, in contrast, there
were no “acute or antagonistic class divisions”. Intellectuals and professionals
shared “all the hardships and indignities of colonialism”. Even for business
people,
the special character of colonialism in South Africa, the seizing by Whites

of all the opportunities which in other colonial countries have led to the
growth of a national capitalist class, have strangled the development of a
class of African capitalists.
This left all positions of economic strength as a white monopoly. Thus, “the
interests of the African commercial class lie wholly in joining the workers and
rural people for the overthrow of White supremacy”. Among Africans, urban
workers comprised “the most dynamic and revolutionary force in South Africa”.
That situation called for a “unified struggle of national liberation and working
class movements”, led by the ANC, which was “representative of all the classes
and strata which make up African society in this country”.
The Communist Party fought for socialism, but its central and immediate
task was “to lead the fight for the national liberation of the non-White people”.
There was a need for a revolutionary change in the social system to put “an
end to the colonial oppression of the African and other non-White people”.
The “immediate and imperative interests” of all sections of the people required
“a national democratic revolution which will overthrow the colonialist state of
White supremacy and establish an independent state of National Democracy
in South Africa”. That would amount to “the national liberation of the African
people”, realising “the deepest interests of the other non-White groups”, and
working for the interests of “the White workers, middle class and professional
groups” by offering them “the only prospect of a decent and stable future”.43
In essence, the analysis contained in the document served the Congress
movement for the next three decades. Its crucial elements –the primary task
of national liberation combined with a range of social demands, the leading
role of Africans, especially workers, though with the support of other groups
and classes, the centrality of the ANC working together with its political allies,
including the Communist Party, the use of force without abandoning other
means of struggle –survived the years of repression, exile, underground work,
and competition from rival movements.The reason for such endurance was the
careful balance attempted between political imperatives, to meet the concerns
of different groups in society, with enough flexibility to adapt to changing
conditions and attention to local and global historical contexts.
In comparison, although the PAC attracted much popular support initially, it
failed to translate that into a long-term political gain in the absence of historic-
ally grounded analysis and evaluation of political forces and strategies. Its belief
in spontaneous action of the masses, called up on a very short notice through
evocative slogans, with no need for patient preparation or any sort of careful
planning, led to radical but short-lived spurts of action with little staying power
or impact beyond the immediate impression they created. The ANC regarded
such an approach as immature and reckless, sending hundreds of young men
to face police bullets (“desperate and suicidal violent campaigns of the Leballo
type”, as the authors of Operation Mayibuye termed it), and compared it
unfavourably to its own less spectacular but more sustainable campaign.44
The Operation Mayibuye plan was intercepted by the police in 1963 and
introduced as evidence in the Rivonia Trial against members of the MK High
Command, headed by Mandela as Accused No. One. In his statement from
the dock, Mandela asserted African nationalism as “the ideological creed
of the ANC”, which meant “freedom and fulfilment for the African people in
their own land”.The close cooperation between the ANC and the Communist
Party was based on a common goal, “the removal of white supremacy”, with
the Party as the only political group “prepared to work with the Africans for
the attainment of political rights and a stake in society” and treat them as equal
human beings. Beyond the shared aim there were disagreements, but “theoret-
ical differences amongst those fighting oppression” were an unaffordable luxury.
Mandela acknowledged the influence of Marxist ideas, and the need for “some
form of socialism to enable our people to catch up with the advanced countries
of this world and to overcome their legacy of extreme poverty”, but this did not
mean he and his colleagues were Marxists. The basic task in any event, he said,
was not socialism but “the removal of race discrimination and the attainment of
democratic rights on the basis of the Freedom Charter”, and the Party’s contri-
bution to that was welcome.
He went on to outline the goals of the struggle:“Africans want a just share in
the whole of South Africa; they want security and a stake in society”. Above all
we want equal political rights, because without them our [social] disabil-
ities will be permanent. I know this sounds revolutionary to the whites in
this country, because the majority of voters will be Africans.This makes the
white man fear democracy. But this fear cannot be allowed to stand in the
way of the only solution which will guarantee racial harmony and freedom
for all … Political division, based on colour, is entirely artificial and, when
it disappears, so will the domination of one colour group by another.
He concluded on the famous note:
During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African

people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against
black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free
society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal
opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if
needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.45
With the sentencing of the Rivonia accused to life imprisonment, followed

by a few other rounds of arrests and trials of leading activists, most notably
the leader of the defence team at Rivonia, Bram Fischer, who was sentenced
to life imprisonment in 1966, the resistance movement effectively ceased to
operate inside the country. The ANC and PAC lost any visible presence, their
leaders and members were in jail, driven underground, or living in exile.
The centre of gravity of the movement moved to other locations in Africa
and Europe. But, the political vacuum proved to be surprisingly short lived.
Already by the late 1960s/early 1970s new forces had started to emerge, with
theoretical perspectives and modes of operation that changed the internal scene
and created fresh openings for the external movements: students and the Black
Consciousness movement on the one hand, and workers and Trade Union
movements on the other.
The alliance between the SACP and the ANC was cemented by their shared
exile experience, and the conceptual apparatus developed by the Party was
adopted by the ANC. Thus, its core document on Strategy and Tactics in 1969
defined South Africa as unique: not a colony but showing the trappings of the
classical colonial framework: “Conquest and domination by an alien people, a
system of discrimination and exploitation based on race, technique of indirect
rule”. At one level South Africa was an independent state, at another it was “a
country subjugated by a minority race”. But the exploiting nation was settled
internally, with roots “embedded in our country by more than three centuries
of presence”. It was thus “an alien body only in the historical sense”.
Much of the optimism exhibited by the SACP in 1962 regarding the poten-
tial role of segments of the white population had disappeared by 1969:
apart from a small group of revolutionary whites who have an honoured

place as comrades in the struggle, we face what is by and large a united and
confident enemy that acts in alliance with, and is strengthened by, world
imperialism. All significant sections of the white political movement are in
broad agreement on the question of defeating our liberation struggle.
There would always be room in South Africa for all who lived in it, “but
only on the basis of absolute democracy”.The main content of the struggle was
“the national liberation of the largest and most oppressed group –the African
people”, which called for their maximum mobilisation “as a dispossessed and
racially oppressed nation”. That task involved “a stimulation and a deepening
of national confidence, national pride and national assertiveness”. The national
struggle was taking place in a South Africa with “a large and well-developed
working class and in which the independent expressions of the working
people –their political organs and trade unions –are very much part of the
liberation front”.
Strategically, this meant unambiguous focus on “the primary role of the most
oppressed African mass”, and full integration on an individual basis of “those
belonging to the other oppressed groups and those few white revolutionaries
who show themselves ready to make common cause with our aspirations”.
In all that, it was essential to link “national emancipation” with “economic
emancipation” and focus on the role of “the doubly oppressed and doubly
exploited working class”.46 The way thus opened to admitting members of all
racial backgrounds into the ANC, a contentious move as it seemed to dilute its
African nationalist credentials and was linked to tensions over the role of the
Communist Party in the movement.The conditions of exile made formal racial
barriers difficult to maintain, especially as the goal of the struggle was to abolish
them altogether.47
Black Consciousness
While the ANC and SACP were consolidating their political-military alliance,
inside the country a new configuration of race was emerging, with the rise
of Black Consciousness. Led by students feeling marginalised by the white-
dominated liberal student movement, with its patronising attitudes, the South
African Student Organisation (SASO) offered a new direction. Its Black
Students’ Manifesto asserted that “the black man can no longer allow definitions
that have been imposed upon him by an arrogant white world concerning his
being and his destiny”. Students had “a moral obligation to articulate the needs
and aspirations of the black community”. They were “an integral part of the
black oppressed community”, committed to “involvement in the intellectual
and physical world and to the consistent search of the black truth”. Rejecting
racist education, they were committed to “the intellectual and physical devel-
opment of our community and to the realization of liberation for black peoples
of South Africa”.There was a need “to break away from the traditional order of
subordination to whites in education and to refuse to be educated for them”,
to “encourage and promote black literature relevant to our struggle”, and to
“ensure that our education will further the preservation and promotion of what
is measured in our culture and our historical experience”.
To allow black students to “assert their pride and group identity”, SASO
focused on liberation from “psychological oppression … through inferiority
complex” and from physical oppression “accruing out of living in a white racist
society”. Black people were those who were “by law or tradition, politically,
economically and socially discriminated against as a group”. South Africa was
a country in which black and white people lived and would continue to live
together, but “whites have defined themselves as part of the problem” because
of their privileges. Therefore, “in all matters relating to the struggle towards
realizing our aspirations” they had to be excluded, and personal contact with
them to be discouraged. This was not “anti-whitism” but merely “a more posi-
tive way of attaining a normal situation in South Africa”, which called for
upholding “black consciousness and the drive towards black awareness” as a
means of getting rid of “shackles that bind us to perpetual servitude”.
Black consciousness was defined as “an attitude of mind” that meant rejecting
any value system that denies basic human dignity to black people. Rather, they
had to build up their own value systems, become aware of “power they wield as
a group, both economically and politically”; group cohesion and solidarity were
crucial. Before black people could participate openly in society as equals, “they
should first close their ranks, to form themselves into a solid group to oppose
the definite racism that is meted out by the white society, to work out their dir-
ection clearly and bargain from a position of strength”. Not to assimilate “into
an already established set of norms drawn up and motivated by white society”.48
The famous slogan, “Black man, you are on your own” epitomised the concern
with independence and self-reliance, primarily from an intellectual, political,
and cultural points of view.49
Standing out from among SASO leaders was Steve Biko who became
the leading intellectual of the movement. He focused on the need for black
students to carve an independent space for themselves within the context of
white hegemony. He rejected liberalism and multiracialism as arrogant, and
their goal of integration as extracting people from “various segregated societies
with their inbuilt complexes of superiority and inferiority”, which manifest
themselves in the “non-racial” set-up of the integrated complex. As a result,
“the integration so achieved is a one-way course, with the whites doing all the
talking and the blacks the listening”. This was not a rejection of integration as
such, but of the kind that was not based on mutual respect. As long as black
people suffered from an inferiority complex, “a result of 300 years of deliberate
oppression, denigration and derision”, they were useless as “co-architects of a
normal society where man is nothing else but man for his own sake”. That was
why black consciousness was essential, so that “blacks can learn to assert them-
selves and stake their rightful claim”.
Liberal integration provided “a vague satisfaction for the guilty-stricken
whites”, but at the back of the white liberal’s mind was a constant reminder
“that he is quite comfortable as things stand and therefore should not bother
about change”. This perspective was misleading, Biko said, because
in oppression the blacks are experiencing a situation from which they are
unable to escape at any given moment. Theirs is a struggle to get out of
the situation and not merely to solve a peripheral problem as in the case
of the liberals.
White people were unwilling and unable to give up their privileges:

“no matter what a white man does, the colour of his skin –his passport to
privilege –will always put him miles ahead of the black man”. In the ultimate
analysis, “no white person can escape being part of the oppressor camp”.50
Biko recognised of course that black South Africans suffered from “material
want” but saw “spiritual poverty” as a greater concern.The logic of white dom-
ination was “to prepare the black man for the subservient role in this country”
and to a large extent that process of dehumanisation created “a kind of black
man who is man only in form”, men who lost their manhood and looked with
awe at white power and accepted their inferior position: “All in all the black
man has become a shell, a shadow of man, completely defeated, drowning in his
own misery, a slave, an ox bearing the yoke of oppression with sheepish tim-
idity”. The first step was
to make the black man come to himself; to pump back life into his empty
shell; to infuse him with pride and dignity, to remind him of his complicity
in the crime of allowing himself to be misused and therefore letting evil
reign supreme in the country of his birth.
That was the meaning of “Black Consciousness”. It required restoring the

past, seeking “to rewrite the history of the black man and to produce in it
the heroes who form the core of the African background”, because “a people
without a positive history is like a vehicle without an engine”. In that process,
the values of African culture, a sense of community, caring for others, com-
munication, and the human touch, were important, as was the need for “black
theology”, which showed that Christianity was “an adaptable religion that fits
in with the cultural situation of the people to whom it is imparted”, with a role
in the “re-awakening of the sleeping masses”.51
In reflections on the issue, from a presentation in December 1971, Biko
highlighted the political and mental aspects of black consciousness:
Black people –real black people –are those who can manage to hold
their heads high in defiance rather than willingly surrender their souls to
the white man … Black Consciousness is in essence the realisation by the
black man of the need to rally together with his brothers around the cause
of their oppression –the blackness of their skin –and to operate as a group
in order to rid themselves of the shackles that bind them to perpetual ser-
vitude … It seeks to infuse the black community with a new-found pride
in themselves, their efforts, their value systems, their culture, their religion
and their outlook to life.
The focus on culture and consciousness ran counter to class analysis for the
most part. Biko spoke about haves (whites) and have-nots (blacks) and denied
there were workers “in the classical sense” among white South Africans:“even the
most down-trodden white worker still has a lot to lose if the system is changed”.
Such analysis identified race –“the greatest single determinant for political
action” –while also mentioning class by describing black people “as the only
real workers in South Africa”.There was no prospect of class alliance across racial
boundaries since poor whites had to display “an exaggerated reactionary attitude
towards blacks”. Hence, “the greatest anti-black feeling is to be found amongst
the very poor whites whom the Class Theory calls upon to be with black workers
in the struggle for emancipation”.White racism was “the one force against which
all of us are pitted”, and it was helped by people’s refusal “to club together as
blacks because we are told to do so would be racialist”. Using Hegelian terms, the
thesis was white racism and there was one antithesis, “solid black unity to coun-
terbalance the scale”. South Africa could become a land where black and white
people lived in harmony but only “when these two opposites have interplayed
and produced a viable synthesis of ideas and a modus vivendi”.52
Organising on a separate racial basis was a measure aimed at restoring black
people’s sense of self and ability to speak for themselves, preconditions for inde-
pendent political action in the context of historical marginalisation. Biko and
his colleagues did not see it as desirable in itself but as a way to enable cooper-
ation on an equal basis in the future. Inevitably though, many white progressives
saw it as a rejection of their efforts to transform society, causing tensions among
student activists.
One voice seeking to address that problem was Durban academic Richard
Turner, who argued that white liberals were a relatively minor force, not a chief
agent in the fight against apartheid. Black activists were right in not relying
on their help and working on their own rather. But, it was wrong of them to
lump white “liberals”, with their “arrogant, paternalistic and basically insulting”
attitudes, together with radicals who were critical of white European culture
and wanted both blacks and whites to go beyond it. He added that there was
a need to separate “the fact that any political policy/strategy in South Africa
must have as its unquestionable basis the objective of satisfying the needs of the
black masses, irrespective of whether this clashes with white interests” from “the
idea that one must go along with the policy/strategy of any particular black
leader just because he/she claims to be aiming at that goal”. The validity of an
argument cannot be decided on the basis of the racial identity of the activists
who make it, nor should it be an outcome of refusal to engage critically due to
white guilt feelings, however justified these may be. Even if a tactical division
of labour between white and black opponents of apartheid was necessary, “the
results of their activities will be interrelated, and so will benefit from conscious
co-ordination”.
White activists had to re-evaluate their role in the struggle to avoid reprodu-
cing the relations of inequality in the society at large, Turner argued, and black
activists needed to re-evaluate the notion that they had an immediate access to
all black people and no access at all to white people: with both “the question of
political action and the question of communication” there was “a difference of
degree, rather than of kind, between black and white”. Crucially, both of them
were oppressed, in different ways, “by a social system which perpetuates itself
by creating white lords and black slaves, and no full human beings. Material
privilege is bought at the cost of mental atrophy”. White radicals were not a
major political force, true, but many of them had skills which made them useful
in political activity. Further, they could be effective in changing white con-
sciousness. They would not lead the struggle but were essential to it, because
to facilitate transformation “there should be as many whites as possible who
want to become full human beings and who recognise that to do so requires
co-operation with all their fellows in changing South Africa”.53
It is important to keep in mind that SASO (and black consciousness as a
broad movement) emerged in an environment that had seen the mass-based
liberation movements of the ANC and PAC driven out of the country. That
situation allowed a student group to become more prominent than would be
the case in “normal” circumstances. Initially at least they were able to operate
relatively unhindered, as long as they restricted themselves to the world of
ideas. That seemed to suit them well at first, as their sense of mission was that
of an educated elite with “an obligation towards making available their skills
and techniques for the development and conscientization” of black workers,
seeking to “conscientise them about their role and obligation toward black
development”.54 That was hardly a viable plan: students could tell themselves
they were a political vanguard but workers might have resented the idea that
they had to be tutored by young, albeit better-educated, people with a superior
attitude. Further, student politics usually relies on enthusiastic commitment that
is bound to be short-lived because of frequent turnover of activists, making a
long-term strategy difficult to sustain without closer links to broader society.
With this background, a new umbrella-type formation was created beyond
campus boundaries under the banner of black consciousness –the Black
Peoples’ Convention (BPC). It addressed “Africans, Coloureds and Indians”
who comprised the Black community in South Africa and were deprived
of the inalienable right “to have a political voice to articulate and realise the
aspiration of members”. It aimed “to unite and solidify Black people with a
view to liberating and emancipating them from both psychological and phys-
ical oppression”.55 In the preamble to the BPC Constitution, it spoke in the
name of “the Black People of South Africa”, whose needs, aspirations, ideals,
and goals could be realised only through “the effectiveness, relevance and cap-
ability of Black political movements” to achieve liberation and emancipa-
tion. Black people in South Africa needed to unite and “re-assess their pride,
human dignity, group identity and solidarity through a political movement”
that would “articulate and aggregate” their needs and represent them nationally
and internationally.
The aims of the BPC were:
• To unite and solidify the Black people of South Africa with a view to
liberating and emancipating them from both psychological and physical
oppression.
• To preach, popularise and implement the philosophy of Black Consciousness
and Black solidarity.
• To formulate and implement an educational policy for Blacks, by Blacks
for Blacks.
• To create and maintain an equalitarian society where justice is meted
equally to all.
• To formulate, apply and implement the principles and philosophy of Black
Communalism –the philosophy of sharing.
• To create and maintain an equitable economic system based on the
principles and philosophy of Black Communalism.
• To co-operate with existing agencies to reorientate the theological system
with a view to making religion relevant to the needs, aspirations, ideals and
goals of Black People.56
In its Fourth congress of December 1975, the BPC defined black conscious-
ness as “the realisation by Blacks of the need to rally around the cause of their
liberation and to operate as a group to rid themselves of the shackles that bind
them to perpetual servitude”, calling for “reconstruction by Blacks of their
own value system” and seeing themselves “as defined by themselves and not by
others”. This involved “the rejection of the value systems that seek to make the
Black man a foreigner in the country of his birth and to dehumanise him”. It
required the rejection of internal “sectional, tribal, or religious differences so
often exploited by the believer of divide and rule”. Black Consciousness was
different from Black Power in the USA, said the BPC, as there was no open
society in South Africa that would allow black people to use their numbers
to assert their will as a majority. An important aspect of it was “promotion
and preservation of authentic Black culture”, drawn from “the historical evo-
lution of the culture of the Black people”, including modern innovations, not
a derogatory “return to the bush”. The answer to unequal and exploitative
relations was Black Communalism, based on “basic respect of the Black man
for the sacred value of the human individual as the basis for the existence of the
communities and governments”.
Speaking in the name of the Black people of “Azania” –a made-up name
for South Africa with no indigenous roots, adopted first by the PAC –the BPC
argued for the need “to radically change the Azania society to be in keeping
with the wishes, aspirations, hopes, interests, ideas and ideals of the majority of
the people” of the country. The system envisioned in place of apartheid would
accord equal rights to all citizens who, together, would “form a united nation
irrespective of ethnic origin, language differences, skin colour or any other
such consideration”. Of note is that reservations with regard to “white” culture
and values were not translated into restrictions on access to political rights or
demands for any commitments on the part of white people of European origins
before they were deemed eligible for equal citizenship. Remarkably little was
said about the content of values and culture beyond generalities, with constant
conflation of race (black, white) with ethnicity or nation (African in general or
indigenous South African, European or English). Focus was on negation more
than affirmation: “Education is geared towards the destruction of imperialist,
racialist, tribalist, sectionalist, colonialist and neo-colonialist notions”. A built-in
tension between blackness as a political identity unifying people of different
historical backgrounds, and as a cultural attribute of specific groups with their
own distinct characteristics, was evident throughout.57
Although the BPC and Black Consciousness organisations in general spoke
about social equality and the centrality of working people, they did not offer
a class-based perspective or seek to organise on the ground in the workplace.
They appealed mostly to students with limited interest in work-related issues.
Their focus on values and mental attitudes –essential to the psychic and spir-
itual life of individuals and communities –was important, but it could not
address the material concerns that were central to popular constituencies. The
political and organisational gaps that opened with the demise of the union
structures of the 1940s and 1950s, with their links to the national movement,
had to be filled by other organisations, particularly a new generation of labour
activists in the 1970s.
It was not a coincidence, of course, that the labour and the Black
Consciousness movements emerged at the same time, following the intense
repression that drove the nationalist organisations underground and into exile.
To focus on culture and education, and on basic material needs, was safer in
that period, though the de-linking from broader political concerns was only
partial and temporary. Local and national concerns came together after the June
1976 Soweto uprising. Rejecting the imposition of Afrikaans as a medium of
instruction at high schools, the direct motivation for the initial protest was but
one theme, and the floodgates of protest and political mobilisation were opened
wide as a result of the massive over-reaction by the security forces.
New Mass Mobilisation

The rise of the labour movement in the 1970s was a result of collaboration
between black activists, to some extent inspired by an older generation of
unionists, and young white academics who sought to use their social and polit-
ical advantages to contribute to the struggle. Student activist Geoff Budlender
put it clearly:
In rigid ideological terms, we should not be involved in the area of black

labour. [Yet] I believe that that is one of the most constructive things we are
doing at this point. We should be aware, however, of the inherent dangers
involved in this. We should go in with our eyes open –and should not
be too emotionally tied to our projects to pull out at the right time. We
should be aware of the dangers –but not be afraid, if we think we are right.
The simple reality is that we have various resources which should rightly
be placed at the disposal of black groups. We have money, mobility, access
to research, and leisure time. If we can offer these to those black people
wanting them, we can be contributing to change. The important provision
is that it should not be done on a basis of paternalism, or in a manner which
creates a dependence on us.58
The role of these activists in the revival of labour unions in the 1970s is a
contentious issue. Even raising the question is controversial, mixing old disputes
about race, power, and knowledge with more contemporary disputes about the
writing of history.59 Less in dispute is that labour issues moved resistance politics
beyond the focus on race and thus allowed white radicals, rebuffed by Black
Consciousness adherents, to carve a role for themselves as part of the solution
rather than part of the problem, even if they remained a small minority whose
influence was exaggerated by critics.
Initially, the move to form unions within a framework of legality was
regarded with suspicion by the liberation movement in exile as it clashed with
its efforts to draw committed activists into the armed struggle and challenged
its centrality.There were other voices though. Already in 1969, veteran unionist
Ray Alexander wrote to the ANC Morogoro conference, urging it to direct
attention to the need to revive militant unionism inside the country without
fear of “economism”: “I am not saying that trade unions can live by bread alone,
what I do say is that they cannot live without bread”.60 The two concerns –
consciousness and bread –were distinct but both contributed to the revival of
resistance on an unprecedented scale, ushering in a process of transformation
that unfolded over the following two decades.
Economism was a derogatory term used by those who regarded trade unions
as concerned with mere bread and butter issues at the expense of the explicit
political focus required for an overall change. It was combined with accusations
of “Workerism” –a focus on the immediate and narrow concerns of workers
on the shopfloor, not on long-term structural issues. Such a focus could also
be seen in positive terms as putting workers in front instead of politicians and
bureaucrats who claimed to be speaking on their behalf, with an emphasis
on grassroots organisation, workplace democracy, and workers’ control. It was
in that sense that the most important organisation to have emerged out of
the 1970s labour movement –the Federation of South African Trade Unions
(FOSATU) launched in 1979 –was Workerist. It organised workers at the
point of production on a non-racial basis and engaged with political issues that
were directly relevant to its tasks, such as racial restrictions on organisation and
bargaining, and national labour legislation. But, it rejected affiliation with any
party-political organisation and avoided framing its positions in nationalist or
racial terms.61
A landmark speech at its second conference in 1982, a product of a teamwork
of officials, shop-stewards, and intellectuals, delivered by FOSATU’s general
secretary Joe Foster, set out the key principles of the Federation. The starting
point was the absence of a workers’ movement in South Africa. The centrality
of racial oppression in the history of South African capitalism led to the rise of
“a very powerful tradition of popular or populist politics” in opposition. The
Congress Alliance mobilised the masses against the repressive minority regime,
an essential task “so as to challenge the legitimacy of the state both internally
and internationally”. In so doing, the ANC became “one of the great liberation
movements in Africa”. Workers, despite engaging in protest and strikes and
taking part in popular struggles, did not form their own movement against cap-
italist domination: “the political energies of the oppressed masses and of inter-
national critics were focused on the apartheid regime and its abhorrent racism.
The government and Afrikanerdom became the focus of attack”, thus allowing
capital to extend its economic control. The rise of Black Consciousness and
popular protest in the 1970s did little to challenge capitalism itself. Although
the working class became “the major objective political force opposed to the
state and capital” in the absence of significant land-based or commercial classes,
politically “the struggle is being fought elsewhere”.
It was not enough to engage in popular struggle as “workers need their own
organisation to counter the growing power of capital and to further protect
their own interests in the wider society”. While globally the ANC was “the
major force with sufficient presence and stature to be a serious challenge to the
South African state and to secure the international condemnation of the present
regime”, it was not an anti-capitalist movement and had to maintain a balance
between competing interests at the international and internal levels. Fighting
illegitimate oppressive colonial regimes required a broad front of popular forces,
within which workers had specific interests that made it essential that they,
especially the industrial proletariat,
strive to build their own powerful and effective organisation even whilst
they are part of the wider popular struggle. This organisation is neces-
sary to protect and further worker interests and to ensure that the popular
movement is not hijacked by elements who will in the end have no option
but to turn against their worker supporters.
That task would not place FOSATU “in opposition to the wider political
struggle or its major liberation movement”, though it would require that it
develop its own political identity and presence as a workers’ organisation.
FOSATU asserted the need to move beyond narrow workplace issues of
concern only to union members and argued that workers should participate in
broader community activities from their own independent organisational base,
rejecting the “empty and misleading political category called the community”.
It would be politically suicidal for unions to take sides in partisan and contested
intra-community conflicts, it said, though that had nothing to do with not
wanting to be involved in politics: “Our whole existence is political and we
welcome that. Our concern is with the very essence of politics and that is the
relation between the major classes in South Africa being capital and labour”.
In other words, making a “fundamental contribution to the liberation of the
oppressed people of South Africa” required that workers retained their organ-
isational and political autonomy and not dilute their specific efforts within the
notion of a united broad-based popular struggle.62
Foster made it clear that he recognised the ANC as the primary liber-
ation movement in the struggle against apartheid. His call on unions to main-
tain their independence from political parties was still regarded as hostile by
the exile movement, the SACP in particular, and the notion that a workers’
movement in South Africa had to be built from scratch came in for sharp
criticism. Unsurprisingly, an article in The African Communist quoted Lenin on
the limitation of trade union consciousness and accused Foster of ignoring
“the rich experience of the past”, referring in that way to the history of the
Alliance between African nationalists, unionists, and Communists and the role
of the SACP as a workers’ party. In theoretical terms, the article said, to regard
South Africa as an arena of struggle between capital and labour and nothing
else meant relegating millions of rural people to a marginal position, dismissing
the national component of the struggle and the links between it and the class
struggle, and ignoring the specific reality of South Africa –in which racial
oppression and capitalist exploitation were mutually reinforcing –due to the
adoption of theories derived from “the armchairs of Europe”.63
It is obvious that the notion of a workers’ party was understood in different
ways. For FOSATU it meant a need to be based directly in working class real-
ities; for the SACP it meant a central role for a political-theoretical class per-
spective, regardless of the class location of members and leaders. The relations
between class and nationalism differed too: for FOSATU national liberation
was important to achieve but not at the expense of class emancipation; for the
SACP the two were interrelated with national liberation as the first stage and
primary task. Both perspectives regarded race as an obvious feature of the South
African condition but politically as a distraction, overshadowed by class and
nation with which it was entangled.The SACP rejected Black Consciousness as
being without “a coherent programme or a strategy of struggle, still less a system-
atic ideology”, even if it inspired activists in the run-up to the Soweto uprising.
Understood as “a general assertion of national identity, pride and confidence, as
a healthy response to the insulting arrogance of the white supremacists, and as a
contribution to the psychological liberation of the African people”, it replicated
the role played by the radical nationalism of the ANC.
The SACP recognised that Black Consciousness “contributed to the
revitalised surge of national feeling”, especially among the youth, but that was
not “a substitute for scientific social analysis”. As an alternative to the pol-
itical perspective of the Congress Alliance it became “a harmful demagogic
cliché” by ignoring “the special character of the economic and class basis of
South African racism”. It failed to provide guidelines for “a real strategy of
social change” based on “the character of those classes and groups which can
be neutralised or mobilised in favour of the liberation struggle”. Thus, it was
“a misleading ideology” which harmed the cause of liberation: “an ideology
which proclaims colour as its sole foundation can more easily obscure the real
issues because of its highly charged emotional content”. For that reason, Black
Consciousness could not express “the vigorous revolutionary nationalism of
our liberation movement”.64
Part of the lukewarm if not actively hostile response of the SACP and, in
muted form, the ANC, to the rise of new movements in the 1970s was the
challenge they posed to the Congress Alliance’s position as the leader of the
national liberation struggle. Yet, neither new movement could offer an overall
vision to pull together the different strands of resistance as effectively as the
ANC could, nor did they match the organisational presence of the Congress
movement in exile or its diplomatic clout. Building on the legacy of its mass
campaigns of the previous decades, the prestige of the armed struggle (regard-
less of its achievements in the battlefield), and the stature of its leaders in exile
and prison, the ANC managed to attract many new recruits eager to make a
contribution to the struggle in whatever way they could. It benefitted from the
absence of viable alternatives –the PAC had imploded in exile through inter-
necine conflict and the Black Consciousness movement was strong on ideas but
weak on structure and action. Intense repression in the aftermath of the Soweto
uprising drove thousands of young militants of different ideological persuasions
across the borders into neighbouring countries, where ANC camps were the
only available refuge, offering them the prospect of training to fight the apart-
heid enemy and a victorious return to South Africa.
The revival of mass-based resistance inside the country forced the ANC to
take stock of its strategy and relations to the internal arena, within the frame-
work of the well-established analysis of South Africa as displaying a “special
form of colonial-type oppression”. A series of discussions produced a docu-
ment in 1979 which became known as the Green Book. It defined the
national-democratic revolution as aimed at “the national liberation of the black
oppressed”, with the African majority suffering the most intense form of racial
domination. Therefore, “the maximum mobilisation of the African people, as a
community robbed of its land and sovereignty” was central to the alignment
of revolutionary forces, eventually leading to “a social order in which all the
historic consequences of national oppression and its foundation, economic
exploitation, will be liquidated, ensuring the achievement of real national lib-
eration and social emancipation”. Both features of the regime –capitalist and
racial/colonial –had to be addressed: “real liberation is inconceivable without
the overthrow of the economic and political power of this [ruling] class and the
total destruction of its state apparatus”.
The South African ruling class drew political support from “all the classes
and groups amongst the white community, including the white working class”,
who benefited to varying degrees from the system. Internal differences among
white groups gave rise to “secondary contradictions”, which made winning
sections of the white community over to the liberation cause possible.That was
not at the expense of the “principal and most consistent social force”, black
urban workers and the “landless mass in the country-side”, who had no stake
in the existing system and suffered “the worst excesses of oppression and eco-
nomic exploitation”. Black groups were not all equally interested in resisting
the regime but no “single class or strata within the black communities” was
untouched by “the political, economic, social, cultural or religious consequences
of racial discrimination”. All of them had a stake in the struggle,“even if they do
not support every plank in our immediate or long-term platform”.
Divide and rule policies sought to entrench tribalism among Africans, the
Green Book said, through the Bantustan policy meant to deny their right to
“full economic, political and social equality within one united South Africa”
and create a manageable “reserve of cheap black labour, with an only transi-
tory presence in the country’s industrial strongholds and no rights of labour
or political organisation”. The response had to be mass mobilisation attracting
all forces with “potential to confront the regime in the struggle against racism
and for one united non-racial South Africa”, the broadest possible unity “of all
national groups, classes and strata, organisations, groups and prominent person-
alities around local and national issues”, working in all locations and institutions,
including “government-created bodies”, if that could “advance our revolu-
tionary aims”.
Recognising other internal social and political forces, such as trade unions
but not Black Consciousness, the ANC asserted its own role in a somewhat
patronising manner:
we must maintain our independence as the vanguard of our revolution and

win growing acceptance for our long-term programme, strategy and tactics.
At the same time we must encourage, provide guidance to all opposition to
tyranny and racism and to every struggle for democratic rights and better
conditions of life. In this connection we must regard every act of opposition
as furthering the cause of our revolution even when the participants do not
yet fully understand or accept our immediate or long-term policy.
To facilitate cooperation of different forces, the ANC avoided talk of socialism

as the ultimate aim of the struggle and any notion of Marxism-Leninism as a
guiding perspective.65
The divisive strategy of apartheid was to be countered by creating
a nation-wide popular liberation front. In the first place, we must recognise

all expressions of opposition to the racist regime as part of such a front. We
must aim to progressively harness such opposition toward a common con-
tent and purpose.
That front would include
varied forms of direct and indirect collaboration between our liberation

movement and the mass organisations. Such collaboration must be in a
form which will safeguard the division between legal and illegal work and
must respect the independence of the participants. It is not conditional on
the acceptance of all aspects of our revolutionary strategy.
The military campaign was no longer central: “in as much as the growth of
the armed struggle depends on the rate of advance of the political struggle, the
armed struggle is secondary at this time”, but it still served “to keep alive the
perspective of People’s revolutionary violence as the ultimate weapon for
the seizure of power” and as armed propaganda, “action whose immediate pur-
pose is to support and stimulate political activity and organisation rather than
to hit at the enemy”.66
A front similar in many respects to that envisaged by the ANC indeed came
into being in 1983, with the formation of the United Democratic Front (UDF,
aligned with the Congress movement) and the National Forum (influenced by
Black Consciousness). Both sought to bring together hundreds of community-
based and civil society organisations, unions, students, and other associations.The
early 1980s saw them competing for popular appeal with the UDF emerging as
the dominant force by mid-decade, with the intensification of mass struggle and
the formation of the Congress of South African Unions (COSATU) in 1985.
It was a successor to FOSATU that did not hesitate to adopt a party-political
affiliation, moving from a Workerist to a Charterist position in the jargon of the
time.This meant using the Freedom Charter as an overall guide, with its notion
that South Africa belonged to all who lived in it, regardless of race. And, it sig-
nified a more open combination of workplace and broader community issues
within COSATU’s mandate. Both these allowed it to claim a central position in
the anti-apartheid movement of the 1980s.
At the core of the National Forum was the Azanian People’s Organisation
(AZAPO), formed in 1979 to carry forward the ideas of SASO, the BPC, and
other movements banned by the regime following the Soweto uprising, a
period which also saw the death of Steve Biko in detention. The Manifesto of
the Azanian People, adopted by the Forum, defined the struggle as against “the
system of racial capitalism which holds the people of Azania in bondage for
the benefit of the small minority of white capitalists and their allies, the white
workers and the reactionary sections of the black middle class”. The struggle
was driven by “the Black working class inspired by revolutionary conscious-
ness”, for “a democratic, anti-racist and socialist Azania”. The historical task of
the black working class was “to mobilise the urban and the rural poor together
with the radical sections of the middle classes in order to put an end to the
system of oppression and exploitation by the white ruling class”. It was guided
by principles of “anti-racism and anti-imperialism; non-collaboration with the
oppressor and its political instruments; independent working-class organisation;
opposition to all alliances with ruling-class parties”.
A list of demands followed, topped by “the establishment of a democratic,
anti-racist worker Republic in Azania where the interests of the workers shall
be paramount through worker control of the means of production, distribution
and exchange”, the “development of one national progressive culture in the
process of struggle”, and that “the land and all that belongs to it shall be wholly
owned and controlled by the Azanian people”.67
Two months later the UDF was launched, with the immediate goal of
fighting proposed changes to the apartheid Constitution in order to create
a tricameral parliament, with “white”, “coloured”, and “Indian” chambers,
leaving black Africans without representation beyond the segregated municipal
level. With the Bantustans –“independent homelands” and “self-governing ter-
ritories” organised on a separate ethno-territorial basis –the overall plan was to
consolidate the population into multiple racial and ethnic groups, each with its
“own” administration, education system, and set of governing powers. Under
the guise of reform, this was meant to make any unified opposition to apartheid
impossible.
The UDF declared, in the name of “the freedom loving people of south
Africa”, that it cherished the vision of “a united, democratic South Africa based
on the will of the people” and strove for “the unity of all people through united
action against the evils of apartheid, economic and all other forms of exploit-
ation”. In working for freedom and justice it was guided by “noble ideals”:
we stand for the creation of a true democracy in which all South Africans
will participate in the government of our country; we stand for a single
non-racial, unfragmented South Africa. A South Africa free of Bantustans
and Group Areas; we say, all forms of oppression and exploitation must end.
For that to become possible, “we commit ourselves to uniting all our people
wherever they may be in the cities and countryside, the factories and mines,
schools, colleges and universities, housing and sports fields, churches, mosques
and temples, to fight for our freedom”.68
The UDF’s emphasis on unity in the face of the fragmentation introduced
by apartheid was done in the name of “the people of South Africa”, not of any
specific group within the population, be it the black or African majority. It
sought to speak for the entire nation against an aberrant minority, seen as pol-
itically oppressive and economically exploitative. Although referred to as the
“white minority regime”, the struggle against it could unite most people of all
backgrounds, since the issue was not race in itself but the social, economic, and
political realities behind it. The unifying message meant to counter apartheid
policies, of course, but it served indirectly as a reproach to those who pursued
sectional interests in the anti-apartheid struggle.
The response to exclusion was inclusion, the UDF was saying, not another
kind of exclusion, practised by the victims. This vision was based on the need
to create a greater whole out of the parts rather than to pit some parts against
others. Not only did it make strategic sense to form a front as broad as possible,
it was also in line with nationalist and democratic principles to allow all those
opposed to the regime to join the struggle, and it facilitated the quest for soli-
darity and moral support from the outside.
At the UDF launch, Reverend Allan Boesak put that approach in moralistic
yet effective words:
Let us not build out struggle upon hatred; let us not hope for revenge.
Let us, even now, seek to lay the foundations for reconciliation between
whites and blacks in this country by working together, praying together,
struggling together for justice. The nature and the quality of our struggle
for liberation cannot be determined by one’s skin colour but rather by
one’s commitment to justice, peace, and human liberation.
His message may have seemed too accommodating and mild to suit angry
young militants, but it had great appeal to a population deeply inspired by
Christian religious rhetoric.69
Christian themes were taken up subsequently by a group of theologians,
church activists and leaders, who produced the Kairos Document, a statement
on the political conflict in South Africa from a perspective similar to that of
liberation theology in Latin America, which asserted that “God Sides with the
Oppressed”. Kairos recognised different understandings of Christianity, and
condemned State Theology: “the theological justification of the status quo
with its racism, capitalism and totalitarianism. It blesses injustice, canonizes
the will of the powerful and reduces the poor to passivity, obedience and
apathy”. Mainstream Church Theology was also criticised for refusing to take
sides between justice and oppression and for condemning revolutionary vio-
lence while excluding from criticism “the structural, institutional and unre-
pentant violence of the State and especially the oppressive and naked violence
of the police and the army”. Against that, Kairos asserted “a long and consistent
Christian tradition about the use of physical force to defend oneself against
aggressors and tyrants”. That meant there were circumstances that allowed for
the use of force against tyrannical and unjust rule, as was the case in the struggle
against apartheid, though always only as a means of last resort.
It was wrong to see the South Africa conflict as simply “a racial war”, Kairos
said, because
we are not dealing with two equal races or nations each with their own
selfish group interests. The situation we are dealing with here is one of
oppression. The conflict is between an oppressor and the oppressed. The
conflict between two irreconcilable causes or interests in which the one is
just and the other is unjust.
It was a situation of civil war or revolution:
The one side is committed to maintaining the system at all costs and the
other side is committed to changing it at all costs. There are two conflicting
projects here and no compromise is possible. Either we have full and equal
justice for all or we don’t.
Christians, Kairos concluded, inspired by Prophetic Theology, must “par-

ticipate in the struggle for liberation and for a just society. The campaigns of
the people, from consumer boycotts to stayaways, need to be supported and
encouraged by the Church”.70
Alongside the community mobilisation of the UDF, supported by progres-
sive Churches, with the capacity to mobilise millions at the grassroots level,
rose the new force of COSATU, which aimed to link workers’ organisations to
the overall struggle. As union leader –future President of South Africa –Cyril
Ramaphosa said at its launch on 29th November 1985, the challenge was to
link the industrial to the political: “We all agree that the struggle of workers on
the shop floor cannot be separated from the wider struggle for liberation”, and
the question was how to contribute to the liberation struggle. As unions
we have sought to develop a consciousness among workers, not only of

racial oppression, but also of their exploitation as a working class. As unions
we have influenced the wider political struggle. Our struggles on the shop
floor have widened the space for struggles in the community. Through
interaction with community organisations, we have developed the prin-
ciple of worker-controlled democratic organisation. But our main political
task as workers is to develop organisation among workers as well as a strong
worker leadership. We have, as unions, to act decisively to ensure we, as
workers, lead the struggle.
In a display of what became known as social movement unionism –linking

workplace issues to community concerns and political struggles71 –Ramaphosa
introduced a crucial modification to the earlier stance of FOSATU that
distinguished between shop floor disputes (the exclusive domain of unions) and
broader campaigns in which workers could join as community members and
citizens. For COSATU, workers had a leading role to play in the national liber-
ation struggle as workers, not merely as part of the broader population. Workers’
unity and strong shop floor organisation were preconditions for winning “the
confidence of other sectors of society”, forming progressive alliances with pol-
itical movements, and playing a key role in the struggle for liberation:
Our role in the political struggle will depend on our organisational

strength. We must meet with progressive political organisations. We have
to work in co-operation with them on realistic campaigns. We must
not shy away and pretend they do not exist. We have to pay particular
attention to worker education and our role in the political struggle. We
must encourage a healthy exchange between our Congress and other pro-
gressive organisations.
In all these respects, COSATU aimed to represent workers as a specific con-

stituency and become a central political player simultaneously. Its aims were the
following:
To secure social and economic justice for all workers; To strive for the
building of a united working class movement regardless of ‘race’, colour,
creed or sex; To encourage all workers to join trade unions and to develop
a spirit of solidarity among all workers; To understand how the economy
of the country affects workers and to formulate clear policies as to how
the economy would be restructured in the interests of the working class;To
work for a restructuring of the economy which will allow the creation of
wealth to be democratically controlled and fairly shared; To strive for just
standards of living, social security and fair conditions of work for all.
All these clearly were class-based issues but their impact went beyond the
shopfloor and even the working class as a collective to shape society as a whole.72
Of course, COSATU was a union federation concerned with workers, nei-
ther a political party nor a bunch of academics engaged in theoretical debates.
It was the Communist Party that put the perspective outlined by unionists
affiliated with the Congress movement in theoretical terms, as the need to
“understand the class content of the national struggle and the national con-
tent of the class struggle.” However, SACP General Secretary Joe Slovo warned
activists not to conflate the two by prematurely attempting “to formally incorp-
orate the objective of socialism into trade unions and the federation to which
they belong”. Such a step “would narrow the mass character of the trade union
movement by demanding an unreal level of political consciousness from its
members or affiliates as a condition for joining”. Building the mass democratic
movement around class-based structures would be a similar mistake that would
“downgrade the UDF as the umbrella of the broad legal liberation front” and
replace it with “a narrower front run by the trade union movement”.73
It was shopfloor structures in the workplace that formed the foundation
of strong industrial unions and COSATU as a national federation. They were
connected in turn to community-based organisations, which included workers
and their families and unrelated members, and campaigned on specific local
issues as well as broad national concerns. Their actions were coordinated to
a large extent by the UDF internally, in alliance with the exile liberation
movement, thus giving the movement its mobilising power in contrast to the
National Forum, which did not manage to build such bottom-up structures.
That was not merely a technical advantage. The ability to develop a unifying
message with potentially universal application –by speaking the languages
of class, community, nation, religion, and morality, but not of ethnicity and
race, which are divisive concepts by their very nature –provided the Congress
movement with its strongest asset, both in fighting the apartheid regime and in
competing with other movements for mass support. Race was a prime factor
in domination and resistance, but perhaps most effective when not spoken
about openly. The outcome of that strategy was mass mobilisation of millions
of people, marching regularly in the streets, going on industrial strikes, engaging
in protests at schools, townships, rural areas, carrying out civil disobedience
campaigns, boycotting state institutions –in short, making the country ungov-
ernable. At the same time, the movement sought to build alternative governing
structures in communities, educational institutions, villages, and communal
areas. Above all, it was the direct interference of the masses in historical events,
forcing their entrance into the realm of their own destiny inside the country,
which forced the apartheid regime to make concessions and eventually brought
on its demise.
Meanwhile in exile, the ANC re-asserted its commitment to non-racialism
with its 1985 conference in Kabwe, Zambia. In a report presented by Oliver
Tambo, open membership for all regardless of background was noted as an
application of the guiding principles of the Freedom Charter, already recognised
in 1969 at Morogoro but now given full effect at all ranks. He cautioned
against external attempts to separate the nationalist and socialist tendencies of
the movement, which remained distinct yet interrelated. Tambo paid tribute
to the positive contribution of the Black Consciousness Movement towards
“further uniting the black oppressed masses of our country”, following thus
in the footsteps of Congress, but pointed to “the limitations of this movement
which saw our struggle as racial, describing the entire white population of our
country as ‘part of the problem’ ”.74 At the same time, the PAC also claimed
Black Consciousness as an outgrowth of its own attempted Status Campaign
of 1960.75
The late 1980s were a period of both intensification of repression and moving
towards a negotiated resolution. The military-political stalemate that developed
in that time meant that neither the regime nor the liberation movement could
gain a decisive advantage.The on-off reform process initiated by the PW Botha
regime in the late 1970s went too far, upsetting hard-core white conservatives,
but not nearly far enough to satisfy white liberals, let alone black and white
radicals. Daring initiatives were necessary to break the impasse. The second half
of the decade saw increasing attempts, both from within the regime and the
ANC alliance, to embark on a course of grand compromise that would satisfy
the basic needs of both sides without resounding victories or crushing defeats.
For the liberation movement, the most basic demand was political equality in a
“one person one vote” system, without which nothing else would do.
With the sense of impending change, the ANC published in 1988 guidelines
for a post-apartheid constitution, converting the Freedom Charter “from a
vision of the future into a constitutional reality”. It saw South Africa as “an
independent, unitary, democratic and non-racial state” in which sovereignty
belonged “to the people as a whole”, with the right to vote “under a system
of universal suffrage based on the principle of one person/one vote”. A Bill
of Rights would guarantee human rights to all citizens “irrespective of race,
colour, sex or creed”. The state and all social institutions would be “under a
constitutional duty to eradicate race discrimination in all its forms … [and] take
active steps to eradicate, speedily, the economic and social inequalities produced
by racial discrimination”. South Africa would ensure that “the entire economy
serves the interests and well-being of the entire population” within a mixed
economy, and that land reform would abolish “all racial restrictions on owner-
ship and use of land” and implement affirmative action, “taking into account
the status of victims of forced removals”. Much of the rest of the document
asserted general democratic rights in various areas. If only racial discrimination
were abolished, the document effectively said, South Africa would finally move
beyond its apartheid and colonial past into a new liberal-democratic future with
public services and social guarantees to workers, similar to many social demo-
cratic regimes in Europe and elsewhere.76
In its last major theoretical statement on the era, The Path to Power adopted
in 1989, the SACP asserted its decades-old colonial thesis: despite intra-racial
class differences,
the effect of colonialism of a special type is that all white classes benefit,
albeit unequally and in different ways, from the internal colonial structure.
Conversely, all black classes suffer national oppression, in varying degrees
and in different ways. The social and economic features of our country are
directly related to its colonial history.
With that said, the crisis of apartheid created new possibilities for “detaching
significant sectors of whites from at least an unquestioned faith in white minority
rule”. Growing numbers of white people were adopting an anti-apartheid pos-
ition, “joining the broad front of forces aligned against the Pretoria regime”,
forces led by the industrial proletariat:
oppressed by the special colonial form of bourgeois domination in South

Africa and super-exploited, black workers stand to gain the most from the
immediate abolition of national oppression. It is also black workers whose
longer-term interests are for the complete and final eradication of all forms
of oppression and exploitation in our country.
They were “the most organised and powerful mass revolutionary contin-
gent”, and closely linked to “the oppressed rural masses”, living on white-
owned farms and in the Bantustans.
Colonialism of a Special Type was in a crisis deeper than ever before –eco-
nomic stagnation, international isolation, divisions in the ruling bloc, and the
revolutionary struggle. Racial oppression created a severe shortage of skills,
under-utilisation of productive capacity, an increasing reluctance of capitalists
to invest. The regime, “relying increasingly for its survival on naked repression”
and regional aggression, was wasting vast sums on its repressive machinery and
bloated bureaucracy. It was primarily a political crisis: “the ruling class and its
political representatives realise that it is impossible to continue ruling in the old
way”. They sought to co-opt black collaborators and middle class partners but
failed: “every racist constitutional and, reform, initiative, designed to divert the
revolutionary pressures, has landed on the rocks”. The result was intensification
of the struggle, and collapse of the “centuries-old confidence and belief in the
eternal survival of white hegemony”. The crisis could not be resolved “within
the confines of the apartheid colonial system”. Fundamental change was essential:
a national democratic revolution which will overthrow the colonial state

and establish a united, democratic and non-racial South Africa. The main
content of this revolution is the national liberation of the African people in
particular, and the black people in general.
Armed struggle remained important, said the Party, but it had to be “pri-
marily guided by the needs of the political struggle … to reinforce political
mobilisation, organisation and resistance”. It must not be counterposed to dia-
logue, negotiation, and compromise: every liberation struggle in Africa “has had
its climax at the negotiating table, occasionally involving compromises judged
to be in the interests of revolutionary advance”. Negotiations were not to be
allowed “to infect the purpose and content of our present strategic approaches”.
If, as a result of
a generalised crisis and a heightened revolutionary upsurge, the point

should ever be reached when the enemy is prepared to talk, the liberation
forces will, at that point, have to exercise their judgment, guided by the
demands of revolutionary advance.
Until that time, seizure of power remained the prime goal.77

But, seizure of power was not to be. Instead, new long-term arrangements
were decided at the negotiating table. Before the end of the year, in October
1989, most of the remaining Rivonia trial prisoners were released, to be followed
by the unbanning of the liberation movements –reversing 30 years of political
repression in the case of the ANC and PAC, and 40 years in the case of the
Communist Party –and the release of Nelson Mandela in February 1990. The
road to negotiations over the future of the country thus opened, culminating
after a long and difficult period in the formulation of the interim constitution
of 1993, which in turn made possible the 1994 elections, the first held on the
basis of universal franchise.
The Interim Constitution was based on the need
to create a new order in which all South Africans will be entitled to a

common South African citizenship in a sovereign and democratic con-
stitutional state in which there is equality between men and women and
people of all races so that all citizens shall be able to enjoy and exercise their
fundamental rights and freedoms.
It mandated that all citizens “be entitled to enjoy all rights, privileges and
benefits of South African citizenship, and shall be subject to all duties, obligations
and responsibilities of South African citizenship”.
Among the fundamental rights it established, equality was central. It declared
that “every person shall have the right to equality before the law and to equal
protection of the law” and
no person shall be unfairly discriminated against, directly or indirectly, and,

without derogating from the generality of this provision, on one or more
of the following grounds in particular: race, gender, sex, ethnic or social
origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief,
culture or language.
However, measures designed to protect and advance the rights of people pre-
viously “disadvantaged by unfair discrimination”, or historically “dispossessed
of rights in land”, were allowed: affirmative action in employment and land res-
titution were some of the measures contemplated in that respect.
While socially, economically, and culturally South African society remained
deeply divided, politically and legally colonial rule came to an end with the
adoption of the new constitution.78
Notes
1 “Joint Declaration of Cooperation”, statement by Dr. A.B. Xuma of the ANC,
Dr. G.M. Naicker of the Natal Indian Congress, and Dr.Y.M. Dadoo of the Transvaal
Indian Congress, 9th March 1947, in Karis and Carter, From Protest to Challenge,
Volume 2 (Hoover Press, 1977), pp. 272–3.
2 Statement of the National Executive Committee of the ANC, 21st May 1950, in
ibid., pp. 443–4.
3 Statement on the National Day of Protest, by the Central Executive Committee of
the ANC Youth League (Transvaal), 31st May 1950, in ibid., pp. 445–6.
4 Report on the National Day of Protest, 26th June 1950, in ibid., pp. 450–2.
5 Report of the Joint Planning Council of the ANC and the SAIC, 8th November
1951, in ibid., pp. 458–65.
6 Presidential Address by Dr. J.S. Moroka, 15th December 1951, in ibid., pp. 471–5.
7 Letter from Dr. J.S. Moroka and W.M. Sisulu to Prime Minister D.F. Malan, 21st
8 Letter and statement of intention to launch defiance campaign, from Dr. J.S. Moroka
and W.M. Sisulu to Prime Minister D.F. Malan, 11th February 1952, in ibid., pp. 480–2.
9 Circular Letter to All Congress Branches of the Province, Review of 1952 by the
Working Committee of the ANC (Cape), December 1952, in ibid., pp. 489–94.
10 N. Mandela, “No Easy Walk to Freedom”, address read to ANC (Transvaal) con-
ference, 21st September 1953, in www.columbia.edu/itc/history/mann/w3005/
mandela01.html.
11 “Nationalism and the Class Struggle”, from Central Committee report to the
National Conference of the Communist Party in Johannesburg, 6th–8th January
1950, in South African Communists Speak (Inkululeko, 1981), pp. 200–11.
12 “Fight for Freedom”, a Declaration to the People of South Africa from the CPSA,
13 M. Harmel, “Observations on Certain Aspects of Imperialism in South Africa”,
Viewpoints and Perspectives, 1, 3rd February 1954, in A. Drew, South Africa’s Radical
Tradition, A Documentary History, Volume Two 1943-1964 (Mayibuye Books, 1997),
pp. 262–9.
14 Symposium on the National Question, with contributions by L. Forman, K.A. Jordaan,
T. Ngwenya, Dr. H.J. Simons (The Forum Club, June 1954); Tom Lodge, “Lionel
Forman’s Trumpet: National Communism in South Africa, 1953-59”, Africa 63, 4
(1993), pp. 601–10.
15 M. Kotane, South Africa’s Way Forward, an Advance Study Document, May 1954.
16 http://historicalpapers-atom.wits.ac.za/ad1137-ea6-1-001-jpeg-pdf.
17 N. Mandela, “In our Lifetime”, Liberation, 19 (June 1956), pp. 4–8. This was “proof ”
that the ANC/ SACP alliance betrayed the more radical expectations of their
followers, says M. Legassick in Towards Socialist Democracy (UKZN Press, 2007),
pp. 205–10.
18 “Call to the Congress of the People”, leaflet issued by the National Action Council
of the Congress of the People, 1955, in T. Karis and G. Carter (eds.) From Protest to
Challenge, Volume 3: Challenge and Violence 1953-1964 (Hoover Institution, 1977),
pp. 180–4.
19 L. Bernstein, Memory against Forgetting (Wits University Press, 1999), pp. 129–44.
20 Address by Professor Z.K. Matthews, ANC Annual Conference, 17th– 18th
December 1955, in From Protest to Challenge, Vol. 3, pp. 215–23.
21 Letter on “certain tendencies” from A. B. Xuma to ANC Annual Conference, 18th
December 1955, in ibid., pp. 242–5.
22 Best source on the rise of the PAC is Gail Gerhart, Black Power in South Africa: The
Evolution of an Ideology (University of California Press, 1978).This overview is based
on interviews she conducted with leading Africanists: Potlako Kitchener Leballo,
11th September 1968, www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/al.sff.document.gerhart0015;
A.P. Mda, 1st January 1970, www.aluka.org/stable/10.5555/AL.SFF.DOCUMENT.
gerhart0016; Robert Sobukwe, 8th– 9th August 1970, www.aluka.org/stable/
10.5555/al.sff.document.gerhart0005
23 P. Leballo, “The Nature of the Struggle Today”, The Africanist, 4, 10 (December
1957), historicalpapers-atom.wits.ac.za/africanist-issued-by-orlando-ancyl-african-
national-congress-youth-league.
24 Quotations from different articles in The Africanist, 4, 11 (June/ July 1958),
historicalpapers-atom.wits.ac.za/africanist-issued-by-african-nationalists-anc.
25 www.sahistory.org.za/archive/robert-sobukwe-inaugural-speech-april-1959.
26 The Basic Documents of the Pan Africanist Congress of South Africa (Lusaka, 1965),
http://psimg.jstor.org/fsi/img/pdf/t0/10.5555/al.sff.document.low142_111_
06.pdf.
27 W. Sisulu, “Congress and the Africanists”, Africa South, 3, 4, (July/ September
1959), pp. 27–34, https://disa.ukzn.ac.za/sites/default/files/pdf_files/asjul59.7.pdf.
Response by P. Raboroko, “Congress and the Africanists: (1) The Africanist Case”,
Africa South, 4, 3 (April–June 1960), pp. 24–32, https://disa.ukzn.ac.za/sites/defa
ult/files/pdf_files/asapr60.5.pdf.
28 Members of the Communist Party went further and accused the PAC of being a
creation of the CIA and the apartheid government, whether wittingly or otherwise,
www.marxists.org/subject/africa/bunting-brian/kotane/ch15.htm.
29 J. Matthews, “ ‘Africanism’ under the Microscope”, Liberation, 37 (July 1959),
pp. 9–13, www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/archive-files/Lin3759.1729.
455X.000.037.Jul1959.5.pdf.
30 Presidential address to the 46th Annual Conference of the ANC, Durban, 12th–
14th December 1958, by Chief Albert Luthuli, www.sahistory.org.za/archive/
freedom-our-lifetime-durban-december-12-14-1958.
31 Report of the National Executive Committee of the ANC, 12th–13th December
1959, in Karis and Carter, From Protest to Challenge, Vol. 3, pp. 463–92. Discussion of
the PAC was confined to items 133–137 out of 150.
32 “The State of the Nation”, Address by R.M. Sobukwe, 2nd August 1959, in ibid.,
pp. 542–8.
33 www.sahistory.org.za/article/wind-change-speech, Cape Town, 3rd February 1960.
Background in S. Dubow, “Macmillan, Verwoerd, and the 1960 ‘Wind of Change’
Speech”, Historical Journal, 54, 4 (2011), pp. 1087–114.
34 www.sahistor y.org.za/ s ites/ d ef ault/ f iles/ M ar itzburg%20All- i n%20
Conference%20-%20resolutions.pdf.
35 https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv01538/04lv01
600/05lv01617/06lv01621.htm.
36 https:// o malley.nelsonmandela.org/ o malley/ i ndex.php/ s ite/ q / 0 3lv01538/
04lv01600/05lv01617/06lv01623.htm
37 www.sahistory.org.za/archive/struggle-my-life-nelson-mandela-press-statement.
38 https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02
730/05lv02918/06lv02950.htm.
39 www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1960/lutuli/lecture/.
40 As if membership cards would have been given to recruits under conditions of strict
security precautions, working underground … T. Lodge, “Mandela and the Left”,
Journal of Southern African Studies, 45, 6 (2019), pp. 1051–71.
41 A. Lerumo [M. Harmel],“Forms and Methods of Struggle in the National Liberation
Revolution”, The African Communist, 8 (January 1962), pp. 12–25.
42 A. Lerumo, “Forms and Methods of Struggle –the South African Democratic
Revolution”, The African Communist, 9 (April 1962), pp. 43–51. Italics in the original.
43 The Road to South African Freedom, Programme of the South African Communist
Party, The African Communist, 2, 2 (January–March 1963), pp. 24–70.
44 Operation Mayibuye, authored by Govan Mbeki and Joe Slovo, called for guerrilla
warfare based initially on infiltration of 120 external fighters linking with 7,000
internal fighters yet-to-be-recruited. It was regarded as reckless by senior members
of the MK High Command, and was aborted when intercepted during the July
1963 Rivonia raid, www.sahistory.org.za/archive/operation-mayibuye-document-
found-police-lilliesleaf-farm-r ivonia-11-july-1963.
45 www.sahistory.org.za/archive/court-transcript-statement-dock-nelson-mandela-
pretoria-supreme-court-20-april-1964. Extracts from the statement were translated
into Hebrew from the British press. Kol Ha’am, the Israeli Communist Party daily,
removed some sections that expressed support for the armed struggle; Matzpen
(19, June 1964) published the full version, highlighting the omitted sections. The
relations between the two are discussed in Chapter 7.
46 Strategy and Tactics of the ANC, document adopted at the Morogoro Conference,
Tanzania, May 1969, www.marxists.org/subject/africa/anc/1969/strategy-tactics.
htm. For background, see N. Ndebele and N. Nieftagodien, “The Morogoro
Conference: A Moment of Self-reflection” in The Road to Democracy in South
Africa, Volume 1, 1960–1970 (South African Democracy Education Trust, 2005),
pp. 573–99.
47 L. Callinicos, “Oliver Tambo and the Politics of Class, Race and Ethnicity in the
African National Congress of South Africa”, African Sociological Review, 3, 1 (1999),
pp. 130–51.
48 Black Students’ Manifesto www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/archive-files3/
sasep72.pdf; SASO Policy Manifesto 1969, http://historicalpapers-atom.wits.ac.za/
sash-policy-manifesto-durban.
49 As outlined by both B. Pityana and S. Biko in the SASO Newsletter, 1, 4
(September 1971).
50 Frank Talk [S. Biko], “Black Souls in White Skins?”, SASO Newsletter, August 1970,
pp. 15–21.
51 Frank Talk [S. Biko], “We Blacks”, SASO Newsletter, September 1970, pp. 15–19.
52 S. Biko,“The Definition of Black Consciousness”, in I write what I Like (Heinemann,
1987), pp. 48–53.
53 R. Turner, “Black Consciousness and White Liberals”, Reality, 4, 3 (July 1972),
pp. 20–2.
54 Resolution 25/72 of SASO General Students’ Council, Hammanskraal, 2nd–9th
July 1972, in From Protest to Challenge, Volume 5: Nadir and Resurgence, 1964–1979,
edited by T. Karis and G. Gerhart (Indiana University Press, 1997), pp. 509–10.
55 BPC Press release, 13th January 1972, https://disa.ukzn.ac.za/sites/default/files/
pdf_files/pre19720113.032.009.282.pdf.
56 The Black Peoples’ Convention: Historical Background and Basic Documents, edited by
S. Buthelezi (Black Liberation Press, 1978).
57 www.sahistory.org.za/ archive/ commissions- report- 1 -black- consciousness- 2 -
black-communalism.
58 G. Budlender, paper to the seminar of the National Union of South African Students
(NUSAS), 29th April 1973.
59 J. Sithole and S. Ndlovu, “The Revival of the Labour Movement, 1970-1980”, and
D. Hemson, M. Legassick, and N. Ulrich, “White Activists and the Revival of the
Workers’ Movement”, in The Road to Democracy in South Africa,Volume 2, 1970-1980
(SADET, 2006), pp. 187–241 and 243–314, respectively; M. Legassick, “Debating
the Revival of the Workers’ Movement in the 1970s:The South African Democracy
Education Trust and Post-apartheid Patriotic History”, Kronos, 34, 1 (November
2008), pp. 240–66.
60 Letter of 28th April 1969, quoted in Hemson, Legassick, and Ulrich, p. 248.
61 Draft Resolutions on the Formation of the Federation of South African Trade
Unions, 1979, in From Protest to Challenge, Vol. 5, pp. 622–5; S. Byrne, N. Ulrich,
and L. van der Walt, “Red, Black, and Gold: FOSATU, South African ‘Workerism’,
‘Syndicalism’, and the Nation”, in The Unresolved National Question in South
Africa: Left Thinking under Apartheid, edited by E. Webster and K. Pampallis (Wits
University Press, 2017), pp. 254–73.
62 J. Foster, “The Workers’ Struggle: Where Does FOSATU Stand?”, Review of African
Political Economy, 24 (May–August 1982), pp. 99–114.
63 Toussaint [L. Bernstein], “A Trade Union Is Not a Political Party: A Critique of the
Speech ‘Where FOSATU Stands’ ”, African Communist, 93 (Second Quarter, 1983),
pp. 35–46.
64 “The Way Forward from Soweto”, extract from political report adopted by the
Plenary Session of the Central Committee of the South African Communist Party,
April 1977, in South African Communists Speak (1981), pp. 417–32.
65 This position was adopted so as to retain a broad national perspective with a dis-
tinct social component, but without raising fear of a Communist takeover by using
explicit socialist terminology. It is interesting in light of the key role of SACP
members in formulating the Green Book. See also “The Role of the Party and its
Place in the National Liberation Movement”, discussion document, January 1980,
www.jstor.org/stable/al.sff.document.cir19800000.026.021.000.
66 The Green Book: Report of the Politico- Military Strategy Commission to the ANC
National Executive Committee, August 1979, www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/
files/GREEN%20BOOK%2C%20August%201979.doc.pdf.
67 Manifesto of the Azanian People, in National Forum (National Forum Committee,
1983), pp. 68–9.
68 Declaration of the United Democratic Front, August 1983, http://historicalpapers-
atom.wits.ac.za/ak2117-j4-22-aax12-001-jpeg-pdf.
69 “Peace in our Day”, speech by Allan Boesak at UDF launch, 20th August 1983,
in From Protest to Challenge, Volume 6: Challenge and Victory, 1980-1990, edited by
G. Gerhart and C. Glaser (Indiana University Press, 2010), pp. 310–15.
70 Challenge to the Church: A Theological Comment on the Political Crisis in South Africa,
1985, www.sahistory.org.za/archive/challenge-church-theological-comment-
political-crisis-south-africa-kairos-document-1985.
71 Edward Webster, “The Rise of Social Movement Unionism: The Two Faces of the
Black Trade Union Movement in South Africa”, in State, Resistance and Change in
South Africa, edited by Philip Frankel et al. (Croom Helm, 1988), pp. 174–96.
72 Cyril Ramaphosa, “Opening Speech to the Inaugural Congress”, Review of African
Political Economy, 13, 35 (May 1986), pp. 77–83.
73 Joe Slovo, The South African Working Class and the National Democratic Revolution,
1988, www.marxists.org/subject/africa/slovo/1988/national-democratic-revolu-
tion.htm.
74 ANC NEC report, presented by O. Tambo, Kabwe, Zambia, 16th June 1985, in
From Protest to Challenge,Vol. 6, pp. 567–74.
75 “Sharpeville, Soweto and Sebokeng”, speech by John Nyati Pokela to UN Special
Committee against Apartheid, New York, 22nd March 1985, in ibid., pp. 555–8.
76 https://ourconstitution.constitutionhill.org.za//wp-content/uploads/2020/07/
tbr_doc11.pdf.
77 www.sahistory.org.za/ s ites/ d efault/ f iles/ T he%20Path%20to%20Power%20
1989.pdf.
78 www.gov.za/documents/constitution/constitution-republic-south-africa-act-
200-1993.
7
Israel/Palestine Post-1948
Dispersal and New Beginnings
The 1948 war resulted in the fragmentation of Palestinian society and the dis-
persal of many of its members in different countries (a process known as the
Nakba). As a result, three different political arenas were created, each with a dis-
tinct status and demographic composition:
• Israel as a Jewish state, including the remnants of the Arab majority now
turned into a minority and subjected to various legal restrictions but with
basic citizenship rights.
• The rest of Palestine, divided into the West Bank, incorporated into Jordan,
and the Gaza Strip under Egyptian military rule. The population included
the original residents as well as refugees who had been displaced from their
homes in the areas that had become Israel.
• The rest of the refugees, dispersed to various Arab countries and devoid of
citizenship rights except for those living in Jordan.
Palestinians retained their unified ethno-cultural identity and continued to

regard themselves as members of the same national community, but their pol-
itical organisation began to reflect the different frameworks within which they
found themselves. From 1948 onwards reference to the Palestinian struggle
must differentiate between its diverse settings. Of most importance here was the
imperative of creating political structures and coming up with new approaches
in order to cope with the conditions of dispersal and fragmentation.
Not only Palestinians but Arabs more broadly were affected by the 1948
events and the need to draw lessons and prepare for new challenges. A crucial
role in that process of reflection was played by a book written during the war
by Constantine Zurayq, a Syrian historian. The book’s title, The Meaning of the
Nakba, introduced the term for the 1948 defeat that eventually caught on as
standard reference to it. Zurayq regarded it as “a disaster in every sense of the
word and one of the harshest of the trials and tribulations” endured by Arabs in
their long history. He bemoaned the “hollow and empty” rhetoric used to assert
the will to resist Zionism, which ended up in material destruction and collapse
of values, “moral and spiritual relapse”, despair and loss of self-confidence.
DOI: 10.4324/9780429020056-7
Israel/Palestine Post-1948: Dispersal and New Beginnings 149
Without national unity, dedicated leadership, public commitment, and will-
ingness to sacrifice all for the sake of victory, defeat was inevitable. The remedy
for that, he said, consisted in heightening the sense of danger represented by
Zionism which was worse than imperialism or neo-colonial domination. The
latter were temporary evils, while Zionism was “the greatest danger to the
being of the Arabs”, threatening “the very center of Arab being, its entirety,
the foundation of its existence”. All media had to “intensify in the souls of all
Arabs an awareness of the danger … so that every thought which we have and
every action which we perform will be influenced by this feeling”, and in that
way reinforce the will to fight as that “of one ready to die”.1
There was a need to mobilise military and economic resources, increase
efforts to unify the Arabs politically and gain global diplomatic support, and
involve the popular masses in the process. All in readiness for “total war, not
confined to troops in the field of battle, but involving all the people; not con-
tent with some of the resources of the nation, but demanding the mobiliza-
tion of all them in their totality”. If such mobilisation forced the Arabs to halt
projects for reform and hamper “building up our countries internally”, and that
resulted in using up resources meant for public works, education, and agricul-
ture, “in fact all the income of the Arab states –above the minimum necessary
for living –so be it!” Nothing was of any value if the Zionists won and were
allowed to “sink their fangs into the body of the Arab nation”.2 The way for-
ward was for the Arabs to match the success of the Zionists by adopting pro-
gressive, modern, scientific, technologically advanced, committed, participatory,
and united attitude towards the national struggle.
It is important to look at Zurayq’s contribution on its contradictory
aspects: a call for modernisation and against tribalism, dynastic rule, and reli-
gious prejudices on the one hand, and a call for militarisation and sacrifice of
human and community development for the sake of nationalist gains on the
other hand. Both proved important in Arab and Palestinian efforts to address
the 1948 defeat.
The “Internal” Palestinians

The smallest component of the post-1948 Palestinian people remained within
Israeli boundaries, forming approximately 15% of the Israeli population and a
similar percentage of all Palestinians. Left after the war without their leadership,
they lived through the first decade of statehood in a survival mode, concerned
above all with safeguarding their precarious existence and avoiding expulsion.
Although granted voting rights, their initial electoral representation consisted
largely of lists of “notables” affiliated with the ruling Mapai Party, who did
not challenge the oppressive policies to which they were subjected. These pol-
icies included massive land expropriations, and restrictions on free movement,
employment, organisation, and education. The majority of them lived under
a military government that acted as the ultimate authority in charge of their
150 Israel/Palestine Post-1948: Dispersal and New Beginnings
affairs. The only legal expression of protest politics was through Maki –the
Israeli Communist Party.
Maki did not contest the notion of Israel as a Jewish state. It called for
Palestinian self-determination alongside Israel, not in its place, leaving the
question of borders to negotiations. It raised the social and civil concerns of
Palestinian citizens and confronted the regime on their behalf. The solution
to the question of Palestine, it said, was “mutual recognition of the right to
self-determination, up to separation, of the two peoples: the people of Israel
and the Palestinian-Arab people”. Since Jews had an independent state already
while Palestinians were denied theirs, Israel had to recognise their right, which
extended to those of them who lived inside its boundaries, as well as the right
of the 1948 refugees to return to their homeland. In exchange, Arab states had
to recognise Israel’s right to exist, put an end to the boycott against it, and con-
clude peace agreements with it. Internally, this would require equality of civil
and national rights for the Arab population in all social, political, economic, and
cultural areas.3
Leading members of the pre-1948 National Liberation League –Tawfiq
Tubi, Emil Habibi, and Emil Tuma –made the Party a prominent voice for
the concerns of Palestinian citizens. They were legally allowed to play that role
because Maki never identified as an Arab nationalist party and the majority of
its leaders and members were Jews.The proportion of Arabs increased over time
to become a majority by the 1960s but even then the Party retained a Jewish-
Arab identity and did not consider itself as part of the Arab national movement.
The impact of Arab nationalism was unavoidable though. Arab regimes
suffered a humiliating defeat in 1948, the shock waves of which led to a series
of coups and popular uprisings that shaped politics in the region for decades to
come. Palestinians were affected like many Arabs, united in support of a new
pan-Arab nationalism associated with the leadership of Egypt’s president Gamal
Abd al-Nasser. While Maki had to reconcile global Soviet policy imperatives
with local concerns, nationalists could pursue the ideal of Arab unity in an
unqualified manner, as the key to the liberation of Palestine. Opposition to
Western attempts to form military alliances with friendly regimes –especially
the Baghdad Pact of the mid-1950s –provided a common political denom-
inator for pro-Soviet and Arab nationalist forces in the region. This proved a
short-lived affair however.
With the Free Officers coup of 1952 in Egypt, and the subsequent rise
of President Nasser to a powerful position in the region and beyond it, pan-
Arabism became a major trend that affected developments in the Middle East
and North Africa. The 1955 Bandung Conference, in which Nasser played
a prominent role, the nationalisation of the Suez Canal Company in 1956,
the tripartite Suez campaign later that year that ended with the ignominious
withdrawal of French, British, and Israeli forces under global pressure –all
these contributed to making Nasser a global anti-colonial symbol. Palestinians,
recovering from the impact of the 1948 Nakba, saw in that new hope for their
own liberation. This was especially the case with the emergence of the United
Arab Republic (UAR) in February 1958, a union between Egypt and Syria that
was intended to become the starting point for broader alliances, promising a
unified Arab effort to boost the cause of Palestinian liberation.
In a speech in the Galilee village of Arrabeh in February 1958, a week after
the formation of the UAR, Emil Habibi asserted:
We Communists have always said that liberation from imperialist dom-

ination is the way to realise the Arab peoples’ quest for restoring their
unity … the process of dismantling imperialist domination in the Middle
East is unstoppable, therefore it should be clear that the Arab unity
established between Egypt and Syria will continue to expand, and no force
could block this natural and necessary development.
It was futile for Israel to “continue serving crumbling colonialism and

denying the rights of the Arab people”. It had to “recognise these rights and
fight in solidarity together with the national liberation movement of the Arab
people against imperialism”. This applied internally too: “It was natural that the
Arab masses should intensify the struggle for their civil and national rights”. No
force could stop the process of Arab unification or “deny the Palestinian Arab
people its right to self-determination”. The Communist Party, he concluded,
supported “the just national rights of the Palestinian Arab people, thereby guar-
anteeing the just national rights of the Israeli people as well”.4
Reports of the speech coincided with a campaign led by the Shabak security
service, with servile collaboration of all mainstream media, which accused
Habibi and other Arab members of the Party of planning to form a separ-
atist movement in support of pan-Arab Nationalism, and to call for an armed
uprising similar to that taking place at the time against French colonial rule in
Algeria. No evidence of such “incitement” ever emerged, then or since, and
it might have been a calculated move to warn dissidents off and nip potential
irredentist trends in the bud.5
The Party responded by reasserting its 1957 conference resolutions: Jews
already realised their right to self-determination and established their state, but
“the Palestinian Arab people was prevented from exercising its right due to the
war, imposed by imperialism and its agents on Palestine’s peoples”. A just solu-
tion for the Palestine problem required “an Israeli recognition of the right to
self-determination up to secession of the Palestinian Arab people, including its
part residing in Israel”.A just peace with the Arab peoples, it continued, required
“abandoning the policy of denial of the national rights of the Palestinian Arab
people, and adopting a policy of recognition and respect for its right of self-
determination up to secession –to facilitate the acceptance of Israel among the
Arab peoples, and guarantee its existence, security, future and prosperity.6
Habibi added that Israel’s future could be guaranteed only in “an anti-
imperialist struggle, understanding and solidarity with the Arab peoples in their
great uprising towards their national liberation”. This included recognition of
the national demands “of a living part of these peoples, the Palestinian Arab
people”. He denied that anyone in the Party called for the destruction of Israel.
Rather, it was government’s insistence on standing in the way of the inevit-
able march of history that presented a danger: it was impossible “to guarantee
the future of one people on the ruins of another”.7 With reference to Alegria,
Party leader Moshe Sneh asserted that it was the French colonialists who were
responsible for bloody terrorism and violence. Communists there and else-
where advocated negotiated peaceful solutions to all problems.8
In a follow-up, two weeks into the orchestrated campaign, Party leader
Mikunis attributed government’s policies to the delusion that global “imperi-
alist reaction” would provide support for “the refusal to recognise the right of
Arab refugees to return to Israel and to resolve the border issue in accordance
with the right to self-determination of the Palestinian Arabs”. Israel/Palestine
was a shared homeland and both its peoples had legitimate national rights, he
concluded.9 That point was reiterated by Tawfik Tubi on the same day, asserting
the Party’s support of self-determination for the two peoples of Israel/Palestine,
Jewish and Arab, in line with the 1947 partition resolution of the United Nations
(UN). Arab members were “loyal sons to our people, dedicated and brave
fighters against its enemies and oppressors who deny its rights”, internationalists
working to advance rights for all.The fight against “national oppression”,“racial
discrimination”, and “land dispossession” was not an expression of nationalism
but of internationalist solidarity, he said.10
The Arab Front and al-Ard

That very senior Party leaders, two Jews and two Arabs, rushed to respond to
the campaign was a clear sign of the importance of the issue, coming as it did
in the midst of a wave of Arab nationalist enthusiasm. Capitalising on that, in
July 1958 Maki joined independent intellectuals and activists to launch the
Arab Front. Its founding document committed the Front to ensure “the just
legal rights of Israel’s Arabs”, including the return of displaced villagers to their
communities, an end to land expropriations and return of confiscated land to
its owners, abolition of the military government, putting “an end to national
oppression and guaranteeing equality in all areas”, use of Arabic in govern-
ment offices, and return of the 1948 refugees.The solidarity offered by progres-
sive Jewish forces was noted, with a call for collaboration to enhance mutual
understanding and co-existence.11
It came as no surprise that the Front encountered a concerted attack from
the authorities and mainstream media, accusing it as being simultaneously
Communist and Nasserist formation, which aimed to undermine Israeli sov-
ereignty from within and aid its enemies from without. In response, Taher al-
Fahoum of the Front’s Executive pointed to the nature of the mass mobilisation,
which sought to unify the Arab community as a whole, and called on Jews to
show solidarity with the efforts to restore rights as a way to create a bridge
between the Jewish and Arab peoples.12
In its articles of association, The Arab Front in Israel opened its membership
to Arabs over 20 years of age. Its initial application for registration was denied
in October 1958, with the excuse that it violated Ottoman-era regulations
prohibiting associations working for “political separation” based on national or
racial grounds. As a result the name was changed to The Popular Front in Israel,
formally opened to all citizens who agreed with its aims.
While the Front aimed to address the local concerns of Palestinian citi-
zens, it could not escape the impact of broad regional developments. When
the pro-Western Hashemite dynasty in Iraq was toppled from power in the
July 1958 revolution, it seemed that the pan-Arab wave led by Nasser received
a huge boost. But it turned out soon thereafter that the new Iraqi leadership
of General Abd al-Karim Qassem chose a different direction: it distanced itself
from the Egypt-Syria Union and joined the Communist Party in blocking
attempts by nationalists to force broader unification. That move opened up a
rift among Palestinians, positioning the independent activists who sided with
Nasser against Maki, which sided in turn with Qassem. Despite appeals urging
colleagues to ignore external disputes, “just as the masses in Jordan and Algeria
did not allow themselves to be distracted from the struggle against British and
French colonialism”13, it proved impossible for the Front to continue operating
as a unified body from early 1959 onwards.
In an attempt to prevent a split in its ranks, the Front focused its efforts on
internal questions of land and refugees. A briefing prepared by veteran lawyer
and activist Hanna Naqarah called on
our Arab people to unify its ranks and to rally around our Popular Arab
Front that is fighting for restoring Arab refugees to their villages, restore
Arab lands to their owners, and putting an end to the policy of racial dis-
crimination and oppression.14
But the project failed to maintain unity and many nationalists left to form
the independent al-Ard (the Land) movement.
In an application for a newspaper license in August 1959, the new movement
outlined its principles:
• The Arab people in Israel were an inseparable part of the Arab nation; Arab
nationalism was the road for social and political liberation.
• Recognition of the right of return of Arab refugees to their former places
of residence was a crucial point in a peace agreement between Israel and
the Arab states.
• Cultivating the spirit of nationalism among the Arabs in Israel and granting
them full rights was another crucial point.
• The people of Israel must adopt neutrality between the two global camps,
recognise the Arab League as the main force in the region, and support
Arab unity.15
No license was granted but in October 1959 a weekly newspaper started
publication. Referring to itself as the “al-Ard family”, the group claimed to
speak for
young people who opened their eyes when the generation of their parents
and relatives were thrown beyond the borders, where they live today under
difficult conditions, afflicted by disease, poverty, hunger, and without dig-
nity, since there is no dignity without a homeland.
The Nakba that was inflicted on them also opened the eyes of “the Arab
masses from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf ”, who realised that their own
conditions of living in misery were due to collaboration between treasonous
kings and corrupt rulers who served as imperialist agents. That realisation
brought about uprisings in many countries and inspired a new wave of Arab
nationalism that resulted in the Egypt-Syria union, which was “the nucleus
of the Arab unity movement working for the prosperity of the peoples of the
region and for world peace”.
Al-Ard promised Arab citizens to raise “the voice of pure Arabism, to express
their feelings and protect their dignity and rights”. The following demands
were listed:
• Equality for Arab citizens in all areas; abolition of racially discriminatory

legislation.
• Putting an end to the “erasure of Arab identity and its moral, material and
spiritual foundations”; allowing it to thrive according to Arab traditions
and national character.
• Recognition of the right of refugees to return to their former places of
residence, noting that “this is not a humanitarian problem but essentially a
political one”.
• Recognition of Arab unity as an independent leading force in the
Arab world.
• Adoption of a policy of “positive neutrality” between the two global
blocks, as decided by the peoples of Asia and Africa in the historic Bandung
conference.
• Linking the future of Israel to that of the region, economically, cultur-
ally, and socially, to avoid its continued existence as “a bridgehead for
imperialism”.16
An editorial on the anniversary of the 1947 partition resolution took “World

Zionism” to task for using that resolution as
a first step towards realising its plans in the Arab world, feeling satisfied
temporarily with a part of the country while conspiring to swallow the
whole of Palestine, and prepare the country to be used as a bridgehead to
conquer Arab countries.
The conquest of Palestine led to the expulsion of a million refugees, while
those “who experienced the disaster inside Israel, are living under conditions
similar to the Nazi detention camps in Europe”. The rights of the Palestinian
Arab people remained “trampled upon inside the country and outside it”. The
Israeli authorities refused to let a single Arab refugee return to his home and
they continued to dispossess Arabs in Israel through land expropriation, heavy
taxation, and making it difficult for Arab residents to make a living.17
The pan-Arab imperative, which gave rise to the movement and caused the
split with the Popular Front, continued to be a dominant theme. A satirical
attack ridiculed “the Jerusalem dwarf ” [Ben-Gurion] and called on him to visit
Baghdad, in a supposed alliance with General Qassem, Nasser’s rival for leader-
ship of the Arab world:
Visit them and allow Iraq to be ruled in collaboration between Abu-Abbas

[Qassem] and Abu-Amos [Ben-Gurion]. You can exchange views about
leadership styles based on your expertise on democracy, freedom of expres-
sion, movement, and principle.You can compete with one another in fab-
ricating nationalisms, since you fabricate Druze and Catholic nationalisms
and Abu-Abbas is fabricating Kurdish, Assyrian, and Armenian nationalisms.
That Arab nationalism was the only legitimate force, and other claims to
identity were nothing but conspiracies against it, was the obvious conclusion.18
What made al-Ard distinct were not its concrete demands, not different
from those raised by Maki, but its ability to operate with no internal Jewish
or external Soviet support. That independence from any legitimate authority
(from the State’s perspective) doomed its chances to work legally and grow as a
party competing for the support of Palestinian citizens. It faced repression and
in January 1960 was forced to cease publishing its newspaper. It never received
a permit for another. It was allowed to register as a commercial company but
could not engage in legal political activity.
Two documents allow us to identify its key positions in subsequent years: a
memorandum to the Secretary-General of the United Nations and a submis-
sion to the High Court of Justice, appealing the state’s decision to deny its regis-
tration as a political association. The 1964 UN letter asserted that “the Arabs in
Israel are part of the Palestinian Arabs who are an integral part of the Whole
Arab nation”. They demanded “total equality for all citizens” and an “end to
discrimination and oppression”, within the context of the UN Palestine parti-
tion resolution of 1947. Israel was called to adopt “a policy of non-alignment,
positive neutralism and peaceful coexistence” in the region, and to recognise
the Arab national movement as “the most progressive and reliable force on
which the future of the region depends”.
Two issues were raised as specific concerns: the systematic campaign of land
expropriation, whereby Arab villages lost the bulk of their possessions, and the
policy of political oppression –directed at activists as well as the general popu-
lation –which made it difficult for people to organise and fight for their rights.
Military rule and the use of Emergency Regulations (a relic from British times)
were particularly harmful. The UN was called upon to intervene, since neither
Israel’s legal system nor Jewish public opinion and the mainstream press offered
assistance in fighting inequalities of that nature. This was needed because the
authorities were “waging an uncomparable mean and violent campaign of
terror, persecution and discrimination against the Arabs who are, in spite of all
false allegations, the first legitimate owners of the country”.19
In its articles of association dating to 30th June 1964, al-Ard’s goals were
identified as:
• Raising the educational, scientific, health, economic, and political level of

all its members.
• Establishing full equality and social justice among all sections of the people
in Israel.
• Finding a just solution for the Palestine question as a whole and indivisible
unit, in line with the wishes of the Palestinian Arab people … within the
framework of the supreme wishes of the Arab nation.
• Supporting the movement for liberation, unity, and socialism in the Arab
world in all legal ways, seeing it as the decisive force in the Arab world.
• Working for peace in the Middle East specifically and in the world at large.
• Supporting progressive movements around the world, resistance to imperi-
alism and support for all the peoples seeking to overthrow its yoke.20
The authorities denied the movement’s application for registration, defining

its goals as a threat to the existence and welfare of the State of Israel. On appeal,
the High Court ruled that those goals amounted to opposition to the exist-
ence of the State of Israel and the Jewish presence in it. The Court agreed that
national minorities had a right to equality and to maintain cultural and ethnic
identification with the broader Arab world. But, the movement’s insistence that
Palestinians were the sole group with the right to determine their own fate
and the future of the country was a code for denying the rights of the Israeli
state and its Jewish population. Further, the Court claimed, Arab unity and
socialism too were code words for supporting the Arab national movement that
denied Israel’s existence. In other words, in the Court’s view, both the local and
regional meanings of al-Ard’s programme were a disguise for a plan to destroy
the State rather than merely change its regime and policies.21 A legal ban on all
movement activities followed soon thereafter, which included a failed attempt
to run in the 1965 general elections under the banner of the Socialist List.
Activists were arrested and sent into internal exile, and the List was disqualified
by the authorities as the same al-Ard in a different guise.
It must be recognised that the positions of al-Ard were indeed ambiguous
regarding the core issues of the Israel-Palestine question. It chose a legal course
of action, shunned violence, and sought to operate through the established pol-
itical channels. At the same time, it challenged the foundations of the Israeli state
ethos and its Jewish identity. It aligned itself with regional Arab nationalism and
local Palestinian-Arab identity and, unlike Maki, made little attempt to com-
bine these with class or other bases of commonality with Jewish groups. Its aim
was to restore the rights of an oppressed minority that was part of a regional
majority and had been part of a local majority before 1948.There was no room
for meaningful Jewish-Arab solidarity, in its view, before Palestinians established
themselves on an independent basis.22 In all these respects its perspective was
similar to that of the Africanists of the same period, discussed in Chapter 6,
with one crucial difference –there was indeed a massive, popular, grassroots
pan-Arab national movement with which they could affiliate, while a similar
pan-African movement was an idea rather than a reality on the ground.
Maki, Matzpen, and the Colonial Model

During that same period Maki remained committed to its point of departure: the
right to national self-determination of the two peoples who shared Palestine as
their homeland.The “national oppression of the Arab population” was seen as an
obstacle to Israeli freedom as well, since a nation that oppressed another could
not itself be free. Specifically, it called for abolition of the military government,
equality of wages and employment opportunities, return of confiscated land to
“local refugees” (as distinct from refugees across the borders), provision of aid
to Arab agriculture, industrial development of Arab-populated regions, job cre-
ation for graduates, encouragement of Arab culture and education, extension
of public services to all Arab settlements, and providing equal citizenship in all
respects, through joint Jewish-Arab struggle and solidarity.23
Maki emphasised the need for mass-based struggle and criticised al-Ard for
what it saw as a failure to learn from Algerian and Egyptian developments that
saw supporters of Arab unity and socialism march together.While defending al-
Ard from accusations of treason and conspiracy to undermine state security, it
criticised its attitude towards Jewish progressives as separatist and self-defeating.
The difference between the two movements was outlined by Emil Habibi:
We know how to use correct slogans to mobilise progressive forces, Jews

and Arabs alike; how to block reactionary attempts at provocation and
slander. We believe in Jewish-Arab brotherhood and joint Jewish-Arab
struggle against the common enemy –imperialism and its agents –for
bread for the worker, land for the farmer, for a common future: a just peace
based on respect for the rights of both peoples.24
Another critical voice in support al-Ard’s right to voice the concerns of

Palestinians inside Israel and align with the Arab national movement outside its
boundaries was the Israeli Socialist Organisation, better known by the name of
its publication, Matzpen (Compass). In a statement issued by Daud Turki, secre-
tary of its Haifa branch, it condemned the moves against al-Ard as an attack on
the freedom of expression and organisation of the Arab public. But, it distanced
itself from nationalist campaigns, arguing that internationalist socialism was the
only solution to national problems. Matzpen was the only Hebrew-medium
publication to feature al-Ard’s memorandum to the UN in full, identifying with
its concerns, while most media simply repeated briefing points prepared by the
security services and the Prime Minister’s office, with no critical reflection.25
Matzpen came into being as a result of a move away from Maki but in a
different direction to that of Arab nationalists. In a book written before they
left the Party, its two “founding fathers”, Akiva Orr and Moshé Machover,
reiterated Maki’s position in support of mutual recognition of the right to
national self-determination of the two peoples living in the country. They
also supported the right of the 1948 refugees to return to their homeland
or receive compensation for their land, if they chose not to return.26 This
remained their position after they and others were expelled from Maki in 1962
for violating internal discipline. In their new journal, they called for “recogni-
tion of the national rights of the two peoples of Eretz Israel –the Jewish and
the Arab”. Their dispute with the Party had to do with other issues: foreign
orientation, attitudes towards democracy, and socialism.27
A few months later, Machover and Orr asserted that the Question of
Palestine –the entire set of relationships between Jews and Arabs in the
country –had not been resolved:
The focus of the problem is that Israel and Jordan divided between them
the territory that belongs to the Arabs of Palestine. Both the private prop-
erty of individuals and the homeland of an entire nation were forcibly
taken away from them. But the nation itself did not disappear.
What was needed was
an Israeli policy that would dare to abolish immediately the military gov-
ernment in Israel, declare publicly that it is ready to return to the Arabs of
Palestine what was taken away from them in 1948, recognise their rights as
individuals and as a nation, help them acquire political independence and
remove Hussein’s yoke [Jordanian rule].
Only such a policy could guarantee Israel’s future by resolving the Israeli-
Arab conflict and normalising relations with Arab countries.28
The notion that Israel as a sovereign state should recognise the right to
self-determination of the Arabs of Palestine, which may involve conceding ter-
ritory occupied in 1948 and the right of return of refugees, and in exchange
receive recognition by Arab states, remained Matzpen’s position for its first
years of existence.29 It placed it at the extreme Left of the political spectrum,
together with Maki, though neither challenged the existence of Israel or the
right of Israeli Jews to self-determination. But, soon thereafter Matzpen started
to display open rejection of Zionism. From an initial call for improved relations
between Israel and Arab countries it moved towards re-defining the clash
between Jewish settlers and indigenous Palestinians as colonial in nature and
called for Israel to be “de-Zionized”, that is, to cease being a Jewish state and to
sever its links with Zionist institutions and policies that entrenched the conflict.
Identifying Zionism as the source of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, due to
its colonial nature, was first done in a discussion of al-Ard. Meir Smorodinsky
argued that Palestine faced a colonialism of a special type. He did not link the
concept explicitly to its South African usage, discussed in Chapter 6, but must
have been aware of it. While “normal” colonialism exploited the labour of the
natives, Smorodinsky said, Zionist settlement was different: “Its goal was the
dispossession of the original residents in order to establish a Jewish state. The
aim of normal colonialism was to exploit the riches of the country; the aim of
Zionist colonialism was the country itself ”. Jews who settled in Palestine saw
it as their homeland and severed their links to their countries of origin. Their
rights in the country could not be denied. The only solution was “changing
the Zionist nature of the State of Israel”, making it the state of all those who
lived in it, not of world Jewry. This necessitated political cooperation between
progressive Jewish and Arab forces, rather than al-Ard’s notion of an exclusive
Arab struggle.30
In a follow-up, Smorodinsky argued that the Zionist movement was different
from all other colonial movements, including that in South Africa, as it sought
to remove all indigenous residents and form a pure state for immigrants. The
Israeli-Arab conflict was not national in essence, “not a struggle over terri-
tory with a mixed population”. It was a struggle between the Zionist colo-
nial movement, which continued to displace the Arabs from an ever-growing
part of Palestine, and the Arab national movement, whose aim was to establish
sovereign control over all Arab-inhabited territories. There was no symmetry
between Zionism and Arab nationalism; their conflict was irreconcilable, “a
clash between a national movement and a colonial movement with no possi-
bility of a compromise!”31
Just as Matzpen was intensifying its critique of Zionism from an internation-
alist perspective, Maki was moving in an opposite direction, with a greater focus
on nationalism (both Jewish and Arab), causing a deep rift within its ranks. The
majority of Jews drifted towards the Zionist mainstream and turned against
the Arab national movement, while Arab members together with a minority
of Jews stuck to the Soviet line, which regarded Arab nationalism as a pro-
gressive ally. In a sense, that was a replay of the same dynamics that led to the
Communist movement’s split in 1943 as discussed in Chapter 4. Reflecting on
the divide, Matzpen adopted “a plague on both your houses” attitude. It did
not side with the faction that eventually became the New Communist List
(Rakah) merely because it displayed superficial anti-imperialist inclinations.32
And, it subjected the Jewish faction to harsh criticism for becoming apologists
for Israeli policies, which put Jewish citizens in danger by aligning themselves
with imperialism against progressive Arab movements.33
There was no way to overcome the contradiction between Zionism and pro-
gressive Arab forces, Matzpen said. Israel was not merely the historical product
of “a movement of external immigrants in the midst of the Arab world”, but an
instrument for ongoing colonisation and settlement.A stable peace arrangement
with the Arab world required more than adopting an anti-imperialist orienta-
tion in foreign policy. It demanded
a far-reaching transformation of the very essence of the state –abolishing

its nationalist character; abolishing policies that initiate, plan, encourage,
and organise immigration and settlement according to nationalist con-
siderations; abolishing the distinctions between Jews and non-Jews, that
is: abolishing the Zionist essence of the state.
The issue was not a conflict between Jews and Arabs, or between Israel and
Arab states. In essence it was “a conflict between Zionism and the national and
anti-imperialist movement in the Arab world”.34
That point was developed further in a major programmatic statement from
May 1967, a month before the 1967 war. The Palestine question, it said, was
“not an ordinary conflict between two nations”, and it was not enough to
call for “coexistence based on mutual recognition of the just national rights
of the two peoples”. The state of Israel was the outcome of “the colonization
of Palestine by the Zionist movement, at the expense of the Arab people and
under the auspices of imperialism”. Israel thus was a tool for the continuation
of “the Zionist Endeavor”. The Arab world could not accept such a state in its
midst, “whose declared purpose is not to serve as a political expression of its
own population, but as a bridgehead, a political instrument and a destination
for immigration of the Jews all over the world”. Israel’s Zionist character was
also “opposed to the true interests of the Israeli masses” because it left them
dependent on external forces.
The solution was the “de-Zionization of Israel”, meaning “a deep revolu-
tionary change which will transform it from a Zionist state” –a state of all
Jews –into a “state that represents the interests of the masses who live in it”.
In particular, the Law of Return needed to be abolished. In that context, the
refugee issue was the most painful part, the solution to which was to allow
“every refugee who wants to return to Israel” to do so or be “fully compensated
for loss of property and for the personal suffering”. Further,
all the laws and regulations aimed at discriminating and oppressing the
Arab population of Israel and expropriating its lands must be abolished. All
expropriations and damages (to land, property and person) caused under
these laws and regulations must be fully compensated.
As a colonial enterprise, the Zionist project displayed specific features:
Whereas in other countries the settlers established their economy upon the
exploitation of the labour of the indigenous inhabitants, the colonization
of Palestine was carried out through the replacement and expulsion of the
indigenous population … As a result of Zionist colonization, a Hebrew
nation with its own national characteristics (common language, separate
economy, etc.) has been formed in Palestine.
The solution had to redress the wrong done to Palestinians as well as “ensure
the national future of the Hebrew masses”, who were brought to Palestine
by Zionism but were not to blame for its actions. Israeli Jews would not free
themselves from the influence of Zionism “unless the progressive forces in
the Arab world present them with a prospect of coexistence without national
oppression”. Recognition of their right to self-determination, ideally as “a
unit in an economic and political union of the Middle East”, was essential. In
that way, the Hebrew nation would carry on its own national and cultural life
“without endangering the Arab world and without a threat to its own exist-
ence by the Arabs”. The same held for Palestinians; if they decided to create
their own political entity, “the necessary political and territorial arrangements
should be made within the framework of establishing a socialist union of the
Middle East”, rather than as a separate little state which would not be viable
on its own.35
The radical shift of Matzpen is best seen against the background of the
1965 split of the Communist Party. The two Party factions shared a view of
the State of Israel as expressing the right to self-determination of Israeli Jews
or perhaps Jews in general (the distinction was not clear). They called on Arab
states to recognise that right and called on Israel to recognise the equivalent
right of Palestinian Arabs. They shared support for progressive Arab nation-
alist regimes allied with the Soviet Union. They criticised Israel’s alliance with
imperialism, which brought the danger of war to the region. But they also had
their differences.
Adherents of Position A (the future Rakah), led by Meir Vilner and Tawfik
Tubi, opposed the “false equivalence” between “those who collaborated with
imperialism [Israel] and those who resisted it [Arab nationalist regimes]”. They
rejected the notion that the Israeli-Arab conflict was “a conflict between two
nationalisms” that failed to recognise each other’s rights. That notion ignored
three points: (1) that the main struggle in the region was against imperialism,
and progressive Arab states played an important role in it, while the rulers of
Israel sided with imperialism, (2) that the right of the people of Israel to self-
determination had been realised, but not the right of Palestinian Arabs; only
when Israel recognised that right it would be recognised in turn, and (3) that
Arab states on occasion expressed support for a peaceful resolution of the con-
flict, in line with the Bandung conference of 1955, effectively recognising Israel,
while Israel never recognised the right of the Palestinian-Arab people or even
its mere existence.
There were reactionary nationalist tendencies within the Arab anti-imperialist
camp, Position A conceded, and occasional irresponsible calls to “throw Israel
into the sea”, but these were secondary in importance, fed by Israeli policies
and likely to fade with ongoing progress. It was crucial to recognise the absence
of symmetry between the sides: “peace between Israel and the Arab countries
must be based on mutual respect for the just rights of both peoples”, but it had
to start with “recognition by Israel of the legal rights of the Palestinian-Arab
people, primarily the right of the Arab refugees to return to their homeland or
receive compensation if choosing not to”.The key to the solution was changing
Israeli policies first.
Adherents of Position B (who kept the name Maki after the split), led by
Shmuel Mikunis and Moshe Sneh, disagreed that Israel bore the primary respon-
sibility for the state of conflict. Both sides were to blame for failing to recognise
the other’s rights. Not only were Arab states guilty of rejecting Israel’s existence,
in violation of UN resolutions, but their position made it more difficult to
campaign for Palestinian rights among the Israeli masses. Hostile statements on
the part of Arab states and Palestinian organisations (the newly created Palestine
Liberation Organisation and its Liberation Army), with the support of foreign
powers such as China, posed a danger that could not be dismissed as secondary,
temporary, or marginal. Such attitudes towards Israel had to be tackled or else
they would ruin the chances of any resolution of the conflict and undermine
progressive developments in the region.36
Clearly, Position A was more critical towards Israeli policies than Position
B, which in turn offered harsher criticism of Arab nationalist regimes. Both
called on Israel to detach itself from Western alliances and adopt more friendly
policies towards Arab regimes and the Soviet Union, but without changing its
fundamental nature. The problem was primarily a matter of foreign orienta-
tion. Neither side offered a radical critique of Arab nationalism as a top-down
militarised development project that could not lead to a socialist transformation
of the region, or of Zionism as a colonial project. It was this latter point in
particular that made Matzpen stand out, and while it was politically isolated in
that respect inside Israel, intellectually it found allies who shared its pioneering
perspective.
Two landmark studies of the mid-1960s consolidated the analysis of Israel
and Zionism as colonial projects, albeit of a special type. Fayez Sayegh’s Zionist
Colonialism in Palestine, possibly the most serious scholarly discussion of Zionism
from a Palestinian view, offered a historical perspective, in which Palestine
represented an anomaly, “a radical departure from the trend of contemporary
world history”. Many peoples gained the right to self-determination “at the
very time when the Arab people of Palestine was finding itself helpless to pre-
vent the culmination of a process of systematic colonization to which Palestine
had been subjected for decades”. That development took the form of “forcible
dispossession of the indigenous population, their expulsion from their own
country, the implantation of an alien sovereignty on their soil, and the speedy
importation of hordes of aliens to occupy the land thus emptied of its rightful
inhabitants”. Palestinians lost not only political control of their country but also
their physical presence in it.37
It was unprecedented, Sayegh said: settlers in Asia and Africa were driven
by economic motives, while Zionist settlers were animated by “desire to attain
nationhood for themselves, and to establish a Jewish state … which would in due
course attract to its territories the Jews of the world”.They could not counten-
ance “coexistence with the inhabitants of Palestine”. Palestine was populated by
Arabs with national consciousness of their own, and Zionist aspirations could
not be realised “while the Arab people of Palestine continued to inhabit its
homeland”. Zionism thus “was essentially incompatible” with the existence of
the “native population”.38 Israel was isolated in the region because its “pattern
of racial exclusiveness and self-segregation renders it an alien society in the
Middle East”.39 Three features distinguished it: a racist pattern of behaviour,
addiction to violence, and expansionism, all of which were “congenital, essen-
tial, and permanent”. And, it was different from colonialism in general:
Nowhere in Asia or Africa –not even in South Africa or Rhodesia –has

European race-supremacism expressed itself in so passionate a zeal for
thoroughgoing racial exclusiveness and for physical expulsion of ‘native’
populations across the frontiers of the settler-state, as it has in Palestine,
under the compulsion of Zionist doctrines.40
Along similar lines, French academic and activist Maxime Rodinson argued
that Zionist settlement was the product of “a European ideological movement”.
It achieved its goal,
thanks to the power of the Yishuv’s sense of nationhood, its predictable

superiority in European techniques of weaponry and organization, its
ability to apply pressure in Europe and America, the guilt that Europeans
and Americans felt at the crimes committed by the Germans –their
European brothers –and their desire to exonerate themselves … at the sole
expense of other, non-European, parties.
All these took place within “the framework of European expansion into the
countries belonging to what later came to be called the Third World”. Creating
a Jewish state
in an Arab Palestine in the twentieth century could not help but lead to a
colonial-type situation and to the development (completely normal, socio-
logically speaking) of a racist state of mind, and in the final analysis to a
military confrontation between the two ethnic groups.41
Rodinson pointed out that relations between Israelis and Arabs had been less
of “exploitation than of domination”, but that did not diminish their colonial
character, nor did it determine their future. He noted that “the colonial origins
of the Algerian Pieds Noirs did not prevent the FLN [National Liberation Front]
from recognizing their rights”. They did leave eventually but due to “their
inability to adapt to the new situation or of their refusal to accept” it. In the
same vein, “no one speaks of chasing the whites out of South Africa because
of their colonial origins. They are asked simply to coexist with the Blacks as
equals”. Rodinson was less certain about the possibility of political independ-
ence for settlers:
To set oneself up as an autonomous ethnic group is more difficult.

Sometimes the native ethnic group can be brought by force to the point of
recognizing this autonomy, which then becomes legal with the passage of
time. But one can only claim to have left the colonial process behind when
the native group, as a result of negotiated concessions, comes to accept this
autonomy.42
The Re-emergence of Palestinian Nationalism

Of course, Jewish political statehood encountered mostly hostile attitudes before
1967. It was not accepted as legitimate by local or other Arabs. Early Zionist
leaders put forward the notion that the Palestine issue could be resolved within
a regional framework, but by the early 1950s, after the rise of a new gener-
ation of Arab nationalist leaders and regimes, the problem had been entrenched,
even exacerbated. Palestinians outside Israeli boundaries did not wait for Abd
al-Nasser to raise the pan- Arab banner. In fact, the most important
organisation –like al- Ard, better known for its legacy than for concrete
achievements –was the Arab Nationalists Movement (ANM, al-Qawmiyyun
al-Arab), which aimed to create a revolutionary alternative to the parochial
movements that had failed to defend their people against Zionism. It was pan-
Arab in composition and orientation and, not surprisingly, Palestinians played
an important role in it: as stateless activists they found it easy to identify with a
movement that organised across states and national boundaries.
The activists most associated with the movement were George Habash and
Wadi’ Haddad who found themselves in exile after 1948. In Lebanon and Jordan
in particular, the movement enjoyed substantial support from refugees, appealing
to them with the themes of liberation, return, and vengeance. Although the lib-
eration of Palestine was the main concern of its founders, they focused more on
the broad Arab scene: they regarded Arab independence from foreign rule and
regional unity as preconditions for a successful campaign against Israel. In the
words of Haddad:“The way to Tel Aviv is through Damascus, Baghdad, Amman,
and Cairo”.43
Reflecting on the formation of the movement, George Habash outlined the
lessons of the 1948 defeat:
the fundamental principal [sic] of our party was grounded in Arab unity, the
sine qua non of a resolution to the Palestinian problem, as our slogan –‘Unity,
Liberation, Vengeance’ –explicitly indicated. Dr Constantine Zurayk was
our spiritual father. His book on the Nakba showed us the path to follow to
recover our right of return. The struggle, according to him, should be not
only military but also cultural, and thereby intimately linked to the Arab
unity we intended to generate.
Further,
we reckoned on a very strong dialectical relationship between the liber-

ation of Palestine and Arab unity. In our eyes, the Zionist project was a
colonialist project that, beyond Palestine, targeted the entire Arab nation.
We therefore had to confront it with a global project of unity, the primary
objective of which was the liberation of Palestine, the matrix of all our
woes.44
Initially, the ANM repeated themes found in Amin al-Husseini’s rhetoric.

The conflict was defined as “the constant aspiration of the Jews to conquer
Palestine and establish their own government”, representing “a danger equiva-
lent to absolute extermination”, which “will not stop within its present borders”.
Imperialism was a problem, but the main danger was Zionism which gained the
support of many countries and the resources of International Judaism. To fight
it effectively, there was a need to overcome the 1948 defeat:
the deterioration and corruption of our national conditions, represented

in the fragmentation of the homeland, the dominance of imperialism and
its allies, the weakness and disintegration of our social existence, and the
predominance of the reactionary conceptions among Arab individuals.45
Subsequently the movement became involved deeply in the quest for Arab
unity, expressed through merger attempts between states, pushing the question
of Palestine to the background. At the same time, internal debate led to a new
left-wing focus on social issues:
The age in which the movement of Arab nationalism was separated from
the progressive social revolution has ended … There is no longer a political
national question standing separately and posing against a specific social
question called ‘the workers question’ or ‘the peasants question’; or ‘the
question of social progress’.The Arab question has come to mean an overall
revolutionary concept which is the melting-pot of the national, political,
economic and social ambitions of the progressive Arab masses.46
The debate was the beginning of greater concern with global issues within
Arab activist circles, heralding the rise of a trend that saw links between local,
regional and international struggles.
A plan outlined by the ANM in 1961 mapped different scenarios, identifying
the main opponent as “Israel”47 together with “the global Zionist movement”.
The ideal scenario from its perspective, but not necessarily the most likely,
was for Palestinian mobilisation to combine with a unified Arab camp led by
the UAR, allowing Palestinians to organise among themselves “while pre-
paring and sharpening their skills for the final battle to be fought alongside the
UAR”, under the banner of the “Palestine Liberation Front”. But, the ANM
acknowledged, Palestinians were dispersed and living under different polit-
ical circumstances, and the task was made complicated by the general morale
among refugees, the legacy of the Nakba, that was “dominated by individualism
and dependence often shot through with a kind of hopelessness and aversion to
any organised political action”.48
By the mid-1960s, the focus on Palestine had become central within a
regional context: “Our struggle for Palestine is at the very heart of our struggle
for the realization of the [Arab nation’s] objectives: unity, liberation, socialism,
and the redemption of Palestine”.49 Yezid Sayigh defined this approach as
“Palestine was now the means, Arab unity the end”, but as it turned out,
Palestine increasingly became an end in itself while Arab unity faced irrevers-
ible decline. It was no coincidence that the ANM’s shift towards Palestine came
about just when al-Ard was operating inside Israel, the Palestine Liberation
Organisation (PLO) was established by the Arab League, and Fatah launched its
first military operations. The generation known as The Children of the Nakba
came of age in those years, having recovered from the defeat of its elders and
having rediscovered Palestinian local patriotism embedded within pan-Arab
nationalism. Different organisational forms came into existence in various
arenas, sharing an assertion of an overall Palestinian-Arab identity, a rejection of
Zionism (not always distinguishing it clearly from Judaism), and a focus on mass
mobilisation as essential to the restoration of the homeland.
The establishment of the PLO in 1964 embodied these concerns. Although
it was part of an initiative from above, driven by Egypt as a leader of the Arab
League, it reflected a growing demand by Palestinians in the West Bank and
Gaza, and the Arab Diaspora, to take charge of their own affairs and embark
on a struggle to reclaim their rights. Ahmad Shuqeiri, its first leader, spoke at
the founding conference held in Jerusalem, celebrating it as “a historical event,
which will return to the holy sites their Arab identity, and their freedom and
their security and sanctity”. It was “a great occasion, because the valiant people
of Palestine have gathered to resist the Zionist and colonial forces. Israel has been
built on our land, and has plotted to drive us out of our homes”. But, in spite of
that, “we come to declare to the entire world that we, the people of Palestine,
are the legitimate owners of this land. We have gathered to liberate Palestine”.
Shuqeiri went on to declare that Palestinians were “one people, of one
homeland and of one shared struggle”, with “a rock solid determination to lib-
erate their land, no matter how long that process takes”. Palestine represented “a
unique catastrophe”. People who experienced colonialism usually “remained
in their homelands, fighting for their land, from their mountaintops to their
plains”, but Palestinians had been “uprooted from their homeland and have had
their entity destroyed in the process.Therefore, it is incumbent on us to build an
entity for the Palestinian people”. External support was critical, he continued,
though “the issue of Palestine will not be solved except by Palestinians, and will
not be solved except by military struggle”, relying on “the mobilisation of the
Arab nation, through its governments and its peoples, with those of Palestine
in the forefront”.50
The founding document of the PLO, the Palestinian National Charter,
outlined the consensus in the Arab world at the time. It spoke in the name of the
“the Palestinian Arab people”, who fought against “the forces of international
Zionism and colonialism” that conspired and worked “to displace it, dispossess
it from its homeland and property”. Guiding principles of the Organisation
were that “Palestine is an Arab homeland bound by strong Arab national ties
to the rest of the Arab Countries and which together form the great Arab
homeland”, and that it was an “indivisible territorial unit”.The Palestinian Arab
people would determine its destiny “when it completes the liberation of its
homeland in accordance with its own wishes and free will and choice”.
The Palestinians were “those Arab citizens who were living normally in
Palestine up to 1947, whether they remained or were expelled”. There was
a place for “Jews of Palestinian origin”, if they were “willing to live peace-
fully and loyally in Palestine”. The Palestinian people firmly believed in Arab
unity but had to “preserve its Palestinian personality and all its constituents”
and strengthen the consciousness of its existence by standing against any threat
that may “weaken or disintegrate its personality”. Arab unity and the liberation
of Palestine were “complementary goals”: Arab unity led to the liberation of
Palestine, and the liberation of Palestine led to Arab unity. The rejection of
Zionism had to be total as it was “a colonialist movement in its inception,
aggressive and expansionist in its goal, racist in its configurations, and fascist in
its means and aims”. Israel, as the pillar of colonialism, was “a permanent source
of tension and turmoil in the Middle East, in particular, and to the international
community in general”.51
Without doubt that was a document thoroughly steeped in nationalism,
undiluted by class or other social concerns, and asserting Palestinian and Arab
exclusive rights to the country and region. In that sense, the Palestinian Charter
was similar to the Pan-Africanist Manifesto of 1959, discussed in Chapter 6,
and radically different from the Freedom Charter in South Africa of 1955,
which declared in the name of “the people of South Africa” that the country
belonged “to all those who live in, black and white”. The Palestinian Charter
did not approach the issue from a potentially universal recognition of indi-
vidual rights but from the standpoint of a group denied and dispossessed of its
particular historical rights, now seeking to restore them. It explicitly rejected
the notion of common ownership, and defined protagonists solely in collective
terms –“the People”, “the Nation”, seen as entities moving through history in
an unchanged form –rather than as people who may be clustered into groups
but derive their rights as individuals. Of course, Palestinian-Arab nationalism
was not unique in giving priority to the nation as a collective actor, but its
attempt to regain a country from which the majority of its adherents had been
physically excluded was unusual.
The removal of the bulk of the indigenous population in 1948 was the
unique predicament of Palestinians and it shaped their strategy ever since. It
was responsible for their reliance on the Arab world, as a territorial and logis-
tical resource, and for their adherence to pan-Arab nationalism.With Nasserism
on the ascendancy, in the 1950s and early 1960s, it was possible to hope that a
powerful Arab front could challenge Israel from a position of strength. But the
collapse of the UAR in 1961, and subsequent intra-regional clashes, forced a re-
think. Nasser’s reluctance to confront Israel before the Arabs were ready made
younger activists feel they had to take the initiative themselves. Discussions in
the Arab League over the issue of a Palestinian Entity seemed a lip service to the
goal of liberation, and an attempt to exploit the plight of Palestinians to further
Arab political interests. Even the creation of the PLO was seen in large part as
manipulation by Arab states,
to absorb the discontent which had begun to permeate all sections of

the Palestinian people and to give expression to the Palestinian people’s
unrest and its determination to build a Palestinian national revolutionary
movement … at first an attempt to circumvent this true revolutionary
unrest.52
Against that background emerged the most important movement of the

period –the Palestinian National Liberation Movement, Fatah.53 What made it
distinct were three principles:
• First, its single-minded focus on Palestine. Other concerns –Arab unity,

Islam, and class struggle –were of interest only to the extent that they
served the Palestinian cause.
• Second, its aim to involve the Palestinian masses directly in working for
their own liberation. It was different from the PLO, which was primarily
a diplomatic project within the Arab state system, and the ANM which
was an elitist organisation. Fatah was concerned not to let Arab regimes
manipulate the Palestine issue to serve their own goals.
• Third, it advocated armed struggle as its core strategy, the only way to
liberate the country, drawing primarily on the Algerian, Vietnamese, and
Cuban examples.
These sentiments were formulated early on in 1958 as core principles, which

included the need for independent action by Palestinians in the context of Arab
repression:
Wherever we disembarked in the lands of Arabism, they forced us to be

silent and deprived us from working for our homeland. They did not leave
us with any possibility for uniting our ranks and licking our wounds. They
constrained any move for our salvation, persisted in imposing their guard-
ianship in all of our affairs, and afflicted us with false hopes.
For that reason, any hope offered by forces such as pan-Arab nationalism
created a sense of great expectations that were not met. Israel was becoming
stronger, but “our Arab nation is divided and it is reticent about confronting our
adversary in the battle of destiny”. A revolution was essential to “put an end to
this pungent surrender and the terrifying existence that is led by the sons of the
Nakba in every land”. There was a need to restore to the people “self-esteem
and belief in itself, reclaiming the confidence of the world in us and its respect
for us”. The goal was
action towards the full liberation of the occupied land of Palestine and
the liquidation of the Zionist colonialist invasion of our stolen homeland,
so that the entirety of Palestine would return as a free part of the greater
Arab world.
That would require “revolutionary mobilisation of the entire forces, capaci-

ties, and efforts of our people in all locations, and their deployment as a van-
guard for the Arab struggle to liberate the usurped land”, supplemented by “the
amassment of all Arab and friendly forces, energies, and capabilities, so that they
could back our struggle in the battle of destiny”, using the West Bank of Jordan
as the main base of operations.54
This position was reiterated in a seminal document, Our Movement’s
Statement:
Our people have been feeling the national defeat and suffering from the
painful disaster ever since it befell them … they have been torn apart, their
ranks have been divided … Our people have been suffocated by the smell of des-
pair and treachery … the smell of misery, sickness, bitter loss and painful misfortune
… ideas have become confused, and hopelessness and despair have flooded
their minds … indifference has spread … individualism has appeared, and
defeatism has prevailed with its philosophy of disparaging any nationalist
action and criticizing all revolutionary views.55
Fatah urged Palestinians to take charge of their own affairs: the movement had
to “originate directly with Palestinians and not be linked to any particular Arab
country”. It had to start operating from all Arab countries simultaneously “in
order the [sic] engage the enemy on all fronts”. It sought practical activities, not
rhetoric, because “the Palestinian people no longer believe in talk and speeches.
All they want is to see action”.56 And action had to be radical: “The only way to
regain the stolen homeland is an organized revolutionary movement, unaffili-
ated, a movement that flows from the heart of the Palestinian people, that will
spring from all the territories surrounding the occupied land simultaneously”.
It aimed to realise one goal, liberation: “Every revolutionary group in the Arab
homeland must recognize the revolutionary significance of the willingness of
the Arabs of Palestine to stand at the forefront of the Arab struggle for the liber-
ation of their homeland”. In their actions, the Palestinian vanguard would open
the way to liberation and unity of all Arabs.57
The model for the struggle was regional as well as global: “Revolutions all
over the world are inspiring us. The revolution in Algeria lights our way like
a bright torch of hope.” When the Algerians took up arms in 1954, they were
vastly outnumbered, yet they “proved to us that a people can organize itself and
build its military strength in the very process of fighting”.58 Frequent references
to Cuba and Vietnam appeared in Fatah’s publications, as it saw itself as a mili-
tant alternative to the official Arab sedate style of action, which was coupled
with bombastic rhetoric. Its office in Algiers, opened in 1962, was used to estab-
lish links with other liberation movements, such as the Vietcong, Che Guevara,
and the forces fighting Portuguese colonialism in Africa.59
Although operating mainly underground, Fatah disseminated its perspective
through its Beirut publication, Filastinuna (our Palestine), which had a broad
impact. It repeated the message to all Palestinians, wherever they were: “you
have a cause that should have the priority over any regime. Your cause is the
cause of Palestine. Be aware, and don’t work except within the framework of
your cause”. Then, “understand that only Palestinians will liberate Palestine –
don’t waste your energy, knowledge, and effort working for Arab parties against
other Arab parties … you need to regroup for Palestine’s sake”. That was not in
opposition to other perspectives:
We respected all ideologies without exception, but we wanted these ideolo-

gies, and those who believed in them, to serve Palestine. You shouldn’t
make the cause of Palestine serve your ideologies … Keep your ideology
but you are a Palestinian and an Arab, use what you believe in to serve your
cause and Palestine.60
The Fatah Constitution of 1964 asserted that Palestine was part of the Arab
World and its struggles, but Palestinians had “an independent identity”, and
were “the sole authority that decides their own destiny, and they have complete
sovereignty on all their lands”. Palestinian forces were a central player in the
liberation of Palestine, with material and human support from the Arab Nation.
Their struggle was “part and parcel of the world-wide struggle against Zionism,
colonialism and international imperialism”. The Zionist movement was “racial,
colonial and aggressive in ideology, goals, organisation and method”, and Israel
was a “Zionist invasion with a colonial expansive base, and it is a natural ally to
colonialism and international imperialism”. Defining itself as a national revolu-
tionary movement “representing the revolutionary vanguard of the Palestinian
people”, Fatah’s goals were “complete liberation of Palestine, and eradication of
Zionist economic, political, military and cultural existence”, and “establishing
an independent democratic state with complete sovereignty on all Palestinian
lands” with Jerusalem as its capital.
The method for liberating Palestine was “armed public revolution”, based on
the Palestinian people and “the Arab Nation as a partner in the fight”. Armed
struggle was “a strategy and not a tactic”, and it would continue until “the
Zionist state is demolished and Palestine is completely liberated”. Any alter-
native to “demolishing the Zionist occupation in Palestine” and “any project
intended to liquidate the Palestinian case or impose any international mandate
on its people” were rejected. Fatah did not “interfere with local Arab affairs” and
did not “tolerate such interference or obstructing its struggle by any party”.61
The key role of armed struggle was asserted subsequently in a May 1967
programmatic document, written by Faruq al-Qaddumi just before the June
war. It argued that settler colonialism was “the worst type of occupation”, and
it took place when foreign forces brought “sections of their peoples so as to
take the place of native peoples” and carry out an “aggressive role of dispersing,
exploiting, or exterminating the latter”. French colonialism in Algeria was an
instance of that, as were Rhodesia and South Africa, as was “the Zionist occupa-
tion of part of Palestine, the usurpation of that territory, and the expulsion of its
inhabitants”. In all those cases, “colonialism removes the social imprints of the
oppressed people and splits it from its natural environment. It may also reduce it
to an exploited class that works in the service of colonial interests”, thus making
the indigenous people “a single class of exploited toilers”.
Palestine was distinct though, having witnessed a violent type of colonialism
that “took the form of expelling an entire people from its country, the occupa-
tion of its land, the shredding of its social being, and the imposition upon it of
the punishment of genocide”.Through it,“our people was replaced by dispersed
groups coming from a wide variety of societies and united by an interest in col-
onisation”. Behind all that was Zionism, “a racist colonial movement backed by
the financial and military means of Britain and America”, enjoying the com-
plicity of “a band of conspiring and treacherous Arab rulers”. Zionist occu-
pation destroyed “Palestinian identity, Palestine as a geographic entity, and the
political and social signifiers and markers of the Palestinian people”. By tearing
Palestine apart, it consolidated its presence “as a replacement for its people”.
Armed violence thus became “the inevitable singular method” in the battle for
liberation, aimed at “eradicating the military forces of the occupying Zionist
state”, destroying “the industrial, agricultural, and financial foundations of
Zionist society”, and “terminating the military, political, economic, financial,
and intellectual institutions of the occupying Zionist state”. Military victory
was not the only goal of the liberation war. It was to be followed by “compre-
hensive de-Zionisation of the occupied territory”.
While the initiative was for Palestinians to take, the task involved the Arab
nation as a whole, which would realise its unity in that way: the battle for
Palestine was the means for “transformation in the course of Arab national
development”. Only popular war was capable of “liquidating the occupying
Zionist state politically, socially, and intellectually”. The war aimed at “gradual
replacement of the aggressive colonial society currently prevailing in Palestine
by means of returning the dispossessed refugees to it”. In addition, it would help
“remove the negative residues that have calcified around Arab consciousness,
rendering it incapable of evaluating the stages of national struggle”, leaving it
with a sense of fear and inadequacy in the face of the enemy.62
This commitment presented a problem for which neither theoretical
definitions nor political condemnations of colonialism provided a solution. If
indigenous people were not exploited by settlers, they became redundant and
therefore targets for ethnic cleansing.The majority of Palestinians were displaced
in the Nakba to be replaced by new Jewish immigrants. Most remained beyond
the boundaries of the Israeli state. Two strategic questions were raised as a
result: how would struggle unfold under conditions in which Palestinians were
excluded physically from the territory they sought to liberate? And, how would
they deal with the people who took their place?
The simple South African answer discussed in Chapter 6 –use the crucial
position of black labour on which economic prosperity depended in order to
undermine the oppressive system from within and negotiate political coex-
istence on an equal basis with white countrymen and women –clearly was
not applicable in Israel/Palestine. Different answers had to be found, with
increased urgency in the period that opened in June 1967, with many more
Palestinians falling under Israeli rule in the occupied West Bank and Gaza but
remaining excluded from Israel “proper”. It is to the post-1967 conditions that
we now turn.
Notes
1 C. Zurayk, The Meaning of the Disaster (Khayat College, 1956), p. 16.
2 Ibid., p. 21.
3 Report by Secretary General Mikunis to Maki’s 13th Conference, in Maki’s daily,
Kol Ha’am, 31st May 1957.
4 Kol Ha’am, “Threats and Incitement Will Not Deter the Communists from Their
Struggle in the Service of the People”, 10th February 1958.
5 Decades later Habibi attributed the incident to a reckless drunken prank, J. Beinin,
Was the Red Flag Flying There? Marxist Politics and the Arab-Israeli Conflict in Egypt and
Israel 1948-1965 (University of California Press, 1990), pp. 193–203.
6 Editorial, “Our Response to Incitement –Intensification of the Struggle”, Kol
Ha’am, 11th February 1958.
7 E. Habibi, “Rulers of Israel, Where To?”, Kol Ha’am, 14th February 1958.
8 Moshe Sneh’s speech, Kol Ha’am, 16th February 1958.
9 S. Mikunis, “Facing the Campaign of Scaremongering and Deflection”, Kol Ha’am,
21st February 1958.
10 T. Tubi, “Leaders of Mapam, You Have Disgraced Yourselves”, Kol Ha’am, 21st
February 1958.
11 “Arab Front Formed in Israel to Abolish Discrimination and Guarantee Rights”,
Kol Ha’am, 7th July 1958.
12 T. al-Fahoum, “A Healthy and Fortified Front”, Kol Ha’am, 15th August 1958.
13 Popular Front leaflet, 30th March 1959.
14 Briefing on Land by Hanna Naqarah, July 1959, in Israel State Archives (ISA) file
17050/4.
15 In ISA file 17050/4.
16 Hadhi al-Ard, 7th October 1959.
17 Kifah al-Ard, 7th December 1959.
18 Wahdat al-Ard, 16th January 1960.
19 Memorandum on the Arabs in Israel, al-Ard, 25th June 1964.
20 S. Jiryis, The Arabs in Israel (Monthly Review Press, 1976), pp. 187–96; L. Dallasheh,
“Political Mobilization of Palestinians in Israel:The al-Ard Movement”, in Displaced
at Home: Ethnicity and Gender among Palestinians in Israel, edited by R. Ann Kanaaneh
and I. Nusair (SUNY Press, 2009), pp. 21–38.
21 http://nakbafiles.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/jiryis-263-64.pdf.
22 See a positive but critical evaluation by a young intellectual in F. el-Asmar, To be an
Arab in Israel (Institute for Palestine Studies, 1978), pp. 66–80; S. Baransi, “All This
Time We Were Alone”, MERIP Reports, 96, May 1981, pp. 16–23.
23 Report by Secretary General Mikunis to Maki’s 14th Conference, in Kol Ha’am,
2nd June 1961.
24 “Al-Ittihad Criticizes the Separatism of al-Ard and Condemns Official Threats”,
Kol Ha’am, 19th July 1964.
25 Matzpen, 21, August–September 1964.
26 A. Israeli [Moshé Machover and Akiva Orr], Shalom, Shalom ve’ein Shalom [Peace,
Peace and There is No Peace: Israel and the Arabs, 1948-1961] (Bohan Press, 1961),
www.akiorrbooks.com/files/PEACE.pdf
27 “There Is an Address”, Matzpen, 1, November 1962.
28 A. Israeli, “Palestine”, Matzpen, 4, February–March 1963.
29 A. Israeli, “Israel- Arab Peace, How?”, Matzpen, 11, September– October 1963;
Matzpen, 12, November 1963.
30 S. Meir, “Al-Ard and Us”, Matzpen, 21, August – September 1964.
31 S. Meir,“The Root of the Conflict: Zionism versus Arab Nationalism”, Matzpen, 23,
November – December 1964.
32 P. Oded, “Matzpen Calling Maki Members”, Matzpen, 24, February 1965.
33 “A Retreat to Reformism: Critique of Maki’s Report for its 15th Congress”,
Matzpen, 25, April 1965.
34 A. Israeli [Machover and Orr], “Zionism or Peace?”, Matzpen, 26, November
1965.
35 ISO Central Committee, “Statement on the Israeli-Arab Conflict, May 1967”, in
Matzpen, 36, June–July 1967.
36 Both positions were outlined in full in Kol Ha’am, 19th May 1965.
37 F. Sayegh, Zionist Colonialism in Palestine (PLO Research Center, 1965), p.V.
38 Ibid., pp. 4–5.
39 Ibid., p. 19.
40 Ibid., p. 24.
41 M. Rodinson, Israel: A Colonial-Settler State? (Monad Press, 1973 [French original
in 1967]), pp. 76–7.
42 Ibid., p. 90.
43 B. al-Kubaisi, The Arab Nationalists Movement 1951-1971: From Pressure Group to
Socialist Party (unpublished PhD Dissertation, American University, 1971), p. 69.
44 G. Habash, al-Thawrīyūn La Yamūtūn Abadan (Beirut: Dar Al-Saqi, 2009), quoted in
http://lear npalestine.politics.ox.ac.uk/uploads/sources/588c1f2b132a8.pdf.
45 W. Kazziha, Revolutionary Transformation in the Arab World: Habash and His Comrades
from Nationalism to Marxism (Charles Knight & Company, 1975), pp. 50–1.
46 Ibid., p. 65.
47 The name was not used in a straightforward manner, always in quotation marks.
48 Movement of Arab Nationalists, “Plan for the Liberation of Palestine”, 1961, in
http://lear npalestine.politics.ox.ac.uk/uploads/sources/588c218eed18b.pdf.
49 Y. Sayigh, “Reconstructing the Paradox: The Arab Nationalist Movement, Armed
Struggle, and Palestine, 1951-1966”, in Middle East Journal, 45, 4 (Autumn 1991),
p. 619.
50 A. Shuqeiri, Arba ͑un ͑Aman fi al-Hayat al-͑Arabiya wa-lDawaliya (Dar al-’Awda,
2004), pp. 79– 94, in http://learnpalestine.politics.ox.ac.uk/uploads/sources/
588c2c7515126.pdf
51 Palestinian National Charter, 1964, in https://yaf.ps/page-1513-en.html.
52 Interview with Abu Iyad in Al-Tali’a, June 1969, in International Documents on
Palestine 1969 (Institute for Palestine Studies, 1972), p. 707.
53 On the background to Fatah among Palestinian student movements in Gaza, Cairo
and the Gulf, see Abu Iyad, My Home, My Land: A Narrative of the Palestinian Struggle
(Times books, 1981), pp. 19–28.
54 Fatah, “The Structure of Revolutionary Construction”, c. 1958. http://
learnpalestine.politics.ox.ac.uk/uploads/sources/588c215b7146a.pdf
55 In I. al-Shuaibi, “The Development of Palestinian Entity-Consciousness: Part 1”,
Journal of Palestine Studies, 9, 1 (Autumn 1979), pp. 79–80. (Italics in the original.)
56 From Filastinuna, March 1961, in M. Shemesh, The Palestinian National Re-
Awakening: In the Shadow of Leadership Crisis, from the Mufti to Shuqeiri, 1937-1967
(Ben-Gurion Research Institute, 2012), pp. 247–8.
57 Filsatinuna, May 1963, in ibid., pp. 248–9.
58 Filastinuna, November 1960, in H. Baumgarten, “The Three Faces/ Phases of
Palestinian Nationalism, 1948–2005”, Journal of Palestine Studies, 34, 4 (Summer
2005), p. 33.
59 Y. Sayigh, Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement
1949-1993 (Oxford, 1997), pp. 100– 8. On the Algerian perspective see
“Interview: Mohammed Yazid on Algeria and the Arab-Israeli Conflict”, Journal of
Palestine Studies, 1, 2 (Winter 1972), pp. 3–18.
60 Hani Fakhoury, 2012 Interview: http://lear npalestine.politics.ox.ac.uk/uplo
ads/sources/58e75831d5966.pdf. Discussion of Filastinuna in al- Shuaibi, “The
Development of Palestinian Entity-Consciousness”, pp. 80–4.
61 Palestinian National Liberation Movement –Fateh, Constitution, 1964 in Documents
on Palestine, Volume 2: 1948-1973, edited by M.A. Hadi (Jerusalem: PASSIA, 2007),
pp. 238–56.
62 Fatah, “The Liberation of Occupied Countries and the Method of Struggle against
Direct Colonialism”, May 1967. http://lear npalestine.politics.ox.ac.uk/uploads/
sources/588c768baf7ba.pdf.
8
Post-1967
Resistance, Occupation, and
Civic Struggle
The June war was a turning point in more ways than one: it created Greater
Israel, which has retained its boundaries to this day. It re-unified Palestinian
citizens of Israel with residents of the West Bank and Gaza, but subjected them
to different legal systems, with the latter living under military occupation. It
separated the refugees in Arab countries from their counterparts within the
pre-1948 boundaries. It dealt a death blow to Nasserist Arab nationalism,
proven unable to follow up on its ideological commitments with action in
the battlefield. At the same time, it gave rise to a wave of armed opposition to
Israel by large number of Palestinian resistance organisations. Following in the
footsteps of Fatah, these organisations gained mass support as a fresh and viable
alternative to the incompetent and corrupt Arab regimes.Within a short period
of time, they took over the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) leadership.
As in 1948, a big gap opened up in 1967 between threats and promises made
by the Arab regimes and their capacity to act upon them.The Syrian poet Nizar
Qabbani put it in his poem, written in the aftermath of the war, Footnotes on the
Book of the Setback (Naksa, distinct from the 1948 Nakba):
Stirred By Oriental bombast/By boastful swaggering that never killed a fly/By the
fiddle and the drum/We went to war/And lost.
Our shouting is louder than our actions/Our swords are taller than us/This is our
tragedy.
In short/We wear the cape of civilization/But our souls live in the stone age.
You don’t win a war/With a reed and a flute.
Our impatience/Cost us fifty thousand new tents.1
Particularly notorious in this respect was PLO leader, Ahmad Shuqeiri, blamed
by many including Palestinians for playing a major role in the defeat of 1967.
In a series of interviews, speeches, and press conferences, he used fiery rhetoric,
bordering on threats of genocide against Jews in Israel, which helped mobilise
international public opinion on Israel’s side and legitimise its military actions.
Voice of the Arabs, an Egyptian state radio station, played a similar role, inciting
for war and celebrating imaginary military victories.
DOI: 10.4324/9780429020056-8
176 Post-1967: Resistance, Occupation, and Civic Struggle
On the eve of the June war, Shuqeiri stated in Amman:
We resist the Zionist Movement and all Zionists, in Palestine and else-
where. The Palestinian Jews can stay in Palestine, and the same applies to
the Jews who came from the Arab countries. We impose one condition
only –that they should not be loyal to Zionism or to the State of Israel.
As for other Jews, “they will go back the way they came; they came by
sea, and they will go back by sea”.2 That last sentence was seen as a call to
“throw the Jews into the sea”. Shuqeiri repeated that theme later, referring to
the Crusaders who “passed away after a terrible struggle, leaving behind them
ruined fortresses and demolished castles”. Israeli Jews could escape by leaving
“to where Jewish communities live in comfort and stability, to where you can
enjoy peace … Emigrate from Palestine, emigrate”.3
The wave of self-reflection that opened up after the war included an essay
by Constantine Zurayq titled The Meaning of the Nakba Revisited, in which
he re-asserted the need to adopt modern civilisation, forge internal unity, and
increase the role of science and education, as well as enhance democracy and
freedom of expression –at the expense of blind obedience to authority
and religion –as the bases for a national revival. He highlighted the morale and
fighting spirit of the Algerians and Vietnamese people that allowed them to
overcome their military and technological inferiority and win against far more
powerful colonial forces. A similar kind of popular war could defeat the Israeli
enemy, he argued, but for that to happen, the focus of struggle had to shift back
from Arab regimes to the Palestinian masses themselves. It was essential to avoid
two common self-defeating extremes: dismissal of Israel’s capacity as an artificial
entity, and exaggeration of its world power and influence, to the point that it
seemed invincible.4
Equally of interest was a contribution made by another Syrian scholar, Sadik
Jalal al-Azm, based in Beirut at the time, who offered a thorough critique of
Arab society. Al-Azm saw a need for a radical re-evaluation that dealt with issues
of culture, morality, and politics. This included rejecting terms such as Nakba
and Naksa that implied the operation of forces of nature beyond human con-
trol and deflected attention from the responsibility of social and political actors.
Defeat in battle was due to fundamental cultural characteristics: “we adhered
during this war to the greatest extent to the pattern of our life, a pattern that
still essentially employs tradition and custom rather than dynamics, mobility,
and ingenuity”. Arabs, he said, “bragged about appearance and form” but
“abandoned the kernel and core”, and kept clinging to “formalities, proprieties,
appearances, and established routine”.5 They had to adopt the methods of a
popular war, like the Vietnamese, but in a different context, in which Palestinian
fedayeen would act as the vanguard and mobilise the Arab masses. This called for
a thorough transformation of Arab societies:
The required response entails not only equipment, machines, experts,

and aircraft, but also a particular kind of mentality, psychology, cultural
Post-1967: Resistance, Occupation, and Civic Struggle 177
background, and physical reactions that the industrial revolution implanted
in modern man and the scientific revolution confirmed in him so that they
become part of his nature.6
1967 and the Regional Context

The war was a global event with far-reaching implications. Matzpen provided
an analysis setting the war in that context. It saw the 1950s as a decade of pro-
gress: “Anti-imperialist forces came to power in many countries in Asia and
Africa, and the direct presence of the colonial powers was considerably reduced
in these continents. The forces of imperialism were retreating”. In the Middle
East this was reflected in the outcome of the Suez war of 1956, the rise of
Nasser to global prominence, and the retreat of European colonial powers. But
the 1960s witnessed a backlash, with the CIA organising coups to replace anti-
imperialist regimes in Congo, Cuba, Vietnam, and the Dominican Republic.
As part of its global offensive, the United States of America (USA) tried to
overthrow the left-wing Ba’ath regime in Syria, and Israel went along with it
for its own interests. Nasser fell into a trap and found himself pulled, against his
better judgement, into a war for which Egypt was ill-prepared. The result was a
massive defeat, and a great victory for the USA–Israel alliance.7
A similar perspective was provided by the Arab Nationalists Movement. It
defined Israel as an extension of the camp of international capitalism and of
imperialism in the Arab world. The war was the climax of a conflict “between
the Arab revolutionary movement and neo-imperialism” under the direction
of the USA. In the 1950s and early 1960s the Arab liberation movement won
victories over old-style imperialism, but the confrontation moved to a new
stage, in which several “local” forces in the heart of the Arab world could be
manipulated against the Arab revolution, with no need for direct foreign inter-
vention. Israel played that role because it was “by its very nature” part and parcel
of imperialism. It was “impelled by her own desire for territorial expansion”
and thus was “ever ready to act as the striking force of imperialism in this part
of the world”.
In confronting this neo-imperialist strategy, the Arab liberation movement
failed to prepare its own strategy and used rather “fluctuating tactics which, in
their scope, methods and battles, were merely a continuation of the previous
era”. A unified approach was needed, planned on a
basis of total and unceasing warfare throughout the Arab world against
neo-imperialism, represented by the United States of America, and against
its allies, the reactionary classes and regimes, which, in the final analysis, are
hostile to any Arab endeavour to curb Israel or to liberate Palestine.
The 1967 defeat, said the ANM, could not be reversed through “a peaceful
settlement with imperialism or with Israel [which] would contain within itself
the seeds of either the total or the partial collapse of the Arab revolutionary
movement”. A united Arab front needed to open up a “horizon of action”
through confrontations with imperialism “on the model of organised revo-
lutionary violence, in various shapes and forms”, which would escalate into
armed struggle, “the highest and most decisive form of revolutionary violence”.
By responding in that way, “the Arab revolution will be taking its place in the
vanguard of an integrated global revolution”.8
That focus on revolutionary violence was re-asserted at the end of the year
with the formation of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)
out of several groups including the ANM, which ceased operating as a pan-
Arab movement. The Front declared a new era of “revolutionary action in
which the people will assume the responsibility and take the lead in combating
the forces of imperialism and Zionism”. This was made possible by the defeat
and occupation of 1967: “for the first time since the disaster of 1948, the masses
of the people of Palestine are to be found, throughout the whole of occupied
Palestine, face to face with the enemy usurper”, with the single rallying cry of
armed resistance: “There is no life left for us in our land except in the pursuit of
popular armed struggle”.That required that Palestinian struggle “be organically
linked with the struggle of the people of the Arab nation who stand face to face
with the same danger, the same enemy and the same designs against them”, and
it called for “the closest possible alliance between it and all the revolutionary
and progressive [anti-imperialist] forces in the world”.9
Armed action featured obviously in Fatah’s approach, which saw the role
of “Arab masses engaging in popular armed struggle on all fronts over a long
period” as the only way forward, rejecting “the conspiracy in which certain
subservient forces are now engaged to liquidate the Palestine problem through
purely political action and further territorial concessions”. Instead of diplomacy
there was a need to escalate the “holy revolutionary war against Zionist occu-
pation with obstinate determination and the utmost vigour”. This was because
“The land is ours, the people are ours, the cause is ours, so we ourselves are best
suited to defend our cause desperately”.10
The concern with “liquidation” of the Palestinian cause was an out-
come of the Khartoum Summit, in which Arab leaders agreed “to unify their
efforts in political action at the international diplomatic level to eliminate the
consequences of the aggression and to ensure the withdrawal of Israeli forces
from the Arab territories occupied during the June War”. That commitment
was subject to qualifications: “that there shall be no peace with Israel, no recog-
nition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel, and that the Arab nations shall take
action to safeguard the right of the people of Palestine to their homeland”.11
These qualifications, known as The Three No’s of Khartoum, did not allay
Palestinian fears. The focus on “eliminating the consequences of aggression”
meant reversing the 1967 Naksa, a shared goal, but implied diminished focus
on reversing the 1948 Nakba. Concern with Arab commitment increased with
United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 242 of 22nd November
1967, accepted by Israel, Egypt, and Jordan, which called for “withdrawal of
Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict” and for
acknowledging “the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence
of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and
recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force”. The phrase “every
State” obviously included Israel and calling for a “just settlement of the refugee
problem” fell short of Palestinian demands. It did not specify refugee return
or even mention them by name.12 Seeing them only as refugees rather than a
People with a right to national existence undermined their just cause.13
Fatah announced categorical rejection of the “Zionist-imperialist project”,
as it implied
the final liquidation of the Palestine problem; the consolidation and legit-
imisation of the occupation of our land by the Zionists; the recognition
of the right of international trusteeship over the cause of our people; the
thwarting of the Palestine liberation revolution.
The conflict was “embodied in the alien Zionist presence on our land”.
It used the opportunity to criticise the PLO for its “lack of an independent
character”, the domineering nature of its leadership under Shuqeiri, and the
absence of “a political, military or information policy, which has rendered it
unable to act in the service of Palestine or to achieve national unity” and made
it into “a paralysed bureaucratic organ”. Fatah called on Palestinians “to advance
at once to the field of battle in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, to join their
people in their heroic stand and their fierce resistance”.14
The PLO was taken to task further by the Fatah’s military wing, linking
Palestinians to a history of armed resistance, the Algerian war for independ-
ence, and the Korean and Vietnam wars. The popular nature of the struggle was
manifested by many “students, farmers, workers, and employees who have joined
the cadres of the revolt, whether to carry arms themselves or to stand behind
those who do”. But, it noted, the PLO displayed “passive, non-revolutionary
attitude towards the revolt in the occupied territories”, announcing “the cre-
ation of revolutionary organs in the occupied territory, which, in fact, exist in
name only; they are purely imaginary”. The PLO had “absolutely nothing to
do with either the popular or the military organisations in the occupied terri-
tories”, and it was taking credit for armed actions by Fatah with which it was
not involved.15
An additional voice that must be noted, of course, was that of occupied
Palestinians themselves, officials, activists, and intellectuals, who issued statements
opposing the occupation and condemning “attempts to establish a Palestinian
entity under whatever name or in whatever form”. They urged “a united Arab
attitude and full solidarity with no unilateral action on the part of any quarter”
[reference to Jordan’s secret negotiations with Israel].16 These were attempts
“to isolate the Palestinian Arab people from the Arab nation … [leading to]
the final liquidation of the Palestine problem, the dissolution of the Palestinian
people and the dealing of the deathblow to the Arab liberation movement”.17
In that context, many saw restoring united Jordanian rule of both Banks as a
better alternative in the fight against Israel’s “continued attempts to undermine
the Jordanian entity and his plans to establish a petty artificial state in the West
Bank and the Gaza Strip”.18
The link with the Arab world was essential for all Palestinian resistance
movements, but the precise relationship with regional actors was seen in
different ways. Fatah insisted the most on Palestinian independence within
broader Arab unity. Arabs were afflicted by divisions and poor leadership, hence
“the Palestinian had to be rescued from the stranglehold of Arab tutelage,
inter-party discord, and regional Arab policies”. This required a redirection of
Palestinian efforts “into the path of national action for the recovery of their
land”, to enable them to “return to the climate of their old revolts and live in a
new atmosphere of heroism so that they might form a cohesive vanguard in the
battle for liberation”. The liberation of Palestine was an Arab national task, but
“the land that must be liberated, however, is the land of the Palestinian people;
consequently it is the Palestinian people who must be the vanguard of armed
struggle in the battle of liberation”.19
Fatah saw the 1967 occupation as an opportunity to achieve its goals within
enemy- controlled territory, by transferring “all its military bases into the
occupied homeland”. That task had been completed, it claimed, bases were
established and “commandos –most of them dedicated peasants and students –
are now operating dozens of times daily throughout the old and newly occu-
pied areas”, with all of Israel within their reach.20 This typical unrealistic picture
of military successes can be contrasted with the more critical view of the PFLP
which maintained that “the long road of Palestinian struggle has always been
beset with difficulties, obstacles and reverses”, some of which were “the result
of the character of the Palestinian and Arab leaderships at the time and of their
political conception of the field and scope of the battle”.21 But, said the PFLP,
the June war created a new situation, with armed struggle as “the vanguard of
Arab opposition and resistance to the Zionist menace”. That role could not
“and must not be regarded as a substitute for full Arab mobilisation against the
menace”. It was a “battle of the entire Arab nation, involving all the Arab masses,
and all Arab material and moral resources”.
The success of the Palestinian struggle was thus dependent “to a great
extent on the backing and support it receives from the Arab countries”. It was
important, added the PFLP in implied criticism of Fatah’s militarist focus –
referred to as the strategy of “blood and iron”22 –to combine political and social
mobilisation with military preparation among the Palestinian masses: “lack of
attention to the material and psychological conditions in which they live, and
leaving them to live disunited and at a loss, is a real danger which threatens the
future of the resistance movement”.23
Dependence on Arab support did not mean subservience to Arab regimes.
Quite the contrary, as the PFLP criticised the notion of “non-interference in
Arab affairs” advocated by Fatah. No Arab affairs were separate from Palestinian
affairs, just as no military strategy could be separated from politics, and no
regular war could be separated from popular war: “The June defeat was not
only a military defeat; it was also a defeat for the whole of the economic,
military and ideological class structure of the Palestinian and Arab national
liberation movement (official and popular)”. Instead of adopting Vietnamese
and Cuban models of popular struggle, petty-bourgeois Arab regimes were
retreating before the counter-revolutionary forces. They adopted UN Security
Council Resolution 242, “which involved liquidation” in line with their
interests and “class, ideological and political privileges”. Only a scientific revo-
lutionary ideology relying on the “revolutionary and radical classes in society”,
raising radical political consciousness, and drawing lessons from past defeats
to organise a “people’s war of liberation”, could successfully confront “those
behind Israel”, meaning “colonialist interests and positions, plus Israel, plus hire-
ling forces and forces allied to colonialism and protecting colonialist interests
in our countries”.24
With the growing influence of armed resistance organisations within the
PLO, it adopted a new Charter to reflect changes. Beyond specifying the pos-
ition of Jews in the country –defining “Jews who were normally resident
in Palestine up to the beginning of the Zionist invasion” as Palestinians –it
highlighted independence from Arab control and the centrality of armed
struggle. It declared that Palestinians, on all their internal differences, wherever
they lived, were “a single national front working for the recovery and liberation
of Palestine through armed struggle”. Armed struggle was “the only way of
liberating Palestine” and thus was strategic, not tactical. The Charter affirmed
Palestinians’ determination “to carry on the armed struggle and to press on
towards popular revolution for the liberation of and return to their homeland”.
Specifically, commando action was “the nucleus of the Palestinian popular war
of liberation”, and all the physical and scientific resources of the Palestinian
masses were to be dedicated to the “armed revolution”.
Although the liberation of Palestine was an Arab national obligation, the
Charter continued, Palestinians themselves “first and foremost” were expected
to act as “the vanguard of their armed revolution until the liberation of their
homeland is achieved”. There were no alternatives: Palestinians affirmed “the
authenticity and independence of their national revolution” and rejected all
forms of “interference, tutelage or dependency”.25 In more concrete vein, the
National Assembly rejected proposals for “a spurious Palestinian entity” that
would lead to “the liquidation of the Palestinian cause once and for all”. Since
the Zionist invasion of Palestine began with the Balfour Declaration of 1917,
eliminating the 1967 “consequences of aggression” was not enough without
the “destruction of the instrument of aggression”, that is Israel itself.26
Arab Communist Parties

Communist parties in the region were generally supportive of resistance to
Israel and Zionism but expressed reservations about the role of armed struggle.
The Jordanian Communist Party (JCP) saw the Soviet-endorsed UNSC 242
Resolution as a significant step forward in the Arab battle “to eliminate the
consequences of the colonialist-Israeli aggression”, despite reservations about
its language. Conflict with “the imperialist Zionist enemy” would be long,
complex, and many-sided, and it would be “a grave mistake to believe that mili-
tary action is the one and only means of eliminating the consequences of the
aggression.” Dragging the Arabs into a new military encounter “would enable
the aggressors to achieve further gains” and harm Arab interests.27
A thorough analytical perspective was provided by a regional meeting of
Communist and Workers parties in 1968. It highlighted popular resistance
organised by the National Front on the West Bank, in which the JCP took
part, and cautioned of two trends. The first was “the adventurist emotional
trend … calling for the use of one method of struggle [armed action] in the place
of the broad political struggle employing all forms and methods of struggle”.
Some of its adherents advocated “the isolation of the Palestinian problem from
the movement of Arab national liberation as a whole”, with an undue stress
on “independence” and rejection of “tutelage”, which ended up “giving the
imperialists, the rulers of Israel and the agents of reaction the opportunity of
destroying the progressive regimes and striking at the whole Arab national lib-
eration movement”.The other trend was “the rightist trend towards surrender”,
obscuring the relationship between “national duties”, including the duty to
eliminate the consequence of aggression, and “the social duties of the contem-
porary Arab national liberation movement”. Both sets of duties were “aspects of
one revolutionary process”. That trend was associated with right-wing regimes
and monarchies that sought “an understanding with American imperialism and
bargaining with it”.
To counter both trends there was a need to implement UN Security Council
Resolution 242, which would “safeguard Arab rights in Palestine, including the
rights of the refugees”, and expose “the crimes committed by Israel in the
occupied Arab territories with the encouragement of American imperialism”.
A key task was enabling “the popular masses, particularly the working classes, to
perform their role and meet their responsibilities in the battle”, by engaging “in
political activity and organised action to mobilise the popular forces and direct
them towards the struggle to eliminate the consequences of aggression”. Armed
struggle was not mentioned as a component of that strategy.28
The JCP reiterated that point by calling for mobilisation at the popular
level, on both sides of the Jordan river, and supporting resistance “by all ways
and means” with “all precautions taken to prevent its misappropriation”.29 It
asserted its links with the Israeli Communist Party (Rakah) with which there
was “full understanding” and cooperation in the struggle against the occu-
pation. It acknowledged that the masses attached great importance to armed
resistance, “because they believe that guerrilla action can recover our honour
and avenge our national humiliation”. But, it asserted, “concentration on armed
action tends to reduce political activity among the masses”. Conditions were
not ripe, in Jordan or any Arab country “for commando action, whether inside
or outside the occupied territory”. There was no difference between com-
mando units and regular armies, since both operated from the outside, unlike
struggle “carried on by the people in the occupied territory”.
To support the commando organisations, the Party said, meant to support
“unrealistic political objectives”. Their methods, “with their strongly extremist
complexion”, were incompatible with objective circumstances, and they
neglected political and popular activity. Progressive regimes, like Syria and
Egypt, were worried about “serious consequences that might result from the
provocation of the enemy”. Reactionary regimes like the Gulf monarchies
openly backed the commandos, but that was in order “to distract the attention
of public opinion from their relations with imperialism”. Commando action
did inflict some damage on Israel, but “at the cost of extremely high casualty
figures and of the expulsion of Arabs from the most fertile areas”. There was
role for armed action, at the right time, but “the nature of the commando
organisations and the lack of realism in their programmes” restricted their
capacity for effective resistance, especially since they operated from the out-
side of the occupied territories and could not blend in, “for in fact they are
strangers”.30
The Communist line, which followed global Soviet policy, stood out in
sharp contrast to that of the SACP, which was in the forefront of armed struggle
efforts together with the ANC in exile, though they sought to link such efforts
to internal popular and mass action, as discussed in Chapter 6. The Palestinian
arena witnessed greater distance between nationalists and Communists. The
Palestinian National Congress saw Soviet policy, with its support for a negotiated
solution that would include Israel, as part of the “liquidation schemes” that
deserved “categorical rejection”. The goal of the movement was not reconcili-
ation between states, achieved in a diplomatic process, but the setting up of “a
free and democratic society in Palestine for all Palestinians, including Muslims,
Christians and Jews”, and liberating Palestine “from the domination of inter-
national Zionism in so far as the latter is a reactionary and racialist religious
movement with a fascistic basis that is integrally affiliated with and serves the
interests of world imperialism”.31
Palestinian Debates: Class and Nation

Those tasks were generally agreed upon but the relationship between the local
Palestinian, regional Arab, and global anti-imperialist spheres was a matter for
dispute between different organisations and political perspectives. Fatah, which
had become the leading element in the PLO by that time, clearly focused on the
local level even when it embedded it rhetorically within an Arab framework.
The notion of “non-interference” in Arab affairs, combined with the rejection
of “tutelage”, meant that Palestinians saw the struggle as their own task. Arabs
could provide logistical help but were neither essential to the struggle, nor dir-
ectly involved through political action in their countries, in relation to their
own regimes. The PFLP, in contrast, targeted a “fourth force” (in addition to
Israel, Zionism, and world imperialism): Arab reactionary forces, which “out-
wardly support superficial national movements” but were “inevitably against
any national liberation movement which aims at uprooting colonialism from
our soil and building an independent economy which will serve the interests
of the masses”.
A comprehensive political strategy had to take intra-Arab conflict into
account, focusing “on the inter-connection between the Palestinian question
and the Arab question”. This meant “strategic emphasis on the ‘Arab Hanoi’
motto”, an Arab revolutionary base from which to attack the main enemy, in
line with Vietnamese, Cuban, and Chinese experiences. What about the “pro-
gressive” Arab regimes of Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Algeria? The PFLP defined
these in class terms as alliances of workers and peasants, with and under the
leadership of the petty bourgeoisie, “against colonialism, Arab reaction and
Israel”. They made revolutionary gains by attacking the interests of “feudalism
and capitalism and their exploitation of the masses” but preserved the petty
bourgeoisie and its interests in the industrial, agricultural, and commercial
sectors, while producing “a new class of military men, politicians and admin-
istrative personnel”. Thus, they were opposed to a “radical revolutionary
strategy which seeks a long-term popular liberation war waged by the masses”.
Relations with them had to be of “alliance and conflict” combined.
In the Palestinian arena, said the PFLP, the petty bourgeoisie was leading the
call for armed struggle –a reference to Fatah –and it was more revolutionary
than its Arab counterparts because it had no access to state power. The human
material, the backbone of the revolution, were the workers and peasants, “the
inhabitants of the camps, villages and poor urban districts”, together but also in
tension with the petty bourgeoisie. Within that national front, the workers and
peasants, armed with a scientific socialist theory, needed to wrest control over
the movement from the petty bourgeoisie.
That scientific theory needed to recognise the historically “weak and
meagre political, economic, social and military structure” of Palestinians in
the face of an Israeli society and Zionist movement that were “scientifically
and culturally superior”. It was wrong to confront that enemy with conven-
tional military means rather than with “guerrilla warfare and popular liberation
wars”. In a language unsurprisingly reminiscent of Constantine Zurayq, the
Front called for discarding “the habits of underdevelopment represented by
submission, dependence, individualism, tribalism, laziness, anarchy and impul-
siveness”, adopting the values of “time, order, accuracy, objective thought, col-
lective action, planning, comprehensive mobilization, the pursuit of learning
and the acquisition of all its weapons”, in addition to the principle of gender
equality –thus discarding “the servitude of outworn customs and traditions” –
and the fundamental importance of “the national bond in facing danger and the
supremacy of this bond over clan, tribal and regional bonds”.
Despite its strident rhetoric, the PFLP recognised internal divisions within
Israeli society, not seeing it as an undifferentiated hostile mass. While still dor-
mant at the time, more radical conflicts might “come out and gain in inten-
sity during coming periods”. There was no “straight geometric line with two
conflicting forces standing on either side”. In fact, there was “a crooked dialect-
ical line on each side of which stands a group of allied forces co-existing under
the shadow of the alliance”.32 The potential of that insight for future political
strategy remained unexplored, though.
By that stage, the Popular Front had adopted a revolutionary socialist iden-
tity that reflected its “complete fusion” with the ANM.33 But, Marxism for it
was a “guide” rather than “a doctrinally rigid ideology”. Its model was “the
Asiatic Marxism” of the Chinese and Vietnamese Parties, and Cuban Marxism,
“with their insistence that priority must be given to armed struggle”, unlike
the Arab Communist Parties which supported a peaceful solution. Such a solu-
tion was unacceptable, said George Habash, since it meant that “I shall never
again see Lydda, my home town”.34 Once Israel disappeared, Jews “will have
full and equal rights”.That did not mean creating “a special separate entity with
dual nationality”, without an Arab identity. The issue of minorities would be
resolved within an Arab context: the goal was to destroy Israel, and the problem
of “numbers, culture, religion and democratic rights of various groups” would
be solved after the revolution “in conformity with the principles of scientific
socialism”.35 In other words, equal rights for Jews but within an Arab nationalist
framework.
The Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PDFLP,
known as the Democratic Front or DFLP) was the one organisation that
moved beyond that nationalist paradigm. It renounced “chauvinistic solutions
of Palestinian or Arab origin” that urged killing Jews or driving them into the
sea, calling instead for “a popular democratic Palestinian state for Arabs and
Jews alike in which there would be no discrimination and no room for class or
national subjugation” and in which the right of both Arabs and Jews “to per-
petuate and develop their indigenous cultures would be respected”. That state
would form “an inseparable part of a federal Arab state in this area” and liberate
“every Arab and Jew from all chauvinistic or racialist trends in their culture. It
would emancipate the Arabs from any reactionary orientation in their culture
and the Jews from Zionist culture”. A state in which “Arabs and Jews shall enjoy
equal national rights and responsibilities” could emerge with the cooperation
of “anti-Zionist and anti-imperialist elements” within Israel and among Jews,
rallying to the cause of “joint Palestine armed and popular struggle”.36
DFLP leader Nayef Hawatmeh recognised the legitimacy of “Jewishness”
as a culture and not just religion, particularly for Israeli Jews, “with special
emphasis on the post-1948 generation that was born and raised in the land
of Palestine”. That generation was entitled “to live side by side and enjoy full
equality in rights and responsibilities with the Palestinian people under the
auspices of a state that rejects class or national subjugation in any shape or
form”. He mentioned Matzpen as “a leftist group that has been coming up
with progressive solutions” but distanced himself from the notions of “a de-
Zionised State of Israel” and “a bi-national state in Palestine”, calling instead
for “a Palestinian state in which both Arabs and Jews would enjoy full equality
of rights” including “the right to develop their own local culture”. Beyond
Matzpen, the DFLP expressed support for “progressive Israelis and Jews joining
its ranks, whether it be within Israel or outside it”.37
To grasp the innovative nature of the Democratic Front’s approach, we need
to realise that major Palestinian organisations recognised equality for Jews in
a future Palestine but with important qualifications. Thus, the Popular Front
insisted on seeing Palestine within an Arab national framework, placing most
Jews in a position of disadvantage as non-Arabs. For Fatah, citizenship would
be granted “to every Jew who not only works against Zionism but has also
purified himself of all Zionist thinking so that he has become convinced that
Zionist thinking is an intruder on human society”. Israel was seen as a society
“closed to humanity”, with “progressive beginnings –small beginnings” that
did not amount to much. It was problematic, of course, to set ideological tests
for rights, especially when the vast majority of the target population would fail.
But, it was indeed a shift, unthinkable only a couple of years earlier, helped by
the credibility Fatah had gained, which shielded it from criticism for being too
conciliatory:
Had this approach been made before Fateh had resorted to arms it would
have been received … by a strong attack from Arab opinion in general
and Palestinian opinion in particular.Thus, this strategic approach has been
made possible by the force of Fateh as a national liberation movement and
political and military strength.38
Against that background the DFLP stood out: it recognised Israeli Jews as
a distinct national-cultural group with its own identity, not merely a bunch
of immigrants who shared a religious community. Consequently, it advocated
a state in which Jews and Arabs would live together in equality with their
different cultures, not as Muslims, Christians, and Jews defined by religion.
It subjected all to the same requirement of discarding reactionary elements
in their cultural orientation without elevating Arab national identity as core
element of the new state, as the Popular Front did. And, unlike Fatah, it did not
harbour any illusions that Israel would disintegrate into discrete ethnic Jewish
components under external military pressure. It would have been delusional for
Arab states to declare, as Abu Iyad proposed, that they were “prepared to receive
back all their Jewish nationals who have emigrated to Palestine and to restore
to them their property and civil rights as Arab nationals of these countries”.The
idea that there was no “assimilation or fusion in Zionist Israeli society”, only
“a coalition of interests based on facing the danger as impressed on them by
Zionism”, and therefore Jews from different countries could not form “a viable
human society”, was flawed.39 So was the idea that Mizrahi Jews were “Arabs
of the Jewish faith” who would embrace Arab identity in a free Palestine.40 The
Democratic Front understood that, and approached Israelis as potential part of
the solution, not only as part of the problem.
Matzpen Post-1967
And, they had an obvious partner for that vision, albeit one with limited influ-
ence within Israeli society. The period of the rise of the armed Resistance,
1967– 70, was also Matzpen’s golden age: its theoretical orientation was
consolidated, its fame (and notoriety) reached their height, and it came to
occupy a unique niche on the Israeli political map.The two components of de-
Zionization of Israel (leading to equal rights and redress for Palestinian-Arab
citizens and refugees, respectively), and its integration in a socialist union of the
Middle East, had already become foundations of its approach. A third compo-
nent, added after the war, was of course the struggle against the 1967 occupa-
tion and its consequences.
From Matzpen’s perspective, the 1967 war and subsequent occupation
confirmed its analysis that “Zionism is by nature a colonizing movement of
settlers … [and] its modus operandi has always been to create faits accomplis –if
necessary, by force of arms –at the expense of the Arabs and against the Arabs”.
To counter that tendency, it was “the duty of the Israeli Government to with-
draw from all the occupied territories and from the attempt to impose a settle-
ment by force”. That demand was “the test for every progressive group and
person”.41 Putting an end to the occupation was a necessary condition for a
solution to the Israeli-Arab conflict but it was not sufficient. An overall solution
would also require “Israel’s withdrawal from the Zionist path and the integra-
tion of a socialist, non-Zionist Israel in the region”. A socialist revolution was
the only way to Arab national unification and to ending the divisions imposed
by imperialism on the Arab world.
But the occupation did not come to an end. It resulted in ongoing expansion,
political oppression, and popular resistance. Palestinians have become “entirely a
conquered people … robbed not only of the most elementary political rights,
but also of the very prospect for national and human existence”. Their militant
response was natural, as it was “both the right and duty of every conquered and
subjugated people to resist and to struggle for its freedom.The ways, means and
methods necessary and appropriate for such struggle must be determined by
the people itself and it would be hypocritical for strangers –especially if they
belong to the oppressing nation –to preach to it, saying, ‘Thus shalt thou do,
and thus shalt thou not do’ ”.42
It is impossible to overestimate the extent to which this statement violated
the sacred principles of the post-1967 Israeli national consensus, which sought
to portray Israeli Jews as an impossible combination of righteous victims and
military super-heroes. Nothing made Matzpen so distinct politically and reviled
publicly as its unconditional support for the right of Palestinians to oppose the
occupation. That was regarded as treason and siding with the enemy, even if
the statement added that “we can support only such organizations which, in
addition to resisting occupation, also recognize the right of the Israeli people
for self-determination”, with a view to a joint struggle of Arabs and Jews for a
socialist future in the region.
Uniquely among Israeli political forces, Matzpen did not succumb to the
myth of the “enlightened occupation”, thus challenging the national self-image
of Israel as a liberal democracy practising “purity of arms”. The Communist
Party (Rakah) joined it in condemning the brutality of military rule in the
Occupied Territories, but Matzpen alone linked it to the ongoing domination
of Zionist ideology in Israel, which was the root of the problem in its view.
What was needed was not merely a withdrawal from the territories, but a revo-
lution that would transform Israel
from a Zionist state, a tool for furthering Zionist colonization … into a

state expressing the real interests of both Jewish and Arab masses, a state
which can and will be integrated in a socialist union of the Middle East.
But in the present circumstances it is impossible even to imagine working
for that goal without a consistent struggle against a continued Israeli occu-
pation of the Arab territories. Only through this struggle can the Jewish
and Arab masses be mobilized for socialism.43
Matzpen attempted to resolve the inherent tension between national and

class discourses by setting the restoration of the rights of Palestinians along-
side –not at the expense of –the right of Israeli Jews to self-determination.
At the same time, it called for the integration of all groups and states within
a socialist federation of the Middle East, perceived as an antidote to local and
narrow-minded nationalism. In that way, it hoped, the quest for socialism could
be reconciled with ongoing attachment of people to their national identity. It is
crucial to realise though that Matzpen never equated the self-determination of
Israeli Jews with the existing State of Israel. Its support for the right to national
self-determination went together with opposition, not just to the policies but
to the very legitimacy of Israel’s existence as a Jewish-Zionist state.
In an article published in 1970, Orr and Machover clarified the meaning of
the key notion of de-Zionization:
the abolition of Jewish exclusivity (expressed for example in the Law of

Return), according to which a Brooklyn Jew is granted more civil and
political rights in Israel and to Israel than a Palestinian Arab born here
(whether currently a refugee or a citizen).44
From a Zionist perspective, the State of Israel was not a final product but
“an intermediary phase and an instrument for the realization of the full Zionist
goal”. Just as a solution to the South African conflict between settlers and indi-
genous people required the abolition of the racial character of the South African
state –the historical source of the conflict as well as the factor that continued to
reproduce it –abolishing the Zionist character of Israel, they argued, was neces-
sary to a solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In sharp contrast to liberal Zionists, Matzpen rejected the notion of peace
and reconciliation between two national collectives (Arabs and Jews) in their
post-1948 condition of existence, since that notion entrenched the prior dis-
possession of Palestinians in the Nakba. Only a common revolutionary struggle
in the entire region, against both the existing Arab regimes and the Zionist
regime in Israel, would guarantee true cooperation between people of different
origins, and a move beyond national antagonism and, indeed, nationalism itself.
Such a revolutionary struggle had to take the form of class-based mass mobil-
isation rather than a military campaign, and it had to be based on recogni-
tion of the collective national rights of Israeli Jews, not merely their civil and
religious rights. In both these respects, Matzpen differed from the Palestinian
Resistance, not only from the mainstream nationalist organisations but also
from the Democratic Front, which was close to it and with which it entered a
brief dialogue that did not bear fruit at the time.45
Strategic Questions
In any event, the focus of debate remained internal to the Palestinian
movement. Fatah put greater emphasis on its military strategy and the need
for intra-Palestinian national unity than both the Popular and Democratic
Fronts. It emphasised ideological neutrality, refusing “to be classified as either
leftist or rightist, Eastern or Western” or “be linked to any Arab country”.46
It maintained that all Palestinians had “a right to take part in the fight”,
without class restrictions. Marxism was of limited relevance anyway: “Did
Marx study a class called the ‘displaced persons class’ which has appeared
among the Palestinian people?” asked Abu Iyad rhetorically in his interview
with Lutfi al-Khuli.47 Other questions should have been asked: could class
theory capture the reality of workers and peasants and their descendants, who
became refugees and no longer lived and worked in their homeland? Could
workers and peasants, the revolutionary classes according to the Popular and
Democratic Fronts, lead the armed struggle if they continued to play their
role in the system of the production that made class analysis meaningful? Was
there no contradiction between the centrality of armed struggle, involving
a specialised group of dedicated individuals, and Marxist class analysis that
focused on the economic production activities of mass- based groups of
people?
These questions became particularly important in view of the unique
conditions of resistance. From a fragmented mass of people controlled by Arab
regimes –a people in itself –Palestinians became active in pursuit of their
own interests –a people for itself. That was the case for refugees in Jordan,
Lebanon and Syria, who became the main constituency of the movement.
Armed struggle served to mobilise people and give them a sense of purpose.
It generated enthusiasm for a model that worked elsewhere –Algeria, Cuba,
and Vietnam –and could work again. But, active participation was restricted
to relatively few young men and left most of the rest as supportive but passive
spectators.The rhetoric of mobilisation of workers and peasants did not fit with
the focus on armed action: by definition, militants did not engage in regular
economic activities, even if many did come from productive social background.
Regardless of their class affiliation, there was little sense in which military
action was shaped by class relations or interests. In that respect there was no
difference between Fatah, PFLP, DFLP, and others, their different class rhetoric
notwithstanding.48
That was a symptom of a more fundamental problem. The Cuban campaign
was waged from within Cuba itself and mobilised peasants in support of guer-
rilla fighters against government forces. The militants came from the outside
initially, but their potential constituency was the majority in the country. In
Algeria the rebel movement was based outside the country, but it managed to
gain a foothold inside it and recruit the locals for its campaign. Again, they were
the undisputed majority although they had to contend with a substantial group
of settlers backed by overseas French forces. Vietnam was similar to Cuba: the
Vietcong were locals fighting against an unpopular government backed by US
foreign troops. Working in parallel with military forces from across the nor-
thern border provided strategic depth and increased the cost to the enemy.
Even the South African anti-apartheid movement, directed from across the
borders, was a re-located local movement, forced temporarily into exile from
the early 1960 to the mid-1970s. Once the internal front reignited, with Black
Consciousness, the revival of trade unions and the Soweto uprising of 1976, the
focus of struggle shifted back into the country, away from the exiles and their
campaigns, as discussed in Chapter 6.
Palestine was different. It was not only militants and leaders in exile but
much of their popular constituency as well, not a temporary situation but a
prolonged one. Possibly, it was the only case in modern history of a people
fighting to liberate its country from colonial conquest, forced to operate from
outside its boundaries. In the process they had to fight not an unpopular regime,
a small group of settlers, or overseas military forces, but a heavily militarised
and mobilised settler society, which displaced and replaced them. None of the
models cited in the literature, nor any of the theoreticians of anti-colonial guer-
rilla war (Mao, Giap, Guevara, and Fanon), had experienced anything like that.
Rhetoric about an “Arab Hanoi” in Amman or Beirut and the image of Arab
forces marching behind the Palestinian revolutionary vanguard were trendy and
appealing, but did not provide a real solution to the challenge of fighting Israel
from beyond its borders.49
When confronted with the issue, Palestinian militants did not provide a clear
response. Abu Iyad argued that Palestinians were facing objective conditions
that were distinct “from those of any other revolution in the world”, because
they were “disunited socially, politically and geographically. This situation inev-
itably imposes new, unconventional techniques and forms of struggle”. But, that
was not unprecedented:
we are both inside and outside, which is normal. On the inside we

are in our occupied country because we do not recognise the Zionist
Israeli presence … The external part of our leadership is separated from
the occupied territory by a few metres … Our bases are located all
throughout this land, and many of them are inside the occupied ter-
ritory … Our internal and external bases provide the revolution with
continued reinforcement.50
This account left out the fact that it was not only the leadership but also
the bulk of the cadres and popular masses supporting the struggle who were
external to the territory, not in an ideological or historical sense but in prac-
tical terms, being based in neighbouring countries. Palestinians were aware
of their unique situation, of course, but did not always recognise openly the
implications of that for their strategy. And indeed, the argument that they could
overcome their predicament by mobilising forces internally in combination
with operations from across the border, to engage Israel in a war of attrition, was
commonly made by activists and also by sympathetic observers.51
Jews and the Democratic State

Abu Iyad’s point about the military credentials of Fatah that allowed it to advo-
cate equal rights for Jews in an independent Palestine was indirectly reinforced
by Arafat, who asserted nationalist orthodoxy by following
the original slogan which calls for the liberation of the land and the elimin-
ation of the Zionist entity, and then the establishment of a democratic Arab
state on the debris of that criminal expansionist entity, so that Christian
and Muslim Palestinians may be able to live with Jews with the same rights
and obligations.
Rejecting Shuqeiri’s “words about throwing the Jews into the sea”, he confirmed
that “we shall absolutely never accept the theft of our homeland, our land and
our homes and the eviction of our families”.52
That assurance was needed in view of criticisms by remnants of the old pre-
1948 leadership of al-Husseini. In a statement by the Arab Higher Committee
for Palestine, the idea of a Democratic State for all was rejected in view of the
numerical and political supremacy of Jews, which would make of Palestinians
“the weakest and poorest section of the population, as a result of the successive
disasters that have befallen them, even if all the Palestinians could return to their
country”. Since Jews were culturally distinct, it would be “extremely difficult
for them to coexist (even as a minority) with other nations and peoples”. Even
as small minority Jews “betrayed Germany in two World Wars … [and] sucked
dry the sources of Germany’s wealth”. Likewise, in the USA they managed to
gain “almost total control of American policy” as they did in other Western
countries. Peaceful coexistence with them was impossible since they were
“determined to root out the Palestinian Arabs at the first possible opportunity”,
force some of them to emigrate, and employ “brutal and ingenious measures”,
leading to “the annihilation of those who do not emigrate”.53
It is impossible to tell whether that voice from the past, replete with anti-
semitic motifs, reflected popular concerns, but the resistance movement
proceeded to express commitment to the “complete liberation of the soil of
Palestine”, based on seeing the people in “the Palestinian-Jordanian theater” as
one, part of the Arab nation, though with “complete independence of all Arab
regimes”. On the other hand, it saw the goal of struggle as a society in which
“all citizens will coexist with equal rights and obligations within the framework
of the aspirations of the Arab nation to unity and progress”. The view of Israel
as “a closed racialist society linked with imperialism”, in which “the limited
progressive forces” were incapable of “bringing about any radical change”, was
maintained, as was the aim of liquidating that entity “in all its aspects, political,
military, social, trades union and cultural”.54 The difficulty in reconciling these
commitments was not addressed explicitly.
For the PFLP it was essential that the slogan of a Democratic State did not
restrict the struggle to a Palestinian framework: a free Palestine would “become
part of a unified revolutionary Arab entity, with the Palestinian liberation
movement integrated with the Arab liberation movement”. The Israeli-Zionist
presence, linked to imperialism and reaction, was to be replaced “by a progres-
sive, democratic Arab society which will allow every citizen his full rights”, a
society that would have “destroyed any objective ground on which Zionist
tendencies might arise again”. To achieve that, there was a need for “awareness,
organization, mobilization and determination to fight for a thousand years,
whatever the sacrifices involved”, said George Habash. It did not matter if
world public opinions were not convinced of the just nature of the cause or the
methods used, which included spectacular global operations seen as terrorism,
such as airplane hijackings: they inflicted “material and moral injuries on the
enemy” which greatly raised “the morale of our people”. The Popular Front
adopted that strategy “as a complement to, not an alternative to, its fighting and
political effectiveness in the occupied area and the Arab theater”, he added.55
That strategy meant that Israeli Jews could not play any role in the process of
liberation.The Democratic Front provided a somewhat different view. It shared
the focus on “the unity of the people in the Palestinian and Jordanian theater,
both in theory and practice”, as the basis for “the mobilization and militariza-
tion of all patriotic classes in a popular militia which will assist the resistance”.
It defined the field of struggle as “the territory of Palestine and all Arab areas
in which there are concentrations of Palestinians, and all the frontiers adjoining
the occupied territories”. Like Fatah and the Popular Front, it defined the
aim of the struggle as smashing “the state of Israel and all its military, admin-
istrative, trades union, cultural and Zionist institutions”, replacing it with “a
democratic popular state in which Arabs and Jews will coexist with equal rights
and obligations”. And, it urged “progressive Jewish forces which are hostile to
Zionism and support the national rights of the Palestinian people” to adhere to
that programme and join the unified national front.56
Fatah saw the Democratic State more as a diplomatic tool than a call for
action. The slogan, Arafat said, was to apply in “a Palestine liberated by armed
struggle from all traces of Zionist fanatics and of that society closed in on itself
which is called Israel”. That Israel launched “a vast information campaign to
combat the effect of this slogan on European and world public opinion” was
proof of the need to “continue to employ this slogan until the whole world
realizes what we hope to achieve by the war of liberation”.57 However, dip-
lomacy was not the same as peaceful settlement, which meant surrender. The
Palestinian movement was strong enough “to stand on its own feet”, he said, and
armed struggle remained the only way to achieve liberation, as in the past: the
Mongols came and swept away the Abbasid caliphate, but were defeated in Ain
Jalut, “in the same region [Galilee] where we are today fighting the Zionists”,
then came the crusaders “and swept over the area, to be defeated at Hattin [also
in Galilee, but earlier]. And the Zionists will be defeated in the same valley, in
the same land … Victory or death lie ahead of us; we welcome either”.58
That sense of historical destiny, victory or doom, was a common feature of
the discourse. George Habash warned of attempts to reach a compromise with
Israel at the Palestinians’ expense. The response would be turning the region
“into an inferno, attacking all colonialist and reactionary interests and any force
that wants to destroy the hope of our people”. The movement had weak points
militarily, such as lack of sufficient arms, the wrong kind of arms, and insuf-
ficient training, but its basic weapon was “the expression of people who are
bearing arms for the first time and feel that their arms are their dignity, their
life, their country, and their land –their all”.Those arms would target all hostile
forces, including those that were “Arab only in name”, resulting in “a second
Vietnam”. The battle would be won through “fighting day after day, inflicting
slight damage on the enemy here and there”, being prepared “to offer millions
of victims until victory is won”. It might take decades, he said, but “no liber-
ation without sacrifice and bloodshed” was possible.
Habash was careful to distinguish between reactionary regimes that were part
of the enemy camp –Jordan, Lebanon, the Gulf monarchies –and the nation-
alist regimes of Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Libya. The latter followed a strategy of
rebuilding conventional armies in order to win the next round in a clash with
Israel, an impossible task in his view. Rather, they needed to adopt a strategy
of “people’s war of liberation”, that “mobilizes the Arab millions and provides
them with political indoctrination and political organization and arms, and
requires them to fight until Zionism and imperialism are crushed in Palestine
and the whole of the Arab world”.59
Regional Changes: Egypt and Jordan

However, instead of adopting such a strategy, the biggest Arab country with
the most important military force, Egypt, moved in the opposite direction in
1970 by accepting ceasefire with Israel, which brought the three-year War of
Attrition to an end. That dealt a serious blow to the Resistance, by neutralising
the biggest military threat to Israeli domination. It was difficult to oppose pol-
itically a move taken by Nasser, the leader of the Arab national movement. In
response, the Resistance affirmed its intention to continue the armed struggle
and reject the measures taken “to implement plans for the peaceful liquidation
of the cause of Palestine”.60 An emergency session of the Palestinian National
Assembly declared its “resolute opposition to the American conspiracy known
as the Rogers Plan”, which aimed at “recognition of the legitimacy of the
enemy’s occupation, surrender to the Zionist-imperialist oppression … and
perpetuation of the presence of this enemy in the body of the Arab homeland”.
It called for turning “the Jordanian-Palestinian theater into a fortress for the
over-all popular revolution” and linking up with “all Arab popular movements
and bodies that have adopted the principle of rejection of solutions involving
liquidation”.61
Dramatic developments were soon to follow. In early September 1970, the
PFLP hijacked four American and European airplanes and landed them in
Jordan.That was in line with its policy of undertaking high-visibility operations
to boost morale and use hostages as leverage, and it was meant to show that
the struggle continued despite the Egypt-Israel ceasefire, and that the armed
Resistance was a force to reckon with regionally and globally. The Jordanian
regime regarded that operation as a critical challenge to its authority, coming
against a background of rising tensions between Palestinian militants and
Jordanian security forces. That the notion of a single “theater” encompassing
Jordan and Palestine was increasingly used by militants was an indication that
the regime was in danger, and it felt it had to take urgent action.What followed
became known as Black September, a campaign aimed to re-establish a mon-
opoly on the use of legitimate force in the country and destroy the capacity of
Palestinians to operate independently of the Jordanian state.
Black September dealt another serious blow to the Resistance’s strategy.
Not only was its freedom to operate in Jordan severely curtailed, but the core
element of its military approach was disrupted. Crossing the Jordan River had
become more difficult with ever-stricter measures used on the Israeli side but
now the Jordanian side added a layer of obstacles, making the crossing almost
impossible. Abu Iyad’s notion of being both inside and outside the territory
and only a few metres away was no longer viable (if it ever was). Of the two
Arab countries that allowed access to Palestinian territory, the bigger and more
important one, due to its proximity and length of border, fell. Lebanon was
not an adequate substitute because of its distance from Palestinian population
concentrations on either side of the border, making the crossing much more
challenging in an unfriendly environment.
Clearly, the Jordanians had wanted to move against the Resistance for a
while already and the PFLP provided an excuse. They were better armed and
organised and managed to inflict heavy losses on the Palestinian forces, leading
them to reflect on their own conduct. Abu Iyad raised the absence of a unified
message, combined with inflated rhetoric, as concerns:
our slogans went beyond our reach and the reach of our swords. When we
employed a slogan we did not know where it would lead us, until we made
the masses who heard us dizzy … One day we tell them that the liber-
ation of Palestine is only possible through class war, another day through a
nationalist war, and yet again we say through the establishment of this kind
of society or that kind of society.
The result was political confusion. It was important, he said, to keep the
cause alive regardless of realities on the ground, for the sake of history: “We do
not want it to be said of this generation that a new Spain was lost, as [Islamic-
Arab] Spain was lost to us … We must maintain it in existence and alive”.62
Abu Iyad added: “The Popular Front and the Popular Democratic Front
launched slogans which the present state of the struggle did not justify”, while
Fatah argued that it was
a struggle for national liberation and that those who called it a class struggle
lacked realism, particularly in Jordan where this choice meant that the
emphasis had to be put on strikes and class conflict in a tribal society and
in a country with barely three factories in all its territory.
Palestinians knew their movement was “part of a movement for Arab liber-
ation”, with social concerns, but
class struggle in Jordan should have been initiated by East Bankers, by a

Jordanian national front. We wished for close ties with such a front and we
would have helped it. But our specific watchwords were the national lib-
eration of Palestine.
This did not mean rejection of other perspectives: “the nationalists have nei-
ther complexes about nor hostility toward the other currents, and I still main-
tain that Fateh is very close to the Algerian experience as well as to the Vietnam
experience”.63
The PFLP drew a different lesson, urging escalation of measures “to protect
the revolution in Jordan” against the reactionary regime that was determined
to crush it, given that the Jordanian theatre was “the principal mainstay of the
Resistance’s capacity for endurance and confrontation”. The mistake was, in its
view, to confine the revolution to Palestinians only, not seeing it as “the revo-
lution of the whole Arab people against the Zionist and imperialist-reactionary
presence in our Arab homeland”. The movement should have mobilised the
Palestinian and Jordanian masses as “a single people living in a single society,
confronting a single danger and having a single cause”.64
The Democratic Front went further, putting intra-Arab relations in the fore-
front. The cause of Palestine depended on struggle “to establish a nationalist
regime, friendly to the Resistance, which will enable it to aim all its rifles at the
Zionist enemy”. But, it recognised, that was not easy to achieve due to a “ver-
tical division” that had pitted Jordanian and Palestinian societies against each
other. Of worry was the Resistance’s failure to link with popular Arab forces,
becoming a “prisoner of Arab conflicts and the system of Arab official relations”,
unable to respond to reactionary attacks. The way forward consisted not in
retreat or in suicidal “armed adventurism” (a swipe at the Popular Front) and
“empty revolutionary slogans”, but in building “a Jordanian-Palestinian national
front” in opposition to the ruling authorities. An alliance with progressive Arab
forces was needed at the regional level, targeting Israel and imperialism and also
their reactionary Arab allies.65
The Mini-State Solution

Their differing strategies regarding Arab alliances notwithstanding, the
organisations shared apprehensions about the idea of a Palestinian autonomous
zone in the 1967 territories, a “quisling state” serving as a buffer between Israel
and Jordan. If such an arrangement came into being, it would undermine the
chances of a true democratic state in Palestine, not serve as a step towards it: “It
is the powerful society which infiltrates the weaker one. So Israel will become
more powerful, more racist, more capable of crushing any attempts to inte-
grate these two areas –except on its own terms”. A liberation struggle that
eventually involved “the Jews of Palestine” was needed but it was difficult for
Palestinians to accept Jews as partners in that struggle. Jews had been persecuted
in Europe, but to Palestinians they appeared as “the European invader, the colo-
nialist settler”. Arabs never experienced them as persecuted people. That was
“changing the very make-up of Palestinian perception”. It was not expected
that Israelis would join the struggle because Palestinians portrayed a rosy picture
of the future. Rather, they had to see that they could not “have the tranquility
of an oppressor state”. Both stick and carrot were essential.66
The Popular Front focused much less on the need to recruit Israelis and
more on the need to escalate resistance to “surrender solutions”, especially in
the 1967 territories. It was important to frustrate Israeli plans, which were based
on creating “normal living conditions for the majority of the masses”, so that
people addressed the problems of daily life. Israel was hoping, the Front said, to
isolate the Resistance from the masses. They were helped in that by mistakes
of the Resistance, which took on “a military character of a primitive kind –
the preparation and equipment of groups so that they may carry out military
strikes”. There was a need to enable instead “mobilization and concentration
of the persecuted, oppressed and exploited masses”, embarking on “long, harsh
and conscious historical struggle, based on revolutionary violence”. Palestinians
alone could not win against Israel and Jordan and “the strength and resources of
their Zionist and imperialist supporters”. To overcome all that, the Resistance
had to become “part of the vast and broad movement of the Arab masses”,
which was the only force “capable of obtaining the human and geographical
depth” needed for victory.67
The PFLP’s view of Israeli Jews was that they all took part in a colonial pro-
ject, although “between them there are also relations of exploitation”. It made
little sense to talk to them about a Democratic Palestine without being able to
pose a realistic alternative: “at the moment it is very difficult to get the Israeli
working-class to listen to the voice of the Palestinian resistance, and there are
several obstacles to this”, including the Arab ruling classes who did not pre-
sent “either Israelis or Arabs with a prospect of democracy”, and the Israeli
ruling class. There was a third obstacle: “the real, if small, benefit that the Israeli
proletariat derives from its colonialist status within Israel”. It gained from the
alliance with Imperialism in which “Israel as a whole has been recruited to play
a specific role”.To overcome these challenges, the Resistance movement needed
to grow on the outside and Israeli dissent emerge from within, but there was
“no real sign of such a convergence yet, since, although Matzpen exists, what
would be necessary is a mass proletarian movement”.68 To facilitate a renewed
focus on mass mobilisation, the PFLP decided to stop armed operations over-
seas if they were harmful to its national and international alliances, without
abandoning the commitment to “the practice of violence against the imperialist
enemy”.69
Overall, the period between Black September of 1970 and the October War
of 1973 involved a great deal of uncertainty, with the Resistance movement
facing a difficult situation “due to the American initiatives and the plans
they spawned”. Initiatives such as the Rogers Plan, the Jordanian-Palestinian
Federation, and the plan to hold municipal elections in the territories led
to “large scale encirclement of the revolution and the spread of the spirit of
defeatism”. To counter that, the PLO urged action “against the comprom-
ising mentality” by intensifying armed struggle and political mobilisation of
all sections of the Palestinian people, including inside the 1967 and 1948 ter-
ritories, and consolidating the struggles of Palestinians and Jordanians together
with those of the Arab nation as a whole. The goal was to eradicate all forms of
“Zionist and imperialist presence (economic, military and cultural), as well as
all the forces connected with them which act as mediators for neo-colonialism
and its policies”.70
How to achieve all that did not receive specific discussion, however. Making
it concrete was a task undertaken by internal forces. A new political formation,
affiliated with the PLO but run from within, started operating –the Palestine
National Front in the Occupied Territory. Its programme included commitment
to the national struggle but with a focus on local issues: fighting confiscation of
land and property, protecting economic enterprises in agriculture and industry,
defending local culture, heritage and religious sites, solidarity with prisoners
of the occupation, and support for mass organisations, such as trade unions,
students and women’s federations, religious and social clubs and associations.71
The October War and Its Aftermath

In retrospect, the timing seemed perfect, as it came just before a crucial event
(that could not have been anticipated) –the October War –which undermined
Israeli military superiority and revived diplomatic efforts in the region. Just as
the defeat of 1967 was a physical and reputational blow to the Arab regimes
and their conventional military forces, so did the (partial) victory of 1973 give
a boost to the prestige of these same forces. At both times Palestinians were
marginal to the result almost to the point of invisibility. In 1967 that allowed
the armed Resistance to emerge as a fresh alternative. In 1973 it forced it to
re-work its strategy and find a new niche for itself. The most important shift
brought about by the war was the acceleration of Egypt’s move away from mili-
tant nationalism towards reconciliation with the USA and eventually Israel, a
move that had started already in the last days of Nasser’s rule and was given a big
push forward in the aftermath of the war. Syria’s shift in the same direction was
more hesitant but was a bad omen for the Resistance’s freedom to operate in
the region. The PLO’s statement that Security Council resolution 338 –which
called for a ceasefire and implementation of resolution 242 and was accepted
by Israel and Egypt and later Syria too –was of no concern to the Palestine
revolution, and that it would “continue armed mass struggle against the Zionist
entity for the liberation of the homeland”, was more like a whistle in the dark
than a sober appraisal of its future prospects.72
Fatah followed suit by asserting that its basic strategic goal, “the liberation of
our usurped homeland and the establishment of a democratic state of Palestine
on all our occupied soil”, did not change, and that one of its principles
remained a “Palestinian unified attitude”.73 But, that was unlikely with the
PFLP’s attacks on the “frantic attempts to push through a liquidationist settle-
ment at the expense of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination”,
which did not mention Egypt and Syria but regarded them as potential part-
ners to imperialist-aligned forces.74 These responses were in line with the
well-established perspective of the Resistance. But, a few days later, a radical
departure from the line began to emerge and it shaped future developments
for decades to come.
In a UK newspaper article, Said Hammami, the PLO’s London representa-
tive, asserted the right of Palestinians “to participate in any forthcoming peace
conference on the Middle East on an equal basis with the other parties”. The
international community should invite Palestinians, he said, “both those living
in exile and those still living under Israeli occupation in their own land”. He
went further: “Many Palestinians believe that a Palestinian state on the Gaza
Strip and the West Bank including Al-Hammah region [in Syria], is a necessary
part of any peace package”. Such a state would lead to closing down the refugee
camps, “thereby drawing out the poison at the heart of Arab-Israeli enmity”.
It would be a first step “towards reconciliation for the sake of a just peace that
should satisfy all parties”, important for having been taken by Palestinians, the
wronged side.75
The article may have been a way of testing the water for Fatah’s decision,
conveyed by Abu Iyad, to insist on Palestinian right to liberate the entire terri-
tory and to avoid a rejectionist position that amounted to hollow words:
An absolute ‘No’ is not always the hallmark of the absolute revolutionary

… Today we are not going to say ‘No’ and sit at home … We are against
resounding slogans that urge the revolution to commit suicide. We shall
not hesitate to do anything that can promote the interests of our people …
As far as our people are concerned we are anxious that they should be in
contact with our people in the occupied territory and that there should be
constant consultations with them.76
That was a clear indication of an impending change as the Palestinian lead-
ership did not want to be left behind while Arab states were moving ahead
without it.
Diplomacy was proceeding apace. The Summit Conference in Algiers
demanded that peace must meet two conditions: “Israeli withdrawal from
all the occupied Arab territories, with particular regard to Jerusalem” and
“recovery by the Palestinian people of their established national rights”.77 In a
follow-up speech, King Hussein of Jordan insisted on an agreement between
the three frontline Arab states (Egypt, Syria, and Jordan) to act as “a single party”
with regard to the implementation of Security Council resolutions. Asserting
Jordan’s key role in realising the rights of the Palestinian people, “in view of the
fact that the overwhelming majority live in the East and West Banks of Jordan”,
he committed himself to letting Palestinians choose their future in, with, or
independently of Jordan, and denied any intention “of competing with anyone
or of quarrelling with our brothers” over representation.Yet, he did not bother
to mention the PLO or any other organisation as legitimate Palestinian voices.
Obviously, the fear that Jordan would be officially denied a say in the future of
the 1967 territories was a prime consideration in his approach.78
Meanwhile, Palestinian organisations were preparing for different even-
tualities. In a symposium held in Beirut in January 1974, Nayef Hawatmeh
distinguished between the “American-Zionist-Hashemite [Jordanian] scheme”,
which would lead to “a submissive, liquidationist solution of the Palestine
question”, and the “concrete, nationalist and revolutionary position” that would
lead to the thwarting of such solutions. In his view, there was a need for an
arrangement to enable Palestinians “in all those liberated territories evacuated
by the enemy to exercise their right to self-determination and establish a
Palestinian independent national authority”. Mass mobilisation “inside and
outside the occupied territories along these lines” would be consistent with
the strategic goal of liberating all of Palestine. That goal could be achieved by
working with the empowered Arab nationalist regimes and movements and
relying on the global role of the Soviet Union.79
In response, George Habash challenged the inflated expectations of a shift
in the regional and global balance of forces. He pointed out that the Soviet
position included “the continued existence of the State of Israel”, in its vision
of a just settlement. Like the Vietnamese, he said, Palestinians had to reject
Soviet advice if it violated their national principles: “Some of our brothers in
the Resistance movement conceive of a democratic national authority [in a
liberated West Bank and Gaza] without realizing what it entails: recognition,
reconciliation with, and the diplomatic exchange with Israel”. His alternative
was “continuation of the political, economic, and military struggle in order to
change the balance of power”, a task to be performed together with patriotic
regimes, such as Syria, Iraq, and Algeria, but not Egypt, let alone Jordan, which
operated in the framework of international diplomacy.80
The PLO majority was more optimistic. Abu Iyad argued that Palestinians
could not give up on an opportunity to make gains, even within the limited
framework of UN-based resolutions.The voice of the Palestinian people had to
be heard, he said, “otherwise, others –who have been responsible for the per-
petuation of the Palestine tragedy, who have shackled them in order to prevent
them from acting and from expressing themselves –will speak on their behalf
[reference to Jordan]”. A unified stand on the basis of a provisional programme
would gain Arab mass support because it would deal with “fundamental, his-
torical and immediate contingencies” and show the global movement that
Palestinians were “a serious revolution willing to face its present and histor-
ical problems with realistic and revolutionary solutions”.81 Shafiq al- Hout
rejected the politics of mere denunciation as futile and demoralising rather than
mobilising. It was important to consider new approaches:
Israelis and Zionists want all of Palestine; yet, today they have to make spe-
cific concessions. Similarly, while we want the total liberation of Palestine,
we must take a position on the immediate problem facing us … it is our
task to restore these territories to our people, and to establish a national
authority allied with the Resistance that will be capable of continuing the
struggle.82
That point was reiterated by Hawatmeh, who maintained that the nature
of the Palestinian authority, whether submissive or revolutionary, was not
predetermined and would depend on popular mobilisation. Reactionary moves
could be countered, he said, “by struggling, mobilizing, and organizing our
people inside and outside the occupied territories to attain the right to self-
determination”. A Palestinian national authority would enable people inside the
territories to rally around “one immediate national political goal –the uniting
of all of its forces”. It would be the most effective way to defeat Arab plans that
bypassed the Palestinian people, “liquidating their cause and suppressing their
independent national existence”.83
The language of pragmatic action did not appeal to all, of course. As
expected, George Habash dismissed talk about “the necessity for realism” and
“we are fed up with negative positions” and therefore need positive talk. Was
that not “a clear attempt to circumscribe whatever remains of the Resistance
movement and its revolutionary character?” he asked. He supported a goal that
“should be acceptable to the Palestinian and Arab masses as well as to the rest
of the world”, based on the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the West Bank
and Gaza and overthrow of the Jordanian regime, but with “no reconciliation,
recognition or direct negotiations with Israel”. Logical analysis showed, how-
ever, that the “existing balance of power will not lend itself to the realization
of our objectives”. Hence, the only road was “fighting and more fighting”.84
Both Abu Iyad and al- Hout asserted the need for plans to move for-
ward without abandoning the overall goals, avoiding the mistake of earlier
leaders [the likes of al-Husseini] who adhered to people’s rights but without
adopting “stage-by-stage programs of struggle under the obtaining conditions”.
Palestinians could not stop Egypt or Syria from serving their own interests, they
acknowledged, but the destiny of Palestinian territories “must be determined
by the Palestinian people”, not letting anyone else exercise tutelage. The new
situation, concluded al-Hout, had to be confronted directly: “Blind attachment
to the strategic goal, without taking into consideration the immediate period,
is unsound”. The new stage and specific conditions required a concrete
approach:“We must respond to all of them while assessing all the possibilities”.85
The most forceful assertion of the new perspective was offered by Hawatmeh,
who attacked “leftist opportunist Palestinian opinions” advancing “bombastic
slogans (‘The whole of Palestine at once’, ‘Palestinian territories liberated from
occupation are to go to the regime of King Hussein’)”. There was a need for a
pragmatic programme to unite Palestinians against American-sponsored “solu-
tion of surrender and liquidation”. Those opposed were in essence “currents of
surrender because they succumb to the present balance of forces” despite their
“revolutionary phraseology”, most likely a reference to the PFLP. There was a
need to declare: “We are fighting for our people’s right to establish its national
authority on its own land after the occupation has been ended”, thus inflicting
defeat upon “imperialism and racist regimes, whether in Palestine, Rhodesia
or South Africa”.86 Recognising that “a united, democratic state” in which
Palestinians and Israelis lived together equally was the best solution, but also that
that was “impossible in this period”, Hawatmeh raised basic demands to enable
a dialogue between Palestinians and Israelis (including liberal Zionists): “the
establishment of an independent, national Palestinian state and the restoration
of their rights to the Palestinian refugees. Without these steps being taken, no
real peace will be possible”.87
That perspective, recognising that liberation may unfold in stages, was
adopted by the Twelfth Palestine National Council in Cairo in June 1974, in
its ten-point programme. It rejected any scheme that required “recognition,
conciliation, secure borders, renunciation of the national right, depriving our
people of their right to return and their right to determine their destiny on
their national soil”. And, it asserted that “the PLO will struggle by every means,
the foremost of which is armed struggle, to liberate Palestinian land and to
establish the people’s national, independent and fighting sovereignty on every
part of Palestinian land to be liberated”. Any step in that direction was “a step for
continuing to achieve the PLO strategy for the establishment of the Palestinian
democratic state”. A joint Jordanian-Palestinian national front was called for to
facilitate democratic change in Jordan in close contact with “the Palestinian
entity to be established as a result of the struggle”. The expected outcome was
“a unity of struggle between the two peoples and among all the Arab liberation
movement forces” with the aim of “completing the liberation of all Palestinian
soil and as a step on the road towards total Arab unity”.88
The language was ambiguous but remarkably it was the first time that an
interim arrangement –an entity or a national authority in part of historical
Palestine –was put forward formally as a goal, albeit with the expectation that
it would eventually lead to complete liberation. Endorsed in advance by the
National Front in the occupied territories as meeting the pressing concerns of
their residents and therefore a legitimate departure from the line,89 the reso-
lution signalled a shift that proved impossible to reverse. It opened a deep fault
line between those who prioritised adaptation to new conditions (which kept
changing) and those who opposed any deviations.
The PFLP supported the programme initially but later on it withdrew from
the PLO Executive Committee in protest over what it saw as national betrayal,
insisting on continued revolution
until the liberation of Haifa, Jerusalem, Nazareth, Safad, Gaza, Nablus and
every inch of our Palestinian land. The revolution must continue until the
racist, Zionist, fascist entity is destroyed and until the reactionary regimes
tied with imperialism such as Jordan and others are also destroyed, and until
the Arab land is liberated from all imperialist influence and exploitation,
even if this requires that our nation has to struggle for tens of years and
sacrifice for it millions of martyrs.90
Instead of returning to the fold, as requested by the PLO, it announced

the formation of “a united front comprising the sections of the resistance, all
the mass bodies and organizations and patriotic persons that reject surrenderist
solutions”, together with few smaller Palestinian groups and the ruling Ba’ath
Party of Iraq.That was the foundation of what became known as the Rejection
Front, which extended to include other Arab regimes, particularly Libya in
addition to Iraq.91
Meanwhile, in the Rabat Summit of October 1974, mainstream Arab
forces affirmed “the right of the Palestinian people to self- determination
and to return to their homeland” and to “establish an independent national
authority under the command of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the
sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people in any Palestinian ter-
ritory that is liberated”.92 That historical declaration was followed by another
milestone,Yasser Arafat’s speech to the UN General Assembly on behalf of the
PLO. Linking the Palestinian struggle to that of other oppressed people (in
Zimbabwe, Namibia, and South Africa), he argued that colonialism as a global
movement was the model for Zionism:
Just as colonialism heedlessly used the wretched, the poor, the exploited
as mere inert matter with which to build and to carry out settler coloni-
alism, so too were destitute, oppressed European Jews employed on behalf
of world imperialism and of the Zionist leaders. European Jews were
transformed into the instruments of aggression –they became the elements
of settler colonialism intimately allied to racial discrimination.
With regard to the role of the UN, Arafat criticised it for having “partitioned
what it had no right to divide –an indivisible homeland”. The 1947 partition
resolution led to dispossession, with settlers uprooting Arabs, “completely oblit-
erating” hundreds of communities, and building “their own settlements and
colonies on the ruins of our farms and our groves”. That was the root of the
conflict, which was not a conflict between religions or nationalisms or states: it
was the cause of a “people deprived of its homeland, dispersed and uprooted,
and living mostly in exile and in refugee camps”. Jewish immigration was not
a problem in itself, he added, if Jews merely wanted “to live side by side with
us, enjoying the same rights and assuming the same duties”, but its goal was
“to usurp our homeland, disperse our people, and turn us into second-class
citizens”. Palestinians never opposed “the Jew, as a person, but racist Zionism
and undisguised aggression”. In that sense, theirs was also “a revolution for the
Jew, as a human being”, aiming to allow Jews, Christians, and Muslims to “live
in equality, enjoying the same rights and assuming the same duties”. As PLO
Chairman and “leader of the Palestinian revolution”, Arafat declared that “all
Jews now living in Palestine who choose to live with us there in peace and
without discrimination” will be included and appealed to all “to enable our
people to establish national independent sovereignty over its own land”.93
In a follow- up move, the UN General Assembly granted the PLO an
observer status, consolidating thus its international status. A year later witnessed
an important symbolic victory for the Palestinian cause when the General
Assembly adopted resolution 3379, which determined that Zionism was “a
form of racism and racial discrimination”. It invoked a series of international
resolutions from the previous two years, which variously condemned “the
unholy alliance between South African racism and Zionism”, called for “the
elimination of colonialism and neo-colonialism, foreign occupation, Zionism,
apartheid and racial discrimination in all its forms”, considered that “the racist
regime in occupied Palestine and the racist regimes in Zimbabwe and South
Africa have a common imperialist origin, forming a whole and having the
same racist structure and being organically linked in their policy”, severely
condemned Zionism as “a threat to world peace and security”, and called on
all to oppose that “racist and imperialist ideology”.94 Arab, African, Asian, and
Soviet-aligned countries supported the resolution, while most Western and
Latin American countries opposed it or abstained.
The PLO’s quest for recognition as a respectable actor on the global stage
encountered resistance from two crucial actors –Israel and the United States.
The first US veto of a UN Security Council resolution calling for an inde-
pendent Palestinian state dates to that period (January 1976). It rejected the call
that “the Palestinian people should be enabled to exercise its inalienable national
right of self-determination, including the right to establish an independent state
in Palestine in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations”. That call
was based in turn on the demand “that Israel should withdraw from all the Arab
territories occupied since June 1967”, and on the expectation that the UN
would guarantee “the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independ-
ence of all states in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and
recognized boundaries”.95
There were two contradictory foundations for the PLO’s approach.The first
was the need for a comprehensive solution, denouncing
all measures which ignore the totality and indivisibility of the Palestine
question –such as a disengagement of forces here, a partial solution there, a
stage-by stage settlement on this front or that, the discussion of the problem
of Jerusalem, the review of the fate of the United Nations Relief and Works
Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the West Bank,
the Gaza strip.96
The second was that the Palestinian people, “in exile and under occupation”,
adopted a clear immediate aim: “the establishment of an independent sovereign
State on our national soil”.97 Whether that aim was merely a temporary stage
on the way to an overall solution, or an aim sufficient in itself, or not an aim at
all, was an issue of ongoing debate. The Palestine National Council reaffirmed
in 1977 that
all forms of military, political and mass struggle in the [1967] occupied ter-
ritories is the central element in its programmes for struggle … with a view
to escalating its struggle and to reinforcing its steadfastness so that it may
dislodge and liquidate the occupation.98
At the same time, the Rejection Front insisted that the PLO should renew
its commitment “to continued Palestinian armed struggle and political and
mass struggle to establish a Palestinian state in all the land of Palestine”, and not
only in the 1967 territories.99
The decade of mid-late 1970s to the late 1980s was a crucial juncture in the
history of the movement. It kept the quest for a solution that would encompass
the different segments of the people: refugees, occupied residents, and Israeli
citizens. In practice, the quest for an independent state in the 1967 territories
re-shaped the contours of the struggle by giving priority to the concerns of
people living under Israeli military rule. That new focus served to “normalize”
the situation as that of a liberation movement fighting foreign occupation.
The special colonial features of the Palestinian condition –exclusion of the
1948 refugees and their replacement by Jewish settlers, unequal inclusion of
Palestinian citizens –did not disappear from view, of course, but increasingly
were handled as issues only loosely connected overall. Israel remained resolute
in rejecting all the basic Palestinian demands though.
There was an important shift in the American position, after the coming into
power of the Carter administration which adopted a statement with the Soviet
Union, calling for resolving “all specific questions” within a comprehensive
framework, including key issues such as
withdrawal of Israeli Armed Forces from territories occupied in the 1967

conflict; the resolution of the Palestinian question, including insuring the
legitimate rights of the Palestinian people; termination of the state of war
and establishment of normal peaceful relations on the basis of mutual
recognition of the principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity, and polit-
ical independence.100
The joint statement was denounced by Israel and welcomed by many Arab
and Palestinian voices, but its impact proved ephemeral and it did not provide
an opening for a new diplomatic initiative in a way favourable to Palestinians
as was expected.
Regional events had already undermined hopes for a unified Arab military
campaign against Israel. Two key developments were crucial. The first was the
Lebanese civil war of 1975–76, which involved Palestinians against their will
in a disastrous military conflict that fractured the Arab front, sapped their ener-
gies, and created devastating divisions between them and their Lebanese and
Syrian allies. The fall of the first “Arab Hanoi” (Amman) in 1970 was followed
by the fall of the second “Hanoi” (Beirut). These places could no longer serve
as potential bases for an Arab effort in support of the Palestinian struggle. After
a lull in fighting for a few years, the resumption of Israeli attacks, first in 1978
and then on a larger scale and with more lethal consequences in 1982, forced
Palestinian cadres to relocate again: this time to places far from the Israeli front
such as Tunisia and Yemen.
The second and more important development was taken by the biggest and
strongest Arab country –Egypt. In culmination of the diplomatic move that
had started in 1973, it put an end to its military involvement in the conflict by
beginning negotiations with Israel in 1977 and concluding a peace agreement
with it in the following year. Its initiative was defined by the PLO as “a grave
violation of the principles of Arab struggle against the Zionist- imperialist
aggression”, particularly harmful as it was “an attack from the inside on the very
essence of the Arab attitude to the conflict”. It was “an embodiment of Zionist
thinking”, amounting to “the greatest blow aimed at the Palestinian cause since
its inception”.101 Palestinian organisations agreed on a six-point programme in
opposition to Egyptian policies and to Security Council resolutions 242 and
338, expressing their support for
the realization of the Palestinian people’s rights to return and self-

determination within the context of an independent Palestinian national
state on any part of Palestinian land, without reconciliation, recogni-
tion or negotiations [with Israel], as an interim aim of the Palestinian
Revolution.102
The Arab Steadfastness and Confrontation Front, formed with the partici-
pation of Libya, Algeria, Syria, South Yemen, and the PLO, was an ineffective
response to the shift by Egypt, which managed to restore all its land while
its opponents were left with no concrete achievements. The Arab boycott
of Egypt in retaliation was important symbolically but of no benefit to the
Palestinian struggle. That remained the case after the Islamic revolution in Iran
of 1979, despite its use of fiery anti-Israel and anti-US rhetoric. When the two
regimes most vocal in their expression of solidarity with Palestine –Iraq and
Iran, neither of which joined the Steadfastness Front –entered in 1980 into a
prolonged brutal war that drained their resources and effectively removed them
from the rest of the Middle East arena, the quest to liberate Palestine through
an external military campaign was finally laid to rest. With Palestinian citizens
of Israel renewing their fight for equal rights and share in resources through
their own internal political structures, above all the Democratic Front for Peace
and Equality formed by the Communist Party in 1977, as discussed later in
the chapter, and refugees in the Diaspora largely isolated, the focus of struggle
remained in the Occupied Territories.
Before 1967 the residents of the West Bank and Gaza already had a his-
tory of organising to fight against Israeli incursions and for access to land that
remained within Israeli boundaries.The 1948 refugees –a majority in Gaza and
a substantial minority on the West Bank –were keen not to allow the outcome
of the war to become a permanent arrangement. Under Jordanian rule they
experienced vibrant party-political life, interspersed with periods of repres-
sion, and in Gaza they clashed but also cooperated at times with the Egyptian
military authorities over their quest for arms, to repel Israeli raids as well as
to enable them to sneak into Israel and their lost property.103 All that changed
after the 1967 war. With Israeli forces in control no free political activity was
allowed. Palestinian resistance organisations and their literature and symbols
were banned, and the only legitimate form of expressing concerns was through
“notables” meeting irregularly with military authorities and exchanging
opinions and perhaps mild criticisms of Israeli policies. Intense repression, espe-
cially in the early post-1967 years, saw thousands of activists driven into exile or
underground or imprisoned for long periods.This had the effect of suppressing
open manifestations of resistance.104 Only years later, in 1973, attempts at organ-
isation bore fruit in the shape of the Palestinian National Front.The Front took
care not to challenge the leadership of the PLO openly, to retain credibility
among the masses, but tensions between the externally based resistance and
local activists were inevitable.105 In many respects this situation mirrored the
relations between external and internal forces in South Africa during the same
period, as discussed in Chapter 6.
The National Front gained ground quickly on a platform of allegiance to
the PLO as the overall representative of the Palestinian People. Its goals were
“to resist Zionist occupation and struggle for the liberation of the occupied
Arab territories” and “secure the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people and,
in the forefront, its right to national self-determination on its own land”. To
achieve that, it was committed
to reject all plans that aim to dissolve the national question of our people
and ignore its rights, be they Zionist (the Allon Plan), Arab (the United
Arab Kingdom of King Hussein), American, or any other defeatist and
liquidationist solution that resembles them.106
In addition, a range of concerns that gave more specific content to its activ-
ities were listed, including land confiscation, economic development, cultural
protection, heritage and holy places, detentions and inhuman conditions of
imprisonment, support for detainees’ families, and so on.
By 1976 the Front clearly had become the dominant political force in the
Occupied Territories, and it managed to win municipal elections with large
majorities in most towns. The Israeli response was harsh, reflecting resent-
ment that its intelligence agencies did not anticipate that their favourite pro-
Jordanian candidates would be ousted from power so easily. Some of the new
mayors and many activists were harassed, detained, deported, and restricted
in their activities, culminating in banning the Front altogether, as well as its
successor organisations.107 Despite attempts to suppress PLO-aligned nationalist
organisations, and Israeli experiments with creating alternative compliant lead-
ership –the Village Leagues –in the early 1980s, no force opposed to the PLO
could emerge in the Territories. The relative order re-imposed as a result of the
repressive campaign, reinforced by the PLO’s ouster from Lebanon in 1982,
did not last long. Tensions continued to simmer under the surface until they
broke out with the most sustained expression of mass resistance in Palestine
since 1936 –the Intifada of 1987, which lasted six years, and led to the Oslo
agreements of 1993.
The Intifada was a massive popular uprising that unified Palestinians in the
Occupied Territories and forced the PLO to come out clearly in support for
independence and statehood in that limited geographical and political frame-
work.108 The Declaration of Independence of the State of Palestine, adopted by
the Palestine National Council in November 1988, within a year of the out-
break of the uprising, was based on the UN partition of the territory:
Despite the historical injustice done to the Palestinian Arab people in its
displacement and in being deprived of the right to self-determination
following the adoption of General Assembly resolution 181 (II) of 1947,
which partitioned Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish State,
that resolution provided conditions of international legitimacy “that

guarantee the Palestinian Arab people the right to sovereignty and national
independence”.
The creation of the state was “the natural culmination of a valiant and ten-
acious popular struggle which has continued for more than 70 years”, in other
words since 1917, not since 1967. Israel as a whole was still defined as “a coloni-
alist, racist, Fascist State based on the seizure of Palestinian land, extermination
of the Palestinian people and, in addition, threats, aggression and expansionism
in neighbouring Arab territories”. However, in rejecting “the threat or use of
force, violence and intimidation against its territorial integrity and political
independence or those of any other State”, it implicitly included Israel as a
legitimate entity. In other words, while the definition of Israel as colonial was
retained in theoretical terms, in practical terms it was no longer regarded as such.
The Declaration owed its inspiration to the “great popular uprising now
mounting in the occupied territories” due to which “the Palestinian conjunc-
ture reaches a sharp historical turning point”, leading to “the establishment of
the State of Palestine in the land of Palestine with its capital at Jerusalem”. The
state “shall be for Palestinians, wherever they may be therein to develop their
national and cultural identity and therein to enjoy full equality of rights”. Jews
living in the country were not included in that definition. It should be “an Arab
State and shall be an integral part of the Arab nation, of its heritage and civiliza-
tion and of its present endeavour for the achievement of the goals of liberation,
development, democracy and unity”.
Without renouncing any historical claims, the Palestine National Council
focused on putting an end to the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, using
those areas as the state’s territorial basis. The Palestinian masses outside of the
homeland were called upon to intensify their support based on “family soli-
darity”, not on shared political fate necessarily. The Council expressed appre-
ciation for “Israeli democratic and progressive forces which have rejected the
occupation, condemned it, and deplored its oppressive practices and measures”,
as well as “Jewish groups throughout the world” who called for “Israel’s with-
drawal from the occupied territories, in order to enable the Palestinian people
to exercise its right to self-determination”. However, it was the principle of
“separate but equal” that inspired the statement, with Israeli Jews and Palestinian
Arabs entitled to statehood of their own equally but in their distinct territories,
rather than the “one person, one vote” principle that dominated the discourse
of the anti-apartheid movement of South Africa in the same period, as discussed
in Chapter 6.109
Oslo and After

After many trials and tribulations involving diplomatic manoeuvres and com-
plex negotiations, the Declaration of Independence was followed in 1993 by a
bilateral agreement with Israel –the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-
Government Arrangements –known as the Oslo Accords. In one sense, that was
the logical culmination of the trajectory taken by the PLO since 1974, when it
adopted the ten-point programme that called for establishing sovereignty over
any liberated Palestinian land. But, in another sense, it was a sharp break from
that course. Many saw it as a surrender by the Palestinian leadership, which
gave up on the long-held goals of political independence and restoration of the
rights of the Palestinian People as a whole, in exchange for limited autonomy
in the shape of the new Palestinian Authority. Not only was the prospect of
independence in the entire territory of pre-1948 Palestine discarded, but even
in the confined area of the West Bank and Gaza Palestinians did not receive rec-
ognition of their right to freedom and statehood. In fact, it may have blocked
the road to further gains, though perhaps that is best seen only in retrospect.110
Israel and the PLO agreed that it was time
to put an end to decades of confrontation and conflict, recognize their
mutual legitimate and political rights, and strive to live in peaceful coexist-
ence and mutual dignity and security and achieve a just, lasting and com-
prehensive peace settlement and historic reconciliation through the agreed
political process,
but without specifying the content of those rights.111 The self-government

to be established in the West Bank and Gaza was limited to Palestinians residing
there, with no power over Israeli citizens living in the same territories or in
relation to Palestinians residing elsewhere. Aiming for a permanent settlement
based on Security Council resolutions 242 and 338, the Oslo Accords left out
issues in dispute, including some of the most crucial issues of all: “Jerusalem,
refugees, settlements, security arrangements, borders”. A period of five years
was allocated to reach a permanent agreement, during which Israel was given
responsibility “for external security, and for internal security and public order
of settlements and Israelis”, allowing its military forces and civilians free use of
roads within the territories.
There is no doubt that the Accords fell short of the minimum demands of
the Palestinian movement –statehood in the 1967 Occupied Territories and
some formula recognising the right of return of the 1948 refugees. That might
have been acceptable if they had offered a path towards meeting these goals
within five years, if not immediately, without requiring Israeli approval. Not
only has Israel continued to exercise control over crucial areas such as land,
movement of people into Israel and the Territories, and between the West Bank
and Gaza, but its military and civilian authorities have proceeded with land con-
fiscation, house demolitions, deportations, Jewish settlement construction, and
other measures restricting the physical presence and legal rights of Palestinian
residents. They have been shifting the demographic and landholding ratio in
favour of Jewish settlers. Whether negotiations continued or were frozen, as
they effectively have been over the last decade, the pie over whose fate they
were sparring has been constantly shrinking. Clearly, the end of colonial rule
in 1993 in South Africa, discussed in Chapter 6, was not repeated for Palestine
at that year, though many believed at the time that it opened the door to such
an outcome.
The PLO’s recognition of Israel, signing the Oslo Accords, and adopting the
relevant UN Security Council resolutions, were to culminate in a formal revo-
cation of the clauses in the 1968 Palestinian National Charter that were incom-
patible with these commitments. The Palestine National Council adopted a
resolution in 1996 to that effect, followed by a letter from President Arafat to
President Clinton in 1998, confirming that many Articles of the Charter were
indeed nullified, specifically all those that spoke about complete liberation of
Palestine through armed struggle in total opposition to Zionism, or those refer-
ring to them.112 No reformulation of these clauses or of the Charter as a whole
was ever produced, however.
The collapse of the Oslo process in 2000, due to the failure of the Camp
David summit in which Palestinian President Arafat, Israeli Prime Minister
Barak, and US President Clinton took part,113 and the outbreak of the second
(al-Aqsa) Intifada, effectively brought an end to the attempt to re-shape the
contours of Israeli-Palestinian relations through formal diplomacy between
the two sides. Different leaders rose to the top in the following two decades,
notably Mahmoud Abbas replaced Yasser Arafat as head of the PLO and the
Palestinian Authority, but little has changed; no new initiatives managed to
break the deadlock in negotiations or chart new directions for statehood. That
outcome facilitated the rise of the alternative Palestinian perspective of the
Hamas movement.
With a long history of activism and links to the Egypt- based Muslim
Brotherhood, the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) emerged into the
open with the 1987 Intifada. It gained fame and notoriety with its Charter,
released shortly before the Declaration of Independence in 1988. Unlike
that Declaration, the Charter made no effort to speak in a universal or even
a nationalist language, steeped as it was in Islamic discourse, with numerous
phrases from the Quran and other religious texts on every page. It defined itself
as “an outstanding type of Palestinian movement”, which “gives its loyalty to
Allah, adopts Islam as a system of life, and works toward raising the banner of
Allah on every inch of Palestine”. Only in “the shadow of Islam”, it said, was
it possible “for all followers of different religions to live in peace and with
security over their person, property, and rights”. The struggle was “a link in [a
long] chain of the Jihad against the Zionist occupation”, in line with the work
of Islamic militants in previous decades, such as ‘Izz al-Din al-Qassam of the
1930s. Its motto was: “Allah is its Goal. The Messenger is its Leader. The Quran
is its Constitution. Jihad is its methodology, and Death for the sake of Allah is
its most coveted desire”.
Although Hamas operated in the specific territory of Palestine, it did not
regard it as a national asset but as “an Islamic Waqf [Trust] upon all Muslim
generations till the day of Resurrection”. No one (Arab state or leader, any
organisation, Palestinian or Arab) could give up any part of the country in
a political arrangement. Its nationalism was “part and parcel of religious
ideology”. The liberation of Palestine was an undertaking that combined “the
Palestinian sphere, the Arab sphere, and the Islamic sphere”. Muslims in par-
ticular were obliged to contribute to “the struggle against the Jewish occupa-
tion of Palestine”, by raising “the banner of Jihad” and fighting “the Ideological
Invasion brought about at the hands of the Orientalists and Missionaries”,
who were operating in the tradition of the Crusaders from the West and the
Mongols from the East. The PLO was regarded an ally, “the father, the brother,
the relative, or friend”, as long as it was not aligned with the communist East
or imperialist West and did not adhere to secular ideology. The struggle needed
to be a unified effort, since “Our nation is one, plight is one, destiny is one, and
our enemy is the same”.114
The Charter clearly was not open to any notion of compromise with
Zionists, Israelis, or Jews in general, and its perspective was hostile to nego-
tiations or appeals to international forces. In that sense it moved in a direc-
tion diametrically opposed to that taken by the PLO at the time. There is a
debate whether the document was meant as a practical guide for political action
or remained at the level of abstract ideology, and whether Hamas supporters
necessarily shared its religious principles or were rather attracted to its nation-
alist convictions. In any event, the radical alternative it offered was consistent
with its boycott of the 1996 presidential and legislative elections, held in terms
of the Oslo Accords, and its refusal to join the framework of both the PLO and
the Palestinian Authority.
A decade later, Hamas took part in the 2006 legislative elections, as a front –
Change and Reform List –rather than in its own name. It said that partici-
pation fell within “its comprehensive program for the liberation of Palestine”,
the return of the Palestinian people to their homeland, “and the establishment
of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital”. With “True
Islam” as a frame of reference, it put forward standard nationalist principles: that
“Historic Palestine” was part of the Arab and Islamic land, owned by the
Palestinian people; that Palestinians wherever they resided were “a single and
united people and form an integral part of the Arab and Muslim nation”;
that they were “living a phase of national liberation, and thus they have the
right to strive to recover their own rights and end the occupation using all
means, including armed struggle”; that “the right of return of all Palestinian
refugees and displaced persons to their land and properties, and the right to
self-determination and all other national rights, are inalienable and cannot be
bargained away for any political concessions”, including “the indigenous and
inalienable rights of our people to our land, Jerusalem, our holy places, our
water resources, borders, and a fully sovereign independent Palestinian state
with Jerusalem as its capital”.
Many specific social issues of concern were mentioned, such as housing,
health, labour and, in a more explicit political vein, prisoners, political freedoms,
protection of civil society, minority rights, corruption, separation of powers,
and other measures of good governance. Islamic law was invoked as a foun-
dation for the legal and education system, but very little of the fiery rhet-
oric of the Charter was retained, and none of its antisemitic notions or other
“civilisational” condemnations of the evil influence of the Crusader West and
Mongol/Tartar East. It seems that promises of clean government and effi-
cient service delivery to meet practical needs had greater electoral appeal than
grandiose pronouncements in a militant language with no clear relevance for
popular constituencies.115
The Hamas victory in the 2006 elections, its takeover of power in 2007 and
reign in Gaza for the last decade and a half, and the military clashes with Israel,
leading to a prolonged blockade of the Gaza Strip with the complicity of Egypt,
fall beyond the scope of this study. The original Charter was never repudiated
formally but neither was it re-affirmed. It seemed that the movement chose to
ignore it until it felt the time was ripe for releasing a new version altogether.116
The “Document of General Principles and Policies” of May 2017 can be
considered as the new Charter in all but name.
The Document offers a nationalist perspective, in an Islamic framework,
highlighting Palestine’s historical identity as “the land of the Arab Palestinian
people, from it they originate, to it they adhere and belong”. Hamas, as a
“Palestinian Islamic national liberation and resistance movement”, aims to lib-
erate Palestine and confront the Zionist project. Palestinians are “the Arabs who
lived in Palestine until 1947, irrespective of whether they were expelled from
it, or stayed in it”. Their cause is that of “an occupied land and a displaced
people”, and the refugees’ right of return is “a natural right, both individual
and collective”. The Zionist project is the enemy, “a racist, aggressive, colonial
and expansionist project based on seizing the properties of others”, and Israel
its “plaything” and “base of aggression”. It poses a threat to Arabs and Muslims
in general and to world peace. There is no religious conflict with Jews, but
“a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine”. The Jewish problem,
antisemitism, and the persecution of Jews were all “fundamentally linked to
European history and not to the history of the Arabs and the Muslims or to
their heritage”.
The position of Hamas towards Israel is unambiguous: “The establish-
ment of ‘Israel’ is entirely illegal and contravenes the inalienable rights of the
Palestinian people”, hence there would be “no recognition of the legitimacy
of the Zionist entity”. Hamas rejects any alternative “to the full and complete
liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea”. However, an important
qualification: “without compromising its rejection of the Zionist entity and
without relinquishing any Palestinian rights”, Hamas considers the forma-
tion of “a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem
as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967, with the return of the
refugees and the displaced to their homes”, to be “a formula of national
consensus”.
To achieve that goal there is a need for resistance “with all means and
methods”, with armed resistance as “the strategic choice for protecting the
principles and the rights of the Palestinian people”. Resistance could apply in
different ways “in terms of escalation or de-escalation, or in terms of diver-
sifying the means and methods”. Hamas recognises the PLO as “a national
framework for the Palestinian people inside and outside of Palestine”, which
should be “preserved, developed and rebuilt on democratic foundations” to
ensure participation of “all the constituents and forces of the Palestinian people,
in a manner that safeguards Palestinian rights”.117
Although it continues to reject Zionism and Israel as illegitimate colonial
entities and insists on the complete liberation of Palestine as an ultimate goal,
Hamas has made a historic change by accepting a state along the pre-1967
lines. That step was similar in significance to the PLO’s 1974 ten-point pro-
gramme and was received by Israel in the same hostile spirit as falling short of its
demand for recognition as a Jewish state (or even just as a state). Prime Minister
Netanyahu dismissively said in his response to that “hate-filled document”:
The new Hamas document says that Israel has no right to exist, it says every
inch of our land belongs to the Palestinians, it says there is no acceptable
solution other than to remove Israel … [they concede now] in order to
destroy Israel later. They want to use their state to destroy our state.118
The gap between Israel’s minimum demands and the maximum concessions
of Hamas remains unbridgeable, an expression of the deep tension between the
anti-colonial thrust that was the raison d’etre of Hamas and its need to operate in
a reality in which ongoing Israeli colonial rule coexists with a degree of post-
colonial state power exercised by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank
and Hamas in Gaza. Neither diplomacy nor the armed struggle has managed to
change that reality so far.119
The Internal Democratic Struggle

While Palestinians living under occupation were re-shaping their struggle to
focus on the goal of an independent state in the 1967 territories, Palestinian
citizens of Israel were undergoing processes of political consolidation of their
own. Although they were re-united with a large part of the Palestinian people
as a result of the 1967 war, they remained legally separated from them due to
their status as Israeli citizens. No longer living under a military government –
it was abolished late in 1966 –and with the security services directing most
efforts to the newly occupied territories and their inhabitants, Palestinian citi-
zens became freer than before to pursue their political agendas.
The re-unification of historical Palestine under Israeli rule did not lead to
a unified resistance movement. Palestinians across the Green Line shared eth-
nicity, culture and family ties, of course, but two decades of separation created
new political realities, which led to the adoption of different strategies: residents
under occupation focused on the struggle to free themselves from foreign rule,
while their Israeli counterparts aimed to enhance their citizenship rights and
gain access to freedoms shared by Jews but denied to other Palestinians. The
tendencies of communism and nationalism were the dominant political forces
among them, as discussed in Chapter 7 for the pre-1967 period, usually in a
state of tension with each other but also, at times, in relationship of collabor-
ation in the face of the common enemy.
As the only parliamentary force resolutely opposed to the 1967 occupa-
tion, the Communist Party (Rakah) emerged as a critical voice in the post-war
period, together with the Matzpen group.This position enhanced its reputation
among Palestinian citizens, and it experienced a growth in support among them
but also a loss of much of the limited Jewish support it had retained after the
1965 split. Perhaps no more than 2–3% of its electoral votes were cast by Jews
after 1967. The bulk of members and voters were Arab, though the Party never
abandoned its Jewish-Arab identity.This combination of factors –its legal exist-
ence and bi-national character, together with its support for equality of rights
and opposition to the occupation –allowed it to claim respectability and dissent
at the same time, working both within the system and on its margins.The result
was a rapid rise in its status as the foremost force representing Palestinians inside
the Green Line.120
A crucial landmark in the rise of Rakah to a dominant position was the vic-
tory of the Democratic Nazareth Front in the municipal elections of December
1975. Headed by Party leader Tawfiq Zayyad, the Front won an unprecedented
victory in the biggest Palestinian town in Israel, receiving two-thirds of the
vote. That allowed it to establish a basis from which to guide the events of the
Day of the Land (Yawm al-Ard) that were to follow.121 Although the rise of
the PLO and its diplomatic successes, together with the civil uprising against
the occupation, served as a background for these events, they were prompted by
local factors: a wave of land confiscation, part of a state-sponsored campaign for
the Judaization of the Galilee. The ongoing centrality of land in the experience
of Palestinian citizens since 1948 was displayed in their biggest mass mobilisa-
tion to date, the Day of the Land general strike of 30th March 1976. As put by
Zayyad: “The battle for the land was, and still is, the basic struggle of the Arabs
in Israel for national equality and for coherent development over their lands and
in their homeland”.
It is interesting to note that Zayyad linked the overall Palestinian struggle to
the specific campaigns waged by Israeli citizens, but also carefully differentiated
the two:
The Arabs in Israel have an important role to play in the struggle for
achieving a democratic and just solution of the national problem of the
Palestinian Arab people –its right to self determination and to a sovereign
national state, and the right of the refugees to return.
A solution to the overall conflict would encourage the internal democratic

struggle “for defeating the policy of racial discrimination and implementing full
national equality”. In addition to resolving the land issue,
the right of the [internal] Arabs to exist and to develop on their land and in
their homeland must be recognized. The Arabs must have the right of due
respect to their culture and national dignity, the right of full representation
in the various official and public institutions, and the right of participation
in remolding the general policy of the state and the future relations with
the Jewish people.
All this would be done in cooperation with “the democratic and rational
Jewish forces.”122
There was a clear distinction here between the right of the Palestinian-
Arab people to its own state, and the right of Palestinian citizens (referred to as
“The Arabs in Israel”) to equality, representation, and participation in shaping
policies. The conceptualisation of occupied Palestinians as external and Israeli
citizens as internal was thus reinforced. Zayyad’s colleague Emil Tuma made
the same point when he argued that absolute justice could not be realised and
partial justice would have to do. This included the right of Palestinians to self-
determination in the Occupied Territories, recognition of the right of return
or compensation for refugees, and the right of the Arab minority in Israel “to
enjoy its national and civil rights in Israel without discrimination or national
oppression”.123 The PLO’s goal of a secular democratic state for Arabs and Jews
in the entire country would remain, he said, but only as a “dream”. In the
meantime, both Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews would be entitled to their
own independent states.
On the basis of those principles, in 1977 Rakah became central to a new
electoral formation, the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality (known as
the Jabha in Arabic and Hadash in Hebrew). The Front received over 50%
of the votes of Palestinian citizens cast in the national elections of that year,
the first time that a non-Zionist list gained a majority among them. Coming
on the heels of the successful mass mobilisation of the Day of the Land, it
was another landmark in the rise of internal Palestinian resistance. Other
movements emerged at the time on the margins of mainstream politics without
posing a serious challenge to the dominance of Hadash. Arab student associ-
ations and, particularly, the Sons of the Village movement (Abnaa al-Balad)
called for undiluted adherence to a radical line, in a similar manner to the al-
Ard movement before them, but this time with a focus on Palestinian rather
than pan-Arab nationalism.124 These movements emphasised the Palestinian
identity of the Arab citizens of Israel and the shared fate of all segments of the
Palestinian people, politically represented by the PLO. For obvious reasons
they had to tread carefully –the security forces did not tolerate any move to
translate abstract sentiments of solidarity into concrete acts of political cooper-
ation across the Green Line, to say nothing of joint Palestinian action beyond
the boundaries of Israeli control.
Palestinian citizens continued to advocate equality of rights throughout
the period, with attempts to forge an explicit link between civil and national
demands. In a path-breaking article written in 1993, Azmi Bishara, a former
Rakah student leader who became an independent public intellectual, set for-
ward a new agenda: making Israel a state of all its citizens. Bishara argued against
the separation of national rights, to be exercised in a separate state, and civil
rights to be exercised in Israel. His alternative was a combined struggle: to
transform Israel into a state that guarantees equal rights to all its citizens, regard-
less of their ethnic origins, and to recognise Palestinian citizens as a national
and cultural minority, in charge of their own education system, media, and
development plans.125 The notion of Israel as a “state of all its citizens”, in con-
trast to a Jewish state, quickly caught up and became a standard for Palestinian
intellectuals, embodied in a new political movement, the National Democratic
Alliance (NDA, known as the Tajamu’ in Arabic and Balad in Hebrew).
Over the course of the following decade, activists, academics, and intellectuals
outlined their vision for Palestinian citizens and their relations with their
Israeli-Jewish counterparts, resulting in the Vision Documents of 2006–07.126
The framework document, The Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel,
defined its constituency as “Palestinian Arabs in Israel, the indigenous people,
the residents of the State of Israel”. It went on to state that, as a result of the
1948 Nakba, they became disconnected from the rest of the Palestinian people
and Arab world, and since then were “suffering from extreme structural dis-
crimination policies, national oppression, military rule that lasted till 1966, land
confiscation policy, unequal budget and resources allocation, rights discrimin-
ation and threats of transfer”, though they managed to maintain their “identity,
culture, and national affiliation”. Israel’s definition as a Jewish state excluded
them, which was why they called for a “Consensual Democratic system that
enables us to be fully active in the decision-making process and guarantee our
individual and collective civil, historic, and national rights”.
Analytically, Israel was identified as executing “internal colonial policies”
against Palestinian-Arab citizens, as part of a process of “Judaization of the land
and erosion of the Palestinian history and civilization”. This made Israel an
“ethnocratic state” that denied equality and used ethnicity and religion “as a
basic principle of the distribution of resources and abilities”. To overcome that
system,
the State should recognize the Palestinian Arabs in Israel as an indigenous

national group (and as a minority within the international conventions)
that has the right within their citizenship to choose its representatives
directly and be responsible for their religious, educational and cultural
affairs …[and] acknowledge that Israel is the homeland for both Palestinians
and Jews.
The two groups “should have mutual relations based on the consensual
democratic system (an extended coalition between the elites of the two groups,
equal proportional representation, mutual right to veto and self administration
of exclusive issues)”.
This should lead to the removal of “all forms of ethnic superiority, be that
executive, structural, legal or symbolic”, and the adoption of “policies of cor-
rective justice in all aspects of life in order to compensate for the damage inflicted
on the Palestinian Arabs due to the ethnic favoritism policies of the Jews”.
A long list of areas in which such policies would apply followed, including land,
planning, and housing; employment and service provision; social development;
education and culture; and institution building. In all these, solidarity with and
a sense of common identity and fate with other Palestinian groups and the Arab
world would be essential. The precise nature of the relations between them was
left vague, however.127
In more legalistic vein, Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights
in Israel, proposed a constitution to embody the principles contained in the
vision framework. Its area of application would be “the territory which was
subject to the Israeli law until 5 June 1967”, in other words Israel “proper”.
Nothing in the document referred explicitly to the Occupied Territories or the
Diaspora. A democratic Israel would be bilingual, with Hebrew and Arabic as
official languages enjoying equal status in state institutions. It would be multi-
cultural, entitling national and religious minorities to “educational and cultural
institutions” of their own, operating “via a representative body chosen by the
members of the group”, allocated a suitable budget by the state, and given
“appropriate representation” in state structures. Participation of minorities in
decision- making was envisaged through a model which required majority
support from “parties that by definition and character are Arab parties or Arab-
Jewish parties”.128
Interestingly, the proposed system was premised on indirect ethnic-group
representation, rather than universal democracy. It implicitly assumed that
people would not transcend their ethnic identity and therefore would continue
to vote and act according to their definition of group interests. Reference to
“Arab-Jewish parties” was a concession to Hadash and the Communist Party,
which did not define themselves as Arab, despite the fact that most of their
support came from Palestinian citizens.
A distinctive feature of the proposed constitution is the notion of “distribu-
tive justice”, aiming to compensate “every group of citizens which has suffered
from a policy of injustice and historical discrimination” in the allocation of land
and water, and in planning.This would enable citizens –and potentially refugees
too –to reclaim expropriated private, communal, and religious property, and
claim compensation for having been uprooted by discriminatory legislation.
These mechanisms of restitution would apply to settled citizens, internally
displaced persons, Bedouins, and residents in unrecognised villages, and facili-
tate a return to the normal conditions expected to apply in a non-ethnic state.
That the proposed constitution makes specific mention of various groups of
Arab citizens is due to past discriminatory practices. In all other respects, it
proposes that equality between citizens must be the norm. Thus, some of the
tension between individual and group rights in the document may be a tem-
porary measure or a form of affirmative action.
The sense of history and need for redress was expressed forcefully in the
2007 Haifa Declaration, which spoke in the name of
sons and daughters of the Palestinian Arab people who remained in our
homeland despite the Nakba …[who] affirm in this Declaration the
foundations of our identity and belonging, and …[call for] an historic rec-
onciliation between the Palestinian people and the Israeli Jewish people …
[based on] continued connection to the other sons and daughters of the
Palestinian people and the Arab nation.
In doing that, the Declaration rejected the label “Israeli Arabs” and
asserted Palestinian and Arab affinities. At the same time, it defined its specific
constituency as having been shaped by the 1948 events, “through which
we –who remained from among the original inhabitants of our homeland –
were made citizens without the genuine constituents of citizenship, especially
equality”. As a “homeland minority”, they were seeking “democratic citizen-
ship”, justice and redress as “the only arrangement that guarantees individual
and collective equality for the Palestinians in Israel”.
Although the focus remained on Palestinians inside pre-1967 Israel, they
were addressed within the overall framework of a need for “historic recon-
ciliation” between the Jewish Israeli people and the Arab Palestinian people,
groups not confined to specific boundaries. To achieve that, the state was
required to “accept responsibility for the Nakba, which befell all parts of
the Palestinian people, and also for the war crimes and crimes of occu-
pation that it has committed in the Occupied Territories”. This should be
supplemented by
recognizing the Right of Return and acting to implement it in accordance

with United Nations Resolution 194, ending the Occupation and
removing the settlements from all Arab territory occupied since 1967, rec-
ognizing the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and to an
independent and sovereign state, and recognizing the rights of Palestinian
citizens in Israel.
In exchange, the Declaration continued, Palestinians and Arabs had to “rec-

ognize the right of the Israeli Jewish people to self-determination and to life
in peace, dignity, and security with the Palestinian and the other peoples of the
region”. This would require a
change in the definition of the State of Israel from a Jewish state to a

democratic state established on national and civil equality between the two
national groups, and enshrining the principles of banning discrimination
and of equality between all of its citizens and residents.129
The Vision Documents leave some questions without clear answers. They
display tension between the quest for a democratic non-ethnic state, in which
all are equal regardless of their background, and the notion of equality between
ethnically defined groups. They do not reconcile the right to national self-
determination of specific groups with overall equality at the individual and
collective levels. Palestinians are defined as an indigenous group confronting a
Jewish settler group, but it is not clear if this definition implies different political
rights and entitlements for members of each group. The Documents identify
the role of Palestinians in Israel in transforming the state through their own
efforts, but the link between their struggle and that of Palestinians under occu-
pation and in the Diaspora is not addressed. And, finally, how Palestinians in
Israel could use their strategic position within Israeli society to support other
Palestinians is not discussed.
The Vision Documents were translated into a political platform in 2015
with the formation of the Joint List, an electoral front of political movements
including Hadash and the NDA, representing Palestinian citizens of Israel. It
saw itself as “an expression of the unity of the struggle of the Arab-Palestinian
public against all branches and parties of the government, and its joint efforts
with Jewish progressive forces fighting against the occupation, racism, and dis-
crimination”. It based its efforts on the collective work undertaken by the rep-
resentative institutions of the Arab public, such as the National Committee of
the Heads of Local Arab Authorities, the High Follow-Up Committee for Arab
Citizens of Israel, the Arab Student committees, “as well as the entire political
and social world of Arab society in Israel, so desperately in need of unifying
values and a patriotic partnership”. While each component of the List retained
its specific identity, they agreed on fundamental principles.
These principles included the following: an end to the 1967 occupation,
dismantling Israeli settlements in the occupied territories, release of political
prisoners, the establishment of “a sovereign, independent Palestinian state within
the June 4, 1967 borders, with its capital in East Jerusalem”, and finding a solution
for the Palestinian in line with UN General Assembly Resolution 194. Internally,
the List called for “full national and civic equality for the Arab-Palestinian public
in Israel as a native minority with collective and individual rights”, and for
“recognition of the Arab public as a national minority with the right to self-
administration in the fields of culture, education, and religion, as part of the Arab-
Palestinian people and the Arab nation”.The struggle against “the regime of racist
discrimination and national oppression” was meant to achieve “equal opportunity,
material equality, and corrective and distributive justice”, in a unifying spirit of
“Empowerment of Culture, Language, Belonging, and Identity!”130
The relationship between the platform and the ideas contained in the
Vision Documents is clear. Although the fortunes of the Joint List went up and
down since its formation, reaching a peak in 2020 but experiencing a major
split in 2021 with the departure of an Islamic component, these reflect elect-
oral manoeuvres rather than disputes over core positions. There is little doubt
that the vast majority of Palestinian citizens converge around these positions
which combine carefully the assertion of Palestinian-Arab identity as part of
the broader national collective, with realisation of the distinct position within
Israeli society, not only for the obvious purpose of political organisation but
from a social and cultural perspectives as well.
Notes
1 In www.criticalmuslim.io/footnotes-to-the-book-of-the-setback/.
2 Radio interview, 1st June 1967, in International Documents on Palestine 1967 (Institute
for Palestine Studies, 1970), p. 571.
3 Address by Shuqeiri to Jews of Israel, Beirut, 30th October 1967 in ibid., pp. 690–1.
4 C. Zurayq, “The Meaning of the Nakba Revisited” in Arab Lessons from their Defeat,
edited by Y. Harkabi (Am Oved, 1969), pp. 184–210, in Hebrew.
5 S. Jalal al-Azm, Self-Criticism after the Defeat (Saqi, 2011), p. 85.
6 Ibid., pp. 97–8.
7 “The Third Round”, statement by the Israeli Socialist Organisation, 5th July 1967,
Matzpen, 36 (June–July 1967). English version in www.marxists.org/history/etol/
document/mideast/toi/doc2.html.
8 Arab Nationalists Movement, “The Struggle of Destiny between the Arab
Revolutionary Movement and Neo- Imperialism”, July 1967, in International
Documents on Palestine 1967, pp. 636–42.
9 Statement of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, 11th December
1967, ibid., pp. 723–6.
10 Statement of the Palestinian Liberation Movement ‘Fateh’, Beirut, 2nd October
1967, ibid., pp. 681–2.
11 Resolutions and Recommendations of the Arab Summit, Khartoum, 1st September
1967, in ibid., pp. 656–7.
12 Resolution text: https://unispal.un.org/DPA/DPR/unispal.nsf/0/7D35E1F72
9DF491C85256EE700686136.
13 Statement by the PLO, Cairo, 23rd November 1967, International Documents on
Palestine 1967, pp. 715–16.
14 Statement of Policy by Fatah, 12th December 1967, ibid., pp. 721–3.
15 Interview Statements by a Leader of the Al-Asifah Organisation, 17th December
1967, ibid., pp. 727–9.
16 Statement to the Arab People, 16th August 1967, in ibid., p. 645.
17 National Charter of the Arabs of the West Bank for the Current Phase, 4th October
1967, in ibid., pp. 682–4.
18 Statement by Inhabitants of the West Bank on Attempts to Judaise Jerusalem and
Split the Jordanian Entity, 13th February 1968, in International Documents on Palestine
1968 (Institute for Palestine Studies, 1971), pp. 308–10.
19 Interview with a leader of the Palestine National Liberation Movement ‘Fateh’,
Beirut, 22nd January 1968, in ibid., pp. 298–301.
20 Press Release No. 1 by Fatah, January 1968, in ibid., pp. 303–6.
21 Memorandum by the PFLP to the Second Conference of the Arab Journalists’
Union on the Strategy of Armed Struggle, 10th February 1968, in ibid., pp. 306–7.
22 Interview with Yasser Arafat, Beirut, 2nd August 1968, in ibid., pp. 413–14.
23 Memorandum by the PFLP to the Fourth Palestine National Assembly, 10th July
1968, in ibid., pp. 389–91.
24 Statement of Basic Policy of the PFLP, Excerpts, August 1968, in ibid., pp. 423–6.
The report was claimed by the left-wing faction that departed later to form the
Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PDFLP).
25 The Palestine National Charter Adopted by the Fourth Palestine National Assembly,
Cairo, 17th July 1968, in ibid., pp. 393–5.
26 Resolutions of the Fourth Palestine National Assembly, Cairo, 17th July 1968, in
ibid., pp. 399–403.
27 The Jordanian Communist Party’s View on the Requirements of the Present
Situation and the Nature of the Conflict, January 1968, in ibid., p. 306.
28 Statement by the Communist and Workers’ Parties in the Arab Countries on
the Urgent Tasks of the Arab National Liberation Movement, July 1968, in ibid.,
pp. 410–13.
29 Statement by the Jordanian Communist Party on the Strengthening of Resistance
in Both Banks, September 1968, in ibid., pp. 447–8.
30 Attitude of the Jordanian Communist Party to the General Struggle Against
Occupation and to Commando Activity, October 1968, in ibid., pp. 459–61.
31 Statement of Policy Issued by the Palestinian National Congress during its Fifth
Session, Cairo, 4th February 1969, in International Documents on Palestine 1969
(Institute for Palestine Studies, 1972), pp. 589–90.
32 “The Political Strategy of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine”,
33 “Organizational Strategy of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine”,
34 Interview with George Habash, Secretary General of PFLP, Amman, 4th March
1969, in ibid., pp. 630–1.
35 Press Conference by George Habash, General Secretary of the PFLP, 10th December
1969, ibid., pp. 826–30.
36 Draft Resolution Submitted by the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation
of Palestine at the Sixth Session of the Palestine National Council, 9th September
1969, in ibid., pp. 777–8.
37 Interview with Nayef Hawatmeh of the PDFLP, 3rd November 1969, Amman, in
ibid., pp. 805–8.
38 Interview with Abu Iyad conducted by Lufti al-Khuli, Editor of al-Tali‘a, in ibid.,
pp. 699–733.
39 Ibid.
40 Interview with Yasser Arafat, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the PLO
and Spokesman of Fatah, August 1969, in ibid., pp. 773–5.
41 “The Third Round”, 5th July 1967, Statement by the Israeli Socialist Organisation,
Matzpen, 36, June–July 1967.
42 General Declaration by the ISO, March 22, 1968.
43 “Down with the Occupation”, A statement by the ISO, 1st January 1969.
44 A. Orr and M. Machover, “Against the Zionist Left”, leaflet by ISO, 1970.
45 O. Pilavski, “Palestinian-Israeli Dialogue: Debate and Discussion”, Matzpen, 53,
April 1970.
46 Interview with Yasser Arafat, 14th January 1970, in International Document on Palestine
1970 (Institute for Palestine Studies, 1973), pp. 749–51.
47 In International Documents on Palestine 1969, p. 716.
48 Tensions between class rhetoric and practical considerations were pointed out
by Lebanese left-wing critics: F. Trabulsi, “The Palestine Problem: Zionism and
Imperialism in the Middle East”, New Left Review, 57 (September–October
1969), pp. 53–90; S. Franjieh, “How Revolutionary is the Palestinian Resistance?
A Marxist Interpretation”, Journal of Palestine Studies, 1, 2 (Winter 1972),
pp. 52–60.
49 The Military Strategy of the PFLP (Beirut, 1970). See discussion of the Palestinian
struggle as part of a global anti-imperialist front in P.T. Chamberlin, The Global
Offensive:The United States,The Palestine Liberation Organization, and the Making of the
Post Cold War Order (Oxford University Press, 2012).
50 Interview with Abu Iyad, in International Documents on Palestine 1969, p. 717.
51 H. Sharabi, Palestine Guerrillas,Their Credibility and Effectiveness (Institute for Palestine
Studies, 1970); G. Chaliand, The Palestinian Resistance (Penguin, 1972).
52 Interview with Yasser Arafat on the Palestine Revolution in the Aftermath of the
Arab Summit Conference at Rabat, 14th January 1970, in International Document on
Palestine 1970, pp. 749–51.
53 Statement Issued by the Arab Higher Committee for Palestine on the Idea of a
Democratic Non-Sectarian State in Palestine, Beirut, 12th March 1970, in ibid.,
pp. 768–71.
54 Statement by the Unified Command of the Palestinian Resistance Movement,
Amman, 6th May 1970, in ibid., pp. 795–6.
55 Interview with George Habash of the PFLP on Theoretical, Political and
Military Questions Related to the Palestinian Movement, mid-May 1970, in ibid.,
pp. 801–5.
56 Memorandum of the PDFLP to the Seventh Session of the Palestine National
Assembly, on the “Present Tasks of the Palestinian Resistance Movement”, early
June 1970, in ibid., pp. 816–20.
57 Interview Statements by Yasser Arafat, Cairo, early June 1970, in ibid., pp. 829–30.
58 Radio Interview Statements by Chairman Arafat of the PLO, 25th July 1970, in
ibid., pp. 877–8.
59 Press Conference by George Habash of the PFLP,Tripoli (Lebanon), 25th July 1970,
in ibid., pp. 878–82.
60 Statement of Palestinian Commando Organizations, Amman, 9th August 1970, in
ibid., pp. 887–8.
61 Resolutions of the Palestinian National Assembly, Amman, 28th August 1970, in
ibid., pp. 895–9.
62 Statements by Abu Iyad, Kuwait, 9th January 1971, International Documents on
Palestine 1971 (Institute for Palestine Studies, 1974), pp. 346–52.
63 Jeune Afrique Interview with Fatah Leader Khalaf (Abu Iyad), mid-October 1971, in
ibid., pp. 539–42.
64 PFLP proposals for Reconstitution of the Palestine National Council, 24th February
1971, in ibid., pp. 384–7.
65 Press Statement by Nayef Hawatmeh of the PDFLP, Cairo, 6th March 1971, in ibid.,
pp. 399–403.
66 Interview with Palestine Resistance Spokesman Shaath by David Hirst, May 1971,
in ibid., pp. 471–3.
67 Statement by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine Analyzing the
Problems Facing the Resistance, Addressed to the Ninth Session of the Palestine
National Council, 7th July 1971, in ibid., pp. 499–503.
68 “Interview on the September Crisis, with G. Kanafani”, New Left Review, 67, May–
June 1971, pp. 50–7.
69 Press conference statements by General Secretary Habash of the PFLP discussing
‘revolutionary violence’, Beirut, 14th March 1972, in International Documents on
Palestine 1972 (Institute for Palestine Studies, 1975), pp. 287–9.
70 Political programme for the PLO as approved by the Palestine National Council,
Cairo, mid-January 1973, in International Documents on Palestine 1973 (institute for
Palestine Studies, 1976), pp. 404–10.
71 Programme of the Palestine National Front in the Occupied Territory, mid-August
1973, in ibid., pp. 458–60.
72 Statement by the PLO Executive Committee, Beirut, 22nd October 1973, in ibid.,
p. 495.
73 Policy statement issued by Fatah, 4th November 1973, in ibid., pp. 507–8.
74 Statement issued by the PDFLP, Early November 1973, in ibid., pp. 508–9.
75 Article by PLO representative Hammami, The Times, London, 16th November
1973, in ibid., pp. 517–19.
76 Speech by Fatah Central Committee member Abu Iyad, Beirut, 27th November
1973, in ibid., pp. 522–4.
77 Communique issued by the Arab Summit Conference, Algiers, 28th November
1973, in ibid., pp. 527–30.
78 Speech by King Hussein of Jordan, Amman, 1st December 1973, in ibid., pp. 530–2.
79 Palestinian Leaders Discuss the New Challenges for the Resistance, panel moderated by
Mahmoud Darwish (Palestine Research Center, April 1974), pp. 7–12.
80 Habash, in ibid., pp. 17–30.
81 Iyad in ibid., pp. 30–4.
82 Al-Hout, in ibid., pp. 34–9.
83 Hawatmeh, in ibid., pp. 39–54.
84 Ibid., pp. 61–8.
85 Ibid., pp. 68–74.
86 Speech by Hawatmeh on the DPFLP’s fifth anniversary, Beirut, 24th February
1974, in International Documents on Palestine 1974 (Institute for Palestine Studies,
1977), pp. 410–11.
87 Press statements by Hawatmeh, Beirut, 14th March 1974, in ibid., pp. 417–19.
88 Ibid., pp. 449–50.
89 Ibid., pp. 448–9.
90 Press statement by the PFLP, Beirut, 26th September 1974, http://pflp-docume
nts.org/pflp-bulletin-13-september-october-1974/.
91 Statement by a delegation of the Rejection Front, Baghdad, 12th October 1974,
in International Documents on Palestine 1974, pp. 512–13.
92 Ibid., p. 525.
93 UN General Assembly session, 13th November 1974, https://unispal.un.org/
DPA/DPR/unispal.nsf/0/A238EC7A3E13EED18525624A007697EC.
94 UNGA 3379, 10th November 1975, https://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/
761C1063530766A7052566A2005B74D1.
95 https://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/696D540FD7821BCE0525651C0
0736250.
96 Speech by PLO Executive Committee member Qaddumi at the UN General
Assembly, 3rd November 1975 in International Documents on Palestine 1975
(Institute for Palestine Studies, 1977), pp. 505–10.
97 Speech by PLO member Qaddumi in the UN Security Council, 12th January
1976, in International Documents on Palestine 1976 (Institute for Palestine Studies,
1978), pp. 357–60.
98 Political statement of the 13th session of the Palestine National Council, Cairo,
20th March 1977, in International Documents on Palestine 1977 (Institute for
Palestine Studies, 1979), pp. 348–9.
99 Memorandum by the Front of Palestinian Forces for the Rejection of Capitulationist
Solutions to the 13th session of the Palestine National Council, Late March 1977,
in ibid., pp. 351–3.
100 Joint statement issued by the governments of the US and the USSR specifying
the necessary steps to be taken to ensure peace in the Middle East, New York, 1st
October 1977, in ibid., pp. 255–6.
101 Statement by the PLO Central Council on the visit to Israel by President Sadat of
Egypt, Damascus, 1st December 1977, in ibid., pp. 456–7.
102 Six-point Programme agreed to by all Palestinian Factions, Tripoli, Libya, 4th
December 1977, in ibid., p. 461.
103 Abu Iyad, My Home, My Land: A Narrative of the Palestinian Struggle (Times Books,
1981); A. Cohen, Political Parties in the West Bank under the Jordanian Regime, 1949-
1967 (Cornell University Press, 1982); S. Bartal, The Fedayeen Emerge:The Palestine-
Israel Conflict, 1949-1956 (The Author House, 2011).
104 For Israeli attempts to build up pro-Jordanian “notables” as a compliant alternative
see A. Raz, The Bride and the Dowry: Israel, Jordan and the Palestinians in the Aftermath
of the June 1967 War (Oxford University Press, 2012).
105 W. Matthews, “The Rise and Demise of the Left in West Bank Politics:The Case of
the Palestine National Front”, Arab Studies Quarterly, 20, 4 (Fall 1998), pp. 13–31.
106 “The Palestinian National Front”, Merip Reports, 25 (February 1974), p. 22.
107 “Interview with Palestine National Front”, Merip Reports, 50 (August 1976),
pp. 16–21; N. Aruri, “Resistance and Repression: Political Prisoners in Israeli
Occupied Territories”, Journal of Palestine Studies, 7, 4 (Summer 1978), pp. 48–66.
108 Z. Lockman and J. Beinin (eds.), Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising against Israeli
Occupation (South End Press, 1989).
109 Full text of the Declaration of Independence as well other components of the
Palestine National Council resolutions of 15th November 1988 in http://unispal.
un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/6EB54A389E2DA6C6852560DE0070E392,
110 E. Said, The End of the Peace Process: Oslo and After (Vintage, 2001).
111 Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements, in www.
un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-180015/
112 www.miftah.org/Display.cfm?DocId=428&CategoryId=10.
113 R. Malley and H. Agha, “Camp David: The Tragedy of Errors”, New York Review of
Books, 9th August 2001.
114 “Charter of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) of Palestine”, Journal of
Palestine Studies, 22, 4 (Summer 1993), pp. 122–34.
115 Extensive quotations from the electoral platform in Khaled Hroub, “Analysis of
the ‘New Hamas’ through its New Documents”, Journal of Palestine Studies, 35, 4
(Summer 2006), pp. 6–27.
116 In a 2015 presentation in Pretoria, Hamas leader Khaled Mash’al said that the
Charter was no longer valid but the movement would not distance itself from it
under international pressure, seeing that the PLO’s renunciation of its own Charter
in 1996 merely invited pressure for further concessions.
117 A Document of General Principles and Policies, Hamas (2017), https://hamas.ps/en/
post/678/A-Document-of-General-Principles-and-Policies. See discussion in
K. Hroub, “A Newer Hamas? The Revised Charter”, Journal of Palestine Studies, 46,
4 (Summer 2017), pp. 100–11.
118 www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-palestinians-hamas-netanyahu/netanyahu-
tosses-hamas-policy-paper-on-israel-into-waste-bin-idUSKBN1830YX.
119 S. Sen, Decolonizing Palestine: Hamas between the Anticolonial and the Postcolonial
(Cornell University Press, 2020).
120 An overview of political conditions within a broad social and economic context
can be found in S. Jiryis, “The Arabs in Israel, 1973-79”, Journal of Palestine Studies,
8, 4 (Summer 1979), pp. 31–56.
121 For surprised and outraged responses by Israeli state officials and commentators
see “Rakah Victory in Nazareth”, Journal of Palestine Studies, 5, 3 (Spring-Summer
1976), pp. 178–80, and “Revolt in Galilee”, ibid., pp. 192–200.
122 T. Zayyad,“The Fate of the Arabs in Israel”, Journal of Palestine Studies, 6, 1 (Autumn
1976), p. 94. On Zayyad, see T. Sorek, The Optimist: A Social Biography of Tawfiq
Zayyad (Stanford University Press, 2020).
123 E. Touma, “Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews”, Journal of Palestine Studies, 6, 2
(Winter 1977), p. 5.
124 Interview with M. Kiwan, “Sons of the Village Assert Palestinian Identity in Israel”,
Merip Reports, 68 (June 1978), pp. 15–18.
125 A. Bishara, “On the Question of the Palestinian Minority in Israel”, Theory and
Criticism, 3 (Winter 1993), pp. 7–20, in Hebrew.
126 Adalah (The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights), The Democratic Constitution
(Shafa’amr, 2007): www.adalah.org/eng/democratic_constitution-e.pdf; Mada
al-Carmel (Arab Center for Applied Social Research), The Haifa Declaration
(Haifa, 2007) www.mada-research.org/UserFiles/file/haifaenglish.pdf; National
Committee for the Heads of the Arab Local Authorities in Israel) The Future Vision
of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel (Nazareth, 2006). www.adalah.org/newsletter/eng/
dec06/tasawor-mostaqbali.pdf.
127 All quotes from The Future Vision document.
128 All quotes taken from Adalah, The Democratic Constitution.
129 Mada al-Carmel, The Haifa Declaration, pp. 7–17.
130 The Political Platform of the Joint List: Our Answer to Racism, https://maki.org.
il/en/?p=3827
9
Comparisons and Conclusions
From the perspective of the 21st century, the ongoing political stalemate in
Israel/Palestine stands out against the transition to full democracy and formal
equality of rights in South Africa. It is no wonder then that the struggle against
apartheid in South Africa has become a focus of interest, as a historical analogy,
a moral lesson, and a strategy for change. In many respects though, using it as
a model is motivated primarily by considerations of political utility, and that
hampers the analytical power of the comparison.
Two deployments of the apartheid analogy have become prominent. One
focuses on legal analysis and the other on solidarity campaigns. The legal ana-
lysis received much attention in the last couple of years, with the release of
reports by human rights organisations operating in Israel/Palestine and globally,
as well as by the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).1 There is a large
overlap between the analyses, centred on the dual legal system, which subjects
Israeli citizens and Palestinian residents of the 1967 Territories to different sets
of laws and regulations, enforcement mechanisms, and civil and political rights.
Israelis enjoy access to the political system, have the right to vote to all levels of
power, and are entitled to state services and legal protections. Palestinians in the
Territories are denied a say in the way they are governed by Israel, lack access
to basic human and legal rights, and suffer from restrictions on their ability to
move, work, trade, and study freely.They live under “an institutionalized regime
of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other
racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that
regime”, which is the definition of apartheid in international law.2
There are disagreements in the reports over the boundaries within which
the definition applies, whether only in the 1967 Territories or the entire area
under Israeli rule “from the River to the Sea”, whether the definition applies
to the State of Israel as a body or merely to its policies and practices, whether
it is necessary to make a comparison to historical South African precedents in
the analysis, and whether and how international legal instruments can be called
upon to intervene in the matter of Israeli domination over Palestinians. Two
features are shared by all the reports: they agree that apartheid is a relevant,
indeed essential, concept for the analysis of Israeli rule, and they focus on legal
DOI: 10.4324/9780429020056-9
Comparisons and Conclusions 227
analysis and political arrangements, paying scant attention to social and historical
aspects of the evolution of Israeli, Palestinian, and South African societies.
Notably absent in the reports is the historical dimension: the rise and demise
of apartheid and racial domination broadly in South Africa were processes
that unfolded over a long duration that were not replicated elsewhere. Similar
oppressive regimes could and did emerge elsewhere, but they grew out of different
histories, which shaped their specific features, presented unique challenges, and
opened up distinct opportunities for political transformation. The reports are
rightly concerned with the here and now and have no need to delve into such
matters. But, in order to make sense of the process that led us to where we are
today, we need to take a brief detour of a more historical and theoretical nature.3
Over centuries, South Africa witnessed various colonial forces (the Dutch
East India Company and the British Empire, Afrikaner and English settlers,
Christian missionaries, farming, mining, and industrial interests) collaborate
and compete over the control of indigenous groups. During a long period of
expansion, this pattern gave rise to a multi-layered system of domination, col-
laboration, and resistance. Numerous political entities (British colonies, Boer
republics, African kingdoms, and missionary territories) emerged as a result,
governed by diverse social relations (slavery, indentured labour, communal pro-
duction, land and labour tenancy, sharecropping, and wage labour). A central
feature was common to all of them: white supremacy was a means to ensure
white prosperity, using black labour as its foundation. A uniform mode of con-
trol had begun to crystallise by the end of the 19th century, aimed to guarantee
the economic incorporation of indigenous people while keeping them polit-
ically excluded. Apartheid was a link in that historical chain, seeking to close
existing loopholes and entrench white domination.
Resistance too changed during that period, from early attempts to retain
independence on disparate pre-colonial foundations, to a struggle for incorpor-
ation of elites at the national level, and later on masses as well, on an equal basis,
as discussed in Chapter 3, prompted by the massive presence and crucial role of
indigenous people in the white-dominated economy, which provided them with
an important strategic lever for change. Since the 1930s, most black/indigenous
political movements aimed to transform the state from within rather than form
independent political structures on pre-or post-colonial foundations. Theirs
was a struggle for incorporation and equal citizenship rather than for separation
based on distinct national identities. Even with the ascendance of Africanist dis-
course it was frequently formulated in inclusive terms of continental identity,
rather than exclusionary terms of race, ethnicity, language, and tribe.
By the 1980s, with the rise of internal resistance –trade unions, Black
Consciousness, and Soweto uprising –as discussed in Chapter 6, white elites
had come to realise that apartheid was becoming counter- productive in
guaranteeing growth and prosperity. It was too costly and cumbersome, and
irrational from an economic point of view: it hampered the formation of a big
internal market and prevented a shift to a technology-oriented growth strategy.
228 Comparisons and Conclusions
It caused social dislocation, widespread discontent, and community-based pro-
test. All that, combined with growing burden on the resources and capacities
of the apartheid state and international pressure, including economic sanctions,
provided the final push towards a negotiated settlement, which took the form
of a unified political framework, within which numerous social struggles con-
tinue to unfold to this day.
Israel/Palestine has experienced a different trajectory, producing two dis-
tinct ethno-national groups competing over territory and resources, without
entering into relations of inter-dependence as was the case in South Africa.
The formation of Israel in 1948 deepened the divide between the groups but
also gave rise to Palestinian citizens as an intermediate community. A major
reason for the historical divergence from South Africa is that indigenous Arabs
and settler Jews had started to consolidate their group identities –linked to
broader ethno-national collectives –before their initial encounter, whereas white
settlers and indigenous people in South Africa formed their collective identities
in the course of the colonial encounter itself. As a result, the Zionist settlement pro-
ject faced indigenous Arabs as a solid obstacle to be removed from the scene in
order to clear the way for Jewish immigration into the country. White settlers
in South Africa, in contrast, focused on the control of resources and populations
(both land and labour) as they expanded into the interior, to enhance their
prosperity. Political domination was primarily a means to an economic end in
South Africa and an end in itself in Israel/Palestine.
With that as a background, the founding act of the State of Israel in 1948
was linked to the Nakba –the ethnic cleansing of the majority of the Arab
population living in the areas allocated to the new state, and the relegation of
the minority who stayed put to a marginalised position –with contradictory
effects. On the one hand, the massive demographic shift allowed the state to
adopt formal democratic norms and incorporate Palestinian citizens in a quali-
fied manner, in turn giving Israel international legitimacy as an expression of
the self-determination of the new Jewish majority. On the other hand, the same
process gave rise to a permanent external challenge from Palestinians who were
dispossessed in 1948, and found themselves outside of the state’s boundaries, but
did not abandon the quest to return, as discussed in Chapters 7 and 8. Neither
outcome had parallels in South Africa under apartheid.
With the 1967 occupation another component was added to the picture,
moving it closer to South African apartheid: large number of indigenous subjects
were incorporated into the Israeli labour market but remained disenfranchised.
The state was unwilling to extend to them the political and civil rights enjoyed
by Palestinian citizens, and unable to impose on them a 1948-style Nakba.They
became stuck in a limbo. It was this population that the Oslo process aimed to
address, and for whose situation the apartheid definition is most clearly applic-
able. But, the international consensus about a solution to their plight is not
incorporation on an equal basis, as was the case for South Africa, but separation
and formation of their own state. This is the case because decades-long resist-
ance to Israeli rule has centred on the goal of political independence as part of
the overall Palestinian national struggle, as discussed in Chapter 8.The notion of
equal rights for all, along the lines of “one person, one vote”, was never central
to their quest for freedom, whether defined in social, political, or national terms.
To an even greater extent this is true for the 1948 refugees, whose demand has
been for return to their original homes and communities inside the territory
of pre-1967 Israel, whether they physically exist or not, rather than to achieve
statehood outside of it.
Many residents of the West Bank and Gaza were employed in Israel for
two decades after 1967, but the Intifada of the late 1980s, followed by the
1990–91 Gulf war, resulted in drastic restrictions on movement and decline
in levels of employment. The core industrial and technological sectors of the
Israeli economy were never dependent on their labour, concentrated as it was
in construction and agriculture. With the rise of globalisation, they could be
replaced by workers from places such as south-east Asia, Turkey, Romania,
and China. They never acquired the indispensable role of black labour in the
South African economy, and it served no purpose from an Israeli perspective to
incorporate them on a permanent basis. Economic benefits could be derived
from the Occupation –land and water resources in particular, and the avail-
ability of captive markets for Israeli industries –but the exploitation of labour
was not central to them. Rather, the primacy of political imperatives, linked to
nationalist and religious ideologies, mandated the continued inclusion of occu-
pied land and the exclusion of its people.
The system that came into being can be called Apartheid of a Special Type
(AST) –a combination of democratic norms, in a qualified manner within
the pre-1967 boundaries, military occupation in the 1967 territories, and
exclusion of extra-territorial populations –the 1948 refugees. It is different
from Colonialism of a Special Type (CST) in South Africa where indigenous
people and marginalised groups were always the majority of the population,
excluded legally and politically but present socially and economically. The
Israel/Palestine system meets the definition of apartheid in international law
but presents different challenges for the campaign against it than was the
case for the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. The most important
of these is the challenge of effecting change from within when the bulk
of the forces seeking such change are located without, both physically and
conceptually.4
The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign (BDS), launched by
Palestinian civil society organisations in 2005, has sought to emulate the anti-
apartheid movement of South Africa in calling on people and organisations all
over the world “to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives
against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era”.
Pressure is to be put on states “to impose embargoes and sanctions against
Israel”, until Israel recognises “the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-
determination” and complies with international law by “Ending its occupation
and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall”, “Recognizing the
fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality”,
and “Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees
to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194”.5
The BDS call identifies the three key dimensions of the Palestinian condition
and in that way provides a comprehensive picture of the situation, but it ignores
the crucial aspect of the anti-apartheid strategy in South Africa: the internal
mass struggle to undermine and transform the political system from within.
That struggle was the most important component of the campaign, as discussed
in Chapter 6. To some extent it received a boost from other components, such
as armed struggle and international solidarity, but these were secondary in
nature. To elevate the solidarity campaign to the most crucial position, if not
the only one, in the struggle against Israeli apartheid, as is frequently done these
days, is equivalent to putting the cart before the proverbial horses. Although the
anti-apartheid solidarity campaign had started in the 1950s already, it only took
off globally in the 1980s, after the revival of the internal movement and under
its impact.
Of course, the BDS campaign aims to mobilise solidarity overseas rather
than organise people for change actively from inside the country.Yet, for many
international activists it is the most important voice of the Palestinian people.
In fact, it is a conceptual framework for decentralised global action, with a plat-
form formulated in broad terms to reflect the concerns of constituencies that
are represented politically, on the ground, by forces such as Fatah, Hamas, and
the Joint List, as discussed in Chapter 8. It is not meant to replace these forces
and it usually keeps apart from internal political debates and contests, which
proceed with little regard for it.Without doubt, its role in encouraging external
solidarity campaigns deserves recognition.
In summary, a great historical arch may emerge into view. In South Africa,
resistance started out from a meagre basis. Black South Africans were fragmented
politically and incorporated socially in a subordinated position into a new state
that was built on cooperation between two white settler groups. Settlers were
united in seeking to streamline the mechanisms of domination over the indi-
genous population, backed by the power of the British Empire. A resistance
movement fighting white supremacy had to be formed almost from scratch.
Starting out by seeking equality for qualified elites, it gradually extended
its mandate to include the broad masses, considered unqualified by Western
standards. The movement also radicalised its message, from “equal rights to all
civilised people” to “equal rights for all”.
As it gained in confidence due to local mobilisation, inspired by contin-
ental and global developments, it moved from seeking inclusion into white-
dominated structures to demanding an overhaul of the political and social
edifice, on a non-racial basis as the Freedom Charter had it or on a Black/
African-inflected basis as Africanism and Black Consciousness had it. From
asking for a qualified entrance into an already-occupied house it shifted to
insisting on full rights of ownership, albeit not as sole proprietor.That remained
its stance during the apartheid era. An inclusive national identity was created in
a process that potentially was open to all citizens regardless of race and ethnicity.
The discourse of struggle combined appeals to specific constituencies defined
by identity with universal messages appealing to notions of class, nation, dem-
ocracy, and justice. This facilitated the move towards a negotiated solution and
the political transition of the 1990s.
The Palestinian-Arab movement moved in a different direction. It started
out with a demand for political power as the demographic majority and his-
torical owner of the country. It was willing to accommodate a Jewish minority
but from a position of strength, as a good-will concession, without comprom-
ising on the exclusive Arab claim to the land. That stance was shattered with
the Nakba of 1948. Once the national movement began to recover from the
military defeat and dispersion of the people, it continued to claim sole owner-
ship of the country but, at the same time, began to shift its position regarding
Jewish settlers, no longer a minority in the country. They were still regarded as
outsiders who had acquired their title through the use of illegitimate force, but
they needed to be accommodated in future arrangements –as a concession to
reality, not as of right.
The notion of a Secular Democratic Palestine in which all would live equally
was a major conceptual breakthrough, but it was formulated largely within an
Arab or Palestinian-Arab framework that Israeli Jews never regarded as genu-
inely inclusive. Nationalism in Israel/Palestine continues to play a divisive role
with no overall common national identity ever emerging to encompass, even
if potentially only, all groups. From the mid-1970s onwards, compromise has
taken the form of separate sovereignties –for Palestinians, on an ever-shrinking
territorial basis –rather than shared power within inclusive political structures.
The two resistance movements differed in their deployment of theory. In
both cases Communist Parties played an important role in developing ana-
lysis that drew on left-wing conceptualisations of race, class, and nationalism,
formulated in the context of global colonial domination and anti-colonial resist-
ance. But, in South Africa the Party was much more closely aligned with indi-
genous nationalism than in Israel/Palestine. In fact, its key role in the struggle
was a bone of contention within the liberation movement, never resolved sat-
isfactorily. Whatever analysis the Party came up with –the Native Republic,
CST, the National Democratic Revolution –it always sought to link theory
to practice, highlighting the relevance of the social theory to political organ-
isation and strategies of grassroots mobilisation. When it identified the black
working class, or white liberals, for example, as distinct forces with a specific
role in the struggle, it called for organising accordingly and dedicating energy
and resources in that direction, with the Congress movement usually following
suit, having accepted its theoretical guidance.
That was not the case in Israel/Palestine. Communist Parties were marginal
in relation to the national movement as a whole, and theory in general was less
important. The Palestinian movement frequently used concepts such as settler
colonialism, racism, fascism, imperialism, and also class terminology, in the ana-
lysis, but the links between these terms and its practices were never consistent.
To illustrate: if Zionism was a form of racism and racial discrimination, or of
settler colonialism, what were the implications of such analysis for the struggle?
Did that mean that it was facing all Israeli Jews (the vast majority of whom self-
defined as Zionists) as an immovable object with no chance of making inroads
among them, or were there opportunities for an alliance with some sections of
that population? If the latter, how were those sections identified in line with the
analysis? What resources and efforts –educational, linguistic, cultural, and pol-
itical campaigns –were necessary in order to make such potential alliances into
a reality rather than a mere slogan? How could the movement have proceeded
to generate those resources accordingly (e.g., invest in learning Hebrew, make
its messages culturally appropriate)? Speaking in a universal language with
potential to appeal to Israeli-Jewish constituencies would have come, at least
to some extent, at the expense of the specific nationalist language essential for
mobilising its core constituency, so there were no easy choices there.
And, on a different note, if workers and peasants were the true revolu-
tionary classes, from whose ranks militant activists would come, as the Popular
and Democratic Fronts maintained, how was that to be reconciled with their
focus on armed struggle, whose fighters did not engage in processes of pro-
duction? How were the nationalist and class discourses compatible, given that
they pushed towards different alliances with internal and external forces? These
questions were infrequently asked, let alone answered, hampering the ability
of the Palestinian movement to combine theory and practice as effectively as
its South African equivalents, the African National Congress/South African
Communist Party alliance in particular.
On a more speculative basis, we may conclude that there is no clear rela-
tion between wealth of resources and success in struggle. The South African
liberation movement was poorly resourced for much of its history, without
strong allies locally and globally, fighting an uphill struggle against powerful
opponents. It never enjoyed the kind of massive support of the Arab and Islamic
worlds as the Palestinian movement did, though whether such support was
more a liability than an asset needs to be analysed separately. This forced South
African activists and intellectuals into developing creative political strategies,
coming up with innovative analyses, relying on mass mobilisation, harnessing
moral and spiritual energies, making the most of the movement’s meagre assets,
and juggling consistent core positions with flexible shifts demanded by chan-
ging circumstances. If there is a lesson that can be drawn from that example,
perhaps, it is this: an essential condition for success is the unwelcome realisa-
tion –“you are on your own!”
Notes
1 Among them are The Occupation of the West Bank and the Crime of Apartheid: Legal
Opinion, by Yesh Din, September 2020, www.yesh-din.org/en/the-occupation-
of-the-west-bank-and-the-crime-of-apartheid-legal-opinion/; A Regime of
Jewish Supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This Is Apartheid, by
B’Tselem, January 2021, www.btselem.org/publications/fulltext/202101_this_is_
apartheid; The Legal Architecture of Apartheid, by al-Haq, April 2021, https://aardi.
org/2021/04/02/the-legal-architecture-of-apartheid-by-dr-susan-powers-al-haq/;
A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution, by
Human Rights Watch, April 2021, www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-
crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution; It Is Apartheid:The
Reality of Israel’s Colonial Occupation of Palestine, by the PLO, Negotiations Affairs
Department, June 2021, www.dci.plo.ps//files/It%20is%20Apartheid%20%20NAD-
PLO.pdf; Israel’s Apartheid against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime
against Humanity, by Amnesty International, February 2022, www.amnesty.org/en/
documents/mde15/5141/2022/en/.
2 www.hrw.org/ n ews/ 2 021/ 0 7/ 0 9/ h uman- r ights- watch- responds- reflections-
apartheid-and-persecution-international-law.
3 This brief historical overview is based mostly on R. Greenstein, Genealogies of
Conflict: Class, Identity, and State in Palestine/Israel and South Africa to 1948 (Wesleyan
University Press, 1995).
4 Further discussion in R. Greenstein, “Colonialism, Apartheid and the Native
Question: The Case of Israel/ Palestine”, in Racism after Apartheid: Challenges for
Marxism and Anti-Racism, edited by Vishwas Satgar (Wits University Press, 2019),
pp. 75–95.
5 https://bdsmovement.net/call.
Index
Abbas, Mahmoud 210 Baku congress of the Peoples of the East

Abdelhadi, Awni 88 (1920) 11–12
Abu Iyad 186, 189–91, 194–5, 198–200 Balfour Declaration (1917) 58, 79–83, 85,
Africanism, Africanists 31, 48, 51–4, 91, 95, 181
108–15, 157, 167, 227, 230 Bandung Conference (1955) 150, 154, 161
African National Congress (ANC) 24, Bernstein, Lionel (“Rusty”) 109
27, 28–31, 42, 45–7, 49–55, 91, 100–3, Biko, Steve 124–5, 135
105–22, 126, 129–34, 139–40, 142, 183 Bishara, Azmi 215
African National Congress (ANC) Youth Black Consciousness 123–30, 132–3,
League 51–4, 91, 100, 109 134–5, 139, 190, 227, 230
Africans’ Claims in South Africa, ANC Black Peoples’ Convention (BPC) 127–8,
(1943) 50–1 134
Alami, Musa al-96–7 Black September (1970) 194–7
Al-Ard movement 152–9, 164, 166, 215 Boesak, Allan 136
Alexander, Ray 129 Botha, P. W. 139
All-African Convention (AAC) 30, BDS movement 229–30
47–9 Budeiri, Musa 67
All-in African Conference (1961) 116 Budlender, Geoff 129
Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry Bukharin, Nikolai 21
(1946) 91–4 Bunting, Sidney 14, 19, 20, 24, 27
Anti-Pass Campaign (1960) 115
Apartheid model 4, 226–32 Churchill, Winston 82
Apartheid of a Special Type, Israel/ Cohn-Eber, Michael 58–9
Palestine (AST) 229–32 Colonialism of a Special Type, South
Arafat,Yasser 191–2, 202–3, 209–10 Africa (CST) 1, 3, 105–6, 119–20, 122,
Arab (Popular) Front, Israel 152–3 132, 140–1, 229, 231
Arab Higher Committee, Palestine Colonialism of a Special Type, Israel/
86–90, 93, 95–6, 191 Palestine 159–64
Arab Nationalists Movement (ANM) Communist international (Comintern,
164–6, 168, 177–8, 185 ECCI) 9–12, 15, 18, 20–31, 58–71;
Arab Office 91–6 Popular Front policy 68–71; Resolution
Arab Revolt (1936–39) 68–70, on the Negro Question (1928/1930)
86–7 22–3; Resolution on the South African
The Arab Steadfastness and Question (1928) 23–4; Theses on the
Confrontation Front 205–6 National and Colonial Question (1920)
Averbuch, Wolf 61–2 9–10; Theses on the Eastern Question
Azanian People’s Organisation (AZAPO) (1922) 10–11; Theses on the Black/Negro
134–5 Question (1922) 18–19; Third period
Azm, Sadik Jalal al-176–7 policy 65
Index 235
Communist Party South Africa/South Hammami, Said 198
African Communist Party (CPSA/ Harmel, Michael 105–6, 118–19
SACP) 14–32, 46, 52, 58, 69, 100, Hawatmeh, Nayef 185, 199–201
103–9, 113, 118–22, 131–2, 138, Haycraft Commission of Enquiry (1921)
140–1, 146, 183, 231 60–1
Congress of Democrats (COD) 107, Hebrew Communist Party (Communist
109–12 Union/Educational Association) 71,
Congress of South African Trade Unions 74–5
(COSATU) 134, 137–9 Hertzog, B. M. 43–5, 47, 55
Congress of the People (1955) 107–8 Hilu, Radwan al-77, 78
Hourani, Albert 94
Darwaza, Izzat 88–9 Hout, Shafik al-200–1
Day of the Land (1976) 214–15 Hussein, King of Jordan 199, 201, 206
Declaration of Independence, State of Husseini, Hajj Amin al-70, 84–8, 94–5,
Palestine (1988) 207–8 97, 165, 191, 200
Defiance Campaign (1951–1952) 101–2, Husseini, Jamal al-89, 96
109
Democratic Front for Peace and Equality Industrial and Commercial Workers
(Hadash) 206, 215, 217, 219 Union (ICU) 20, 24, 28–9
Democratic Front for the Liberation of International Socialist League (ISL)
Palestine (PDFLP, DFLP) 185–6, 189, 14–15
192, 195–6, 232 Intifada, Palestinian uprising (1987)
Du Bois, W. E. B 20 207–8, 210
Intifada, al-Aqsa (2000) 210
Elkind, Menahem 64
Ethiopian Catholic Church in Zion 37 Jabavu, John Tengo 40
Jabavu, D. D. T. 40–6, 48
Farah, Bulus 78 Jewish Section PKP 69–70
Fatah (Fateh) 166, 168–72, 175, 178–80, Joint List 219, 230
183–4, 186, 189, 191–3, 195, 198, 230 Jones, David Ivon 14–18, 20
Federation of South African Trade Jordanian Communist Party (JCP) 78,
Unions (FOSATU) 130–1, 134, 137–8 181–2
Fischer, Bram 121
Forman, Lionel 106 Kabwe Conference of the ANC (1985)
Foster, Joe 130–1 139
Freedom Charter (1955) 107–12, 121, Kairos Document (1985) 136–7
134, 139–40, 167, 230 Kattan, Henry 95–6
Kautsky, Karl 6–7, 105
Garvey, Marcus 20–1, 54 Kotane, Moses 28–30, 106–7
General Syrian Congress (1919) 80
Ghori, Emil 86, 93 La Guma, James 20–1
Governor-General’s Native Conference League of Nations 58, 83
(1925/26) 43–5 Leballo, Potlako 109–10, 120
Green Book of the ANC (1979) 132–4 Lembede, Anton 53
Group Areas Act (1950) 100–1 Lenin,Vladimir (also Leninist, Leninism)
Gumede, JT 29, 46 8–10, 17, 25, 131, 134
List, Nahman 62
Habash, George 164–5, 185, 192–3, Lutuli, Martin 36
199–201 Luthuli, Albert 113–14, 117–18
Habibi, Emil 78, 150–2, 157, 172 Luxemburg, Rosa 7–9, 15
Haddad, Wadi’ 164
Hamas, Islamic Resistance Movement Machover, Moshe 158, 188
210–13, 224, 230 Macmillan, Harold 115
236 Index
Maki, Israeli Communist Party 75–6, 145, Oslo Accords (1993) 13, 207–11, 228–9
150–2, 155, 157–9, 161–2
Malan, D. F. 53, 102 Palestinian Arab Congress (Arab
Mandela, Nelson 101–3, 108–9, 116–18, Executive) 81–4, 87
121, 142 Palestine Arab Delegation (1922) 82–3
Mapai (Labour) Party, Israel 149 Palestinian Communist Party (PKP) 28,
Mash’al, Khaled 224 58–76
Matthews, Z. K. 109 Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO)
Matthews, Joe 113 93, 162, 166–8, 175–6, 179, 181, 183,
Matzpen, Israeli Socialist Organisation 197–9, 201–12, 214–15, 226
145, 157–62, 177, 185–9, 197, 213 Palestinian National Charter 167, 181,
Mbeki, Govan 145 209
Mda, A. P. 53 Palestine Royal Commission (1937)
Meirson,Yaakov 59 87–90
Mikunis, Shmuel 73–4, 152, 162 Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) 91,
Morogoro Conference of the ANC 111–15, 120–1, 126, 128, 132, 139, 142
(1969) 129, 139 Pan-Africanist Manifesto (1959) 112–13,
Moroka, J. S. 101–2 167
MPS (Socialist Workers Party) 58–61 Pass Laws (South Africa) 39, 41, 49, 52,
Msimang, Selby 47–8 101, 104, 107
Muslim–Christian Associations (1918) Plaatje, Sol 38, 44
80–1 Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine (PFLP) 178, 180–1, 183–6,
Naqarah, Hanna 153 189, 192–8, 201–2, 232
Nassar, Fuad 78 Population Registration Act (1950) 101
Nasser, Gamal Abd-al-(also Nasserist, Progressive Youth Council 52
Nasserism) 150, 152–3, 155, 164,
167–8, 175, 177, 193, 198 Qabbani, Nizar 175
Natal Indian Congress 100 Qaddumi, Faruk al-171, 223
Natal Native Congress 36 Qassem, Abd al-Karim 153, 155
National Democratic Alliance (Balad)
215, 219 Rakah, New Communist List/Israeli
National Forum (South Africa) 134–5, Communist Party 159, 161, 182, 187,
139 206, 213–5, 217
National Front (Palestinian Occupied Rand Revolt 1922 18
Territories) 182, 197, 201–2, 206–7 Ramaphosa, Cyril 137–8
National Liberation League, Palestine Rejection Front, Palestinian 202, 204
(NLL) 71–6, 78, 150 Republic Referendum (1961) 115–16
National Party, Nationalist Party (South Rivonia Trial (1963–64) 120–1, 141
Africa) 32, 47, 113 Rodinson, Maxime 163–4
Native Affairs Commission (1920) 40 Roux, Eddie 24–5, 29–30
Native Bills (Hertzog) 42–8, 55 Roy, M. N. 10–11
Natives’ Land Act (1913) 37–8, 41
Native Life in South Africa (Sol Plaatje, Sayegh, Fayez 162–3
1916) 38 Selope-Thema, R.V. 44
Native Republic slogan 20–30, 46, 231 Seme, Pixley ka Isaka 29, 37, 46–7
Native Vigilance Association of the Settler-colonial model 2–3, 231–2
Orange River Colony 36 Sharpeville Massacre (1960) 115
Natives’ Representative Council (NRC) Shaw Commission (1930) 84–6
55 Shuqeiri, Ahmad (Ahmed) 93–4, 166,
175–6, 191
Operation Mayibuye (1963) 120–1, 145 Sisulu, Walter 102, 113
Orr, Akiva 158, 188 Slonim, Meir 71, 77
Index 237
Slovo, Joe 138, 145 Tuma, Emil 78, 150, 161, 215
Smorodinski, Meir 159 Turki, Daud 157
Smuts, Jan 47, 55 Turner, Richard (Rick) 125–6
Sneh, Moshe 152, 162
Sobukwe, Robert 111–15 Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) 115–21, 145
Sons of the Village (Abnaa al-Balad) 215 UN General Assembly Resolution 181
South African Constitution, Interim (1947) 75, 152, 154–5, 202–3, 207
(1993) 142 UN General Assembly Resolution 3379
South African Indian Congress 101, 106, (1975) 203
109, 111 UN Security Council Resolution 242
South African Labour Party (SALP) 14, (1967) 178–9, 181–2, 198, 205, 209
18 UN Security Council Resolution 338
South African Native Affairs Commission (1973) 198, 205, 209
(SANAC) 35–7 UN Speech by Yasser Arafat (1974)
South African Native Congress 35–6 202–3
South African Native National Congress United Democratic Front (UDF) 134–9
(SANNC) 32, 37–42 United Party (South Africa) 47, 107
South African Student Organisation
(SASO) 123–6, 134 Verwoerd, Hendrik 113, 116
Soweto Uprising (1976) 128–9, 132, 135, Vilner, Meir 72–4, 161
190, 227 Vision Documents, Israel/Palestine
Status Campaign (PAC) 114–15, 139 (2006–2007) 216–19
Strategy and Tactics of the ANC (1969) 122
Suppression of Communism Act (1950) Wailing Wall/al-Buraq Uprising (1929)
100–1, 103 65–6, 84–6
Supreme Muslim Council 84, 86 White Paper, Palestine (1939) 90
Tambo, Oliver 102, 139 Xuma, A. B. 49–50, 55

Ten-Point Programme, PLO (1974)
201–2, 208, 212 Yishuvism (PKP) 61–2, 64–5
The Path to Power, SACP (1989) 140
The Road to South African Freedom, SACP Zayyad, Tawfik 214–15
(1962) 3, 119–20 Zinoviev, Grigory 11–12
Transvaal Indian Congress 100 Zionist Labour movement 58–61
Tzabari, Simha 71, 77 Zurayq (Zurayk), Constantine 148–9,
Tubi, Tawfik 78, 150, 152 164, 176, 184

Ran Greenstein - Anti-Colonial Resistance in South Africa and Israel - Palestine - Identity, Nationalism, and Race-Routledge (2022)

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Ran Greenstein - Anti-Colonial Resistance in South Africa and Israel - Palestine - Identity, Nationalism, and Race-Routledge (2022)

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Anti-​Colonial Resistance in

South Africa and Israel/​Palestine

Ran Greenstein is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the

This series includes in-​depth research on aspects of economic, political, cultural

Photography and History in Colonial Southern Africa

Women’s Lived Landscapes of War and Liberation in Mozambique

Rethinking White Societies in Southern Africa

Colonialism, Ethnicity and War in Angola

Anti-​Colonial Resistance in South Africa and Israel/​Palestine

For a full list of available titles please visit: www.routledge.com/​Routledge-​

2 The Communist Party of South Africa  14

3 The Rise of African Nationalism  35

4 The Palestinian Communist Party, 1919–​1948  58

5 Palestinian-​Arab Nationalism before 1948  79

6 South Africa: The Apartheid Era  100

7 Israel/​Palestine Post-​1948: Dispersal and New Beginnings  148

8 Post-​1967: Resistance, Occupation, and Civic Struggle  175

9 Comparisons and Conclusions  226

• Examining them within the context of centuries-​long history of expanding

In using this approach, we must consider that

In fact, how settlers and indigenous people defined themselves, constructed or

Classical Theoretical and Political Reflections

Such colonies relied on “plundering or forced labour of the natives”.

Rejecting colonialism as “no more than foreign domination, racial domin-

that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and

These questions continue to pose a challenge to the nationalist logic which

a gross example of Entente imperialism and the bourgeoisie of the country

As discussed in Chapter 4, this was the foundation of the Communist perspec-

Zinoviev made little distinction between colonies and independent countries

Nationalist movements in independent states that remained subordinate

With the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910 as a dominion of

In all countries the influx of cheap labour is used as a whip wherewith to

Solidarity was the answer for labour competition:

The Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA)

As workers whose functions are wholly different in the industrial world,

Under such conditions, class consciousness among white workers was

The emancipation of white workers of South Africa depends upon the

Between Class and Race

The Native Republic Slogan (Rise and Demise)

In response, Comintern General Secretary, Nikolai Bukharin, called on the

IT IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY to pay particular attention to the

an oppressed nation, which is in a peculiar and extraordinarily distressing

In a country like South Africa, where the overwhelming majority of the

Why a revolution carried out by peasants and led by workers should be

become South African not only theoretically, but in reality, it should be a

Kotane’s admonition was directed not only at members too involved in

it is impossible to drive out the imperialists without waging mass armed

Return to Mainstream Resistance Politics

the road of expanding economy and wider democracy, of greater oppor-

Land was raised in another testimony, by representatives of the Native

Union and South African Native National Congress

the Bantu people as a race to a status of permanent labourers or subordinates

It never occurred to us that the spread of British dominion in South

The solution was “revision of the scales of wages by employers everywhere”,

Urban conditions were harsh:

people live in squalid surroundings, shockingly overcrowded, these quarters

The Fight against the Native Bills

Since natives were “inextricably bound up with Europeans in our territorial

On the contrary, Africans were moving away from the past:

The key strategy was to cater to the demands of different constituencies,

The All African Convention (AAC)

in so far as it will drive large numbers of Africans now on European farms

Politically, it reaffirmed its commitment to “common and citizenship rights

Anti-Colonial Resistance in

South Africa and Israel/Palestine

This series includes in-depth research on aspects of economic, political, cultural

Anti-Colonial Resistance in South Africa and Israel/Palestine

For a full list of available titles please visit: www.routledge.com/Routledge-

2 The Communist Party of South Africa 14

3 The Rise of African Nationalism 35

4 The Palestinian Communist Party, 1919–1948 58

5 Palestinian-Arab Nationalism before 1948 79

6 South Africa: The Apartheid Era 100

7 Israel/Palestine Post-1948: Dispersal and New Beginnings 148

8 Post-1967: Resistance, Occupation, and Civic Struggle 175

9 Comparisons and Conclusions 226

• Examining them within the context of centuries-long history of expanding

practically the whole of the non-Jewish population was united in hostility

other dangerous factors –religious, national and strategic –aimed at

There was a need to respond. The choice to abandon non-violence was

Non-White South Africa is the colony of White South Africa itself. It is

a nation-wide popular liberation front. In the first place, we must recognise