Today, Saturday 29 November, is the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. UN General Assembly Resolution 181, passed on 29 November 1947, which proposed the partition of Palestine, marked the beginning of war, mass displacement, institutionalized discrimination, and the formation of one of the world’s longest unresolved conflicts and many of today’s tragedies. On 21 November 1977, the UN General Assembly designated 29 November, the anniversary of Resolution 181, as the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.
This day is a reminder of decades of occupation, discrimination, war, displacement, and repression suffered by the Palestinian people. Israel’s repeated wars on Gaza and the West Bank, especially in recent years, have laid bare a stark image of an unmistakable, state-driven destruction. The bombing of residential neighborhoods, vital infrastructure, hospitals, schools, and refugee camps has led to large-scale killings of civilians especially children. The long-standing economic siege of Gaza, severe restrictions on movement, home demolitions, and the displacement of families are daily forms of collective punishment that deny the most basic human rights. This situation has made ordinary life nearly impossible for millions of Palestinians.
At the same time, the treatment of prisoners, detainees, and Palestinian political prisoners is another dark chapter in the record of the Israeli state. Administrative detentions without trial, torture and mistreatment during interrogations, holding Palestinian children and teenagers in degrading conditions, denying access to lawyers and medical care, and various forms of physical and psychological pressure have been repeatedly documented by international human rights organizations. Palestinian women prisoners, in addition to all this, face gender-based violence, threats, humiliation, and additional abuse.
On this international day, two realities must be emphasized:
First, genuine solidarity with the Palestinian people has nothing to do with reactionary and repressive governments, including the Islamic Republic of Iran. Second, the liberation of Palestine does not pass through fundamentalist and sectarian groups like Hamas. A just solution to the Palestinian question is possible only through the solidarity of leftist, progressive, secular, and egalitarian forces, whether within Palestine, within Israel, or globally and whether in the form of a single democratic state with equal rights for all, or through the establishment of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.
Sincere and egalitarian solidarity with Palestine necessarily requires distancing oneself from both reactionary poles:
First, condemning the occupation and systematic repression by the religious Israeli state; second, rejecting the fundamentalism and adventurism of reactionary forces like Hamas and its regional backers, including the Islamic Republic.
Since its early years in power, the Islamic Republic has turned the “Palestinian cause” into a pillar of its ideological and propaganda apparatus. It created “Quds Day,” inscribed the slogan of “liberating Jerusalem” on its banners, provided financial and military support to groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and presented itself as the “standard-bearer of resistance” in the region. But behind these slogans, the Islamic Republic’s real record regarding the Palestinian people is entirely destructive and hypocritical.
For the Islamic Republic, Palestine has become a tool of domestic legitimation. Through propaganda spectacles, forced marches, and state-controlled media, it has tried to portray itself as a “defender of the oppressed.” Meanwhile, the same government continues executions, torture, gender discrimination, repression of minorities, and the killing of protesters at home.
Palestine also serves as a bargaining chip in the Islamic Republic’s foreign policy. Its support for armed groups is used as leverage against regional rivals and global powers, and the “Palestinian cause” is exploited to strengthen its bargaining position in issues such as the nuclear program. When a government that has shot down protesters in the streets during the December 2017, November 2019, and “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprisings speaks of “defending the Palestinian people,” it is, in fact, an insult to Palestinian suffering.
Relying on its Shi’a-centric and anti-Western ideology, the Islamic Republic has supported forces whose vision is not a democratic and egalitarian society but religious rule and social repression. Hamas, as an Islamist and authoritarian force, has, throughout its rule in Gaza, suppressed any independent political opposition, leftist movements, civil society groups, and progressive women’s organizations; and through its militaristic adventurism, has repeatedly given Israel a pretext for large-scale attacks without offering any real prospect of liberation for the Palestinian people.
But the Palestinian people are not monolithic under Hamas’s banner.
Among Palestinians, a wide range of political tendencies exist: leftist, secular, and socialist forces; civil society movements; labor unions; women’s and student organizations; and intellectual and human rights circles.
A just solution to the Palestinian question can only rest on the following foundations:
Recognition of equal rights for all historical inhabitants of the land (whether Jewish, Arab, Muslim, Christian, secular leftist, etc.); an end to the occupation; an end to settlement expansion and legal discrimination against Palestinians; recognition of the right of return or fair compensation for Palestinian refugees; and guarantees of safety and freedom for both populations, Palestinian and Israeli.
This vision can take shape in two possible scenarios:
Scenario One: A democratic state with equal rights for all, in which all citizens regardless of ethnicity, religion, or nationality enjoy fully equal political, civil, social, and cultural rights; with no racial, ethnic, or religious discrimination in the law or institutions; and a governing structure based on legal and civic equality rather than ethnic or religious identity. This scenario requires profound transformation in Israel’s legal and political structures and the strengthening of progressive, anti-racist forces on both sides of the divide.
Scenario Two: The creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, with recognized borders, an end to occupation, and guaranteed political and economic independence for Palestine.
But the reality is that neither of these scenarios can be achieved without the support of progressive, democratic, and egalitarian social movements within Israel and Palestine, and without the pressure and backing of global public opinion, labor unions, student movements, human rights organizations, and leftist and secular parties worldwide. Without the mobilization of such forces, no sustainable solution to the Palestinian question will emerge.
