Philip Marfleet - Palestine, Imperialism and the Struggle for Freedom

As the genocide in Gaza continues, millions of people around the world are trying to understand the reason for Israel's continued assault on the Palestinians. If my personal experience is anything to go by, there can be few workplaces, coffee shops or trade union meetings were there have not been discussions about the causes of the occupation and the possibilities of peace. So the publication of Philip Marfleet's new book Palestine, Imperialism and the Struggle for Freedom should be welcomed because it seeks to explain the current conflict in the context of a century of "colonial occupation, displacements and dispossession". Crucially, and unusually for even left-wing books on the subject, Marfleet's book puts Palestinian action and resistance at the heart of the history.

Marfleet begins with the Zionist "vision" of a "public project for colonisation by Zionist settlers". He writes:

As the Ottoman Empire went into rapid decline Britain became the focus of Zionists' attention. Now the movement's leading figure was Chaim Weizmann, who was convinced that it must win support from within the British ruling class on the baiss that a Jewish state could serve the best interests of Britain's emprie. Weizmann was able to deal directly with members of the British government. During the First World War, as Britain advanced on German-Ottoman forces in Palesinte, he lobbied decision-makes in London, allying with the most aggressive imperial stategists - ministers who sought to extend British control across the Middle East.

These close historic links between Zionism, colonialism and imperialist interests are crucial to explain the modern actions of the Israeli state and the close relationship it has with Western powers. Marfleet shows how the Zionist state that was created in 1948 did not invent repression of the Palestinian people, instead it "learnt from the British". He writes:

Britain's ideologues of empire and those who administered it colonial territories were not only racial supremacists but also designed and implemented policies that involved savage represion. As Zionist settlement in Palestine accelerated, Britain was crushing resistance in neighbouring Egypt and Iraq. 

In Egypt in 1919, a rebellion involved "members of all the country's ethno-religious communities: significantly, Jews joined Muslims and Christians in the uprising". But the British "colonial regime used all means against the movement". Thousands were killed.

The point here is that there is no automatic divide between the religious peoples of the region. In fact, as Marfleet shows, Jews, Muslims and Christians lived side-by-side for centuries. One of the lessons the British taught the emerging Israeli state was how to divide and rule.

But it is the resistance of the Palestinians that is central to Marfleet's account. This began long before the creation of the Israeli state in 1948. In 1936 there was a massive revolutionary movement in Palestine. This history is seldom told, and much of it was new to me. It is one of the most fascinating parts of Marfleet's book. This revolution was incredible. Zionist militias were violently assaulting Palestinian villages, British colonial rulers were oppression and restricting Palestinian freedoms and resistance exploded. Marfleet places the revolution in the context of a developing industrial capitalist economy:

Change accelerated during the 1920s as Britain established the Mandate regime and Jewish settlement intensified. More and more peasants were forced from the land but - as Britain favoured industrial and infrastructural defvelopment for the Jewish sector and Jewish organisations impements the policy of Hebrew labour - many were rapidly impoverished.... by 1936 the majority of workers in Jaffa, a key industrial centre, were living below subsistence level. Industrial workers, semi-proletarians of the countryside, the peasants and the urban poor not only faced a European power and an emerging colonial-settler regime but also the reality of immiseration. It was in these circumstance that the uprising 'spread like wildfire, gripping the cities and country alike and giving rise to an unprecedeted armed insurrection'.

Space precludes any further summary of Marfleet's account of this extraordinary rebellion. But here we see one of the first examples of a theme which Marfleet returns to time and again - the way that Palestinian resistance sparks rebellion elsewhere. The 1936 "Palestinian intifada also stimulated solidarity across the Arab region. In Egypt there were demonstrations of support and the Muslim Broptherhood declared backing for the uprising".

Marfleet tells how the establishment of the Israeli state required the systematic displacement and violent oppression of the Palestinian people, as well as confrontations with the Arab states. In doing this Israel became a crucial ally of Western Imperialism, particularly of the US, post World War II. 

Importantly Marfleet shows how the failure of the leaders of the Arab world to build real solidarity with the Palestinians, and the limitations of the Palestinian leadership which became focused on the creation of a Palestinian state, undermined the wider struggle for freedom. But while Marfleet is rightly critical of some of the Palestinian leadership, he also notes how the cause of Palestinian oppression remains the Israeli state. He quotes Martin Shaw, a "pioneer figure in Genocide Studies" who said in 2010:

We should view Israel's destruction of large parts of Arab society in Palestine in 1948 not simply through the perspective of settler-colonial genocide, but as an extension of the exclusivist nationalism which had recently brought about extensive genocidal violence in the European war. 

This is, tragically, an ongoing process. Marfleet quotes from the genocide historian Mark Levene's work in 2024:

The target of Israel's offensive could not realistically be Hamas, said Levene, for the organisation 'will redeploy from underneath the rubble at will'. Referencing the pioneering work of Rafael Lemkin, [Levene] saw Israel's war as 'a conscious, wilful effort to destroy the integrity of a society'. Levene concluded: 'The charge of genocide is legitimate.'

But as Marfleet shows this genocide arises out of global imperialist interests and the nature of the settler-colonial state. It means that the solution, in terms of peace in the region, cannot be one with two states side by side, but rather a single state were people of all faiths, Jews, Muslims, Christians and none, live together. This has been the case in the past and could be in the future. The importance of Palestinian resistance is thus in part their ability to inspire and shape to mobilise and encourage resistance elsewhere in the world. In particular that of the massive working classes of the region. These, Marfleet argues are the force that can fundamentally transform the region. 

Palestine, Imperialism and the Struggle for Freedom is thus a book that stands out from among many other books about the history of the region, because it has an emancipatory vision of the struggle to liberate Palestine. It locates Israeli's oppression of Palestine in a historical process and argues that struggle from below is the force that stop it.

Marfleet is a long standing socialist and has written and studied the Middle East for many years. An earlier book of his on the 1987 Intifada became a crucial text for a generation of socialists. This new book ought to play the same role for new generations of radicals.

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Pappe - Ten Myths About Israel
Gluckstein & Stone - The Radical Jewish Tradition: Revolutionaries, resistance fighters & firebrands
Hamouchene & Sandwell (eds) - Dismantling Green Colonialism: Energy and Climate Justice in the Arab Region