On October 7, 2023, the Palestinian National Liberation Organization “Hamas”—a bourgeois revolutionary organization cloaked in Islamism, aiming to liberate the entire territory of Palestine through armed struggle—declared a new round of liberation war against the Israeli reactionaries, codenamed “Al-Aqsa Flood.” They launched a surprise attack while the Israeli reactionaries were celebrating the Sukkot festival, catching them off guard, annihilating hundreds of Israeli soldiers in one stroke, killing an Israeli colonel, capturing another colonel, seizing multiple tanks, multifunctional infantry vehicles, and other equipment, achieving a significant victory. The victory of the Palestinian people was formed through long-term intense line struggles. Revolutionary organizations represented by Hamas have fought several times against the surrenderist organization “Fatah”—which advocated parliamentary reformist paths and surrendered its arms in the 1980s—and defeated a surrenderist countercurrent within Hamas itself. Since its establishment, Hamas has not feared violence or the despicable assassination campaigns by Israeli reactionaries against its successive leaders, persistently fighting to eliminate the Israeli reactionary regime and liberate the entire Palestine, a resilience that is precious in today’s Middle East, ravaged by imperialist exploitation and widespread silence.
This liberation war marks a new high tide in the Palestinian people’s struggle for liberation. Since the capitalist restoration in China, the Middle Eastern national bourgeoisie, which lost the support of socialist China, has been increasingly declining, and the Middle East has begun to revert to a colony of imperialist robbers. The Palestinian National Liberation Organization “Fatah,” which adhered to armed struggle during the socialist period, has now degenerated into a national traitor advocating parliamentary reformist paths and openly colluding with the Israeli reactionary regime. Its armed wing, the “Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades,” has also degenerated into a puppet force of the Israeli army in Palestinian gathering areas.
However, where there is oppression, there is resistance. Although one organization has degenerated, the Palestinian people’s determination to liberate their homeland will never degenerate. After Fatah’s betrayal and defection, a new bourgeois revolutionary organization, Hamas, emerged. In its programmatic documents of 1988 and 2017, Hamas openly declared the restoration of all historic Palestinian lands extending east to the Jordan River, west to the Mediterranean Sea, north to Ras Naqura, and south to Umm Rashrash. It must be noted that the 2017 document regressed somewhat compared to the 1988 document by adding an annex stipulating the restoration of the 1967 territorial boundaries “on the premise of rejecting recognition of the Zionist regime and not relinquishing any rights of the Palestinian people.” This is because Hamas, after all, is a national bourgeois organization; it neither has nor can fully uphold the position of national independence and must show its class limitations under the external pressure of foreign imperialism and internal surrenderist forces. Nevertheless, both documents essentially uphold the stance of the Palestinian bourgeois national democratic revolution and, overall, represent a progressive national bourgeois program.
After its establishment, Hamas immediately faced fierce struggles with the already existing traitorous organization Fatah. Fatah leader, the Palestinian collaborator Arafat, in 1993, against the will of the broad Palestinian people to continue the struggle, secretly signed the humiliating and surrendering treasonous treaty “Declaration of Principles” with the Israeli reactionary regime, openly declaring a desire to make peace and pursue parliamentary reformist paths. Faced with this surrenderist tide, Hamas did not yield but declared its adherence to armed struggle, rejecting this unequal treaty imposed on the Palestinian people by imperialist robbers.
In March 1996, a surrenderist tide also appeared within Hamas. The surrenderists announced in the name of Hamas that Hamas would abandon “violent activities” and turn the struggle into so-called “political struggle,” essentially a disguised disarmament and surrender, a parliamentary path replica. However, this tide lasted less than two months before being crushed. After taking office, Israeli reactionary leader Netanyahu revealed his true face, thoroughly exposing the counterrevolutionary nature of Israel’s fake peace talks and real annexation, refusing to accept the initial conditions proposed by the Palestinians. The Israeli reactionaries’ betrayal educated the Palestinian people from the opposite side and led to the purge of the surrenderist tide within Hamas by the revolutionary faction inside the organization. Afterward, Hamas re-declared its continuation of armed struggle.
Entering the 21st century, the Palestinian national liberation movement led by Hamas became more complex and intense, facing a more difficult environment than before. Since Hamas could not be completely eliminated on the battlefield, the Israeli reactionaries devised a vicious plot known as “targeted assassinations,” using despicable assassination methods to eliminate Hamas leaders in an attempt to cause organizational chaos and destroy Hamas.
However, the Palestinian national liberation movement led by Hamas is a revolutionary and just liberation war, supported by the broad Palestinian people. With a deep mass base, when one leader falls, another takes over. From founder Yassin to successor Rantisi, and then to current leader Haniyeh, they have basically adhered to the revolutionary line of the national liberation movement, engaging in arduous struggles against the Israeli reactionaries. Hamas’s ability to persist under the furious siege of Israeli reactionaries and its successive leaders’ adherence to the armed struggle program are inseparable from their support by the masses.
In 2006, the struggle within the Palestinian national liberation movement between the revolutionary faction represented by Hamas and the surrenderist faction represented by Fatah intensified. In January 2006, Hamas won the democratic election and established a new government based on Hamas, uniting various democratic factions, with Fatah included in the negotiation list. However, Fatah stubbornly insisted on a divisive and separatist line, continuously upholding its surrenderist stance, causing the unity front to collapse and leading to armed conflicts between the two factions. In 2007, the two factions signed the “Mecca Agreement,” temporarily easing the conflict. Under the Mecca Agreement, Hamas leader Haniyeh was to serve as prime minister, and Fatah would obtain the deputy prime minister position. This was a concession made by Hamas for the sake of united struggle. However, the Mecca Agreement did not specify the path to liberate Palestine and reflected the fundamental division between the two factions—whether to follow the path of violent revolution or peaceful parliamentary reform—which remained unresolved. Therefore, a few months after signing the Mecca Agreement, armed conflict broke out again. Hamas expelled Fatah from the Gaza Strip and declared the establishment of a government explicitly committed to liberating Palestine through armed struggle. Fatah continued to harbor its reactionary surrenderist stance, engaging in divisive activities and establishing a so-called “Palestinian Emergency Government,” led by the so-called “independent” but actually Fatah-puppet moderate Fayyad as pseudo-prime minister, opposing Hamas.
Afterward, the struggle between Hamas and Fatah became public. Hamas had to fight not only against the Israeli reactionaries’ furious siege but also against the surrenderist line of Fatah internally, making the situation even more difficult. However, difficulties do not scare the heroic Hamas fighters nor the glorious Palestinian people. Chairman Mao said, “The deepest root of the great power of war lies among the masses”. The joint strangulation by the anti-Palestinian reactionary forces did not destroy Hamas but made it stronger, awakening more and more Palestinian people to abandon Fatah, which had led them into the abyss of national ruin, and turn to support Hamas. The eyes of the Palestinian people are sharp; they can distinguish who truly supports their liberation cause.
For a long time, especially after Hamas launched a new round of liberation war recently, the Israeli reactionaries’ backstage masters—the U.S. imperialists and their lackeys—have been spreading slander and smearing Hamas, labeling it as a so-called “Islamic revolutionary organization,” defaming Hamas as a fanatical cult and destructive group. But is Hamas really as the imperialists fabricate? One only needs to look at their 2017 new document and the Palestinian people’s support for Hamas to know.
Hamas’s 2017 new document further reflects its revolutionary national bourgeois stance; it is by no means a so-called religious organization but merely a bourgeois revolutionary organization cloaked in Islamic religious garb (although the earlier 1988 document somewhat overemphasized Islamic ideological content, its core was still a bourgeois revolutionary program to achieve national independence and establish a democratic government). In 2017, due to changes in the current struggle situation, Hamas issued a new programmatic document. Although it regressed somewhat in territorial demands, it advanced in other aspects. The 2017 document defined clear Palestinian borders and clarified the scope of Hamas’s armed struggle and the territory belonging to the Palestinian people. According to bourgeois national theory, the 2017 document clearly defined Palestinians as all residents living in Palestine before 1947, declaring them “legitimate, effective, timeless, and passed down through generations.” Thus, Hamas eliminated previous internal confusion over the definition of Palestinians, clarifying the enemy-friend boundary of the national liberation movement to some extent. Hamas also commendably overcame some narrow nationalist content in the 1988 document, distinguishing Jews from Zionism and clarifying that the struggle against “Jews” (Israeli reactionaries) is due to Zionist oppression of the Palestinian people, not the Jewish identity itself. The 2017 document explicitly states, “The anti-Semitic persecution faced by Judaism fundamentally stems from European historical social phenomena and not from the historical traditions of Arabs and Muslims.” Thus, Hamas distinguished ordinary Jewish masses from a small group of Jewish reactionaries, similar to how Sun Yat-sen’s revolutionary party differentiated anti-Qing from anti-Manchu struggles, formulating a policy conducive to uniting Jewish masses and eliminating narrow nationalism’s interference in the national liberation movement. Hamas also declared participation in the Palestine Liberation Organization in the 2017 document, expanding the united front and striving to establish a democratic new Palestinian government, eliminating the previously disruptive closed-door stance. Furthermore, Hamas inherited the anti-imperialist stance of the past Palestinian national liberation movement, declaring with revolutionary spirit that various Zionist declarations and documents concocted by imperialist robbers—such as the Balfour Declaration, the Palestine Mandate, and UN General Assembly Resolution 181—are all illegal and invalid. Finally, through long revolutionary struggle, Hamas recognized the harm of overemphasizing Islam as a religious cloak on the national liberation movement and toned down the religious color of Islam in the 2017 document, replacing it with bourgeois humanitarianism as its ideology. Although it still remains within bourgeois limits and reflects the class limitations of Hamas-led national liberation movement’s inherent incompleteness, this secularization must be regarded as progress.
Imperialists and Israeli reactionaries have also exaggerated civilian issues, portraying Hamas as a bandit group indiscriminately massacring civilians. This is a complete distortion. Indeed, as a bourgeois revolutionary organization, Hamas cannot entirely rely on the people; at times, it has taken some erroneous attitudes towards the people and failed to scientifically distinguish between Jewish masses and a small group of Jewish reactionaries, leading to some excessive actions against Jewish masses. However, this is only a minor current in the revolutionary movement, not the mainstream of the Hamas-led national liberation movement. One may ask, could a so-called “terrorist organization” that crazily massacres Palestinians and Jews persist under the joint siege of anti-Palestinian reactionary forces? If so, who supports them? Why would the Palestinian people support an organization that kills their own? And if the attacks target the Israeli reactionary army, then as Chairman Mao said, “To correct an error, one must overcorrect; without overcorrection, the error cannot be corrected”, meaning it is “very good” rather than “very bad.” Without resolutely striking the Israeli invading army, the Palestinian people will become utterly enslaved, and Hamas as a revolutionary organization will be overthrown by counterrevolutionary armed invasion. Therefore, from both positive and negative perspectives, imperialist accusations are baseless.
This time, the Israeli reactionaries, relying on foreign guns and cannons supplied by U.S. imperialism, with missiles, warplanes, and tanks deployed one after another, brutally massacred Palestinian residential areas, but they can only suffer the same fate as their robber master, U.S. imperialism—that is, being crushed by the people’s war. Even if the revolutionary struggle led by Hamas fails, the Palestinian people’s revolutionary struggle will never cease; they will fight until Palestine achieves true liberation.
Currently, those who claim to be “friends of the peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America” but in fact expand colonies under the guise of “aid and construction,” plundering local people, take a cunning moderate stance on this matter. Due to their contradictions with U.S. imperialism, these revisionist robbers hold an ambiguous position in this war, superficially supporting both Israeli reactionaries and Hamas, but in fact intending to watch from the sidelines and insert their claws into Palestine at the right moment for profit. Although they are not and cannot be the masterminds behind Hamas, they have not condemned Hamas as the Israeli embassy in China hopes, which does not indicate goodwill but only shows they are brewing a new vicious plot, just as they did in the Russia-Ukraine war issue.
Although Hamas is not a Marxist communist organization, it remains a truly progressive organization leading the Palestinian people in revolutionary struggle. Under Hamas’s organization, the Palestinian people have moved from dispersion to unity and will further shift from bourgeois revolutionary ideology to Marxism under changes in domestic and international situations. Socialism is destined to triumph worldwide, and one day, the people of Hamas will, like China during the May Fourth Movement, embrace the scientific truth of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism—the salvation of the nation and people.
