Statement on the Catastrophe in Historic Palestine
Statement of the SP Anti-War Working Group, updated and passed by the National Executive Committee
The Socialist Party USA condemns, without reservation or qualification, the violence and brutality that has resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of residents of Gaza and throughout historic Palestine in recent months. These completely avoidable tragedies are the direct result of the policies and decisions of those in power, working against the interests of working-class people, whether Palestinian or Israeli. The Socialist Party has long condemned the ruthless barbarity of the Israeli settler colonial and apartheid state. We support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement initiated by grassroots Palestinian people's organizations.
We explicitly affirm the right of the Palestinian people to determine their own method of self-defense against oppression and genocide. We affirm Palestinians' right to determine their own future using all means that they deem appropriate for their situation.
We demand the US government immediately end all aid to the State of Israel, rhetorical and tangible, and commit to supporting the Palestinians in rebuilding their country. We are in solidarity with the Palestinian call for an immediate ceasefire. We call for the withdrawal of all US military forces in historic Palestine. We call for delivering humanitarian aid and restoring human necessities, including food, water, fuel, medicine, and electricity to the people of Gaza. We furthermore call for the dismantling of all Israeli settlements in the West Bank and enfranchising ALL expelled Palestinians (and their descendants) with the Right of Return.
We believe in the enfranchisement of all citizens of historic Palestine with full and equal human rights, full and equal human rights, full and equal citizenship, equal access to services, and the ability to come and go freely, without checkpoints and other forms of systemic apartheid. The Israeli government’s settler colonial project with its state-sanctioned dispossession, persecution, and ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people, lands, and spaces are the seeds from which the current horrors have grown, and they must end.
The US, Great Britain, and the occupying State of Israel should bear the primary financial responsibility for rebuilding Palestine, with mandatory contributions from countries that aided and abetted the State of Israel’s decades of war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and genocide of Palestinians. If the US has any role in the future, it should be restricted to supplying necessities to the Palestinian people.
The Socialist Party calls for an immediate release of all hostages on both sides, including the thousands of political prisoners of the Israeli government, a large percentage of whom are held in administrative detention, without due process. We support the call for war criminals and violators of human rights to be brought before the appropriate international court.
This current genocidal bloodbath has revealed to the world an undeniable truth: there cannot be a return to the status quo, ever again. The time has come for the sun to set, for all time, on settler colonialism. The time is now for the world community to recognize this, and to take swift action to support Indigenous Palestinians in their chosen path to create a legally recognized, safe, democratic state, founded on equal rights, and free from both colonial occupation and religious dictatorship.
