Lessons from the history of anti-colonial resistance in Palestine and Ireland

The eyes of the world are on Palestine. It is impossible to turn away from the horror of the second Nakba, but the ruling class ignores our cries for a ceasefire. In what seems like a hopeless crisis, it is our responsibility as activists, unionists, socialists, as anarchists, to hold to a clear vision of justice and peace, and to fight for this future however we can.

As activists outside of Palestine, we cannot and should not wish to determine the nature of Palestinian resistance. But we must reflect critically on the means by which Israel’s colonial regime can be challenged and ultimately deconstructed. What can we learn from previous struggles against violent and genocidal colonial regimes? How can the Zionist state be dismantled in a way which does not lead to the reintroduction of new forms of domination and exploitation in its place? How do we support resistance without endorsing Islamist nationalism? 

We might look to Ireland for answers. Some of the most incredible displays of solidarity with Palestine have come from Ireland, a people recognised by Palestinian representatives like Dr Afif Safieh as being “among the first to hear our cries for freedom.” A nation whose people overturned eight hundred years of British colonial rule through a campaign of guerrilla warfare and popular resistance. Yet, for working people in Ireland, national liberation has only meant a continuation of the same fundamental issues of poverty, inequality, economic insecurity and sectarian violence under a new flag. Only briefly in the early twentieth century did the drive to independence unsettle the rule of the British and of capital generally, when workers across the country began to take production into their own hands in a wave of strike action between 1920–23. 

This revolutionary possibility was put down not only by the British military but by the leaders of the Irish Republican movement themselves. This history demonstrates not only the importance of an organised, militant working class in the struggle for national liberation but also why workers must be willing to organise politically to build a national liberation movement with a socialist, internationalist vision of liberty. This is the only pathway to lasting peace and justice in a decolonised society, and much can be done to strengthen and develop such a movement by socialist unionists around the world. 

The trajectory of Palestinian resistance

It is important to say from the outset that armed Palestinian resistance is a justified and appropriate response to the genocidal actions of the Israeli occupation. In any discussion on the nature of resistance, we must be clear that it is not the responsibility of the oppressed to conform to the ethical or legal ‘standards’ that their oppressors are flagrantly abusing. Nor should we subscribe to the naive assumption that non-violent actions in occupied territories will achieve liberation; as Stokely Carmichael puts it: “for non-violence to work, your opponent must have a conscience.” 

Under the smokescreen of ‘self-defence’, Israel has secured the backing of almost all mainstream political leaders in the West, and global equivocation on whether their actions are justified has given the IDF impunity to carry out the most horrific and devastating crimes in plain sight. We are now witnessing the peak of this genocidal violence with Netanyahu’s scorched earth campaign in Gaza. There should be no mistaking the intention here. This is not about safety, it was never about the hostages taken by Hamas, this is the culmination of the Zionist project to erase Palestine and its people from the map. This is a genocide. 

In avoiding this reality and framing the current crisis as a ‘war’ or a ‘conflict’, our government has entirely bought into the destructive logic of Zionism. Each escalation of violence from Israel has been quietly endorsed, with the occasional muffled plea to spare civilian lives while carpet bombing civilian targets. A horrifying experiment has played out, in which our Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong are continually asked whether October 7 justifies the death of five thousand, ten thousand, fifteen or twenty thousand Palestinian civilians. They have not just sat silently but actively endorsed the violence, sending military support to put down Houthi efforts to disrupt Israeli shipping lines, and cutting aid funding to UNRWA – one of the main agencies which provides essential humanitarian assistance to displaced Palestinians. 

Since the first Intifada, Hamas and other militant Islamist groups have become the easiest scapegoat for the occupation. As the political authority of Hamas has grown, the group can now exist in all the hospitals, schools, apartment buildings and market squares of Gaza… Total elimination of the Palestinian people is seen as the only way to ensure security for Israel.

How did it get to this point? How has the IDF been able to bomb its way through the entire territory of Gaza without facing any serious international sanctions or repercussions? The excuse put forward by Netanyahu and his allies, as always, centres on Hamas. 

The organisation – whose name is both an abbreviation of Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya (Islamic Resistance Movement) and an Arabic word meaning ‘strength’ or ‘bravery’ – is a multifaceted political entity, formed on the principles of Islamist Palestinian nationalism. It was a party of government in the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), having received the largest minority of seats in the 2006 election. It has operated as the de facto government of Gaza since its violent split from the PLC in 2007. Unlike its main political rivals in Palestinian national politics, Hamas is an armed resistance group and is designated by Israel and its international supporters as a terrorist organisation. 

The organisation emerged from relative obscurity in the wake of the Oslo Peace Accords in the 1990s, a process which Hamas directly opposed. Negotiated in 1993 between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), the Oslo Accords led to the creation of the Palestinian National Authority – or Palestinian Authority (PA) – as an institution of Palestinian self-governance in the West Bank and Gaza. The recognition of the State of Israel and its right to exist, as well as the continued need for violent insurrection against the Israeli occupation were key points of difference between Hamas and the secular Arab nationalists of Fatah, the leading political force within the PLO. The Hebron Massacre in 1994, where a Jewish-American terrorist murdered 29 Muslim Palestinians (including several children), led Hamas to reinforce its commitment to armed resistance and carry out its first instance of terrorist suicide bombing attacks in retaliation. This both strengthened the visibility of Hamas and cemented the divisions between itself and Fatah. The trajectory of the Palestinian national liberation movement thus diverged along separate paths: Fatah with the aim of securing international recognition for an emergent Palestinian nation-state alongside Israel – the so-called ‘two-state solution’; Hamas with its commitment to violently destabilising and dismantling the Israeli state.

This division perfectly favours and has been fostered by the Zionist project. As Andrew Rigby notes in his 1991 work on the first Intifada: 

“The Israelis, like occupying powers before them, have sought to prevent the emergence of any indigenous unified political authority that could command the allegiance of the subject people and effectively coordinate resistance activities against the imposed rule of the occupier.”

The first Intifada, which began in 1987, caused significant problems for the Israeli state. It saw a widespread campaign of popular resistance, civil disobedience, work refusal and strike action, and the militant contestation of public space. It spread throughout the entire Palestinian community, with civil disruption in key sites across Gaza and the West Bank, supported by major strike actions of Palestinian workers in Israel. The Unified National Command of the Uprising (UNC) was formed in early 1988 with nationalist, communist and Islamist groups represented at clandestine meetings which aimed to cohere the movement around shared goals and strategies. Whole sections of Palestinian society were mobilised and the election of local popular committees enabled communities to self-manage civil society and basic services during the Uprising. The popular committees were a notable success, but were unilaterally banned in 1988 after the Israeli Defence Minister declared they were “undermining the Israeli government apparatus and establishing an alternative apparatus in its place.” 

Despite presenting a unified front publicly, tensions within the UNC emerged due to factional disagreements over the escalation of force, the importance of strengthening the popular committees, and the extent to which Fatah could claim to represent a grassroots network similar to the other organisations. When Israeli leaders were eventually forced to the negotiating table with the Oslo Accords of 1993, it was Fatah which became the de facto representative of the Palestinian people through its majority position within the PLO. With the creation of the Palestinian Authority in return for formal recognition of Israel, the PLO and Fatah successfully laid the foundations for the ‘two-state solution’. They were hailed internationally as the only legitimate political force in Palestine and were held responsible for reigning in the militant actions of groups like Hamas to ensure the terms of the agreement were upheld. 

The Oslo Accords only widened the chasm between the two sides of the movement, with Fatah condemned by the ‘Rejectionist Front’ of organisations which remained committed to total liberation. With the Intifada suppressed and the Palestinian national liberation movement fractured, Israel continued expanding its settlements and violently targeting Palestinian civilians in flagrant violation of the Oslo agreement. Since the first Intifada, Hamas and other militant Islamist groups have become the easiest scapegoat for the occupation. As the political authority of Hamas has grown, the group can now exist in all the hospitals, schools, apartment buildings and market squares of Gaza – the civilian sites which Israel has regularly targeted, both in previous attacks and the current onslaught. Total elimination of the Palestinian people is seen as the only way to ensure security for Israel. 

This is the essential core of the issue. Palestinian resistance has been so thoroughly smashed by Israel’s increasingly brazen use of force that no mass popular movement can emerge. Protests and marches are put down with tanks and bullets, and even the possibility of work stoppages has been nullified by Israel’s decision to replace some 70,000 Palestinian workers with foreign labourers after October 7 for ‘security reasons’ (as reported by Reuters, Feb 2024). This leaves the underground, guerrilla infrastructure of Hamas as the only available avenue for Palestinian resistance. If Hamas did not exist, another group would surely emerge to fill its place anyway,  a group which would be used the same way by Israel. 

So, we should see through the calls to ‘condemn Hamas’ as simply an effort to undermine what remains of the Palestinian national liberation movement. But, is the Islamist nationalism championed by Hamas any basis for a free and equal Palestinian society? We must be clear that religious nationalism breeds only further discontent and division, and it must be left behind by working class independence movements that seek true freedom. Looking to the example of Irish Republicanism shows that workers must tackle this inherent contradiction sooner rather than later if we are to seize the opportunities opened by anti-colonial revolution. 

Ireland

At the onset of the Irish War of Independence in 1919, the ‘threat’ of socialist revolution was considered a serious possibility by both British colonial authorities and the leaders of the Irish Republican movement. Trade unionists and socialists were at the forefront of the republican movement, fighting on two fronts against the exploitation they faced in their workplaces and the violence of British rule.

These struggles were intertwined practically as well as politically. It was workers of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITGWU) who originally led in the formation of the Irish Citizen Army, as a paramilitary defence force to protect workers’ demonstrations from police repression. Initially an armed organ of the union movement, the ICA went on to become the primary force behind the 1916 Easter Uprising and precursor to the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Prominent socialist trade union leaders like James Connolly actively wove together the republican cause with the principles of Marxism and revolutionary syndicalism. In Connolly’s own words, he was responsible for “interpreting Socialism to the Irish and interpreting the Irish to the Socialists.” Embedded in the hope for Irish independence there existed the very real possibility of economic revolution, and with it, a new vision of worker self-management.  

This vision was realised in the wave of militant strike actions which occurred during the War of Independence. From 1919 to 1922, strikes across Ireland regularly developed into full-scale workplace occupations which, instead of stopping work, continued production under worker self-management. Democratic workers councils were elected and ‘soviets’ declared, after the example set by Russian workers in 1917. During this period, over one hundred separate soviets were declared at various times and in various locations. These strikes did not limit themselves to purely economic concerns, as the nationalist cause was often inextricable from the unions’ contestation of capital. The most notable example was the Limerick Soviet of 1919, which developed after a general strike was called to protest the British Army’s designation of a ‘Special Military Area’ across all of Limerick City. The strike was coordinated by a ‘soviet’ formed by members of the United Trades and Labour Council and quickly gathered the support of residents generally. Fifteen thousand workers downed tools for nearly two weeks and only essential services were permitted to operate by the strike committee. Goods were distributed freely alongside newly printed soviet currency, cinemas were re-opened by workers who channelled profits back into the strike fund, and thousands of young people organised a hurling match outside the boundary of the Special Military Area, provoking a major flashpoint with the British officers. The strike was called off on the 27th of April with a guarantee that the military designation would be revoked one week later, which it was. 

The success of the Limerick soviet and general strike demonstrated the political strength of the organised working class, and inspired dozens of other actions over the following years. These actions were empowered by a massive surge in union density and activity. The ITGWU was one of the most influential national trade federations involved in supporting or leading the majority of these strike actions, and the union’s membership grew from around five thousand in 1911 to a total of over 100,000 members across 350 branches by 1919. Many union members were also IRA militants, and working class Catholic communities were a significant base of support for Sinn Fein. Yet the leadership of these organisations did not reflect their base, and as the labour movement continued to flex its industrial muscle after the War of Independence, tensions emerged. When strikes again broke out in dozens of factories, farms and worksites across the country in the early twenties, it was not the British Army that quashed the revolutionary potential of these campaigns, but the leaders of the IRA and Sinn Fein.  

In prioritising the construction of the new Irish state, both sides of the fractured Republican movement sought to suppress the actions of the radical union movement that had so thoroughly disrupted the rule of capital in Ireland.

By mid-1922 the Irish Free State was experiencing an internal crisis of legitimacy due to the onset of the Civil War. Alongside this political crisis, the labour movement’s success had also provoked a major crisis in the Irish economy. With the British gone, the Free State under strain, and the largest agriculturalists, landowners and industrialists losing control of their property, a second revolutionary cataclysm was imminent. However, a lack of coherent political organisation amongst Irish workers limited the possibility of any outright turn towards socialism. The strikes were not guided by the cause of Republicanism, but neither were they directed towards the establishment of socialism. As declared in the Workers Bulletin newspaper during the Limerick Soviet: “The strike is a workers’ strike and is no more Sinn Fein than any other strike against tyranny and inhuman oppression.” Distancing themselves from Sinn Fein allowed a degree of freedom for radical unionists, but without a distinct and openly socialist political platform they were unable to contest the new Republican establishment. 

When the union’s campaigns began to threaten ‘national unity’, bourgeois nationalists had the full weight of the Republican military forces at their disposal. By 1922, tides were shifting against the union movement and business owners led a coordinated effort to cut workers’ wages across the board. On May 12,  a lockout of around three thousand employees was declared, after workers refused to accept the significant pay cuts put to them in new agreements. With the confidence of previous successes, workers (largely organised under the ITGWU) seized control of more than a dozen worksites and production centres in Co. Limerick and Co. Tipperary. Though successful in gaining control of production, the workers had lost the fragile support of Republican leaders and bourgeois elements of the nationalist movement, who embarked on a campaign of repression against them. Anti-Treaty IRA forces destroyed gas works facilities and shot at strikers in Tipperary while trying to establish control of the area, while at the same time, the Republican government used National Army soldiers to dismantle the remaining soviets, in an effort to maintain the Free State’s newfound international legitimacy. 

In prioritising the construction of the new Irish state, both sides of the fractured Republican movement sought to suppress the actions of the radical union movement that had so thoroughly disrupted the rule of capital in Ireland. Where widespread disruption was initially seen as useful for the cause of national liberation, it was rejected once the popular front collapsed. Trade unionists and working class communities became the first target for bourgeois nationalists seeking to establish political control of the island.

This dynamic was established even before the British left. The earliest courts established by the Irish Dail were civil tribunals which did not challenge the British legal system but simply existed alongside it, taking on cases of land disputes and similar matters. The same legal professionals who ran the British administration simply migrated into new roles in the Dail Courts, and Republican forces began enforcing verdicts rather than the British military. As early as 1920, Republican Volunteers were responsible for banishing tenants who had seized land in Galway until they accepted the Courts’ ruling in favour of the landowner. The same year, creamery workers in Cork refused arbitration of the Courts, and IRA members were ordered to escort milk through the picket lines. 

These incidents precipitated the trajectory of Irish republicanism post-Civil War. Even when Republicans have acted as an insurgent force against the British and Irish states, they have simultaneously acted as strongmen in their own communities, policing dissent and brutally cracking down on “anti-social behaviour” with violent punishments. Since the Good Friday Agreement, Sinn Fein have slowly entered into the ruling class both North and South of the border, and in doing so have shown no signs of addressing the class war at the root of the problem.

At each stage of the struggle for national liberation in Ireland, the self-organisation of workers has been seen as either a distraction, a hindrance, or a threat, and the only interests truly represented in the Republican movement have been those of the ruling classes. This dynamic has not disappeared. Sinn Fein is now a mainstream force, yet its resurgence carries no promise of working class liberation. The party now holds the largest minority of seats in both the Northern Irish Stormont and the Dail Eireann, and it presents itself as a party of government willing to tackle the lingering question of national unification. But the key concerns of working people – housing affordability, climate change, income inequality, poverty, police violence – remain unanswered. In almost every way, the party leadership seeks not to disrupt the establishment, but rather to become accepted within it. 

Conclusion

Rebuilding a fighting union movement strong enough to hold real power is the only sure way for workers to win change on material issues. But in the context of a struggle for national liberation, should these concerns be sidelined and redirected towards the primary goal of decolonisation? The history of the Irish Republican movement shows that a strong, combative union movement is crucial to disrupting the economic foundations of colonial regimes, and indeed can come to threaten the bourgeois elements of a nationalist popular front. To avoid being cast aside as popular fronts inevitably collapse, trade unionists and socialists must also be politically organised and willing to fight for a coherent platform of material liberation beyond national independence. If workers are able to use their power to unseat their own rulers, we can also destabilise the global economy and help dismantle the systems of colonial and capitalist oppression entirely.

Though it might seem impossible to imagine a Palestine beyond the horrors we now witness, the only way to reach a just and lasting peace is to completely dismantle the genocidal Israeli state. This means attacking the many roots of the system which stretch across our own countries. Though there are few options for Palestinian resistance fighters, we workers in Australia and around the world should be inspired by their bravery to create our own movements for liberation which can free us from both the suffocating grip of capitalism and the boot of colonial repression.