Communists were opposed to the two-state solution for France. It is a mistake for them to accept the two-state solution for Palestine.
9 October 2026
By Stephen Gowans
Pro-Zionist communists, such as the Communist parties of the United States, Canada, Britain, and China, support the two-state “solution,” a euphemism for the colonization of 78 percent of Palestine. Many base their support on the argument that a) communists must allow Palestinians to decide the solution to the problem of Jewish colonization of their homeland and b) that most Palestinians favor the two-state proposal. The first part of the argument is logically flawed. The second part is empirically invalid.
Let’s begin with the second part.
A little over a year ago, The Wall Street Journal reported that “Polls in recent years have shown that only a minority of Israelis and Palestinians support the idea” of a two-state solution. Among Palestinians, “just 28 percent of those interviewed … supported such a plan, while 64 percent opposed it.” A Gallup poll released this month showed that 58 percent of Palestinians interviewed in the West Bank and Jerusalem oppose the two-state proposal. (Palestinians in Gaza, could not, for obvious reasons, be surveyed.) As Mondoweiss, an independent, non-profit news website focused on Palestine concluded, “Most Palestinians disagree with a two-state solution.”
In 1947, when partition of Palestine was proposed by the United Nations General Assembly, Palestinians were dead set against it. It shouldn’t be difficult to understand why. Palestinians were expected to hand over 56 percent of their country to recent immigrants who made up only one-third of the population, while they would keep only 42 percent of their homeland. (Jerusalem, two percent of the territory, was to be internationalized under the UN plan.)
The partition plan sparked a civil war followed by an international war. When the dust had settled, Jewish colonizers had driven 83 percent of Palestinians who lived in what has since become 4 June 1967 (or Green Line) Israel out their homes, and refused their repatriation. At the same time, they expanded their territorial holdings from the 56 percent the UN General Assembly had proposed to 78 percent of Palestine. The colonizers said they had accepted the partition plan, but they implemented not one of the plan’s provisions.
For the next 40 years, Palestinians tried to recover their country, pursuing a vision of one democratic state in all of Palestine. They met with no success. After decades of struggle, the PLO accepted what has become known as the two-state solution. At the time it appeared that an independent Palestinian state comprising 22 percent of Palestine, as prescribed by the two-state “solution”, had some hope of coming to fruition. But after decades of a failed “peace process” it became obvious to Palestinians that they had been sold a bill of goods. Instead of getting a Palestinian state on one-fifth of Palestinian territory, they were presented with ongoing colonization of the West Bank, the Judaization of East Jerusalem, and a concentration camp in Gaza.
Let’s examine the first part of the argument: Communists must allow Palestinians self-determination to decide the solution to the problem of Jewish colonization of their homeland.
Alain Alameddine and Saman Hasan are active in the Palestinian-led One Democratic State Initiative. They argue that “Standing against the establishment of a democratic Palestinian state in all of Palestine in the name of Palestinian self-determination is a laughable contradiction. Democracy is, by definition, rule of the people. Democratic states are precisely the tool by which people self-determine.”
On top of being a laughable contradiction, opposing the call for a decolonized Palestine is, for communists, an ideological contradiction. Following Lenin’s lead, communists have always favored decolonization, but somehow their support for decolonization has stopped short of Palestine. Lenin didn’t call for the liberation of the world’s oppressed people, except the Palestinians.
Furthermore, no communist would ever have said “The French must be allowed the self-determination to decide whether to accept the partition of their country into a German colony with a capital at Paris (comprising 60 percent of France), and a French state with its capital at Vichy (comprising 40 percent.) Nor would they have said that the French have accepted that their country should be partitioned, as evidenced by the agreement of their government with the Germans, so we’re going to support the French right to a self-determined “two-state solution.” Any communist who accepted a two-state solution for France would have been justifiably denounced as a collaborator with German colonialism, and hardly a communist at all.
There’s a further contradiction. Pro-Zionist communists say their support for the two-state solution is based on letting Palestinians lead the way, the only true anti-colonial position. The problem with this argument is that pro-Zionist communists have never allowed Palestinians to lead the way.
- They supported the transfer of 56 percent of Palestine to Jewish colonizers in 1947, even though Palestinians were vehemently opposed.
- Today, they continue to support the two-state proposal despite the fact that most Palestinians oppose it.
The only lead pro-Zionist communists have ever followed is that of Moscow, and today, China and Cuba. Moscow reversed the position of the communist movement in 1947 from anti-Zionism to pro-Zionism and from support of one secular democratic Palestinian state in all of Palestine to support for the Jewish colonization of the better part of the Palestinians’ homeland. The volte-face was carried out for Soviet geopolitical aims. Stalin believed the Zionists were committed socialists whose opposition to Britain would make them good allies. Leaving aside the question of whether this policy turned out to be an opportunist blunder, it’s absurd that pro-Zionist communists today mimic a policy based on the realpolitik of a state that has been dead for 35 years!
To sum up, many communists think they’re anti-Zionist because they criticize Israel and (say they) stand with the Palestinians (though it’s not clear how they can claim to stand with the Palestinians while supporting a two-state solution the Palestinians oppose.) Anti-Zionism is a rejection of the project of establishing an ethno-supremacist Jewish state in a colonized Palestine. Supporting the two state “solution”, a euphemism for supporting the Jewish colonization of 78 percent of Palestine, is not anti-Zionism. It is the very opposite.
The pro-Zionist two-state “solution” position is clearly at odds with the communist tradition of opposing colonization. It is also at odds with the call for one secular democratic Palestinian state in all of Palestine, the position of the communist movement before the Soviet Union’s 1947 realpolitik volte-face, as well as that of the Palestinian Marxist-Leninist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Finally, we should recognize the absurdity that lays at the heart of pro-Zionist communist support for the two-state proposal. It assumes that Palestinians would actually prefer the occupation of 78 percent of their land over its liberation. This idea is as absurd as the notion that the French would have preferred a state based at Vichy to the liberation of all of France.
Alain Alameddine and Saman Hasan of the One Democratic State Initiative point out that “A number of movements such as Citizens in a State (Lebanon), the Democratic Popular Unity Party (Jordan), Democratic Socialists of America (USA) [though this is unclear: see comments below, and] Diem25 (Europe)” support some version of one democratic Palestinian state in Palestine. And of course, so too does the Green Party of England and Wales, whose recent support for this position, has been widely covered in the news media. Ironically, it is reformists, not revolutionaries, who are taking the lead in building anti-Zionist platforms and calling for decolonization of Palestine.
Communists must do more than oppose genocide and accept Israel’s existence as a settler colonial state. As Alameddine and Hasan write “The Israel you have seen over the past three years is the one we have been seeing over the past 78 years. It is the only Israel there is—a danger to Palestine,” the Levant, “and the world. The time for non-solutions is over. We must push forward the dismantling of the settler state and the establishment of its antithesis,” one secular democratic Palestinian state in all of Palestine.
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Further thoughts on the DSA’s Palestine position.
Based on the party’s obvious tergiversation, one might think its initials, D.S.A., stand for dissemblers of spineless ambiguity, but that would suggest that the party’s equivocation on Palestine is aimed at concealing its true position. It seems more likely, however, that the party has no position at all, and conceals this reality by taking a stance that is minimally acceptable to both sides. In this, the party can be said to be what the ancient Greeks called a kothornos, or buskin—a boot designed to fit either foot. A buskin tries to accommodates everyone.
This DSA characteristic was alluded to by “Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, president of the New York Board of Rabbis, who criticized” the most high-profile member of the DSA, Zohran Mamdani, “for his efforts to appease both sides. ‘What is surprising is if the mayor thought that somehow he could walk between the raindrops,’ Hirsch said.”
Trying to walk between the rain drops is perhaps the best way to sum up the DSA as a party.
Hirsch went on to say that “There is no middle ground between those who want to destroy Israel and those who want Israel to survive.” I agree. Except I would put it this way: There is no middle ground between those who call for one democratic Palestinian state in all of Palestine and those who want a racist settler colonial state to survive. Except the DSA thinks it can finesse one through the strategic use of ambiguity.
Refusing to take a side, as the DSA does, while at the same time conjuring the illusion it has come down firmly on one side or the other (whichever one pleases you best), calls to mind an observation made by Desmond Tutu (hardly original to him) that “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
Fair point.
The DSA position is unquestionably ambiguous, and so much so that it appears to be an equivocation. One could argue that the party’s position is simply a description of the two-state proposal shorn of any explicit reference to Israel to create the impression that it is an endorsement of one democratic state, for those who want to believe it is. And it could indeed be an endorsement of one democratic state, if read in a certain way.
On the other hand, the position statement is not incompatible with the two-state solution. “The right to self-determination in a free Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital” could mean a free and independent Palestinian state on the 22 percent of Palestine not colonized by Zionists, with East Jerusalem as its capital. For those who want to believe the DSA position is, au fond, the same as the two-state solution, there’s much in this statement to satisfy them.
Clearly, the party has bent over backwards to avoid clarity and in doing so has (dishonestly I would argue) produced a Rorschach blot position-—one that’s so nebulous you can read into it whatever you want.
It is said, “A number of movements such as … Democratic Socialists of America (USA) … support some version of one democratic Palestinian state in Palestine.” This is not the case.
The current program of DSA (it changes every year or two) reads: “Recognize the rights of the Palestinian people, including the right of return, the right to resist military occupation, and the right to self determination in a free Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital. End all military and economic aid to Israel. Prosecute U.S. and Israeli leaders responsible for the genocide in Gaza.”
https://program.dsausa.org/
As you can see, this militant rhetoric does not demand a single democratic state in all Palestine. Note the demand to end aid to Israel. This is an example of a typical DSA fudge. Is it simply an immediate demand? Then why does it follow the sweeping demand for the right to self determination? Or does it demand no aid to an Israel that continues to exist next to a bantustan Palestine in a two-state solution?
DSA is known as a group with a dozen or so significant caucuses, and some of them may declare for one democratic state. But the official program is the official program. In any event, real power in DSA does not reside in the caucuses, but in the National Office and with the candidates for offices around the country whom DSA has endorsed.