Palestine solidarity and overdetermination

My attempt at answering a question a lot of people I organise with have been pondering...

As Israel terrorises Lebanon with impunity, continuing its bombing campaign and exploding the pagers and walkie talkies of dozens of Lebanese citizens, I wanted to make a point about the endurance of the genocidal settler-colonial regime’s aggression. Over this past year of mass internationalist mobilisation, it has struck me that despite a widespread frustration with the global Palestine solidarity movement’s results, there has been little in the way of an analysis of why we have not achieved our goals. These objectives range from a ceasefire and an end to all arms export licences, to the total political, economic and legal exclusion of Israel and the practical realisation of its growing pariah status.

In doing so, I want to reintroduce the concept of “overdetermination", as utilised by Louis Althusser. For the French Marxist, “overdetermination” meant “the reflection in contradiction itself of its conditions of existence, that is, of its situation in the structure in dominance of the complex whole". This concept implies that any contradiction within the global capitalist system is affected and mediated by the different ‘levels’ which constitute the capitalist totality - be they ideological, economic, political or otherwise. Put crudely and simply, lots of different things affect other things.

Now, we, as an international movement, have marched, occupied, blockaded and forced our arguments into an incredible array of social spheres, from the workplace and the corridors of governmental power, to the legal arena and the boardrooms of the global rich. Despite the huge gains we have made and the mass movements we have built, there are a number of obvious reasons for our lack of success. For one, transformations do not take place overnight. We face the resistance of large sections of the world’s ruling elite, most notably those aligned to the US-led imperial order. The Palestinian people and the wider Arab popular classes have an essential role to play in the destruction of Israel and the reactionary Arab states which facilitate its existence. The Palestine solidarity movement across the world is uneven and, despite making huge advances over the past year, has many more strides to make. And, of course, popular Israeli support for the colonial state’s genocidal campaign in Gaza and increasingly now in the West Bank too, is one of the key features keeping Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir and Israel’s far right in power. This last factor cannot be underplayed. Despite the images of protests against the Israeli government, the Pew Research Center’s data in May informed us that, “When asked to assess their country’s military response against Hamas in Gaza, about four-in-ten Israelis say it has been about right. Another 34% say it has not gone far enough, while 19% say it has gone too far.” This means that, when asked, more than seven-in-ten Israelis believe that the murder of between 40,000 (according to Palestinian health authorities) and 186,000 Gazans (according to the Lancet) is entirely justified. At one point, taken together with Likud’s poll collapse, this could have led one to believe that the settler state’s genocidal war was the prime activity keeping this particular cabinet in power. The news that Netanyahu’s party is now experiencing a recovery in the polls only reinforces this trajectory. If you need an example of the exterminatory racial logics which drive settler-colonial civil society, look no further. 

But, if those reasons for the endurance of Israel’s barbarisms were not enough, I think there is something else at play here. Whilst the historic relationship of interdependency between Israel and the US empire has not disappeared, it is mutating as we experience the beginning of the end for US imperialism. Prior to Oct 7th 2023, the US’ place in the Arab world looked shakier than ever. The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq had both been unmitigated disasters from the US imperial perspective. China’s influence in the region has been quietly growing. The burgeoning power has become Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates’s largest non-oil trading partner as a result of its emergence as the world’s manufacturing powerhouse; it has conducted a number of strategic partnership agreements with a handful of states in the region; and played a crucial role in orchestrating the Saudi-Iran deal alleviating a period of bitter relations between the two states. As well as growing Chinese soft power in the region, the increasing self-confidence of the Gulf States and their somewhat tense relations with the US has also become a notable feature of regional and global relations. As the imperial hegemon frays, not only is its key rival making inroads, but a number of regional, sub-imperial powers also compete for influence and dominance within the region. This is to some extent the story Israel’s ideologists - eager to declare the next act of aggression on Lebanon, Iran or Yemen - tell themselves in their quest to further radicalise the colonial project too. 

This is not to imply that the US’s influence in the region is done. But the empire is stretched. Between its catastrophes in the Middle East, Russia’s war on NATO-backed Ukraine, and the desired focus on China’s rise to power, the US does not want to be hampered by its interests in the Middle East. It is upon this landscape - of imperial fracturing, delegitimation and isolation -  that we must understand the West’s unremitting support for the pariah state and the lack of a breakthrough on the part of one of the biggest social movements in the history of recent humanity. The US, on its own terms, clearly cannot afford to lose its colonial outpost in the region. Except unlike in the past, this dependency is born from weakness.

The US’ dependency on Israel may not make it enthusiastic for another war in the region, but it does throw a great deal of contingency into the situation. The dynamic in motion in Israeli politics insists that, if the rightist settler government wants to preserve itself, it must go on with its war of extermination and extend it into a regional war against neighbouring countries. The Israeli state does not have the military to prosecute a war, especially as its economy lies in tatters, and the US cannot leave it to fight a regional war alone. So then, grasping the key dynamic defining this murderous intransigence beyond the normal rules of the game and the colonial tendency towards racialised dehumanisation, means staring the “morbid symptoms” of the US’ decline squarely in the face.

The strained imperial hegemon (and its allies) could be dragged into a regional war of aggression it does not want, precisely because of the colonial monster it has created. They - and Britain - facilitated the birth, growth and solidification of Israel. They finance it, arm it, and fuel it. And we will likely be returning to the streets again to organise against the latest phase in its bloodsoaked trail of colonial horror. The onus is upon us then, following the examples of campaigns such as Workers in Palestine, Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions, Health Workers for a Free Palestine, and many more, to put an inordinate amount of pressure on the levers that can bring the settler regime to a halt.

Developing his thoughts on determination, causality and agency, Althusser remarked that “the lonely hour of the ‘last instance’ never comes”. By this, he meant that the final economic determination is never quite realised. The global anticolonial solidarity movement, led by the Palestinian freedom movement, will have to prove that wrong.