The francophone Anarchist Federation denounces and condemns the latest military attacks currently underway in Palestine and in the occupied territories following the kidnapping of a young Franco-Israeli soldier.

It is once again the civilian population, directly affected, who is paying with its blood, living conditions, and freedom for the conflict between two nationalist, capitalist, military, and religious logics in the ongoing war between the State of Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

It is indeed Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, voted to power by taking advantage of the corruption and discredit in Yasser Arafat’s Fatah party and the decay of the PLO, who are manipulating the anger and frustration of the majority of Palestinians by transforming the struggle against colonial oppression into a religious fight and an apogee of anti-Semitism.

Israeli governments have always sought out this religious conflict and as such encouraged the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in order to legitimate their colonial policies of domination and ethnic apartheid to the West.

As anarchists we know that States separate peoples by erecting borders. Just as creating the State of Israel did not settle anything in this region or for the exiled Jewish peoples, themselves in a desperate situation in another era, the creation of a real Palestinian State cannot satisfy us. Indeed, how would a more formal State help Palestinians? What would this State do? Maintain the status quo with increasing Islamic influence and leave social struggle aside on the pretext that Israel is the enemy. What about social emancipation? Where is the social and economic equality in all this? The hatred between peoples barricaded behind the barbed wire borders of their respective states would crystallise around “national” groups (a vague, misleading, and interclassist concept) if even more borders are drawn up.

We propose anarchist federalism, fundamentally egalitarian and adapted to a Middle East composed of a mosaic of peoples, favouring the free association and federation on egalitarian bases of the individuals and groups of individuals making up this federalism.

Redistribution of wealth and generalised self-production are indispensable in this region as elsewhere, where there are rich and poor people, and States vying for access to the sea, water, fertile lands, and oil.

An alternative is possible in the Middle-East if both Israeli and Palestinian peoples reject the artificial barriers which separate and oppose them in order to unite against their common enemies, political, economic, religious, and military power to together build the bases of a society which guarantees peace and harmony.

The existence of collectives made up of Palestinian and Israeli individuals, for example struggling together against the Wall or supporting military deserters and opponents, proves once again that that which unites us, mutual aid and solidarity, is stronger than that which divides us.

The francophone Anarchist Federation calls all forces in the social movement and all individuals who hold justice, peace, and freedom dear to protest by all means possible for the intolerable situation faced by workers, civilians, women, men, and children in this region of the world to be put to an end as quickly as possible.

Fédération anarchiste, 05/07/06