There are two popular but incorrect takes on Palestine today. First: that countries like Russia and China form an ‘anti-imperialist axis’, and should therefore be supported by communists around the world. Second: that all wars are imperialist, and so Palestine’s struggle must be too – requiring communists to maintain neutrality in the current national liberation struggle.
Both views are profoundly wrong, and dangerously distort Marxist-Leninist principles. In the imperialist stage of capitalism, imperialism is not a policy, but the inevitable outcome of capitalist competition on a global scale. This means that, despite tactical differences, all capitalist states intervene in the Palestinian struggle to serve the same end: increasing profits for their own bourgeoisie.
Different states approach Palestine in different ways – but all do so through the lens of imperialist interest.
First, there are the open supporters of Israel, backing it with the aim of maintaining their stronghold in a region that is central to global energy supplies, trade routes, and military dominance. The US, Zionism’s backbone, continues to provide weapons, funds, and political cover crucial to sustaining the genocide in Gaza. Most NATO and EU states follow the same line, with minor differences in rhetoric regarding Israel’s actions not changing the fact that they remain firmly anchored in the same imperialist bloc.
Second, Russia and China represent the main competing imperialist pole. They issue cautious calls for a ceasefire and a two-state solution even as their (often state-controlled) companies are involved in arms shipments to Israel or in surveillance technologies used against the Palestinian population. Their single aim is weakening US influence and securing control over regional resources and logistics corridors central to their own capitalist expansion.
Of course, the role of NATO and the Russia-China bloc is not equivalent. NATO powers bear primary, direct, and overwhelming responsibility for enabling Zionist genocidal policies. In contrast, Russia and China adopt a more cautious, ambiguous, and ultimately opportunistic posture. Yet it is pivotal to see how both blocs act not out of solidarity or hostility toward the Palestinian people, but in accordance with the material interests of their own bourgeoisie.
A third group of states is composed of regional powers playing a balancing act. Turkey, for example, threatens to freeze ties with Israel, wavering between Russian and American influence while seeking to boost its own political and economic role in the region. Similar contradictions exist in countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the UAE that, by seeking deeper ties with both the US-Israeli and the BRICS bloc, perfectly display how competing imperialist interests can exist not only between states but also within the same state’s bourgeoisie.
Finally, there are states like Iran that openly support the Palestinian resistance both politically and materially. While this weakens Zionism in the short term, it remains driven by those countries’ own capitalist and imperialist ambitions, ie growing profits and countering US-Israeli pressure.
The Middle East holds nearly half of the world’s oil and gas reserves and sits at the crossroads of global trade. It is no surprise that imperialist powers compete so fiercely for control over its territories and resources.
But why is the region today at the centre of escalating imperialist contradictions? A major reason is the current over-accumulation of capital. When profitability declines, capitalist states turn to war as outlets for surplus capital. Arms production, but also ‘post-war’ contracts for reconstruction of cities and infrastructures, bring the needed superprofits to some state bourgeoisies – and losses to others who are shut out of the deal.
By diverting public spending away from social needs and toward monopoly, profits, war, militarisation, and destruction are among capitalism’s ‘solutions’ to economic crisis.
But the Palestinian people are not pawns in this game. While imperialist states see Palestine as a place to expand their power and profit, Palestinians have every right to exploit the contradictions between these blocs in their fight for national liberation.
Understanding imperialism as a global system, and recognising that every state serves the interests of its own capitalist class, is essential to a principled Marxist-Leninist stance on national liberation struggles. From this understanding, however, comes also a clear duty: to stand with the oppressed not by backing one imperialist bloc against another, but by supporting revolutionary resistance against all imperialism. Only through this lens can we build true internationalist solidarity with the Palestinian cause.