In his article, ” Analysis of the Classes of Chinese Society “ (March 1926) Mao Tse Tung writes:

“Who are our enemies? Who are our friends?

1. Mao Tse-Tung, Selected Works, Vol. 1. Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1965. p. 13. This is a question of the first importance for the revolution. The basic reason why all previous revolutionary struggles in China achieved so little is their failure to unite with real friends in order to attack real enemies. A revolutionary party is the guide of the masses, and no revolution ever succeeds when the revolutionary party leads them astray. To ensure that we will definitely achieve success in our revolution and will not lead the masses astray, we must pay attention to uniting with our real friends in order to attack our real enemies. We must make a general analysis of the economic status of the various classes in Chinese society and of their respective attitudes towards the revolution.” ¹

Who, then, are our enemies?

Political thinking behind any revolution commences by posing this question and replying to it. Admittedly, the masses of our Palestinian people have not yet answered this in a clear, specific and conclusive manner. Without a clear definition of the enemy, a clear view of the battle becomes impossible.

The evaluation of the adversary by our masses has been an emotional process until now. When we achieve a few partial victories there prevails among the masses a general atmosphere which belittles the enemy’s power, imagining the battle to be a quick and easy one in which it is possible for us to triumph within a short period. On the other hand, when the enemy deals us severe blows we sometimes go to the other extreme and imagine our enemy as an invincible force.

It is evident that with such emotional vacillation, it is impossible for us to have a scientific view of the battle or to plan intelligently and with perseverance for winning it.

The time has come for our masses to understand the true nature of the enemy because, through such understanding, the picture of the battle becomes clear to them.

1. Israel

In our battle for liberation we first face Israel as a political, military, and economic entity which is trying to effect the maximum military mobilization of its two and a half million nationals to defend its aggressive expansionist racial structure and prevent us from regaining our land, our freedom and our rights. This enemy enjoys a marked technological superiority which is clearly reflected by the standard of its armament and training and by the dynamism of its movement. It also enjoys a great ability to mobilize resulting from its feeling that it is waging a life-or-death battle and that consequently it has no alternative but to defend itself until its last breath.

This ability to mobilize and this technological superiority must be kept in our minds at all times throughout our confrontation with the enemy. It is not by chance that we hitherto lost all our battles with this enemy, and it would be a big mistake to give partial or haphazard explanation to our defeats. Understanding the true nature of the enemy is the first step to strategic planning for victory. But is Israel the only enemy that we are facing in the battle? It would be a gross error to confine our view of the enemy to Israel alone, for then we should be like one who imagines that he is in conflict with one man, only to find himself face to face with ten men for whom he is not prepared.

2. World Zionist Movement

Israel is in reality an integral part of the world Zionist movement – indeed, it is an offshoot of this movement. Thus, in our battle with Israel, we are facing, not the State of Israel alone, but an Israel whose structure is founded on the strength of the Zionist movement. Zionism as a racial religious movement is trying to organize and recruit 14 million Jews in all parts of the world to support Israel, protect its aggressive existence and consolidate and expand this existence. This support is not confined to moral backing: it is really and basically a material support which providing Israel with more people, more money, more arms, more technical knowhow and more alliances concluded by the movement by virtue of its influence, in addition to its support through publicity and propaganda in every part of the world. Thus, when we say that our enemy is Israel plus the Zionist movement we do not add to our enemy a mere string of words but a material force of a certain size which we must take into account in making our calculations for the battle.

In the present report we confine ourselves to this general view of Israel and the world Zionist movement, but we must refer to the necessity of making a precise and detailed study of Israel and the world Zionist movement. Far from obstructing the general view, such a study would confirm this view and make it more palpable, thus enabling us to get rid of any superficial imagination about our enemy.

Some interest has been displayed in recent years in the study of Israel and the world Zionist movement. Such studies place before us the facts about this enemy and the political, military, economic and social aspects of its life. Our political and military cadres are expected to read these studies regardless of the political trend governing the writers’ line of thinking because, from particular data and facts, and through detailed information, we will have a true, concrete picture of the enemy whom we are fighting. It must be pointed out that the enemy facing us and represented by Israel and Zionism is naturally governed by a number of conflicts both inside Israel, as in any other society, and between Israel and the world Zionist movement.

These conflicts must be for us a subject of constant study and research. The growth of the resistance movement will undoubtedly increase the acuity of these conflicts so that we may be able to channel them to serve the interest of the liberation battle. As far as the coming battle is concerned these contradictions have not reached a degree which hampers the full concentration and consolidation taking place inside Israel and the world Zionist movement. For us the picture of the enemy must remain that of a camp which is being strongly and efficiently concentrated and consolidated with technical skill and precise organization with the object of fully mobilizing the inhabitants of Israel and world Jewry to face us in this battle.

Now, does our perspective of the enemy stop at this limit?

Is this the picture of “all the enemy” we are facing?

We repeat that we would be committing a big mistake if we fail make scientific calculations for the battle if we allow and our perspective to stop at this limit.

In the battle for the liberation of Palestine, we are facing a third force, that of world imperialism led by the United States of America.

3. World Imperialism

World imperialism has its interests which it fights fiercely to defend and keep. These interests consist in robbing the riches of the underdeveloped countries by purchasing them at the lowest prices and then processing these riches and re-selling them at the highest prices in the markets of these same countries. By this operation they accumulate immense profits enabling them to increase their capital at the expense of the people’s poverty, deprivation and wretchedness. The Arab world possesses many resources, mainly petroleum, and constitutes a big consuming market for manufactured goods. Imperialism wants to maintain this situation to allow the process accumulation of imperialist wealth to continue on the one hand and our poverty to increase on the other. To this end, it is genuinely determined to crush any revolutionary movement which aims at freeing our country and people from this exploitation.

The revolutionary movement of the masses in the Arab World naturally aims at destroying Israel because Israel is a force which has usurped a portion of this world and is a great danger threatening other portions of it. Consequently, Israel cannot but fight to the end, any Palestinian or Arab revolutionary movement. Here imperialism finds itself in the best position in this part of the world, because through Israel it is able to fight the Arab revolutionary movement which aims at eliminating it from our homeland with Israel becoming the force and the base used by imperialism to protect its presence and defend its interests in our land. Such a situation creates an organic unity between Israel and the Zionist movement on the one hand and word imperialism on the other, because they are both interested in fighting the Palestinian and Arab national liberation movement. Thus the protection, reinforcement and support of Israel and the maintenance of its existence, are fundamental matters for the interests of world imperialism. This gives us a coherent picture of the enemy which clearly embraces Israel, the world Zionist movement and world imperialism.

Here also we want to stress that the addition of imperialism to our image of the enemy camp should not be regarded as an addition of mere words to our definition of the enemy, for it enters into the concrete picture we have of the enemy against whom we are waging this battle. Imperialism here means more arms, more support and more money for Israel. It means Phantom jets, atomic bomb secrets, and the building of an economy capable of facing the permanent blockade and state of war which we try to impose.

Here millions upon millions of West German marks and American dollars are converted into a concrete force which increases Israeli strength and should therefore be taken into account in our calculations for the battle.

Our enemy then is not Israel alone. It is Israel, Zionism, imperialism, and unless we have a clear scientific knowledge of our enemy we cannot hope to triumph over it. The opinion which attempts to “neutralise” the Palestinian question on the international level by contending; “Why not try to win America to our side in the battle instead of allowing it to remain on Israel’s side?” is an erroneous and dangerous opinion because it is unscientific, unrealistic and far from being accurate. It is dangerous because it camouflages the truth about the enemy facing us and leads to erroneous calculations during the battle.

Does our definition of the enemy stop at this limit? Are these all the forces which we are facing in the Palestine liberation battle?

Is this “all the enemy” facing us? There is a fourth force which substantially stands on the side of the enemy camp and which we must view and define clearly.

4. Arab Reaction represented by Feudalism and Capitalism.

Arab capitalism, whose interests are represented and defended by reactionary regimes in the Arab world, does not constitute an independent capitalist unit and is consequently unable to assume independent political positions. In point of fact, this capitalism represents weak branches of world capitalism which are interconnected with, and form an integral part of, the latter. The millionaires of the Arab world, including merchants, bankers, feudal lords, owners of large estates, kings, emirs and sheikhs, have in fact acquired their millions by virtue of their co-operation with world capitalism. They have amassed this wealth because they are commercial agents for goods produced by foreign capital, or secondary shareholders in foreign banking establishments or insurance companies, or they are sheikhs, emirs and kings at the head of regimes which defend and protect colonial interests and strike at any mass movement aiming at freeing our economy from this exploiting influence. Consequently, they cannot keep their millions unless our land remains a market for foreign goods and foreign investments, and unless the colonialists continue to plunder our oil and other resources, because this is the only way which enables them to acquire and keep their millions.

This means that, in a real liberation battle waged by the masses to destroy imperialist influence in our homeland, Arab reaction cannot but be on the side of its own interests, the continuation of which depends on the persistence of imperialism, and consequently cannot side with the masses.

These Arab reactionary forces – particularly the intelligent ones – may outwardly support superficial national movements with the object of using them to settle, to their own advantage, some of their side conflicts with Israel or with world imperialism, but in the end they are inevitably against any national liberation movement which aims at uprooting colonialism from our soil and building an independent economy which will serve the interests of the masses instead of going into the pickets of the few representing these reactionary forces.

The growth of the revolutionary mass movement means, in relation to these forces, the growth of the people’s authority which acts to destroy the authority of these forces. Therefore, whatever degree their conflicts with Israel and imperialism attain, they are at all times conscious of the fact that their main conflict is with the movement of the masses which seeks the complete destruction of their interests and authority.

The classification of Arab reaction as one of the forces of the enemy is of the utmost importance, because failure to recognize this fact means failure to have a clear view before us. In actual practice it means failure to take account of real bases and forces for the enemy camp which are living among us and are capable of playing a diversionary role which disguises the facts of the battle before the masses and which, when the opportunity arises, will take the revolution unawares and deal it a blow leading to defeat.

This then is the enemy camp which we are really facing in our battle for the liberation of Palestine. We cannot win this battle without a clear sight of all parties in this camp. In the light of the definition of these parties and our perception of the connections which bind them together, it becomes clear that our strongest enemy, the real and main enemy, is world imperialism, that Arab reaction is but one of its offshoots. and that Israel’s power lies in its being one of the bases of world imperialism which is providing it with all sources of power and converting it into a big military force possessing the technological superiority and the economy which enable it to survive in spite of the conditions under which it lives.

Thus the struggle for the liberation of Palestine, like any other liberation struggle in the world, becomes a struggle against world imperialism which is intent on plundering the wealth of the underdeveloped world and on keeping it a market for its goods. Naturally Israel – and the Zionist movement as well – have their own characteristics, but these characteristics must be viewed in the light of Israel’s organic link with imperialism.

Following the end of the First World War, the Palestinian feudal forces and bourgeoisie tried to picture the struggle as if the enemy was only the Zionist movement and the Jews in Palestine. and on the basis that British colonialism would act as a neutral force in this conflict. It was only later that the masses, through the national contingents that formed their vanguard, became aware that their real enemy was British colonialism which wanted to strengthen and support the Zionist movement in our country as a means of striking at the ambitions of the progressive masses.

Our people today are no longer in need of new experiments and improvised actions. In our struggle for the liberation of Palestine, we face primarily world imperialism, our battle is directed basically against it, against Israel which acts as its base and against the reactionary forces which are allied to it. We will not win the battle unless we have a clear knowledge of our enemy to ensure that our calculations for the battle are correct.

Any deficiency or lack of clarity in our view of the enemy camp with all its parties, contingents and alliances means a deficiency or lack of clarity in our imagination of the level of revolutionary mobilization which we must undertake to be able to confront such a camp and attain superiority over it in our battle.

In the light of all this the main features of the enemy facing us become clear:

1. Our enemy in the battle is Israel, Zionism, world imperialism and Arab reaction.
2. This enemy possesses technological superiority and definite superiority in production which naturally develops into military superiority and great fighting power.
3. In addition to all this, the enemy has long experience in facing the masses’ movement towards economic and political liberation and has the power to defeat such movement unless the masses possess that high degree of political consciousness which enables them to counteract all methods used by the neo-colonialists in trying to defeat revolutionary movements.
4. The nature of the battle in relation to this enemy’s principal military base represented by Israel is a life-or-death struggle which the political and military leadership inside Israel will endeavour to put up until the last breath.

This clear view of the enemy camp puts matters in the right perspective and eliminates any superficial view of the battle. It is this clear perspective which determines the time and place of the battle and the nature of the fight. In other words, it is this perspective which determines:

1. The importance of the revolutionary theory and revolutionary political thinking which is capable of mobilising all revolutionary forces to confront the enemy, to stand firm in this confrontation and to counteract all enemy measures to thwart and undermine revolutionary action.
2. The powerful political organization which is the vanguard of the forces of revolution in the struggle, armed with a stronger determination to win than the enemy’s determination to defend its existence and interests to the last breath.
3. The nature and size of the revolutionary alliances which must be recruited to confront the entire enemy camp.
4. The course of armed struggle taking the form of guerrilla warfare at first and developing in the direction of the protracted people’s liberation war which will ensure ultimate triumph over the enemy’s technological and military superiority.

It is the nature of the enemy which determines the nature of the confrontation and here lies the danger of any superficial or unscientific look at the enemy camp and its main characteristics.