The US Imperialism and the EU are accomplices! Down with the zionist capitalist state!
On the past 10th of May, israeli planes started a bombardment operation in the Gaza Strip.
Since then, artillery and tanks have joined the hundreds of air raids and missiles hitting like a rain of hell-fire. The military attacks have killed at least 170 people as of the 16th of May, with 41 children and more than 20 women amongst them, causing hundreds of injuries and huge and serious damage to infrastructures, houses and neighbourhoods. This is the biggest attack against the Palestinian population since 2014, and a ground operation might be imminent.
This new offensive by the zionist state is part of a policy to punish the occupied territories, especially Gaza, which has led to the collapse in living conditions.
The electricity, drinking water and health system shortages are compounded by the Israeli government decision to deny vaccinations for the Palestinian people.
Western Imperialism, with Joe Biden’s government at the helm, has justified Israel’s right to carry out this massacre invoking the firing of missiles by Hamas. What a criminal hypocrisy! All hide and willfully ignore what happened in the past few weeks, and Netanyahu’s responsibility.
Provocations by the Israeli government have repeatedly happened throughout Ramadan: closure of muslim religious spaces, evictions of Palestinian families in the Sheik Jarrah neighbourhood to benefit israel settlers, and a constant far-right presence harassing and attacking palestinian people. All of this has been the straw that broke the camel’s back, overflowing the indignation and weariness of the israeli-arab population, 20% of the inhabitants in Israel, that lives in a regime of semi-segregation, with less rights than the jewish israelis.
The protests against these provocations have grown, becoming the largest mobilisation of the palestine population living in israeli cities that the zionist government has faced in years, with the youth playing a prominent role. In the Northern cities, tens of thousands of Palestinians have demonstrated against the police inaction toward the far-right groups and attacks. Everywhere the Palestinian flag and slogans rise up again- not only in the occupied territories anymore, but inside the borders of the 1948 accord that created Israel.
In the days before the bombardments the anti-riot police laid siege, on numerous occasions, to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, which became the epicentre of the protests, and brutally invaded it. Using rubber bullets, smoke and stun grenades, they injured 200 people on Friday, 7th of May and 300 people on Monday, the 10th.
In the days before the bombardments the anti-riot police laid siege, on numerous occasions, to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, which became the epicentre of the protests, and brutally invaded it
Netanyahu and the political crisis of Israel
The punishment operation in Gaza is happening during the middle of the deepest political crisis in the history of Israel. After four elections in only two years, the instability of the Government remains, and Netanyhau is facing lawsuits and processes that might lead him to prison. He lost his opportunity to form a new Cabinet and it is now the turn for the group of parties that opposes him.
During the weeks before the offensive, Neanyahu encouraged and fanned the police repression andsettlers' marches, in order to create a situation of “exception” and hinder the formation of a Government opposed to him. This move has bore its first fruits, with Naftali Bennet’s Yamina coalition, a far-right coalition with a social base on the settlers and colonists, already leaving the anti-Netanyahu block and engaging in talks with him.
Palestinians are again paying with their lives for the turmoil in israeli internal policies, the crisis of the regime and of zionist capitalism.
Netanyahu has, for the last two decades, supported himself in the most reactionary layers of society: the ultra-orthodoxes, settlers and colonists, the religious far-right… He has showered them with money and overrepresentation in parliament and ministries. Now, those forces have been unleashed, and it is not at all clear that Netanyahu will be able to control them to achieve his objective of heading a new government. The possibility of an even bigger political crisis of unpredictable consequences is very real.
Real “pogroms” are happening on the streets of the cities with a mixed population, led by the zionist far-right against palestinians. With the cries of “death to the arabs” they are attacking mosques, houses and lynching palestinian people in the middle of the street, sometimes in front of tv cameras. The arab population is organizing to face the aggressions and protesting against the scandalous inaction of the police. Every night, hundreds of Palestinians are being detained and arrested.
The widespread clashes encompass Acre, Um el Fahm, Tamra, Nazareth, Jaffa and Haifa, but it is Lod, a city close to Tel Aviv, that has become the face of this situation. On Monday three israelis were arrested in Lod for murdering a Palestinian person with gunfire. They were released on Thursday after well-known israeli politicians criticized their arrests. On Monday, a state of emergency and curfew was imposed on the city.
The fundamental support of imperialism
The brutality of the bombardments in Gaza, and what is happening in the israeli cities and the occupied West Bank has also exposed the sham of Biden’s Government, a president in the pockets of Wall Street, who has given continuity to Trump’s foreign policy regarding Israel. Although he tried to keep his distance from Netanyahu during the beginning of the offensive- which was clear by the hesitancy of various White House spokespersons in the first few press conferences about the offensive- he has shown his true colours after several hours and steadfastly supported Israel.
The role of the European Union is exactly the same, giving cover to this new slaughter. It shocks that Washington and Brussels ask for “restraint” when they carry so much of the responsibility for what happens in Jerusalem and the policy of illegal settlements to colonise even more palestinian land.
Israel is the most faithful partner of western imperialism in the Middle East. The US and EU have made clear throughout the decades that they will not jeopardise this alliance in any event. The Palestinian people cannot expect any help from any forum of the so-called “international community”.
Regarding the Spanish Government, the self-entitled “most progressive government in history”, it has done no more than calling for “deescalation” and to emphasise that the rocket launches from inside Gaza should stop. What a submission to the interests of the Israeli zionist state and its imperialist partners!
The role of Hamas and Fatah
The current situation illustrates the absolute helplessness and political defeat of Fatah and the Palestinian National Authority. In the end of April the palestinian president Mahmud Abbas postponed elections scheduled for the 21st of May, the first elections in 15 years. The excuse was the refusal of Israel to allow Jerusalem inhabitants to vote. The reality behind this indefinite postponement is the hit which Abbas will take in the elections. Fatah has splintered into three lists and he heads the less popular one.
For its part, Hamas is trying to capitalise on the situation. In the protests of the past few weeks slogans in support of Hamas have been heard. Nature abhors a void and it is clear that to many of the youth who are staging these protests, Hamas appears as fighting the occupation, in opposition to Fatah that limits itself to obey Israel rules, with occasional timid protestations. Nevertheless, these protests have been spontaneous, not organised by either the Hamas or Fatah.
The authority of both organisations has been drastically undermined even more during the last few years. They have been responsible for brutally repressing workers’ strikes, youth protests and the struggle against the ever worsening living conditions in the occupied territories. With their actions and repression, they showed ever more clearly the bureaucratic character of its dispute for the PNA, and the increasing weight of its foreign sponsors: western imperialism in the case of Fatah, and Turkey and Qatar in the case of Hamas.
The experience of the last few decades is very clear- neither Fatah nor Hamas have contributed to the advancement of the cause of the Palestinan people. Fatah’s collaborationist politics is simply a surrender and the Hamas rockets achieved exactly the opposite of what they pretend to want to achieve: they temporarily strengthen Netanyahu and contribute to the removal of mass struggle from the forefront.
A socialist and internationalist programme of support for the Palestinian cause.
The weeks before the offensive have offered valuable lessons about the methods of struggle. Mass action, with the palestinian youth on the forefront resisting police repression, has achieved a series of victories that contributed to propel and strengthen the rank-and-file of the movement.
Mass action forced the police to reopen the Damascus Gate and allow the passage of palestinian people, and in the Sheik Jarrah neighbourhood they achieved a one-month postponement of the evictions by the Supreme Court.
The mobilisation of the masses has shown the weakness of Netanyahu, and of the bunch of reactionaries and ultra-reactionaries that fight to succeed him in the rotten israeli parliament. It has exposed the so-called “Abraham Accords” and the hypocrisy of the Arab oligarchies, from Saudi Arabia to the Moroccan Monarchy, much more effectively than the lame protests of Abbas and Fatah. And it has put back on the table the issue of Palestine liberation, when many wanted to simply write it off as a defeat.
Against the occupation, and now against the war, we have to rise a palestinian revolutionary movement of resistance and self-defence, armed with the programme of proletarian internationalism and working-class unity, and rooted in mass struggle and organisation.
This is not an utopia. In Israel successive demonstrations to oppose Netanyahu’s government have been taking place since July of 2020. In them, israeli jews and israeli arabs have stood shoulder to shoulder on the streets, and felt the repression of the same anti-riot and militarised border police that now attacks the palestinian people and supports the actions of the far-right.
We, on the left and the working-class movement in the rest of the world have to help empower this movement, and stop the massacre by ending its causes: imperialist oppression and the existence of puppet Governments , throughout the whole of the Middle East, that only protect and safeguard the interests of the capitalist oligarchy.
Long live the struggle of Palestinian People for their freedom!
For a socialist federation of the Middle East!
