Search
Close this search box.

Israel rejects ceasefire despite mounting opposition to the Gaza slaughter

The murderous bombardment of the Gaza strip continues into a fifth day, with a threat by an Israeli cabinet minister of “long weeks of action.” The death toll of Palestinians stands at over 370 killed, many were members of the Hamas security forces but many civilians are amongst the dead.

The targets chosen – every institution and building associated with Hamas – means that all government buildings, most Mosques, plus the dense network of social services and the Islamic University – makes high numbers of civilian dead and wounded inevitable. The Gaza strip is one of the most densely populated places on Earth, with some 1.5 million people packed into a tiny strip of land (360 sq kilometres or 139 square miles in size). Israel knows this and yet continues its attack.

Hamas was democratically elected as the Palestinian government in 2006, but at US and Israeli instigation the “international community” refused to recognise these elections. They issued an ultimatum for Fatah to be given the dominant role in the government and control over the security forces, even though the electorate had clearly rejected them at the polls. Within a year – egged on by Israel threats and CIA manipulation – fighting broke out as Fatah forces tried to oust Hamas from its dominant position in Gaza. Hamas naturally resisted, effectively splitting Palestine into two entities, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

Israel pulled its illegal settlers out of the Gaza Strip, precisely in order to clear its line of fire. The way was open for a state of siege against the entire 1.5 million people, who were to be collectively punished for daring to elect the “wrong party,” i.e one that had not yet capitulated to Israel . The blockade has intensified over the last two months, forcing Palestinians to live in terrible conditions, denying them access to essentials like electricity, petrol, heating and cooking oil.

Whilst socialists have nothing in common with the political goals of Hamas for an Islamic state in Palestine or the imposition of sharia law on those who do not wish to live their lives according to its prescriptions, they cannot fail to recognize that Hamas stands now at the forefront of resistance to Israel in Gaza –as Hezbollah did last year in Lebanon. In this military role it fully deserves the support of workers, youth, indeed all democratic and progressive forces worldwide who must wish its victory and help it to defeat the Israel attacks and break siege of Gaza.

The current offensive is a cynical ploy by the incumbent Israeli government a coalition government of “centre right” Kadima and “centre left” Labour, to win back votes at the February election. Michael Warschawski, a founder of the Alternative Information Centre in Jerusalem, pointed out that “all Israeli leaders are competing over who is the toughest and who is ready to kill more.” As long as the illusion that this bloody onslaught can deliver victory over Hamas, public opinion in the Israeli population remains pro-government and its latest war.

Premier Ehud Olmert, mired in corruption scandals and the ignominy of the defeat by Hezbollah in the 2006 invasion of southern Lebanon, desperately needed to persuade the electorate that the IDF had restored its military prowess. He did so by raining death and destruction from the air on Gaza. But this cowardly attack, whilst it can cause a enormous amount of human suffering, will not and cannot break the will to resist of the Palestinians.

They have no alternative. The plain fact is that no Israeli government has offered or will offer meaningful concessions, even to wretched quislings like Mahmoud Abbas and his corrupt regime on the West Bank. The Palestinians have no option but to resist because Israel offers them nothing short of their annihilation as a people – i.e. ethnic cleansing from all the best land and loss of control over its infratructure and communications links, and the penning up of the remaining population into a series of barren enclaves. In short the Palestinian people face deliberate genocide.

The international media tries to apportion the greater share of the blame to Hamas, claiming that Israel’s attacks are only a response to the ‘indiscriminate rocket fire from the Gaza strip’. The BBC carries daily reports of the ‘Sderot front line’, it shows footage of damaged buildings, it points to the four dead Israelis as some kind of justification for the Israeli government killing 400 Palestinians.

The attempt to equate the two actions are totally wrong. The firing of unguided rockets which certainly kill civilians is nothing compared to the massive full scale bombardment of the Gaza strip by the Israeli air force. The Palestinians do not have an army or modern military equipment, whereas Israel has one of the most powerful military forces in the whole region. The Israelis deliberately ignored Hamas’ overtures for a renewal of the ceasefire if they would lift the siege and stop their aerial attacks on Hamas leaders.

The government did so because (a) they absolutely refused to lift the blockade, which had become near total in early November, and (b) because they were looking for a pretext for the onslaught they were preparing. Moreover as a result of ministerial visits to Cairo just before Christmas they had got the Egyptian president and the Saudi King’s tacit approval for the destruction of Hamas rule in Gaza. Today in despite the murder of its militants, Hamas has once again said that it was prepared to consider proposals for a ceasefire. Hamas official Ayman Taha has commented “Once we receive a proposal, we will study it. We are for any initiative that will bring an immediate cessation to the aggression and lift the siege entirely.” The response of Israel is a flat refusal.

Socialists clearly stand with the oppressed Palestinians in their struggle for liberation from their racist oppressors, including their right to re-establish their own national state on the entire territory of pre-1948 “Mandate Palestine.” The Zionists and their imperialist backers try to cover the racist logic by talking about their “demographic problems- i.e. about how to expel, and keep expelled, enough “Arabs.” how to deny citizenship to millions, how to settle enough Jewish immigrants so as to claim a majority and accord them “democracy” in the context of a fundamentally settler state. Yet the Palestinians always were, and still remain, the majority of the population- if the ethnically cleansed population is freely allowed to return.

The international working class and progressive movements need to rally to the defence of Gaza and call for not only an end to the attacks but to the complete lifting of the siege as well. In the event of an Israeli ground invasion socialists call for the victory of the Palestinians resisting the attack and for the defeat of the Israeli forces. Those courageous Israeli socialists, democrats and peace activists who oppose the invasion can play their part to stop the bloodshed too. If they are in the army they should, clandestinely try to organise meetings amongst their fellow soldiers to discuss why they are being used as political pawns by the government to win the election, persuading them to refuse to go into the Gaza strip.

The anti-Zionist forces in Israeli working class must come to the defence of the Palestinians and protest against the war, including organising strikes to disrupt the economy. Such actions are will be very difficult if not impossible whilst the government is holding the illusionary objective of “peace through victory” before they eyes of the population. But if Israel suffers yet another setback, and when the reality of the mass murder in Gaza becomes known, the antiwar movement can grow in strength. Today’s’ isolated heroic individuals can quite suddenly become influential amongst hundreds or thousands of people. But to fundamentally change the relationship of forces a weight greater than that available in Israel-Palestine needs to be thrown into the scales – the people of the Arab countries and all progressive forces around the world, not least in the “belly of the beast” US imperialism and it European allies.

The most significant force in the region has yet to come into play though – the Arab working class in countries like Egypt is large and becoming better organised and more militant. During the Gazan onslaught right across Egypt demonstrations have been held and mass meetings on campuses taken place, all under the threat of heavy repression from the Mubarak regime. All our solidarity goes out to these courageous militants- both socialist and Islamist alike- in their struggle to expose the rotten capitulationist policies of Mubarak and bring down this number one asset of Us imperialism. Across the Middle East demonstrations have been organised, often against the Arab leaders, who despite statements of protest against the attacks in Gaza, have done nothing practical to help. The Egyptian government must be forced open the border with the Gaza strip, not just to let out casualties but to allow a free flow of people and goods- including fighters- in and out of the Palestinian areas.

The impact of the present capitalist crisis in the Arab world is severe. The masses face food and fuel price inflation, mounting unemployment, and their own government’s repression of the slightest protest. The explosive material, political and economic, which has accumulated under the foundations of these regimes is enormous. Mass demonstrations for Palestine that conquer the streets, turning into strikes, can be the spark that sets off an huge social explosion, a revolution in Egypt and in other states would change the whole international situation.

The Israeli government and military has already shown that it desires to drown the Palestinian resistance in blood in order to defeat their struggle for an independent homeland. It bears on its forehead the indelible mark of a racist state, one moreover with clear genocidal intentions. Can Arabs and Jews – especially Arab and Jewish workers and small farmers, live in the same land? Emphatically yes.

In Palestine 60 years ago a section of the Jewish people became convinced of the Zionist delusion that the creation Israel would bring peace, security, prosperity, a flowering of national culture. It did not. The “empty land” had a people who paid the price of the UN backed creation of Israel, as thousands of Arabs were expelled from their homes. Now the cycle of violence goes on, bringing to mind Marx’s words ‘any nation which oppresses another can never itself be free’. Genuine peace can only come in the region through a one state solution, in which the racist colonial Israeli state is destroyed and replaced by a bi-national state for Arabs and Jews in Palestine. It is one that, in our view, must be socialist and an integral part of a Socialist United States of the entire Middle East.

Content

You should also read
Share this Article
Facebook
Twitter
WhatsApp
Print
Reddit
Telegram
Share this Article
Facebook
Twitter
WhatsApp
Print
Reddit
Telegram