Martin Suchanek
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his generals have used the anniversary of 7 October to intensify the destruction of the most basic means of life in Gaza, to speed up the right wing settlers’ takeover of Palestinian land on the West Bank and to bomb four more states in the region.
Internationally accepted figures show up to 50,000 bodies have been recovered in Gaza and the UN estimates there are a further 200,000 of them buried in the 70% of houses and infrastructure that has been destroyed. At the same time the IDF blocks the lorries carrying food, medication, and clean water for the survivors.
By assassinating Hamas’ top leaders Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and Yahya Sinwar in Gaza, Israel has effectively aborted any ceasefire agreement with Hamas.
Since the IDF began its bombing of Lebanon on 23 September and invasion on 1 October thousands have died, including Hasan Nasrallah and other prominent Hezbollah leaders. The UN estimates that over a million Lebanese have been forced to flee their homes. The country’s infrastructure and parts of its capital are getting the Gaza treatment.
Ethnic cleansing
Voices in Israeli government circles are demanding the permanent occupation of southern Lebanon as a buffer zone for settlements in northern Galilee. Meanwhile heavily armed far right Zionist settler groups are intensifying attacks and expulsions in the West Bank, under the protection of, and in cooperation with the army.
Meanwhile the goal of evacuating and completely expelling all Palestinians from northern Gaza has become increasingly clear. This is the strategic goal of Israeli right-wing strategists, such as Giora Eiland, which would open the way to colonisation of the north while the south would be placed permanently under ‘full security control’ where starvation, disease and warplane strafing of ‘safe zones’ will eventually drive out the population.
The fascistic elements of Netanyahu’s government see the chance to achieve the total ethnic cleansing of Palestine, hoping the claim to be establishing security on the borders will cement national unity. For years it has been clear that as long as Israel’s Jewish working class does not break with Zionism, it is incapable of standing up to the right, remains politically powerless and tolerates or even supports pogrom politics. Since the liberal and labour Zionist forces are also committed to their ‘own’ racist project, their subordination to the right will continue.
Meanwhile proto-fascist forces have expanded their influence in the army. Now some 40% of officer candidates come from the right-wing national-religious sector (in 1990 this was only 2.5%). Alongside the settler organisations they form a militant, armed force that will not hesitate to impose its will on Israeli society by force. It is very likely they would not bow to even a limited ceasefire, let alone any deal pushed by the US and the EU that included mention of a two-state solution.
In addition the Western imperialist allies stand staunchly with Israel: blocking UN resolutions, supplying the blockbuster bombs which obliterate hospitals, schools, universities and housing blocks, and upgrading its defence dome.
Lastly most Middle Eastern states—Saudi Arabia and Egypt, but also Qatar and Turkey—limit themselves to protest resolutions against Zionist aggression. Even Iran and Hezbollah want to avoid a full scale war with the most powerful military state in the region and its superpower backer.
Yet despite the huge odds against them the masses in Gaza and the West Bank continue to put up heroic resistance to occupation and expulsion. However, the catastrophes they face are also, in part, the result of the policies of the Palestinian leadership. Since Oslo the Palestinian Authority and Fatah have acted de facto as an extended arm of the occupation.
Leadership
The leadership of the Islamist Hamas is also proving to be a reactionary dead end. For years, it relied on the so-called Axis of Resistance, an alliance between Hezbollah, Syria and Iran, though Hamas itself did not join this. In alliance with Russia, Iran and Hezbollah smashed the Syrian revolution and saved the Assad regime. In the process it weakened regional democratic forces, who during previous Israeli aggressions have mobilised the ‘Arab street’ in support of Palestine.
Hamas, as well as Hezbollah and other bourgeois and jihadist nationalist leaderships, are pursuing a reactionary goal—the establishment of a capitalist and Islamic-Palestinian state. This project not only facilitates the demonisation of Hamas and the Palestinian people, it is also directly opposed to the interests of the masses in comprehensive liberation from national and social oppression and is completely unsuitable for establishing the unity of workers and peasants in the Middle East against Zionism, imperialism and capitalism.
But despite our fundamental differences with Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and other bourgeois and Islamist nationalist leaderships, we unconditionally support the liberation struggle, the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, and their right to defend themselves with all the means at their disposal.
It is up to the youth, the workers and the oppressed masses around the world, the anti-Zionist Arab and Jewish activists in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, to intensify their mobilisations in support the Palestinian and Lebanese people, indeed to all other targets of Zionist and imperialist aggression. To play a progressive role the Israeli working class and youth must break with Zionism, reject its wars and support the Palestinian liberation struggle, including the right of refugees to return to their homeland.
There will be no lasting peace in the Middle East as long as the racist settler state of Israel, acting as a pro-imperialist gendarme, continues to exist. Nor with the failed two-state policy that imperialism keeps re-raising, let alone the reactionary utopia of a capitalist and Islamist Palestinian state. Peace will only be possible if the oppressive Israeli state is replaced by a unitary, secular, democratic and socialist Palestine, with equal rights for its Jewish and Arab citizens, within the framework of a regional socialist revolution.