Mass protests have erupted across Israel, with over 100,000 people demonstrating in Tel Aviv and other cities on 22 March. Protesters blocked highways, surrounded the Israeli parliament in a makeshift encampment and endured beatings by police. Society is in turmoil, with daily demonstrations.
This eruption follows Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s unilateral ending of the 24 November Gaza ceasefire, with renewed brutal attacks on Gaza and a new ground incursion. Netanyahu threatens to annex sections of the tiny Gaza Strip, ethnically cleanse its inhabitants and forcibly deport them to east Africa and other locations.
A large majority of Israelis oppose this, viewing it as a death sentence for the Israeli hostages still being held in Gaza and as a political manoeuvre by Netanyahu to shore up his coalition by enticing the far-right Jewish Power party back into the government. The families of hostages have publicly opposed the new offensive and many military reservists are war weary and sceptical of Netanyahu’s claim that it will force Hamas to return the remaining hostages.
Protesters are also reacting to a government cabinet vote to sack Ronen Bar, the head of the domestic intelligence service, followed days later by a vote to also sack Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara. Ronen Bar has attempted to check Netanyahu’s power by arresting some of his aides and investigating their connections to Qatari money. Netanyahu’s priorities were made clear when he postponed a government discussion on the hostages in favour of a cabinet meeting to sack Bar.
Like with the 2023 nine-month movement against actions by Netanyahu to curb the judiciary, these further moves by Netanyahu are seen by protesters as attacks on democracy, through reducing checks on the ultra-right government.
The protests are a cross-class movement, mainly made up of the working and middle classes but with a leadership consisting of parts of the capitalist establishment, including CEOs, former generals and secret service chiefs. These leaders have made militant speeches, calling for civil disobedience and a nationwide shutdown. Former Shin Bet chief Ami Ayalon called on company directors, school administrators and university heads to pause the operation of their institutions. The Histadrut, Israel’s main trade union federation, threatened to call a general strike if Netanyahu ignores a court ruling against the immediate sacking of Bar, which would be the third general strike in three years.
The crucial question now is whether this movement can defeat Netanyahu and end the war in Gaza. The experience of the democracy movement shows that demonstrations alone are insufficient; a general strike with longer length than the previous two is necessary to bring down the government.
Netanyahu’s rise is a symptom of the deep crisis of Israeli society, including the capitalist class’s failure to improve conditions for working Israelis. Having largely lost control of the situation, capitalist leaders are now attempting to leverage the working class’s power to rescue their own interests. However, workers must not act as foot soldiers for the so-called ‘liberal’ wing of the Israeli capitalist class, which seeks to defend Israeli capitalism’s secret service chiefs and judicial system. The capitalist system is the root of the crisis and cannot resolve it.
Yair Golan, head of the Democrats party (a merger of Meretz and Labour), has called for the main parliamentary opposition parties to unite against Netanyahu. However, these parties all serve capitalist interests and offer no future for Israeli workers.
Instead of fighting for sections of a failed capitalist class, Israeli workers must fight for their own class interests – through general strike action based on the working class, and through taking steps towards creating their own party, uniting workers across religious and secular lines, Jewish and Arab alike. Such a party should fight for working-class interests: stopping the soaring cost of living, raising wages, building homes, and ending the subjugation of the Palestinian people – the only way to achieve peace and security.
Capitalism means endless cycles of war and slaughter, so none of the capitalist parties have a credible plan to end the conflict. The solution lies in building working-class parties in both Israel and Palestine, forging links between them, and with both adopting a socialist programme for an end to the conflict based on shared class interests of Israeli and Palestinian workers.
End Gaza slaughter: Build a mass working-class alternative
Oscar Parry
Residents across Gaza were thrown into chaos and terror last week as the Israeli state launched a surprise bombing campaign that killed 400 people in one night, 200 of which were children, and wounding hundreds more. The death toll for the conflict is now at least 50,000. Even before the renewed attacks, Gaza was in ruins.
Netanyahu has shattered the fragile two-month ‘ceasefire’ that limited the worst of the attacks on Gaza. Even during this period all aid was blocked, Israeli airstrikes and ground attacks continued, and violent repression on Palestinians in the West Bank stepped up.
Trump says he fully supports Israel’s renewed attacks, and Netanyahu is set to establish a government agency that would oversee the removal of Palestinians from Gaza. This follows Trump’s monstrous proposal that the whole population of Gaza could be “cleaned out” and Gaza turned into a US-owned “riviera” as a playground for the rich.
Various capitalist powers around the world have condemned the renewed attacks, but their moral outrage is only skin deep. It reflects a view of the capitalist ruling classes that Netanyahu and Trump are simply going ‘too far’ in trampling over the norms of ‘international law’ and capitalist relations, and are increasing the risk of new popular uprisings worldwide.
Britain’s Labour foreign secretary David Lammy initially condemned Israel’s blockade of Gaza as a “breach of international law,” before being rebuked by Keir Starmer to say that Israel was only ‘at risk’ of breaching international law. Starmer is attempting to cosy up to the Trump regime to avoid tariffs and preserve the ‘special relationship’ between US and British capitalism.
This sickening jockeying for position while mass slaughter is being carried out, is in stark contrast to the genuine outrage felt by workers and the poor worldwide.
In Britain, thousands continue to attend protests at short notice. The Socialist Party is calling for the trade unions to play a central role in the anti-war protests, including by linking the fight against more military funding to the fight against brutal attacks on disabled people and other austerity policies.
The working class in Britain developing its own new mass political force – fighting against the capitalist bosses and for a socialist alternative to war and austerity – would strengthen the struggle of the Palestinian masses and all struggles of the oppressed worldwide. The presence of five MPs in the UK parliament, elected in opposition to the war on Gaza, could be a potential step forward on the road towards such a new party.
The actions of Netanyahu and the Israeli state are fuelling a profound rage – the huge protests rocking the cities of Israel itself are an indicator.
This rage of the masses in the region will, at a certain stage, erupt in volcanic lava flows, shaking the Israeli capitalists, the elites in neighbouring Arab states, and the imperialist powers across the world.
The Socialist Party fights for:
- End the siege of Gaza and the occupation of all the Palestinian territories. For the permanent withdrawal of the Israeli military from those areas
- For a mass struggle of the Palestinians, under their own democratic control, to fight for liberation
- For the building of independent workers’ parties in Palestine and Israel and links between them
- For an independent, socialist Palestinian state, alongside a socialist Israel, with guaranteed democratic rights for all minorities, as part of the struggle for a socialist Middle East
- No trust in capitalist politicians internationally. Fight to build workers’ parties that stand for socialism and internationalism
