At many times since the start of the war on Gaza it has seemed that the situation in the strip couldn’t become much worse. But following the Israeli government’s renewal of bombardments in early March and blockade of all food, water, medicines and other necessities, a new level of trauma and agony is being reached.
Mass starvation and homelessness, on top of an estimated minimum of 77,000 deaths during the war, according to the Economist, is escalating the suffering.
The Israeli cabinet’s course of action is to condense Gaza’s population into vast tent encampments in the south of the strip, while increasing the death toll and making living conditions unbearable enough to force as many Palestinians as possible out of the strip. According to the public pronouncements of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, this horrific collective punishment is to enable the isolation and destruction of remaining Hamas fighters and obtain the release of the remaining Israeli captives.
These aims are rightly seen by most people worldwide – including a majority of Israelis – as subterfuge. The hostages won’t be released through further bombardment and the extreme brutality cannot completely destroy Hamas, which in any case exists outside Gaza too. The same Netanyahu who today declares the need to wipe out Hamas previously encouraged Qatar to send $30 million a month to that very same Hamas, one illustration of the manoeuvring he has engaged in to suit his objectives.
Rather, underlying Netanyahu’s plan is the Israeli right’s desire for Israel to encompass all the Palestinian territories, and also the determination of virtually the entire Israeli ruling class and its political representatives to ward off conditions that could lead to the setting up of a genuine neighbouring Palestinian state. Also, Netanyahu is spurred on by the motive of holding his governing coalition together by satisfying the demands of the far-right parties within it.
The plan for Gaza is accompanied by furthering Israeli annexation in the West Bank. With far-right government minister Bezalel Smotrich leading that project, messianic Jewish settlers have been encouraged to expand their armed groups, increase violence against Palestinians and develop new settlements. This has gone hand in hand with Israeli state military invasions into the Palestinian refugee camps in Jenin and Tulkarm, demolitions of Palestinian homes, forced displacement of an estimated 40,000 West Bank Palestinians, and economic strangulation of the Palestinian Authority.
World response
The global response reflects the class divide in societies everywhere. On the one hand, enraged and shocked ordinary people, and on the other hand governments – representing capitalist interests – that refuse to take meaningful action against the war.
This week, US president Trump is sealing deals worth hundreds of billions of dollars with Arab elites, during a tour of several Arab countries. The massive amounts being flaunted include a possible ‘gift’ of a $400 million luxury jumbo jet to Trump from the autocratic ruler of Qatar. At the same time, Trump’s administration has agreed to participate in Netanyahu’s obscene drive to starve, decimate and expel the population of Gaza, dressing up US participation as a humanitarian operation which will provide $1.3 meals as a palliative.
The lull in anti-war movements internationally isn’t due to lack of outrage at the war but rather reflects frustration that the mass opposition so far hasn’t managed to stop it. This doesn’t mean there won’t be a new wave of protests in coming weeks, or that they can’t be effective in stepping up the necessary pressure. Capitalist governments worldwide, whether friendly to Netanyahu’s regime or critical, are constantly weighing up how much inaction they can get away with regarding Gaza, in front of their home audience.
Movements from below that could develop to challenge their interests are the biggest threat they face. Aware of that, the Financial Times warned them in an editorial on 7 May: “US and European countries that tout Israel as an ally that shares their values have issued barely a word of condemnation. They should be ashamed of their silence, and stop enabling Netanyahu to act with impunity”. It went on to criticise Arab leaders too, for doing nothing for Gaza while they “fete Trump at lavish ceremonies with promises of multibillion-dollar investments and arms deals”, and concluded: “Those who remain silent or cowed from speaking out will be complicit”.
Clearly ‘speaking out’ is not enough; the Western powers must be forced to take measures against the war – such as by depriving Israel’s military apparatus of arms imports – through building working-class pressure and action with that aim. The Arab masses too have immense potential power, including the ability to bring economies to a halt that are vital for world trade routes and energy supplies. On the doorstep of the Israeli regime are the seven million Palestinians across the occupied territories and inside Israel who also have great potential power, through developing collective, democratic organising at working-class level against the war and occupation.
Israeli workers
Pivotal too, is for the Israeli working class to bring its organised weight to bear – against being made to pay the price of the war, against the war itself and the West Bank repression, and also against the Israeli regime’s military interventions elsewhere. It has been bombarding south Lebanon and Yemen, and in Syria has seized territory, along with attempting to foster division, leaning on the Druze population and certain other minorities.
Many Israeli workers – both Jews and Palestinians – took part in a general strike last September against the refusal of the government to create the necessary conditions for a hostage release deal. A well-prepared programme of escalating action by the Israeli workers’ movement would be able to force an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and remove Netanyahu’s government from office. Significantly, a teachers’ strike broke out in Israel last week, against wage cuts imposed on public sector workers. Other ‘war economy’ austerity measures are impacting on workers as well, such as a 1% increase in VAT.
“It is a toxic brew: the government is asking its citizens for big sacrifices even as those citizens despair of their government”, said the Economist on 26 March. The discontent includes army reservists: in some military units only half of them have turned up for duty when called up.
So the class divide is becoming more exposed in Israel, a welcome development that will need to be accompanied by workers moving to create their own mass party, independent of capitalist interests. Through such a party taking up socialist ideas, and a similar process developing in the Palestinian territories and in surrounding Arab countries, a way forward will be opened up towards ending the cycles of war, and for all the region’s peoples to be able to arrive at mutually beneficial solutions to all the nightmare conditions that are unsolvable under capitalism.
- End the siege of Gaza and the occupation of all the Palestinian territories. For the permanent withdrawal of the Israeli military from those areas
- The release of the thousands of Palestinian political prisoners held in Israeli prisons and the Israeli captives held in Gaza
- A mass struggle of the Palestinians, under their own democratic control, to fight for liberation
- The building of independent workers’ parties in Palestine and Israel and links between them
- 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