Gaza was put under a complete blockade by the Israeli government for over two months up to 19 May. No food, medicine or even water was allowed to enter the territory, resulting in the deaths of at least 57 children by starvation, mass malnutrition and homelessness.
Even last week, after the lifting of the blockade, just 388 trucks were allowed access – compared to over 2,000 per week before the invasion in 2023. For civilians in Gaza, life is living hell.
Into this situation has stepped the ‘Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’ (GHF), an organisation run by American mercenaries, establishing aid compounds and attempting to usurp the United Nations (UN) as the main distributor of aid. On Tuesday 27 May, a GHF compound opened in southern Gaza. The entrance was immediately swamped by Palestinians desperate for food and medication. The fences gave way under the weight of the crowd, and masses of people climbed into the building, taking whatever they could to feed themselves and their children. The IDF intervened with live fire, resulting in at least one person dead and 48 injured.
There are three GHF sites established in the south of the territory and only one anywhere near the north, where around half of the population still live. This means that civilians, including the elderly, children and disabled people, will have to travel 30km through a war zone with the hope of receiving a package of food.
This is consistent with the Netanyahu government’s aim to displace the population of northern Gaza into the south, with the intention of driving all the Palestinians out of the area into prison camps the other side of the Egyptian border, or simply into the desert. His regime aims to control all the Palestinian territories, to scupper any prospect of the creation of a genuine Palestinian state, and to placate the far-right parties inside his coalition government.
It’s vital to keep up the mass pressure on governments internationally, which are constantly evaluating what action (or inaction) they can get away with in the eyes of their own population, including in Britain.
There have been consistent mass protests in Britain in solidarity with Palestinians. The election of four ‘Gaza independent’ MPs plus Jeremy Corbyn, former left leader of the Labour Party, at the 2024 general election, was a shot across the bow of the UK’s Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s incoming government. The working class taking further steps towards developing its own political voice independent of Labour would ratchet up that pressure.
Workers taking action in Britain and elsewhere against the capitalist bosses strengthens the struggles of the Palestinian masses and workers across the Middle East, including in Israel. The CWI fights for the working class to develop its own mass parties which can fight to bring an end to the capitalists’ rule and bring about socialist change.
- End the siege of Gaza and the occupation of all the Palestinian territories. For the permanent withdrawal of the Israeli military from those areas
- 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