17 October 2025
Earlier this month, Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire as part of a US-sponsored “peace plan” to end the two-year military campaign of genocidal extermination of the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip. The agreement is a significant victory for both American imperialism, which was increasingly anxious to wrap up a damaging conflict that has harmed its geopolitical standing, and its Israeli client, which is now deeply entrenched in Gaza with no intention of withdrawing its forces from the beleaguered enclave. It is, therefore, a humiliating and major defeat for the Palestinians.
While the agreement has led to a fragile truce for now, Hamas has indicated that other key elements of the proposal require further negotiations, including demands for its disarmament and its future role in Gaza. But they have signed the deal and begun to implement it. Hamas has handed over all living hostages to Israel and, in exchange, nearly 2,000 Palestinian political prisoners and detainees held in Israeli jail cells have been released. This plan can resolve none of the long-standing hostilities and territorial claims arising from the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Instead, it legitimizes and rewards Israel’s genocidal campaign, which Tel Aviv will continue to pursue with less spectacular means until it restarts bombing of the Gazan population, which will now be in a weaker military position.
Lacking a class-based political framework, the reactionary theocratic nationalists of Hamas, seeing no alternative way to strike blows against the Zionist oppressors, opted to launch the fateful raid into Israel two years ago. While Hamas undoubtedly killed not only legitimate military targets in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) but hundreds of civilians as well, accurate figures of exactly who was responsible for all Israeli deaths on 7 October are unavailable. Two years on, an independent investigation has yet to be conducted. The magnitude of the fire power from the Israeli counterattack (30-millimetre cannon mortars and Hellfire missiles from dozens of attack helicopters, shelling from tanks), combined with the fact that Hamas lacked the military capacity to inflict such damage, almost certainly means the IDF was responsible for many of the deaths. Last year, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz (7 July 2024) revealed that commanders in the IDF gave the order to fire on troops who had been captured by Hamas at three separate locations, explicitly referencing the “Hannibal Directive,” which allows Israeli troops to use lethal force against their own soldiers to prevent them being taken into captivity.
Whether or not the fascist-infested government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu intentionally allowed the 7 October incursion to happen, they were delighted by the cover it provided to ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians. Hamas leaders must have known that their gambit would lead to the slaughter of tens of thousands of defenseless Gazans, though they perhaps underestimated the extent to which the Zionists would engage in open genocide and levelling of the entire Strip.
At the White House event unveiling the 20-point plan on 29 September, US President Donald Trump cynically boasted that it might lead to “eternal peace” in the region. In reality, it is a colonial-style treaty that enshrines continued subjugation of the Palestinians and strengthens American imperialist control over the strategically important region. The framework for the proposal was reportedly crafted in coordination with Netanyahu’s top adviser, Ron Dermer, and spearheaded by US Special Envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Of course, at no point did the plan involve Palestinian consultation before being announced.
The initial draft of the document received approval from eight Arab and Muslim-majority nations—Saudi Arabia, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan and Indonesia—all of which co-signed a joint statement welcoming Trump's supposed “sincere efforts” and expressing their “confidence in his ability to find a path to peace” on “the basis of the two state solution” (Times of Israel, 30 September 2025). Over the course of the next few days, the text of that initial draft was substantially altered by Israeli and US officials in regard to the time limit for handing over the hostages, the distribution of aid, the number of Palestinian prisoners that would be released, the post-war stabilization force and the lines to which Israeli forces would withdraw. On all of these issues, Israel’s control was hardened and its commitments weakened. It was this final version that was ultimately presented to the world by Trump and Netanyahu at the White House.
The US–Israeli plan not only calls for Hamas to fully disarm, but for the total “demilitarization of Gaza,” i.e., to leave it completely militarily defenseless. In its place, an “International Stabilization Force (ISF)” composed of the US, Arab and international partners is to be deployed in Gaza to maintain “control and stability.” While the proposal states that “Israel will not occupy or annex Gaza,” the IDF’s commitment to withdrawing is worded so as to entirely depend upon agreement “between the IDF, ISF, the guarantors, and the United States” and is tied to a “secure Gaza that no longer poses a threat to Israel.” Of course, it is Israel that poses a threat to Gaza, not the other way around. This condition will never be satisfactorily met in the eyes of the hard right fanatics in the Netanyahu government, who view the mere existence of Palestinians in Gaza as “a threat to Israel.”
The plan specifies that even if the conditions were recognized as being met, Israeli forces would eventually only withdraw to a “security buffer zone” that includes the strategically important strip of land between Rafah and Sinai, known as the Philadelphi Corridor, i.e., the IDF is to remain in Gaza permanently. Hamas, of course, is to have no role in the post-war governance of Gaza, “directly, indirectly, or in any form.” Instead, a “technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee” is to take over temporary transitional governance with oversight and supervision by a new international transitional body, a so-called “Board of Peace,” which will be headed and chaired by Trump, with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair as colonial viceroy.
After the White House press conference announcing the plan, Netanyahu openly boasted about getting a deal in which “the IDF remains in most of the Strip,” while effectively placing an Arab and international stamp of legitimacy on genocide. Asked whether he had agreed to a Palestinian state during his visit to the US, he declared:
“Absolutely not, and it is not written in the agreement either. But one thing we did say: we are firmly opposed to a Palestinian state. President Trump also said this; he said he understands our position. He also declared at the UN that such a move would be a huge reward for terror and a danger to the state of Israel. And of course, we will not agree to it.”
—Guardian, 30 September 2025
Two weeks later, on 13 October, Trump was in Egypt to attend the “Summit for Peace” where he, along with a rogue’s gallery of world leaders and regional despots, oversaw the clinching of the Gaza deal. Earlier that day he addressed the Israeli Knesset to a hero’s welcome that included chants of “Trump! Trump!” In a deranged war-mongering speech lasting over an hour, he praised Netanyahu as “one of the greatest wartime presidents,” incredulously proclaimed the ceasefire would usher in a supposed “historic dawn in a new Middle East” and “peace and prosperity,” and openly bragged about arming the IDF death machine:
“We [the United States] make the best weapons in the world, and we’ve got a lot of them. And we’ve given a lot to Israel, frankly.
“I mean, Bibi would call me so many times, ‘Can you get me this weapon, that weapon, that weapon?’ Some of them I never heard of, Bibi, and I made them. But we’d get them here, wouldn’t we, huh? And they are the best. They are the best.
“But you used them well. [Y]ou obviously used them very well.. That’s what led to peace.”
—Times of Israel, 14 October 2025
The peace plan comes after two years of utter death and destruction unleashed by Israeli forces as part of its genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza. Official figures state that over 65,000 have been murdered and 170,000 wounded, 83 percent of whom are civilians according to the Israeli military’s own classified database. The real number of casualties is likely much greater. Most of Gaza lies under rubble and a quarter of its people are facing famine. At least 1.9 million across the Gaza Strip—about 90 percent of the population—have been displaced during the campaign, many of them repeatedly, some reportedly up to ten or more times.
At the beginning of March, Israel imposed a three-month total blockade on Gaza, cutting off all deliveries of humanitarian aid and commercial supplies. Prices for basic necessities skyrocketed, as accessing food, medicine and hygiene products became nearly impossible. In May, the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” (GHF), an American–Israeli proxy, began taking over delivery of the vast majority of aid in the Strip, intentionally sidelining the United Nations (UN) as the main supplier. In place of the UN-led distribution network of roughly 400 sites across Gaza, the GHF, guarded by armed private security contractors working for an American company, set up a total of only four “mega-sites” for a population of about 2 million Palestinians. US and Israeli security personnel quickly turned these “humanitarian” distribution sites into shooting galleries. By August, 1,000 Palestinians desperately seeking aid had reportedly been killed at GHF sites, most of them by the Israeli military.
Retired US special forces officer, and former GHF aid center employee, Anthony Aguilar, revealed how he “witnessed the Israeli Defense Forces shooting at the crowds of Palestinians,” adding that he had never seen such a level of “brutality and use of indiscriminate and unnecessary force against a civilian population, an unarmed, starving population” (BBC, 25 July 2025). In September, the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, published interviews with soldiers in the IDF who openly admitted to the killing of innocent civilians, including children, attempting to get aid:
“Every day we have the same mission: to secure the humanitarian aid in the northern Gaza Strip. “It's like a game of cat and mouse. They try to come from a different direction every time, and I'm there with the sniper rifle, and the officers are yelling at me, ‘Take him down, take him down.’ I fire 50-60 bullets every day, I've stopped counting kills. I have no idea how many I've killed, a lot. Children.”
—Haaretz, 16 September 2025
In September, the IDF began a major weeks-long offensive on Gaza City, where until recently an estimated 1 million had sought refuge. As Israel was preparing to bring to bear the “full force” of its military might in laying the city to waste, Defense Minister Israel Katz warned the 400,000 Palestinians left behind that this was their “last opportunity” to flee, and threatened: “Those who remain in Gaza will be [considered] terrorists and terror supporters” (CBC, 1 October 2025). Now, after weeks of fleeing the Israeli offensive, those displaced Palestinians are returning to a Gaza City left unrecognizable from the scale of the unprecedented devastation.
International outrage over the indisputably genocidal character of the Gaza war has left diplomats in the West scrambling to distance themselves from Israel’s most egregious acts of barbarism. In July, the foreign ministers from a host of Western countries including Britain, France, Canada, Australia and New Zealand signed a joint statement condemning Israel for the “drip feeding of aid” and “inhumane killing” of Palestinians at GHF distribution sites and calling for an end to the war. In September, many of these same imperialist powers, which have spent the last two years arming and facilitating the genocide in Gaza, decided to “recognize the state of Palestine” at the United Nations.
Recognition of this kind, and now backing of the US–Israeli “peace” plan, has fraudulently been presented as the first step towards Israel and Palestine living side by side in peace and security—the revival of Oslo-style diplomacy in pursuit of an illusory two-state solution. In reality, it is largely designed to salvage the much-tarnished public perception of the West, while de facto ensuring the continued existence of an Israeli apartheid state. Even the issue of de jure Palestinian statehood is a dead letter. As a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, the United States, which remains staunchly opposed, has veto power to block Palestine’s full UN membership. The US has used its veto power at the Security Council 49 times to block diplomatic measures against Israel for its treatment of the Palestinians. As recently as September, the US voted against a UN General Assembly resolution seeking a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
An enormous chasm exists between, on the one hand, millions who overwhelmingly condemn the genocide, and on the other, the ruling elites across the world who have enabled it. At bottom, recognition of Palestinian statehood by a handful of Western powers is a largely performative political gesture designed as a means of appeasement. It comes with no legal obligations, nor will it change the balance of forces on the ground in the Occupied Territories (Gaza, West Bank and East Jerusalem). It certainly has not disrupted lucrative trade relations and weapons sales between Israel and the imperialist metropoles in the West.
Washington, which retains a “special relationship” with Tel Aviv, remains by far the largest exporter of arms to Israel, accounting for approximately two-thirds. Over the past two years, the US has provided $21.7 billion in military aid and spent an additional $10 billion working with Israel “on broader Middle East activities, such as strikes on Yemen’s Houthi rebels and Iranian nuclear facilities” (Associated Press, 7 October 2025). In September, Washington proposed delivering an additional $6.4 billion in military equipment and weapons to Israel, including Apache attack helicopters and assault vehicles. This is on top of the roughly $3 billion in military aid the US gives Israel per year.
Even for those imperialist powers that recently recognized Palestinian statehood, arming the Zionist behemoth remains business as usual. Of the 350 arms export licenses Britain has with Israel, only 30 have been suspended. London continues to ship Tel Aviv key components for its F-35 fighter jets, and Royal Air Force Shadow aircraft run near daily surveillance flights over Gaza, the intelligence of which is shared with the Israeli military. As late as July, the Ministry of Defence was forced to admit that British forces were then actively training personnel from the IDF on British soil (Declassified UK, 29 July 2025).
France, which led the diplomatic push to recognize Palestine, is no different. In October 2024, President Macron told France Inter radio that “the priority is that we return to a political solution, that we stop delivering weapons to fight in Gaza,” and claimed that “France is not delivering any” weapons to Israel (BBC, 5 October 2024). However, a report by the Palestinian Youth Movement and others revealed that since October 2023 France has supplied Israel with more than 10 million euros worth of military equipment—including bombs, grenades, torpedoes, missiles, rocket launchers, flamethrowers, artillery pieces, and rifles (france-palestine.org, 10 June 2025). When it finally acknowledged it was indeed still arming Israel, the French government insisted the military goods were only used for the country’s Iron Dome defensive missile systems. Of course, even if true, such “defensive” weapons enable Israel to continue its genocidal campaign in Gaza and its annexation in the West Bank.
In March 2024, Canada passed non-binding legislation to halt all new government weapons sales to Israel. Nonetheless, a series of loopholes have allowed the flow of weapons from Canada to Israel to continue, as Ottawa continued to honor pre-approved contracts for military goods signed prior to January 2024. This reportedly included “dozens of shipments between October 2023 and July 2025, carrying more than 400,000 bullets, cartridges, and aircraft components, including F-35 fighter jet parts” (The Intercept, 25 September 2025).
A detailed investigative report published by Declassified Australia (1 October 2025) revealed that between October 2023 and September 2025 “a total of 68 shipments of F-35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft parts [were] flown from Australia directly to Israel.” The same report, based on leaked shipping records, notes how “jet parts have been flown on commercial passenger planes to Israel from Australia as recently as last month”:
“None of the potentially 321 passengers on board sipping the Thai Airways complementary wine, nor the busy flight crew, could have any idea that beneath the cabin floor, in the cargo hold of the plane, was a military aircraft spare part destined for Israel that would enable an Israeli F-35 Joint Strike Fighter to rain down death and destruction on the civilians of Gaza, and elsewhere.”
Belated recognition of Palestinian statehood by a handful of imperialist powers was largely driven by widespread public outrage in the West at a genocide livestreamed on social media by countless courageous Gazans on the ground. Since October 2023, Israel has barred international news outlets from entering Gaza to report on the war, while deliberately targeting and killing at least 189 journalists and media workers, making it the deadliest conflict ever for journalists. According to Irene Khan, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression: “More journalists have been killed in Gaza than both world wars, the Vietnam War, wars in Yugoslavia, and the war in Afghanistan combined” (UN Press Briefing, 15 September 2025). Nevertheless, the Zionist war machine has been unable to entirely suppress news from within Gaza getting out, and Tel Aviv has slowly been losing the propaganda war.
Public opinion in the West towards Israel and the Palestinians has significantly shifted since the start of the war in Gaza. Two-thirds of Germans now hold a “negative” or “somewhat negative” opinion of Israel, while 62 percent believe Israeli actions in Gaza amount to genocide (aa.com.tr, 23 September 2025). More than half of Britons oppose Israel’s war on Gaza, the vast majority of whom (82 percent) say Israel is carrying out genocide. That same poll found that nearly two-thirds want Britain to implement the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (YouGov, June 2025). US public opinion on Israel is changing as well: over half (53 percent) now have negative attitudes towards Israel, while 43 percent believe Israel has been committing genocide against the Palestinians (Al Jazeera, 22 September 2025). Most alarmingly for Trump and the GOP, unfavorable views of Israel among young Republicans now hovers around 50 percent.
Fearful of the irreparable damage being done to his Israeli ally, French President Macron cautioned Israeli broadcaster Channel 12:
“These types of operations in Gaza [are] totally counterproductive; this is, I have to say, a failure.…
“You are making so many civilians casualties and victims that you are completely destroying the credibility and image of Israel not only in the region but in public opinion everywhere.” —Politico, 19 September 2025
Of course, diplomats in Paris, London and Berlin care nothing for the hundreds of thousands of Gazans murdered and maimed, nor for the cause of Palestinian liberation. They are instead largely concerned about the destabilizing impact that Israeli aggression is having on domestic politics and the ability of the state to contain social discontent at home.
Imperial planners across the West are also increasingly worried about the extent to which Washington is willing to unconditionally back its volatile Israeli client, along with the latter’s desire to engulf the entire Middle East in a regional conflict. Such a conflict would provide Tel Aviv with an opportunity to significantly redraw the map of the Middle East and carry out its project of establishing a Greater Israel—complete the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population in Gaza, formally annex the West Bank and East Jerusalem and extend its territorial control to neighboring countries.
Since October 2023, Israel has provocatively targeted a host of countries and territories across the Middle East: Iran, Lebanon, Qatar, Syria, Yemen and the occupied Palestinian territories. In June, Israel sparked a 12 day war with Iran in which US-made Israeli stealth jets, and drones launched by Israel from within Iran itself killed the majority of Iran’s senior military leaders (see “Block the Bombs, Shut down the Ports! Defeat Israel’s war drive on Iran!,” 1917 No.49).
The latest round of Israeli attacks in Doha, Qatar, in September sought to eliminate the political leadership of Hamas directly involved in peace negotiations with Israel. While ultimately unsuccessful, the Israeli air strike was unmistakably designed to sabotage any efforts at a negotiated settlement of the conflict in Gaza so that Israel could continue its genocide. Israeli officials claim that the Qatari attack had the begrudging blessing of the Trump administration, which was informed of the air strike in advance yet refused to call it off.
The botched Israeli strikes appear to have been a turning point for the US. The White House reportedly used them as leverage to yank the chain of its Israeli attack dog: it not only persuaded Netanyahu to formally apologize to the Qatari Prime Minister but also to agree to end the war. Fearful of alienating the Qataris, who play a special role as leading mediators in conflicts throughout the Middle East, President Trump signed an executive order “assuring the security of the state of Qatar.” The directive explicitly regards any “armed attack on the territory, sovereignty, or critical infrastructure of the State of Qatar as a threat to the peace and security of the United States,” and vows to use all measures—including US military force—to defend the Gulf state (whitehouse.gov, 29 September 2025).
Qatar is a key American ally and home to Al Udeid, the largest US military base in the region. Housing some 10,000 troops from the Qatar Emiri Air Force, the US Air Force, the British Royal Air Force and other foreign forces, Al Udeid also acts as the forward headquarters for US Central Command, which directs American military operations over a huge swathe of territory stretching from Egypt to Kazakhstan. It allows US imperialism not only to defend its Israeli ally but to coordinate military planning throughout the Middle East.
All wings of the Jewish-Israeli ruling class are opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state and are firmly committed to the Zionist project of an Israeli apartheid state, i.e., enforcing Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. At most, they differ over how to conduct the war and best achieve a Greater Israel. Recent public opinion polling found that 62 percent of all Israelis believe “there are no innocent people in Gaza,” while 82 percent of Jewish Israelis support the expulsion of Gazans. This speaks to the power of Zionist propaganda to manage consent and how widespread hardline attitudes are two years into the genocide, as the political center of gravity in Israel has drastically shifted rightward.
While Netanyahu, and his coalition government with ultra-nationalist zealots, continues to retain stable levels of public support, most Israelis have negative views of Israeli leadership generally—and Netanyahu specifically. The public perception of the Israeli prime minister has been battered by ICC arrest warrants for war crimes and crimes against humanity, as well as multiple corruption charges in Israeli courts that could see him spend up to 10 years in prison.
The government’s conduct of the war, and its inability to achieve one of its principal stated war aims (the release of all the hostages) until very recently, has been an additionally deeply polarizing faultline within war-weary Israeli society. Since November 2023, protests against Netanyahu and his government, primarily in response to the handling of the Gaza war and hostage crisis, have grown significantly in size and strength. On 4 October, tens of thousands rallied in Tel Aviv to demand that Netanyahu and the Israeli government accept the deal to free the remaining hostages. That protest was called by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, the official organization speaking on behalf of the families of the Israeli captives, which saw Netanyahu as the “one obstacle” preventing their return and the reaching of a peace deal. After Israel’s strike on Hamas in Doha in September, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum wrote on social media that “every time a deal approaches, Netanyahu sabotages it” (BBC, 14 September 2025). The possibility of yet another Qatari-style attack by Netanyahu and Israel designed to sabotage the current deal remains a distinct possibility.
Despite all this, Netanyahu may yet remain in power. Yair Lapid, the leader of Israel’s parliamentary opposition, and Benny Gantz, another party leader and Netanyahu critic, are vocal supporters of the Trump–Netanyahu peace plan. Both have suggested that they would help prop up a Netanyahu government, if necessary, to ensure he could implement the agreement over the objections of his current right-wing coalition partners.
Growing public outrage in the West has led to countless protests, demonstrations and vigils around the world in solidarity with the Palestinians. Millions have mobilized to demand an end to the genocide, Israeli blockade and occupation, as well as Western support for Israel, while calling for humanitarian aid to Gaza.
The Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF), an international convoy of some 40 vessels and 500 pro-Palestinian activists, organizers and humanitarians was a very public recent attempt by those fed up with the inaction and complicity of Western governments to break Israel’s siege on Gaza. The GSF set sail in July from Spain across the Mediterranean, seeking to establish a nautical corridor to deliver humanitarian aid to the besieged Gaza enclave and draw attention to the blockade.
Unsurprisingly, Israel responded by unleashing a disgusting propaganda campaign demonizing the “terrorists” and “provocateurs” aboard the GSF. This ranged from belittling it as a “publicity stunt” and perversely offering to deliver the aid itself, to claiming it was “organized by Hamas” and dubbing it the “Jihadist Hamas Flotilla.” The vilification of the GSF was carefully calculated to soften international opinion before taking measures to attack and intercept the flotilla to prevent it from delivering aid to famine-stricken Palestinians. In early October, Israeli forces kidnapped participants in international waters as the ships approached Gaza. Many were thrown into Israeli dungeons and subjected to degrading and harsh treatment. Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, for instance, was reportedly beaten, forced to kiss an Israeli flag and denied sufficient food and water. As these political prisoners are released, they face deportation by the Israeli authorities.
On 3 October, Italy erupted in a nation-wide political general strike in response to the Israeli assault on the flotilla. More than 2 million reportedly participated in over 100 cities across the country. The following day, hundreds of thousands more took to the streets in cities across Europe—Rome, Amsterdam, Madrid, Barcelona, Istanbul, London, Paris, Berlin, and more—to demonstrate against the genocide in Gaza. The Italian general strike built upon an earlier national protest on 22 September in solidarity with the beleaguered Palestinians. That action, coordinated by the trade unions and mobilized under the slogan “Blocchiamo tutto!” (“Block everything!”), saw tens of thousands participate. In Livorno, dockworkers and community activists successfully prevented the SLNC Severn, an American vessel transporting military cargo, from berthing.
It was port workers in Genoa, organized in the Unione Sindacale di Base (USB), who first launched the idea of strike action for Gaza, which then garnered support from rank-and-file workers in Italy’s larger trade unions. In August, the same USB-organized dockers in Genoa had refused to load naval artillery made by Italian arms giant Leonardo onto a Saudi ship carrying weapons, ammunition, explosives, armored vehicles and tanks bound for Israel. According to Drop Site News:
“Around 40 workers boarded to inspect and document the shipment, declaring: ‘We don’t work for war.’
“It follows a July action when Genoa dockers—tipped off by Greek port unions—blocked military-grade steel headed for Israel. Union leaders warned that handling such cargo makes workers complicit in war crimes and the Gaza genocide.”
—x.com, 9 August 2025
The autumn strikes and protests are powerful expressions of international labor solidarity with the Palestinians and against the genocide in Gaza. Above all they demonstrate the immense potential social power of the international working class, especially among its most class-conscious components. This must be deepened and channeled in a more militant direction, or risk being dissipated. The ceasefire, which is cynically being hailed by world leaders as a “momentous opportunity” for resolving the conflict, will no doubt be used to defuse pro-Palestinian support and anger over the genocide in the West.
Working-class militants must urgently seek an immediate halt of all weapons shipments to Israel (hot cargo), up to and including a complete labor-imposed boycott of all trade and economic relations with Israel. This requires coordinated joint action within the trade unions and across Mediterranean ports.
Revolutionaries also seek to build united-front actions with pro-Palestinian activists to end the widespread state suppression of protests against the still ongoing genocide. Laws that limit the right to demonstrate or prohibit pro-Palestine organizations such as Palestine Action in Britain must be opposed. We must fight for all those detained to be freed and all charges dropped.
Individuals within the Israeli leadership responsible for war crimes (e.g., Benjamin Netanyahu, Yoav Gallant), along with their accomplices in the West, should of course face arrest and prosecution. But only an international workers’ tribunal, with significant representation by the Palestinian people—the victims of the US–Israeli genocide—can be entrusted to deliver justice to the Zionist war mongers and their imperialist backers. No faith must be placed in the United Nations, International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice, which are institutions fully integrated in the system of 21st century global capitalism and fundamentally serve its interests.
Finally, the international workers’ movement must ensure the immediate and unimpeded delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza through every available channel. Much like the perspective of shutting down the supply chains fueling the Israeli genocide in Gaza, the workers’ movement must aim to use its social power to open the floodgates to all forms of aid, such as food, potable water, clean sanitation, medical supplies, shelter and logistical support.
Such a political perspective immediately poses the question of workers’ control and self-organization. This requires the creation of militant caucuses in the trade unions, linked to a Bolshevik-type political organization fighting on a revolutionary program of workers’ power and the overthrow of capitalism—the creation of a bi-national workers’ state as part of a larger socialist federation of the Middle East. This is the only historically progressive solution to the seemingly intractable Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the path to truly end the nightmarish reality of mass ethnic cleansing and genocide engendered by the imperialist world system.
Related articles
Block the Bombs, Shut down the Ports! Defeat Israel’s war drive on Iran! (1917 No.49)
Hands off Gaza, the West Bank & Lebanon! (1917 No.49)
Stop the Gaza Genocide! Marxism & the Struggle for Palestinian Liberation (1917 No.48)