Palestine: Stop the slaughter in Gaza
Mass struggle is the only way out
The Socialist Party condemns the Israeli attacks in the Gaza strip which have already left more than 360 people dead and more than 1800 injured. We stand with the thousands of ordinary people who have protested across Australia and the world in the past few days calling for an end to the slaughter.
By Socialist Party reporters
Israel’s government’s rule has been a chain of scandals and failures, most recently the impact of the world capitalist crisis. Now they are trying to save themselves from defeat in February’s elections by means of a wholesale slaughter of Palestinians in this long planned attack.
Abu Abas, Mubarak and the Arab League leaders condemn the massacre. But they were complicit in Israel’s starving of the Gaza’s 1.5 million inhabitants by Israel’s 16-month siege. These regimes willingly carry out the dictates of imperialism. Mubarak’s authoritarian regime in Egypt collaborated in the imprisonment of the Palestinians by preventing free movement of goods and people on Egypt’s border with Gaza. Mubarak even met Israel’s foreign minister Livni on the day before Israel’s attack.
Bush, and Obama, have refused to force Israel to immediately halt the carnage. Bush used similar brutality in the US occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. While Miliband makes feeble calls for a cease-fire, the White House does not criticise the massive Israeli onslaught and blames Hamas for provoking these attacks on Gaza. Bush supports the Israeli/Egyptian blockade of Gaza while condemning the consequent Hamas rocket fire into Israeli cities.
Hamas’ rocket fire cannot defeat the Israeli state’s oppression of Palestinians. The Israeli ruling class do not care about the working class inhabitants of the towns bordering Gaza, but uses their plight to justify the war. The Hamas leadership use the rockets as a means to hide their lack of any strategy to liberate the Palestinian masses from the Israeli siege. The Israeli government does not defend the real interests of ordinary Israelis, rather it exploits their fears.
Every gain made in the history of Palestinian struggle has been the result of active mobilisation of the masses. Tragically for Palestinians neither Hamas, nor Fatah, nor the Arab regimes, have a strategy to defend the masses and stop the Israeli state’s slaughter.
The Socialist Party calls for –
-An immediate end to Israeli attacks and for and immediate end to the siege.
-Escalation of demonstrations and protests against the war both in the Middle East and internationally.
-No trust in the world powers or the United Nations. The Palestinian masses must trust their own struggle and appeal for support from the working masses internationally, especially in the Middle East, including Israel.
-Organisation of the masses in self-defence and for mass action by Palestinians and Egyptians to break the siege that imprisons Gaza.
-United struggles by the workers and poor to overthrow all the capitalist regimes in the Arab states and in Israel. For worker’s governments across the Middle East which can end the cycle of violence by resolving the contentious issues in the interests of working people and start to create a society run for the needs of ordinary people.
-A Socialist Palestine and a Socialist Israel as part of a Socialist Federation of the Middle East.
Below we also publish an article written just before the attacks on December 18.
Palestine: Mobilise against the cruel sanctions on Gaza!
On Friday 19 December, Lebanon and other parts of the Arab world could see high numbers of people taking to the streets in protest against the Israeli sanctions on Gaza.
The people of Gaza are facing a process of backward development leading to a destruction of the economy where the majority now find themselves without food, medicine or energy reserves. Although this call was initially made by Hezbollah’s leader, Nasrallah in an appeal to the masses in the Arab world, the left and working class fighters should mobilize their contingents where a united working class stand can be made, in solidarity with the poor and the oppressed, and for a workers’ resistance.
While Gaza is facing starvation and death as a result of the sanctions, Palestinian state services and natural resources are being privatized and sold off to big business. Meanwhile, Israel continues to develop new settlements in the west bank and East Jerusalem, building a railway system on occupied territory and the apartheid wall. Any imperialist promises of a so called “independent state†under capitalism fly straight out the window in the face of these developments.
Dismantling of the Palestinian economy
Palestinians’ livelihoods are at threat by military occupation, economic sanctions and colonisation of land and water resources by Israel in the West Bank as well as the ongoing collective punishment of Gaza. The so-called “Palestinian Reform and Development Plan†simply means normalisation of occupation and a gradual abandonment of Gaza.
80% of the population are living on less than two dollars a day and unemployment hovers at 60%. Only 195 out of 3,900 factories remain open. 40,000 agricultural workers have lost their incomes due to a ban on all exports.
The Palestine Plan follows a typical free-market directive where the aim is to shred to the bone public services already destroyed by Israeli tanks and aircrafts since the Al Aqsa Intifada, and to privatise services and resources. Israel has already annexed a further 20% of the West Bank’s most fertile land. Cuts in public spending, wage freezes, price hikes and de-regulation of new industry are already seen as a result of this big business plan.
Organise the masses against capitalism!
Humanitarian Movements have already failed to protect workers or improve living conditions and have also damaged attitudes, not just towards movements but also of the need for self-organisation through fighting democratic trade unions and the need for an alternative party of workers and the poor. The right to self-determination can only be fought for by challenging the system of capitalism and the ruling class which benefits from the impoverishment and exploitation of the masses.
The corporate sector would be the key ruling body in the future of any Palestinian state under capitalism and with dominance of the US neo-liberal model, the results of which are seen in Iraq and the rest of the region, not to mention the world which is heading into a deep crisis.
Free market capitalism, breeding insecurity, exploitation and inequality, can only be fought via a workers’ movement, organized through democratically elected committees of the masses with the right to be armed to defend land and services from both military and economic attack.
The only way to bring real, lasting justice, peace and prosperity to Palestinians and to all the peoples of the region is through common mass struggle against oppression and the pro-capitalist, corrupt regimes. The overthrow of capitalism and landlordism and the creation of a genuine socialist society – putting people before profit and ending poverty – would see real collaboration between all working people of the region, pooling together all the rich resources for the benefit of the many and bringing about real self-determination for the oppressed.
