International Workers’ Unity-Fourth International
10 April 2024. Six months have passed since the Zionist aggression against the Palestinian people started in Gaza Strip and occupied West Bank. The Zionist operation has not fulfilled its goals. They could neither force Hamas to surrender nor the Palestinian people. Hamas is still the government in Gaza. They do not even control the Strip. Despite the despairing situation and the military inequality, combats continue even in the north of Gaza, where Israel maintained they had destroyed Hamas. Nevertheless, Zionist soldiers continue to die in the north in the hands of the Palestinian resistance.
They could neither capture nor kill the resistance leaders that are still in the Gaza Strip, not those in other countries. They could not recover any hostage in the resistance hands. The liberation of a group of hostages was the result of negotiations.
Israel continues the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, bombing and starving the population. They do not allow humanitarian help, even with settlers supported by the military that block the convoys at the Rafah border.
They are conducting a genocide we see daily through social media, cruel and moving images. The outcome so far is 33,369 people killed in the Gaza Strip, 70 per cent of them women and children, and 75,993 injured. While in the West Bank, settlers and the Zionist military have killed 457 Palestinians.
Israel could not obtain the results it pursued six months ago. Now, it is more isolated internationally than in any other moment since 1948, when imperialism created the reactionary enclave in Palestinian land.
The mobilisation of the people of the world continues
The Israeli genocide of Palestinians has sparked global support for Palestine and opposition to Zionist aggression.
The protests have spread to all the continents, with special force in Europe, the USA, Canada, north of Africa, Arab nations in the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America. Every week, millions in Yemen take to the streets. In Barcelona, a meeting to unify European solidarity with Palestine took place recently. In Jordan, massive vigils took place for several days in front of the Israel embassy. People take to the streets in London and New York despite the cold and rain. In Germany and France, people defy restrictions against protests to support Palestine. In Berlin, Paris, and other cities, thousands of people take to the street and fight repression.
Land Day in Palestine saw worldwide demonstrations for Palestinian right to return. 200 thousand marched in London and 30 thousand in New York. These massive demonstrations remind us of the immense global movement against the imperialist war of the USA against Vietnam.
There are demonstrations in Israel demanding Netanyahu should step down
As in those years, protests are also taking place on the domestic front. In Israel, demonstrations against the Netanyahu government take place every weekend, demanding an agreement to bring about the return of the hostages. On 1 April, thousands marched in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Caesarea, where Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence is located. On 7 April, some 100,000 people marched in Tel Aviv demanding “elections now” and Netanyahu’s resignation. The demonstrations took place simultaneously in 50 cities in Israel.
The outcry for a ceasefire and against the arm sales of Israel grows
The genocide the world witnesses and the massive demonstrations in solidarity with Palestine are weakening the imperialist international organisations and the governments that are part of them.
On 25 March, the UN Security Council passed a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza with 14 votes in favour, and the USA abstaining, an unprecedented development. For the first time since the beginning of the Zionist aggression, the USA did not use its veto right. We know these votes are mainly political resolutions of an imperialist organism; they are non-committal, and Israel ignores them.
More recently, the UN’s main human rights body passed a resolution asking countries to stop selling and sending weapons to Israel. Since then, there has been a growing clamour in the world to stop sending arms to the Zionist entity in order to stop the genocide of the Palestinian people.
600 lawyers, including former UK Supreme Court judges, warned in a letter to the prime minister of potential complicity in crimes like Gaza genocide.
In the letter they said: “Failure to comply with its own obligations under the genocide convention to take ‘all measures to prevent genocide which were within its power’ would incur UK state responsibility for the commission of an international wrong, for which full reparation must be made.” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/former-supreme-court-judges-say-uk-arming-israel-breaches-international-law
Alicia Kearns, chair of Foreign Affairs Select Committee, responded to UN pressure by declaring the UK must immediately stop selling arms to Israel. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/30/uk-government-lawyers-say-israel-is-breaking-international-law-claims-top-tory-in-leaked-recording
Arms sales to Israel have been suspended by Belgium, Spanish State, and the Japanese arm company Itochu Corporation.
US imperialism gets impatient with Netanyahu
Joe Biden himself and US imperialism, while continuing to support it, reflect Israel’s isolation by having to distance themselves and call on Netanyahu to curb his military action. A fact the Nazi-Zionist regime systematically rejects.
Biden called Netanyahu on 4 April to warn him that US support for the war depends on protecting civilians and allowing food supplies in.
In a tv interview on 9 April, Biden said about Netanyahu’s political approach in Gaza: “I think what he’s doing is a mistake.” I don’t agree with his approach,” https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/4/10/biden-israels-netanyahu-making-mistake-on-gaza Insisting that Israel should accept a ceasefire now and allow humanitarian aid in for 6-8 weeks.
Even Trump has criticised Israel, noting that “Israel must stop the fighting. We cannot allow this to continue. “You have to finish it up and do it quickly and get back to the world of peace. We need peace in the world … we need peace in the Middle East,”https://www.axios.com/2024/03/17/trump-says-israel-should-quickly-end-the-gaza-war-we-need-peace
Both reflect the US presidential election context in November. With Biden, the fall in the polls because of the unrestricted support he has given to Israel in the last six months.
The IWU-FI calls for deepening solidarity with the heroic Palestinian people
Despite the genocide being carried out by Israel in Gaza, and although it may seem contradictory, precisely because of this terrible massacre and destruction of Zionism, the conditions could be created so that in the not too distant future the crisis of Zionism will deepen, and finally the Palestinian people and the masses of the world will impose the end of Zionist apartheid.
Last February, the non-Zionist Israeli historian Ilan Pappe in a lecture in London entitled: “It Is Dark Before the Dawn, But Israeli Settler Colonialism Is At an End”, presaged the end of Zionist apartheid in Palestine. https://socialistproject.ca/2024/02/dark-before-dawn-israeli-settler-colonialism-end/ This will only be achieved with the resistance of the Palestinian people and a massive worldwide mobilisation, until a single, secular, democratic and non-racist Palestinian state is imposed on the historic territory “from the river to the sea”, as the worldwide solidarity movement cries out.
The struggle of the fighters in Gaza continues, with the support of the heroic resistance of the entire Palestinian people. In this context, the IWU-FI, as part of the world solidarity movement, supports the struggle of the Palestinian people’s struggle and resistance in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. We call for a redoubling of the massive and united worldwide mobilisation in solidarity.
Let the people of the world demand their governments break off economic, commercial, cultural, and military agreements with Israel. No more weapons for Israel! No more financial and military aid from the United States, Germany and other countries to the Zionist entity! We repudiate the naval coalition established by the United States to confront the attacks of the Yemeni Houthis in the Red Sea against Israeli ships or ships carrying goods to the Zionist entity!
Let the people with their mobilisation demand that their governments, in particular the Arab governments that have done very little to support the Palestinians, break relations with Israel and support the Palestinian resistance with all it needs.
International Workers’ Unity-Fourth International (IWU-FI) 10 April 2024
