By Robert Cosgrave
At the time of writing, the Israeli state’s unrelenting genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza is in its twelfth month, with no end in sight. Official figures estimate that over 41,000 have been killed by the Israeli occupation forces, including 17,000 children – 2.6% of all children in Gaza. On top of this 94,000 have been seriously wounded by Israeli attacks, and over 10,000 are missing, most presumed dead, under the 42 million tons of rubble, which the UN estimates will take 15 years to clean up. Almost nine in every ten Gazans have been forced from their homes.
Nearly all infrastructure has been destroyed by Israeli strikes: 19 of the 36 hospitals are not functioning; 65% of the road network has been decimated; and 85% of schools damaged or destroyed. Amidst this carnage, the first cases of polio in Gaza for over 25 years have been identified, leading to a rush to vaccinate 640,000 children while bombs go off around them. The Lancet medical journal estimates the excess death rate in Gaza to be 186,000.
The Israeli state has pushed to guarantee its control over the Philadelphi Corridor along the border of the Gaza Strip and Egypt and has created the Netzarim Corridor just south of Gaza City – effectively cutting the north of the Strip off from the remainder of Gaza. This is a clear signal of its desire to maintain direct military control over the Gaza Strip, as well as continuing with the siege and blockade of the imprisoned Palestinian population. Netanyahu has made this a red line for the sham ceasefire negotiations overseen by US imperialism. The demand is clear: there cannot be any semblance of Palestinian independence in Gaza.
Increased repression in occupied West Bank
While at its sharpest in Gaza, the intensification of attacks in the Occupied West Bank marks an escalation of Israel’s brutal campaign against the Palestinian people. Already over 600 Palestinians in the West Bank have been murdered since 7 October. Since 28 August, Jenin, a city of 50,000 with refugee camps of up to 20,000 in the surrounding area, has been targeted by the Israeli military in the largest attack on the West Bank since 2002. In just five days, they destroyed 70% of the road network and left many houses with no electricity and water. Aid has been forcibly cut off by the IDF, which also engages in mass arrests.
Doctors Without Borders was forced to suspend essential care in the city. Similarly, in the larger city of Hebron, the repression has seen the intensification of military checkpoints with the de facto closing off all the roads in and out of the city, and a greater number of raids in the area. The actions of the IDF not only worsen the conditions of the Palestinians, they provide the signal for an escalation in Israeli settler terror and land grabs throughout the occupied West Bank.
The Palestinian masses must organise from below, independent of the corrupt and collaborationist Palestinian Authority (PA) and also of Hamas, in a mass movement to resist Israeli State terror, including with armed self-defence and resistance to the IDF and colonial settlers.
Threat of regional war
Not content with destroying Palestine, the Netanyahu regime determined to escalate tensions with Hezbollah in Lebanon, an ally of Hamas that inflicted an embarrassing defeat on Israel in 2006. The Israeli army has launched almost daily drone strikes into southern Lebanon, killing up to 600 and displacing nearly 100,000 since October.
On top of this, the threat of a regional war in the Middle East has grown more acute due to Israel’s assassinations of high-profile Hamas and Hezbollah leaders in recent months. These assassinations are designed to bolster the fledgling prestige of the Netanyahu government, at home and abroad, as well as ensure continued support from US imperialism.
The latter has tried to push the Israeli regime to avoid regional escalation. Biden and Harris will allow the genocide to continue, but they don’t want regional war and destabilisation that would in undermine their economic and geopolitical interests in the region, least of all in an election year. However, the escalation of attacks has its own logic, which doesn’t always follow the wishes of the White House. In short, the danger of regional conflict is inherent in the situation.
Protests in Israel
For the Netanyahu government, the holding of the remaining hostages taken on 7 October has given it a crucial justification for continuing its genocidal campaign in Gaza, which it wants to continue indefinitely, but the lack of progress in returning the hostages has become a major point of exasperation in Israeli society. The death of six hostages during a raid in Gaza in early September has sparked enormous protests within Israel. An estimated 300,000 people joined protests over several days called by hostage family groups, and a general strike was called by the Histradut (the Israeli trade union federation).
Ordinary Israelis are correct to say that this government is utterly cavalier about the fate of the remaining hostages and more generally, that Netanyahu and co. do not care about the safety of ordinary Israelis. Over every struggle in Israeli society, however, there is one issue that looms: the ongoing oppression and occupation of the Palestinian people – oppression that has manifested in outright genocide for nearly one year. Until the protest movement recognises this and stands against it, it is a movement that’s completely contradictory: against the criminal Netanyahu, but failing to challenge the very basis upon which the policies he is pursuing rests – the Zionist state itself. A movement of working-class Israeli Jews that rejects the occupation and genocide could be a powerful ally in the struggle for Palestinian liberation.
Revolutionary socialist change
The existence of the apartheid Israeli State and the imperialist and capitalist order it is part of promises only a future of horror and destruction. Palestinian freedom is totally bound with the struggle to end the rule of this deeply inhumane system. The Palestinian masses and the working classes of the Middle East and North Africa are the force that can bring this necessary change about, and one that can exploit the cracks in Israeli society.
Revolutionary socialist change in this region, with systemic oppression and exploitation abolished, can provide freedom and justice for all, including the right to national self-determination for all its peoples.
