MILLIONS of people have taken to the streets throughout the world to
protest against US imperialism’s decision to recognise Israel’s
annexation of Arab East Jerusalem. Across the Arab world, from Morocco
to the Gulf, demonstrators are denouncing Donald Trump, the chief
American war-lord, and demanding action in solidarity with the
Palestinians struggling against the barbarous Zionist regime. In
occupied Palestine itself, some protesters have been killed and many
more wounded in clashes with the Zionist police and security forces.
Moqtada al-Sadr, the militant Iraqi Shia cleric whose Mahdi Army led the
Shia Muslim resistance to the American occupation, has called for the
expulsion of all Israeli diplomats on Muslim soil and Lebanese cleric
Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Shia resistance movement in Lebanon,
has called for a united front “in the field” to support the Palestinian
resistance against this “foolish decision”, which he hoped meant the
“beginning of the end” of Israel.
The Zionists have always dreamt of dominating the Middle East and
colonising Palestine. But their petty ambitions are not the driving
force of US imperialism. The tail does not wag the dog, and Israel and
the American ‘Zionist lobby’ does not dictate American foreign policy.
They serve it. They provide American imperialism with a convenient alibi
to play the role of ‘honest broker’ in the Middle East. They enable the
feudal Arab oil princes to claim that the Arabs’ enemy is not
imperialism as such but Israel and this supposedly all-powerful “Zionist
lobby”, which pulls the strings in the USA. Trump has now revealed the
true face of US imperialism to those venal Arabs who claimed that the
Americans could push forward the “peace process”.
The tragedy of the Palestinian Arabs began when British imperialism
occupied their land in 1918 and encouraged Zionist immigration. British
imperialism sought to create a Zionist community that would prolong
their occupation of Palestine indefinitely.
The Zionists helped British colonialism crush the Palestine Revolt in
1936. But in the immediate post-Second World War situation the Zionists
seized the opportunity to push for a separate state of their own. In
1948 the British colonial mandate ended and the State of Israel was
proclaimed. On that day the first Arab—Israeli war began. It has never
ended.
The first war led to the expulsion of a million Palestinian Arabs from
their homes by the Zionist regime. Those refugees and their descendants
have never given up their right to return to their land. And this is the
heart of the crisis in the Middle East that has led to five full-scale
wars and continuing simmering conflicts.
Israel is economically and politically entirely dependent on American
imperialism, and successive Israeli governments have existed to serve
the needs of American imperialism in the region. And those needs are to
weaken and divide the Arabs to ensure that the big oil corporations can
continue their exploitation and plunder of Arab oil until it eventually
runs out.
US imperialism believes it can call all the shots in the Middle East
today. The imperialists believe that all resistance can be crushed by
brute force and they still believe they can find willing Arab tools to
do their bidding, hoist up the white flag and sign a surrender peace.
In the Middle East imperialist violence always leads to an equally
violent resistance. Imperialism’s refusal to recognise this has led to
the spiral of violence and terror that began in 1948 as a regional war
to a conflict that now spans the whole world.
We call for the immediate and unconditional end to the Israeli
occupation of the West Bank and Syria’s Golan Heights, to pave the way
for a comprehensive peace treaty to end the conflict in the Middle East
based on past United Nations resolutions. A lasting solution must be
based on the right of return of the Palestinian refugees and an
independent Palestinian state, with Israel giving up all territories
seized since 1967, including Arab East Jerusalem.
No comments:
Post a Comment