No end in sight...

The Middle East is now on the brink of all-out war following this week’s targetted killings of Palestinian and Lebanese resistance leaders in back-to-back Israeli air strikes in Beirut and Tehran. Some say this is what the Israeli leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, wants to stave off the Gaza cease-fire he fears would split his coalition and force him to call fresh elections he almost certainly lose. Bowing out while facing bribery, fraud and breach of trust charges is not how Netanyahu wants to be remembered. He wants to end his days covered in Zionist glory as the man who built “Greater Israel” and brought the Palestinians to their knees. But he’s failed, so far, on all counts.
Israel has failed to drive the Palestinians into Egypt to clear the decks for the Zionist settlement of the Gaza Strip. Israel has failed to stop the confrontation with the Lebanese resistance on its northern border. The Yemenis are maintaining their naval blockade that has closed down Eilat, Israel’s port on the Red Sea. The Palestinians still hold scores of Israeli prisoners and Hamas and the other Palestinian resistance movements fight on using tunnel networks under the Strip that the Israelis have failed to uncover.
It hasn’t been for the want of trying. The genocidal Israeli campaign in Gaza has brought death and destruction to the Palestinian enclave on an industrial scale. Some 39,000 Palestinian Arabs have been killed and over 90,000 more wounded in the round of fighting that began in October 2023. Most of them were defenceless civilians.
But behind Israel stands American imperialism. Despite all the talk of “Zionist lobbies” or the “Jewish vote” only the Americans count in Tel Aviv. The Israelis are American puppets that, until recently, enabled the Americans to pose as friends of the feudal Arab kings who allow the Big Oil corporations to plunder their oil in return for a juicy cut and American protection.
Likewise the Zionist leaders who strut the world posing as independent politicians are just alibis for American aggression in the Middle East. US imperialism provides the military and economic support that keeps Israel going. The country is a virtual American protectorate and their leaders will ultimately do whatever America wants.
The war goes on in Gaza because that’s what American imperialism wants. They want the fighting to continue until Hamas is crushed – because Hamas stands in their way, because the Palestinian resistance sabotaged the American plan for NATO expansion in the Middle East when it launched its raid into Israel last October.
But what the Americans want and what they get is another matter altogether. They failed in Iraq. They failed in Afghanistan. They failed in Syria and they will fail in the Middle East.
The establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 led to the expulsion of nearly a million Palestinians from their homes. The war that began in 1948 continues to this day. The Palestinians fight on and they will continue the struggle until their legitimate rights are restored.
UN resolutions have provided the basis for a just and lasting peace in the Middle East. First of all Israel must totally withdraw from all the occupied territories seized in 1967, including Arab East Jerusalem and Syria’s Golan Heights. The Palestinians must be allowed to establish a state of their own on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Palestinian refugees whose homes are now in Israel must be allowed to return or, if they so wish, be paid appropriate compensation in exchange. And all states in the region, including Israel, should have internationally agreed and recognised frontiers guaranteed by all the Great Powers.