Love is in the Air

...or so many of us thought back in the 1970s when the forces of liberation were storming through the Global South and massive peace movements could march through the heart of the imperialist world to demand the end of imperialist wars. The words, now largely forgotten outside the ranks of Dundee United fans, were sometimes amended to “peace is in the air” in those halcyon days of the last genuinely Labour government that from time to time would pay lip-service to the cause of peace that commanded significant support amongst the labour movement of the day.
These days Starmer is seldom bothered by such niceties and rarely talks about peace except to justify more arms expenditure or the monstrous expense of our bogus nuclear strike force. Donald Trump is somewhat different. This immensely vain man does little to mask his determination to put the Nobel Peace Prize in his trophy cabinet. Behind his supreme ego lies the equally determined view of prominent circles within the American ruling class that want to “Make America Great Again” – largely at the expense of their own allies – while, at the same time, cut their losses on profitless wars in the Global South 
When the Soviet Union and its European allies went down in 1991 we were told to expect a “peace dividend” in return. The bourgeois gurus on both sides of the Atlantic talked about the “end of history” and predicted that the end of the Cold War would lead to massive cuts in Western defence spending that would usher in a new age of prosperity for everyone in the 21st century. What we actually got was regime-change invasions and a “new world order” of forever wars in the Global South amidst a global capitalist slump with still no signs of recovery on the horizon. And everywhere we look in the capitalist world we see unemployment, homelessness, poverty, drug abuse and crime. The symptoms of industrial decline, inflationary pressures, stock market volatility and economic stagnation. 
Trump’s Ukraine peace plan is a realistic response to the legitimate demands of the Russian Federation and if it ends the conflict in eastern Europe it will bring countless benefits to working people on both sides of the fence.
Sadly the same cannot be said for the Gaza plan, adopted by the UN Security Council last week, that established a ceasefire and laid-out a  vague framework for long-term peace between Israel and Hamas involving international support and a pathway to Palestinian statehood.
Though Trump did, indeed, bring a halt to the Israeli invasion – which is more that can be said for the Biden administration – the fighting still continues, albeit on a much smaller scale in the beleaguered Palestinian enclave. Trump certainly wants to bring the feudal Middle Eastern oil princes and the venal Arab politicians in their pay on board but all the Palestinians get are the usual platitudes which have always come to nothing in the past. 
The proposed “Gaza International Transitional Authority” – headed by The Donald himself –simply aims at replacing the Israelis and the Hamas administration with a government run by American nominees and an occupying army drawn from America’s regional allies while the Palestinians are merely expected to staff the admin sector and the auxiliary police force needed to cover this densely-populated Palestinian strip of land on the Mediterranean coast.
Sure there’s plenty of talk about Arab oil money transforming the post-war Gaza Strip into a millionaires’ playground. But there’s going to be no Arab Monte Carlo as long as millions of Palestinians are forced to live under Zionist bondage. And there’s going to be no peace as longs as the Palestinians are denied their legitimate right to freedom and independence.

Gaza: What next?

The guns have fallen silent and the Palestinians are returning to what  was once their homes in the Gaza Strip. The hundreds of international volunteers in the Global Sumud flotilla who were interned after their vessels were seized in international waters by the Israeli navy have all been released. The relatives of the Israeli hostages and the Palestinian prisoners look forward to long-awaited re-unions with their loved ones. And Western politicians and Arab leaders talk about a new civil government that will replace the Hamas administration after the Israelis have gone which will be the first step towards ending the conflict in the Middle East. But will any of this actually happen?
Well the cease-fire will hold at least until the prisoner exchange is over. After that it’s anyone’s guess. Few Palestinians trust Netanyahu to keep his word.The Israeli leader didn’t want a cease-fire. Nor did he want to make a grovelling public apology to the Qataris. But he did what he was told. Because ultimately it all depends on Donald Trump, who has shown over the past few days who really calls the shots in Tel Aviv. But what do the Americans want?
Trump’s 20 point peace plan may be a vague collection of platitudes but the “settlement” the Trump team drew up during The Donald’s first term is pretty precise. Their ‘Abraham Accords’ two-state solution would see the Israelis retaining all their West Bank settlements in exchange for worthless desert in Israel that would be attached to the Gaza Strip and what’s left of the Arab West Bank for the establishment of a powerless  Palestinian ‘state’ whose independence would barely stretch beyond that of an Indian ‘reservation’ in the USA. 
But they can’t crush Arab resistance. They couldn’t stifle the global anti-war movement that called for an immediate end to Israeli aggression. The voice of the oppressed, the millions that support the legitimate rights of the Palestinian Arabs has swept the world.
Now more than ever, our pressure on the British government matters. The government must stop arming Israel and instead use every possible means to facilitate immediate access to humanitarian aid and push any temporary ceasefire into a lasting deal that restores the legitimate rights of the Palestinian Arabs that the world has long recognised.

Trump trumped again

Donald Trump has once again failed to get the Nobel Peace Prize he has so long coveted. It has instead gone to a Venezuelan opposition politician whose only merit is that she is a reactionary leader and a staunch supporter of Israel who believes in “popular capitalism”.
This rubbishy prize, with few honourable exceptions, has long been the preserve of imperialist politicians and prominent agents of imperialism. The anti-communist Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov won it in 1975. The reactionary Polish union leader Lech Walesa got it for his counter-revolutionary campaign in 1983. Gorbachov was similarly rewarded for his treachery in 1990. This year was no exception.
María Corina Machado’s “tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela” includes supporting imperialist sanctions against her own country and calling for foreign intervention to remove Venezuelan President Maduro on humanitarian grounds.

Trump has a plan…

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..but whether it will bring peace is another matter altogether. It’s very difficult to take anything that Trump says seriously these days – let alone a 20-point plan to end the fighting in the Gaza Strip that specifically rules out any role for the resistance movement that has governed the beleaguered Palestinian enclave since 2007. 
You would have thought that any proposal that envisages a new international administration for the Palestinian enclave called the “Board of Peace”  led by Trump himself with Tony Blair as The Donald’s chief gofer would be laughed out of court.
Far from it. The oil princes of Arabia and the other craven Arab politicians long in America’s pay love it. It gives them another excuse to do nothing, Likewise the Western politicians in Britain and the European Union who talk about Palestinian rights but, at the end of the day, will routinely do what they’re told to do in Washington.
To be fair the Trump plan does call for an end to the fighting, a prisoner exchange and a staged withdrawal of all Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip. It even makes a nod towards eventual Palestinian independence. But few, if any, Arabs seriously believe that the Israelis will honour what they signed up to in the White House. Trump, of course, could force the Israelis to obey him. The question is does he want to...

Meanwhile…

...Israel has hijacked the international peace convoy sailing to Gaza to deliver aid and detained the civilian activists on board. The commandeering of the Global Sumud Flotilla boats shows the contempt Israel has for the Palestinians and the international norms that the West pretends to uphold in their “rules-based order”.The civilians on board the flotilla were attempting to deliver aid to the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, to break Israel's immoral and illegal siege. 
Israel's genocidal campaign against the Palestinian Arabs in the Gaza Strip is a component of its genocide, which has killed many tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, and caused the complete devastation of civilian infrastructure and an intentionally engineered famine.
Earlier this month, the UN Commission of Inquiry concluded what we already know –that Israel is inflicting a genocide on the Palestinian people. The report outlined that signatories of the Genocide Convention, including Britain, have an obligation to prevent further acts of genocide and punish those responsible, including by ending the arms trade with Israel.
Four of the boats in the fleet were British-flagged. The Starmer government has a legal duty to defend these vessels and the civilians on board, who have been subject to an attack clearly breaching international humanitarian law. The British government must intervene to demand the immediate release of those detained, and urgently address the issues to which the flotilla was responding to by ending all arms trade and military collaboration with Israel. 

Take action for Palestine!

 As Palestinians starve under the Zionist thumb Israeli troops move into Gaza city leaving a trail of death and destruction in their wake. While People’s China and the Russian Federation have long taken the principled stand with the Global South in support of the Palestinian Arab freedom fighters America’s feudal Arab lackeys wring their hands but do little or nothing to stop the genocide on their door-step.
All over the world millions upon millions of people are demanding an end to the slaughter forcing even the venal Western politicians to at least pay lip-service to human rights in Palestine. But that’s as far as it goes for the likes of Starmer, Macron and Merz.
They try to stifle the solidarity movement by intimidating and jailing those who protest against Zionist terror. They’ll all crawl to Washington to bleat on about Ukraine but none of them are prepared to stand up to Trump or make the decisive break with Zionism and Israel that is needed to halt the violence which threatens to plunge the entire Middle East into chaos and bloodshed.
The Palestinians have called on people around the world to launch divestment campaigns as an effective way of showing solidarity with their struggle for freedom. The call for sanctions against Israel becomes louder and louder each day.
Israel's genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip has killed tens of thousands of Palestinian Arabs and displaced over 90 per cent of the entire population. But Israel’s actions can only be sustained through imperialism. And the leader of the pack is the United States.
The Zionist entity is a total dependency of the United States. The United States holds 99 per cent of the cards in Tel Aviv. Despite all the talk of “Zionist lobbies” and 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 an American protectorate and their leaders will ultimately do whatever America wants.
The establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 led to the expulsion of nearly a million Palestinians from their homes. The war 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 the 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 should have internationally agreed and recognised frontiers guaranteed by the Great Powers.

Stop the drive to war

Trump walks out of the G7 conference in Canada. He threatens to kill the Iranian leader and join Israel in its offensive against the Islamic Republic of Iran. All in all it seems that the American establishment, the “deep state” or war lobby that cuts across the bogus political spectrum in the United States, that represents the most venal and aggressive sections of the American ruling class is back in charge if the mercurial acts of the man in the White House is anything to go by these days. That, of course, we won’t know for sure as Trump’s bargaining style is a heady mixture of lies, bluff and threats What we do know is that the entire Middle East will be set ablaze if US imperialism does openly join in the war to save the skin of its Israeli puppet.
That’s why the Stop the War movement and the rest of the Palestine solidarity coalition has added the slogan No War on Iran as part of its mobilisation for the big national demonstration in London this weekend. That’s why we, as communists, must also help in the effort to stop British involvement in any future American aggression in the region.
The Americans will almost certainly want to use Diego Garcia, the Anglo-American military base in the Indian Ocean, as a staging post to conduct strikes on Iran. They may also want the RAF squadron in Cyprus to join them in what the Israelis are openly calling “regime change” in Iran. 
Crawling to the Americans is second nature to Labour and Tory politicians who still drone on and on about trans-Atlantic “partnership” and the “special relationship” to justify British imperialism’s slavish support of American power throughout the world. So we shouldn’t expect much from the Starmer government that bleats on about “de-escalation”, says Iran must never have a nuclear bomb while supporting Israel’s supposed “right to defend itself” whenever anyone demands a serious response to Zionist war-crimes from the British government. 
Stop The War convener Lindsey German says Trump has “absolutely no business bombing or attacking the country in any way. To do so would be a completely illegal war crime which will cause misery to millions and drive the world into the worst Middle East war ever.
“The claims that Israel is simply defending itself against the attacks by Iran over the last week are completely false. 
“We know from the past 20 months of Israel’s assault on Gaza they’re not defending themselves, they’re engaged in an aggressive and genocidal war, and they intend the same for Iran”.
 In Britain the ruling class would have us believe that we live in what the Americans call the “free world”; that the USA is some sort of democratic utopia and that anyone who opposes imperialism is evil, mad or both. Backed by bought and paid-for Labour leaders and a daily dose of lies from the bourgeois media they think they can play this cynical game for ever and ever. We must prove them wrong and stop this war.

The struggle of the people against imperialism must be strengthened!

 Joint Statement of Communist and Workers’ Parties

The Communist and Workers’ Parties signing this Joint Statement strongly condemn the US attack on Iran, which escalates the military offensive already launched by Israel.
After Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and the ongoing genocide in Palestine, the USA and its allies are now shedding the blood of yet another country in the Middle East. This imperialist aggression is plunging people into war across a wider region and threatening to destroy humanity as a whole.
The Communist and Workers’ Parties are demanding an immediate end to the escalation of the war against Iran by the USA, NATO and Israel. We also call on people to strengthen their struggle against war, foreign military bases, troop deployments abroad, military equipment and nuclear weapons.
Solidarity with the people of Iran, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and all other peoples in the region must be strengthened.
 
SolidNet Parties

• Communist Party of Albania
• Algerian Party for Democracy and Socialism
• Communist Party of Armenia
• Communist Party of Australia
• Party of Labour of Austria
• Democratic Progressive Tribune, Bahrain
• Communist Party of Bangladesh
• Brazilian Communist Party
• Communist Party of Britain
• New Communist Party of Britain
• Communist Party of Canada
• Communist Party of Chile
• Colombian Communist Party
• Socialist Workers' Party of Croatia
• Communist Party of Bohemia & Moravia
• Communist Party of Denmark
• Communist Party of El Salvador
• German Communist Party
• Communist Party of Greece
• Communist Party of India
• Iraqi Communist Party
• Tudeh Party of Iran
• Communist Party of Ireland
• Workers Party of Ireland
• Communist Party of Israel
• Socialist Movement of Kazakhstan
• Communist Party of Mexico
• New Communist Party of the Netherlands
• Communist Party of Norway
• Communist Party of Pakistan
• Palestinian Communist Party
• Palestinian Peoples Party
• Paraguayan Communist Party
• Peruvian Communist Party
• Philippines Communist Party [PKP 1930]
• Communist Party of Poland
• Romanian Socialist Party
• Communist Party of the Soviet Union
• Communists of Serbia
• South African Communist Party
• Communist Party of the Workers of Spain
• Communist Party of Sri Lanka
• Communist Party of Sweden
• Syrian Communist Party
• Swiss Communist Party
• Communist Party of Turkey
• Communist Party of Ukraine
• Union of Communists of Ukraine
• Communist Party USA
• Communist Party of Venezuela

Other Parties

• Argentinian Communist Party
• Revolutionary Brazilian Communist Party 
• Communist Workers' Party – For Peace and Socialism (Finland)
• Communist Revolutionary Party of France 
• Communist Party (Germany)
• Communist Front (Italy)
• Communist Workers' Platform USA

We can’t stop now!

Thousands are being massacred in Gaza, and the Western world remains silent. Israel has treacherously broken the ceasefire. For the last two weeks, Israel has completely blockaded Gaza, using starvation as a weapon of war as it continues to kill Palestinians with impunity in the occupied West Bank as well as the beleaguered Palestinian enclave. And now, with the blessing of Donald Trump the Zionists have resumed their genocidal assault on Gaza.  
The Israeli war-machine has killed at least 45,000 Palestinians in Gaza and displaced more than 90 per cent of Gaza’s population. Palestinians in Gaza are facing imminent famine. Yet our political leaders still refuse to call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, and for Britain to stop arming Israel. 
All we get are weasel words from Starmer. His Foreign Minister, David Lammy told the House of Commons on Monday that Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip was “appalling and unacceptable” and “a breach of international law”. The next day it was watered-down by Downing Street. Starmer’s spokesman Dave Pares refused to repeat that line, telling reporters that  “our position remains that Israel’s actions in Gaza have a clear risk of breaking international humanitarian law”. Shameful nonsense.
Hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets in London and all over the country to demand a halt to Zionist aggression and call for justice for the Palestinian Arabs. As Israel’s genocidal assault continues we must keep on taking action until the Palestinians win their fight for freedom. We can’t stop now!

Tax the rich instead

Opposition to Labour’s new austerity programme is growing. “Slashing disability benefits is a cruel political choice that will cost lives” says Jeremy Corbyn. The former Labour leader says none of the cuts announced are necessary and the government should tax the super-rich instead. Diane Abbott dismisses Sir Keir Starmer’s claim that the cuts in benefits had a moral purpose. “This is not about morality,” she says. It is “about the Treasury’s wish to balance the country’s books on the back of the most vulnerable and poor people in this society”. And the Greens tell Starmer that millions were struggling in “a deeply unfair, unequal economic system” while billionaires got ever richer. Why put the burden for tackling the crisis on the elderly, children, the sick and disabled “rather than on the shoulders of the super-rich with a wealth tax”. 
The Starmer government pleads poverty to justify means-testing the pensioners’ winter fuel benefit. It won’t pay compensation to the three million or so women born in the 1950s who were not properly informed about the state pension age increase. But it can find plenty to fuel the proxy war against Russia and pay for Trident and the rest of our so-called nuclear deterrent.  
The Labour biggies and the ruling class that they serve maintain that capitalism is the only game in town. And it is – but only for themselves. Capitalism, in the final analysis, is simply a system designed to perpetuate the rule of the landowners, industrialists and capitalists to ensure that a tiny handful of parasites can live the lives of Roman emperors off the backs of millions upon millions of working people. There is only one solution to the capitalist crisis – socialism! 

The Trump plan to deport the Palestinians

by Fouad Baker

The Trump plan to deport the Palestinian people from Gaza and the West Bank cannot be viewed in the same way as his rhetoric about purchasing Greenland from Denmark, merging Canada with the United States or controlling the Panama Canal and the Gulf of Mexico.
The plan to deport Palestinians is presented with high seriousness, and preparations for it are taking place behind the scenes to move the residents of Gaza to Egypt and from the West Bank to Jordan. This plan is based on communications between Donald Trump and his counterparts, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, King Abdullah of Jordan, as well as secret communications with other countries, such as Albania and Indonesia as well as some members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, especially Saudi Arabia.
During Donald Trump’s first presidential term, from 2016 to 2021, he altered the equations that Palestinians had established, which emphasised that no regional settlement could occur without resolving the Palestinian issue. Trump undermined this equation when he imposed the “Deal of the Century” in 2020, moving the American embassy to Jerusalem and recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and the annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights that Israel seized in 1967.
Trump also signed the Abraham Accords, which are treaties and agreements to normalise relations with Israel, that included Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, (UAE), Morocco and Sudan, as well as forming a military alliance under the guise of so-called economic peace.
With his new term, since assuming office on 20th January 2025, Trump has reintroduced the issue of resolving the Palestinian cause, this time with his desire to win a Nobel Peace Prize and end wars in the world. However, this also comes at the expense of the Palestinian people and their inalienable national rights, as outlined in international legal resolutions, including the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, the right to self-determination and the right of return as per [United Nations] Resolution 194.
Secret diplomatic moves
The new US administration, alongside Israeli diplomats, has quietly begun seriously discussing Trump’s vision of deporting Palestinians. They are engaging with several Arab capitals to push this plan forward and apply heavy pressure, through the gateway of accepting Palestinians as short-term humanitarian refugees, pending the reconstruction of Gaza.
This plan involves a period of taking in Palestinians for between six months to a year, with their return to Gaza in 2026 once the reconstruction is complete. The plan subtly includes, though not openly stated, the possibility that these Palestinians may not return to their cities and villages – much like in 1948, when their departure was intended to be temporary, but they still have not been allowed to return despite all international resolutions.
According to diplomatic sources, Israel is communicating with certain countries like Albania and Indonesia, to see if they will accept Palestinian refugees. The discussions are revisiting aspects of the 2020 Deal of the Century, particularly the integration of Palestinians displaced in 1948 into the countries that hosted them, such as Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.
Israel has also opened a dialogue with some members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) over a plan to resettle 5,000 Palestinian refugees annually over a span of 10 years, totalling around 50,000 refugees.
Now the Trump administration is striving to engage with Saudi Arabia to normalise relations with Israel and to abandon its conditions relating to the two-state solution and the Arab Peace Initiative. According to sources close to decision-makers in Saudi Arabia, the Kingdom has become more flexible in its approach to the Arab Peace Initiative, under the pretext that it cannot be implemented all at once, but rather gradually, starting with normalisation with Israel, to open political dialogues and prospects related to the Palestinian issue.
The new Trump administration has returned to its previous tactics from the first term, exerting economic pressure on the Palestinian Authority. It has cut aid and support for American development projects in the West Bank and plans to use the reconstruction of Gaza as leverage against Hamas.
The aim is to pressure Hamas not to reclaim authority over Gaza by stalling reconstruction efforts, holding back funds and donations from other countries and preventing them from being transferred to Gaza. The Trump administration also seeks to control the reconstruction fund, which is currently being organised by some European countries and certain Arab regimes that oppose Hamas’ control over Gaza.
According to technical experts, Gaza will require several years to rebuild, to erase the remnants of Israeli aggression and clear the rubble of destroyed buildings. In this context, the new Trump administration justifies the temporary humanitarian refugee status for Palestinians in Gaza for six months, while being fully aware that reconstruction would take at least eight years if it were to proceed – assuming there are no political obstacles or funding restrictions.
Possible scenarios
The scene of Palestinians returning to their homes in Gaza through the Netzarim checkpoint – now destroyed – illustrates the deep connection of the Palestinian people to their land, despite the widespread devastation. This shattered the illusion of absolute victory that Netanyahu spoke of.
Hamas, with a tactical move involving the release of the Israeli prisoner Arbel Yehud, achieved strategic success by securing the return of residents from northern Gaza. It has become increasingly difficult for Israel to resume the war, even if the ceasefire agreement  were to collapse, especially with the unsearched civilians walking through the Netzarim crossing.
Furthermore, the renewal of the war is no longer in the hands of Netanyahu or [Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel] Smotrich, who opposed the ceasefire agreement. The decision now lies with Trump, who seeks to rescue Israel from military defeat and turn it into a political victory by deporting Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank.
This plan would continue the annexation of Palestinian territories, normalise relations with Arab countries — specifically Saudi Arabia — and undermine the two-state solution. The true deal this time will be an American-Saudi-Israeli deal.
Trump is attempting to replace the genocide that was inflicted on the Palestinian people [by the Israelis during the Gaza war] with political genocide. This time, it is not only aimed at the authority in Gaza, but also at the Palestinian Authority [that runs the “autonomous” West Bank zones].
By besieging the Jenin camp and confronting the Palestinian militias in the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority seeks to present its credentials to the new US administration in an effort to maintain its political position and prevent its collapse.
In the absence of a unified Palestinian national strategy, Trump’s plan remains intact, and it is difficult to counter it. This first and foremost falls on the responsibility of the Palestinian Authority (PA), which refrains from implementing the Beijing Declaration, calling for a meeting of the unified Palestinian leadership, and the PA’s failure to form a national unity government that includes everyone, thus avoiding collective responsibility in confronting the American-Israeli plans.
This calls for international efforts to confront the looming danger to the Palestinian cause, with the goal of pressuring the Palestinian Authority to implement the Beijing Declaration, form a national unity government that includes competent national figures, hold comprehensive Palestinian elections, rebuild Gaza and overcome external obstacles in order to block Israel’s questionable projects.
The Palestinian people have affirmed to the entire world, through the powerful scene of their return to northern Gaza, their unwavering attachment to their land and their rejection of the forced displacement plan, despite all the destruction and massacres committed against them.
No matter how much Israel tries to impose racist and colonial policies against them, the Palestinian people will resist until their last breath. As Israeli historian Ilan Pappe states in his book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine: “the olive tree has pierced the trees imported by Israel from outside Palestine and planted in Palestinian land to reinforce their narrative that they are the rightful owners of the land”.
Similarly, the Palestinian people will defy all these plans with their will and rejection of colonial projects and policies of fait accompli. They will invent new forms of resistance, as they have done in previous stages, and they will amaze the world with their diverse strategies.

The author is an international lawyer and a member of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP)

Gaza: What next?

The Gaza ceasefire agreed this week has brought relief to the long-suffering Palestinian Arabs in the beleaguered Palestinian enclave and hope at last to the relatives of the prisoners held on both sides whose fate hinged on the success of the talks in the capital of the Arab state of Qatar. It remains to be seen if the Israelis honour the agreement they signed up to in Doha. But it’s difficult to see how they go back on their word over the truce that was pushed through on the insistence of an emissary of President-elect Donald Trump who returns to the White House on 20th January.
The deal – a total Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in return for a prisoner exchange – is essentially the one Hamas agreed to last May to end the fighting. Endorsed at the United Nations the Biden administration and the Netanyahu government both supported it – indeed they said the plan had orginated in Israel in the first place. But it was just a ruse to stall for time and divert world public opinion while the Israelis assassinated Hamas leaders and pushed on with their plan to re-occupy the Strip and drive out most, if not all, of the Palestinians Arabs to make room for Zionist settlers.
UN resolutions provide 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.
Joe Biden fully approved of Israeli aggression. When he met Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his visit to Israel last year he said "I don't believe you have to be a Jew to be a Zionist, and I am a Zionist". But American support for Israel began long before Biden. When the Zionist state was proclaimed in 1948. When the first Arab-Israeli war began and around a million Palestinians were driven out of their homes to make way for Zionist settlement.
Israel is nothing without the United States. It is a pawn of the United States.The Zionist leaders strut the world posing as independent politicians. But US imperialism provides the military and economic support that keeps Israel going. The country is an American protectorate and their leaders will ultimately do whatever America wants. 
Trump, in turn, loudly proclaims his own support for the Zionist entity. He also wants to keep the oil princes sweet. The section of the US ruling class that he leads wants to maintain the American presence in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf to build a new military bloc to threaten Iran and pave the way for US imperialism’s total control of the global energy market. Trump and his cohorts may well believe that an end to the fighting is enough to keep the feudal Arabs on side. But the Palestinians, and indeed, virtually the entire world outside the United States want to see a final end to the crisis.
 As for Netanyahu – he wants to end his days covered in glory as the man who built “Greater Israel” and brought the Palestinians to their knees. But he’s failed on all counts. Whatever happens next this is their victory – not his.

Trump takes centre stage

Two weeks still to go to Inauguration Day but Donald Trump’s already been grabbing the headlines urging Canadians to join the United States and threatening to take over Greenland and the Panama Canal, which he says is now under Chinese control. While few take his pantomime threats seriously it’s amusing to see venal British and European politicians, so used to licking the boots of Uncle Sam, on the receiving end of American abuse for a change.
They turned a blind eye to Israel’s genocide in Gaza. They egged on the proxy war against Russia and crippling sanctions on China. Now they’re recoiling in horror at The Donald mouthing off against his own allies. Now they know that “Making America Great Again” can only happen at their expense.
The Trump team are already talking about resuming the dialogue with Democratic Korea and floating proposals to end the Ukraine war which go some way to meeting the legitimate demands of the Russian Federation. We can only hope that this will lead to serious negotiations to normalise US relations with the DPR Korea and end the war in eastern Europe. 
Trump says he’ll end the war in Ukraine at a stroke when he’s back at the helm. But we’ve heard it all before over Korea. Though he promised much when he was last in the White House he still remained a prisoner of the most aggressive elements of the American ruling class. What Trump says and what he can or actually does do is another matter altogether. 

Meanwhile...

...Elon Musk, the South African born tech tycoon said to be the richest man in the world, has clearly got some time on his hands. Not content with the prospect of a key role in the new Trump administration, he’s now calling on Nigel Farage to stand down as leader of the Reform Party and scheming to get rid of Keir Starmer before the next general election. 
Musk is often called a “kingmaker” in the bourgeois media of the United States: possibly by some unaware of the tragic fate of the first man to bear that mantle – Richard Neville, the Earl of Warwick, who was killed in 1471 during the feudal struggle for the throne known as the War of the Roses. 
Musk is much like George Soros, another immensely rich American, who used his money to finance anti-communist movements in eastern Europe in the 1980s and prop up the venal pro-NATO regimes that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union and the European people’s democracies in 1991. Soros, a supporter of the American Democrats, poses as a philanthropist. Musk, who likes to be thought of as a “libertarian”, is a Trump Republican. But their common underlying philosophy is simply that of end days capitalism and inherited wealth.
Now Musk can say and do what he likes in the United States – he became an American citizen in 2002 – but poking his nose into our affairs is totally unacceptable. 

What choice do we have?

Starmer squirms while Gaza burns. He warns MPs that the Middle East is “close to the brink” and in “very real danger of a regional war”  but refuses to rule out British military involvement if Israel attacks Iran. He declines to say whether MPs would get a vote first on any military action. Why is that?
The obvious answer is that Starmer is waiting to see what the United States wants and at the moment the White House is keeping its cards close to its chest. At the moment we can only second guess what the Americans will do though Biden’s 30 minute telephone call to Netanyahu doesn’t bode well for the future of Lebanon. What is however certainly clear is that whatever Biden wants Starmer will do.
This is what the “special relationship” is all about – doing the bidding of the Americans and those sections of the British ruling class who believe that their global interests are best served through the might of US imperialism. Crawling to the Americans comes as second nature to right-wing Labour leaders who never seriously challenged imperialism when the British empire spanned the globe,
Starmer & Co stand for little apart from personal ambition and slavish support for American imperialism and what they believe to be the dominant section of the British ruling class. Sadly they face no serious challenge, at the moment, from within the labour movement. Labour’s army of local government jobsworths and the legion of trade union bureaucrats that run the big unions and the TUC have been easily bought off by the very modest package of reforms promised by the new government. Like Starmer and the ageing Blairites now back at the helm of the Labour Party the grandees think they can safely ignore the mass movement on the street in support of the Palestinians.
We must prove them wrong. Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators marched through the heart of London last weekend demanding justice for the Palestinians. Hundreds of thousands more are taking part in anti-war protests throughout the country. As Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader who now heads the Independent group in Parliament said “without further de-escalation, unimaginable horror is on the horizon. But as we stand on the brink of a major regional war, do not forget those who lie dead in its wake. Do not forget what has been taken from us, forever. Do not forget the people of Gaza, where genocide continues unabated.
“We continue to march because we refuse to let the memory of Palestinians die. We continue to call for an end to all arms sales to Israel. We continue to speak up for the only path to a just and lasting peace: an end to the occupation of Palestine. After a year of genocide, we might ask ourselves why we bother to carry on when our demands have largely fallen on deaf ears. As long as there are Palestinians who dream of freedom, what choice do we have?”.

Brighton rocks...

...and no more when the TUC is in town. These days the TUC’s annual conference is little more than a talking shop for the union establishments and Brighton was no exception. Every year the assorted full-time officers get together for this annual jamboree to formulate policies that reflect the views of the senior full-timers and the lay officers that lead the factions that run our unions today. In the coming months motions which reflect the views of the bureaucrats will doubtless end up as material for mediocre TUC campaigns and lobbies  – those that genuinely reflect the demands of the street on pay, terms and conditions and social justice will be sidelined or ignored.
Though some motions challenged the bourgeois consensus the bureaucracy ensured that nothing was done to embarrass Sir Keir Starmer who turned up to tell delegates that what he called “Changed Labour” would need to make “tough choices” and provide no “special favours” to unions.
Conference as a whole did however take up the fight against racism calling on the movement to do all it can to mobilise on the streets against the far right and delegates unanimously
passed an emergency motion on the danger of a wider war in the Middle East and in support of a national day of action for Palestine on 10th October.
Though the days when the TUC was called the “general staff of labour” are long gone it still pompously calls itself the “voice of Britain at work”. In reality it is, of course, the ‘voice of the union bureaucracy at work’ so we shouldn’t be surprised when, at the end of the day, nothing is done...

No arms for Israel!

While the Zionists may talk about teaching Hezbollah a lesson with their pager bomb terror campaign the only thing they have actually taught the Lebanese resistance is to never again compromise their security with electronic equipment made in the American empire. Meanwhile Britain continues to aid and abet the Israeli war-criminals by supplying sophisticated arms to the Zionist state.
The Western powers, who routinely brand all resistance to imperialism as “terrorism”, say little about Israel’s current wave of terror in Lebanon, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and rarely go beyond their hypocritical calls for restraint “on all sides” that are actually calls for a complete Arab surrender to Zionist demands. 
A few weeks ago the Starmer government suspended 30 out of the current 350 UK arms export licences to Israel. But this token gesture, given to try and stave off the mounting pressure to halt all British arms exports to Israel, is nowhere near enough. Or as CND’s Kate Hudson put it: “Israel is committing a genocide against Palestinians and is using both conventional and hybrid warfare to kill and injure people in Lebanon. The Middle East stands on the edge of a wider regional war and the British government is more than happy to cheer it on. This has to stop”.

Bye Bye Biden

Joe Biden was clearly looking for a glorious send off at the Democratic Party’s national convention this week – Kissinger-style shuttle diplomacy to end the Gaza war and a Ukrainian push into southern Russia to seize the Kursk nuclear power plant and force Putin to beg for peace. Such is the stuff of dreams.

He shuffled off to his long-overdue retirement without either. Kursk didn’t fall and the Ukrainians are now being pushed back by the Russians and all the American talk of Israel’s acceptance of a  “bridging proposal” to end the genocide in Gaza was, within days, shown to be just...talk. 
One wonders who actually advises the “leader of the free world” these days. The Ukrainian sortie into Kursk province clearly underestimated Russia’s defence capability while Washington’s latest diplomatic efforts in the Middle East, led by the hapless Anthony Blinken, were doomed from the start because they talked of a deal the current Israeli government doesn’t want while asking the Palestinians to lay down their arms while offering next to nothing in return. 
The Americans could, of course, easily end the fighting in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Israel and Ukraine are essentially American protectorates. These puppet regimes cannot survive without American economic and military support. The fanatical Zionists in Tel Aviv and the fascist Ukrainian nationalists in Kiev genuinely hate Arabs and Russians but they get away with it because they are ultimately only doing the bidding of American imperialism. They turn their back on genuine peace proposals that would end the conflicts because that’s what their masters in Washington want. When they are no longer of any further use they’ll be dumped – like the imperialist stooges who ran like hares when the Americans cut their losses in Afghanistan in 2021.

War Crimes UK

There’s no doubt that the Israelis are breaking international law. A UN Commission has found that Israeli forces have committed crimes against humanity, including the killing of defenceless civilians  and the forcible transfer and torture of Palestinian Arabs in the Gaza Strip. The Zionist state remains under investigation for genocide at the International Court of Justice. And last month, the same court ruled that Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestine is unlawful.  
If Israeli leaders are found guilty of war crimes – and the International Criminal Court has already applied for arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu – then British ministers and senior civil servants could be held liable too.  
The Global Justice Now campaign has published legal advice which shows that the UK may be liable for crimes committed by Israel during the onslaught on Gaza and through Israel’s illegal occupation of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and the Golan Heights. The advice, written by leading barrister Sam Fowles, says that the UK’s trade relations with Israel and provision of intelligence and diplomatic support could also make UK officials liable for Israel’s breaches of international humanitarian law. 
 Last week a British diplomat resigned over the British government’s refusal to ban arms exports to Israel. Mark Smith accused Israel of waging “war crimes in plain sight” against the Palestinians after he resigned from the Foreign Office over British arms sales to the country.
He said he had flagged his concerns about the sales at “every level” of the ministry, up to Foreign Secretary David Lammy, but the response was “not satisfactory”. Smith took the principled stand over Palestine. We must redouble our efforts in support of Palestine. The struggle must continue until Palestine is free!

Every cloud…

...has a silver lining. And no more so than in the new parliament. We’ve seen an election that has given Starmer & Co a steam-roller majority in the House of Commons. We’ve also seen the election of independent MPs including Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader hounded out by Starmer and the Blairite gang, and a bigger block of Liberal Democrats and Greens who can be counted on for support on Palestine and social reform issues.
Corbyn, who defeated a Starmer stooge to keep the Islington seat he’s held for over forty years, has already formed a bloc with the four independent MPs who stood on pro-Palestinian platforms. Now he’s reaching out to the seven Labour MPs who voted to alleviate child poverty in Parliament this week. Those seven, all former Corbynistas, have now been suspended by Labour for six months.
 Corbyn told LBC “I’m very happy that the seven of them voted against the continuation of the two-child benefit cap. And obviously I will be working with them, as I have been working with them for many years anyway”. He told the London radio station that “Even one MP can be an awful nuisance in Parliament, multiply that by 12 and you’ve got 12 awful nuisances in Parliament who will continually be reminding the Government of its responsibilities to all citizens in our society”.
This is certainly needed these days. Supporting a Gaza cease-fire and the restoration of the legitimate rights of the Palestinian Arabs is a must. Taking up the minimum demands of the unions for higher pay, social justice and the restoration of the welfare state go without saying. Being a focus of resistance in parliament and on the street now becomes attainable. Whether the rebel Labour MPs take up Corbyn’s offer remains to be seen but the fight-back has already begun.

Struggling for peace

Imperialism fans the flames of war in Ukraine and the Middle East, blocks the return of Taiwan to its Chinese homeland and prolongs the unhappy partition of many countries including Cyprus, Ireland, Kashmir and Korea.
Imperialist leaders like to talk about “universal human rights” and “rules based order” – but only when it suits them. They talk plenty about Ukraine to justify their proxy war that has shattered the former Soviet republic. But they say nothing when it comes to the Palestinians.
Last week, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague said, "Israel’s continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory is unlawful. Israel, the ICJ said, “is under an obligation” to end it “as rapidly as possible.”  It also found Israel to be guilty of violating the international prohibition on racial segregation and apartheid. Palestinian Arabs have long known this to be true, but it nevertheless must mark a turning point in the Palestinian struggle for liberation. 
ICJ decisions are supposed to be binding on all members of the United Nations but they are routinely ignored by Israel. Now things are changing.
Imperialism believed it could call all the shots in the Middle East. They thought that all resistance could be crushed by brute force with the support of their Israeli and Arab lackeys. But imperialist violence always leads to an equally violent resistance. Imperialism’s refusal to recognise this has led to the spiral of violence and terror in the region that began in 1948 as a regional war, to a conflict that now spans the whole world.
The New Communist Party calls for the immediate and unconditional end to the Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli withdrawal from all occupied Palestinian and other Arab territories and a comprehensive peace treaty to end the conflict in the Middle East based on past United Nations resolutions. These resolutions provide the basis for a just and lasting peace in the Middle East.

On the campaign trail

This week the leaders of all the mainstream parties kicked off the election campaign in a desperate attempt to stir up some enthusiasm on the campaign trail for their manifestos that barely go beyond the usual bourgeois platitudes politicians reserve for these occasions.
The Conservatives, who are trailing badly in the opinion polls, are touting conscription and tax cuts for pensioners to win back the elderly constituency that the Tories have traditionally taken for granted in the past. Labour has confined itself to bland promises to recruit more teachers and cut hospital waiting lists while stirring up a hornets nest in London over Diane Abbott, who was eventually re-admitted to Labour’s ranks this week only to then be told that she will not be allowed to defend her Hackney seat on the Labour ticket.
Conscription is, of course, a red herring designed to capture the headlines and woo the hang’em and flog’em brigade that have now largely drifted over to the Faragist Reform Party. While national service does have some appeal amongst the older generation – particularly those who see it as some sort of penal servitude for juvenile delinquents  – it is bitterly opposed by those who would actually have to do it. But it’s not going to happen.
The Tories haven’t seriously costed the plan. Nor have they seriously consulted the military or the health service sectors that would be expected to train and employ these new recruits.
National service was abolished by a Tory government in 1960. It would need another Tory government with an overall majority to restore it – and that seems beyond their grasp at the moment. 

  No red lines for Biden

The Americans says Israel’s weekend strike in Rafah that killed scores of displaced Palestinians did not cross the “red line” President Joe Biden set two months ago. The Biden administration made clear in public on Tuesday that Israel’s despicable action would not trigger any serious reprimand from Washington.
This comes as no surprise to us. Israel’s brutal invasion of the Gaza Strip depends entirely on American funds and supplies. There can be no doubt that Netanyahu is doing the bidding of the American imperialists that the Israelis have loyally served since the 1950s.
Biden, a senile old fool who barely knows what day it is, is the front man for the most venal and aggressive sections of the American ruling class who believe that Israel is the key to imperialist control over the Middle East and the immense oil reserves that are currently being plundered by the big oil corporations of the capitalist world.
Netanyahu tells his people Israel is just "one step away from victory" but at the end of the day the decisive factor is not the guns of the imperialists and their lackeys but the will of the people. The British Empire on which “the sun never set” has long gone along with the other European colonial realms that once held sway throughout Africa and much of Asia. The French were driven out of Algeria and the Vietnamese defeated the Americans. Israel’s turn is coming.

Stop arming Israel!

The student occupations and tent cities that began in America have now spread like wild-fire throughout the centres of learning in the West while all over the world people are taking to the streets to demand justice for the Palestinian Arabs and an end to the carnage in Gaza. The American bourgeois media call them  “commie campus” protests. The students are branded as “anti-semitic” while in Britain the Sunak government is trying to brow-beat the college authorities into shutting down the Palestinian solidarity protests.
In the “land of the free” and the other parts of Western Europe under the American thumb the police have already been unleashed in a drive to crush the student protests. But who believes the lies of the bourgeoisie and the Zionists?
Not the youth of today who don’t even bother with the propaganda spewed out by the mainstream media these days. They’ve seen the mass graves of the victims of Zionist terror in Gaza. They know about the killing of aid workers and tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians – mainly women and children – by the Israelis who want to drive them out to make way for more Zionist settlement on stolen Arab land. They want this to stop and they want Britain to immediately cease all arms exports to Israel.
Israeli warplanes are being used in the ongoing genocide taking place in Gaza. Israel uses British weaponry, surveillance technology and military equipment to kill and enforce a system of apartheid on Palestinians. 15 per cent of components used by Israel’s American Lockheed-Martin F-35 aircraft to bomb Gaza are provided by the United Kingdom.
Any British company wanting to export military or dual use goods (that could have military or civilian use) to other countries must have a UK government licence to do so. To abide with international law, the UK’s export criteria state that arms shipments must be stopped when there is a ‘clear risk of violating international humanitarian law’.
The UK government’s own lawyers’ advice is reported to have stated that Israel has breached international humanitarian law in Gaza. But the Sunak government has failed to make this public or take any action. This stark report comes against the backdrop of mounting global concern over Israel’s breaches of international law. The UK is further shamefully providing diplomatic cover to Israel and is, therefore, complicit in the genocide.
Since 7th October over 30,000 Palestinians have been killed. 70 per cent of those have been women and children. 2.2 million people are at imminent risk of starvation, with 9 out of 10 people living on less than one meal a day.
The Palestinian solidarity movement is under attack from the Zionists and those who serve the interests of American imperialism. The Sunak government is trying to smear the anti-war movement and the student upsurge to justify curbing or even banning all public support for the Palestinian Arabs. We must send a clear message to this government that we are determined not to allow our right to protest to be taken away. We must tell them we want a halt to British arms exports to Israel and an end to the war in Gaza!

Take on the Zionists!

The Americans, like the Israelis, want to crush Hamas and the rest of the Palestinian resistance that they believe is the major obstacle to the imposition of a surrender peace that would allow the Israelis to annex the parts of the West Bank they call “Greater Israel” while the Palestinians would get a next to nothing – a powerless “independent” statelet run by quislings that the feudal Arab oil princes need to justify their collaboration with imperialism on the Arab street. Even this “two-state” solution is too much for the Netanyahu government and its Zionist settlers’ bloc. The only thing they want to give the Palestinians is a one-way ticket off the land they want to colonise.
Biden, Sunak and the rest of the imperialist pack can ignore and even justify the massacre of tens of thousands of Palestinian Arabs in the Gaza Strip. But the murder of seven Western aid workers this week is a different matter. Three of the innocent victims were British, another was American.
This time round the shock and horror on the street can’t be simply dismissed as pro-Arab propaganda or outright “anti-Semitism”. Nothing the Israelis do with their weasel words about a “tragic accident” and an offer to pay blood money to the families of these hapless victims of Zionist terror can whitewash their latest atrocity in Gaza.
Some say Biden has told the Israelis that he wants an end to the fighting by the end of the week. That may be wishful thinking. Biden and the most venal and aggressive sections of the American ruling class that he represents have given unconditional moral and material support to Israel – support that has enabled the Zionist war-machine to slaughter over 33,000 Palestinian Arabs.
There are, of course, divisions within America’s ruling circles and the British Establishment over the current imperialist stand on Palestine. Arming Israel to the teeth to perpetuate the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights clearly no longer works. The Houthi Yemeni government’s blockade that has closed the Suez Canal to Israeli and Anglo-American shipping is bad news for imperialism. Anger on the Arab street that turns on the oil princes would be a nightmare.
Meanwhile the mass monthly protests that have rocked London for months on end have mobilised public opinion in support of the Palestinians and encouraged others to publicly speak out against Israeli aggression.
Over 600 prominent lawyers, including former Supreme Court justices, have signed a letter warning that the UK government is breaching international law by continuing to arm Israel while a former Conservative minister has publicly accused two Tory peers of working for “the interests of another country”.
Sir Alan Duncan, who served as a Foreign Office minister under Theresa May, says the Conservative Friends of Israel group was “doing the bidding of Netanyahu” and called for two of its prominent members, Lord Polak and Lord Pickles, to be removed from the House of Lords. He also accused several ministers and former ministers of not supporting international law by failing to condemn illegal settlements, including deputy premier Oliver Dowden, Michael Gove, and former home secretaries Suella Braverman and Priti Patel.
Alan Duncan has broken the bourgeois consensus in Sunak’s ranks. Now someone needs to do the same in Starmer’s….

A step in the right direction

US imperialism, after five long months of genocide, finally bowed to world public opinion this week by refusing to veto a UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza. But the Americans soon made it clear that they weren’t going to do anything about it,
If the Americans were truly concerned about the plight of the Palestinians they could have cut off all military supplies to Israel to force the Zionists to open up their check-points to allow humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, accept a permanent ceasefire and to withdraw all Israeli troops from the Palestinian Arab enclave. Instead they’ve rushed to tell the world that the UN resolution was “non-binding” to assure the Israelis that the flow of American arms to Israel will not be suspended. 
This clearly wasn’t enough for the rabid Zionist leaders enraged at the further isolation of Israel on the world stage. Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the resolution as betrayal. He cancelled an Israeli delegation to Washington. “Israel will not cease fire,” Israeli foreign minister Israel Katz said. “We will destroy Hamas and continue to fight until the last of the hostages return home” while another minister said that “the Security Council decision proves that the United Nations is antisemitic, and its secretary general is antisemitic and encourages Hamas”.
Without sanctions the American abstention is in itself a meaningless gesture – a sop to the Palestinian solidarity movement that is sweeping across the United States and the rest of the world. Nevertheless it is a step in the right direction. Equally significant is the fact that  the Sunak government broke ranks with Washington on this issue – joining France, Russia and People’s China in supporting  the modest call on the Security Council for  “an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan respected by all parties leading to a lasting sustainable ceasefire”.
The Israelis thought that they could crush the Palestinians and drive them out of Gaza to clear the land for more Zionist settlers. They never imagined a war like this that has closed their Red Sea port of Eilat and forced over half a million Israelis to flee the country. They never expected such fierce resistance. Not just in Gaza. In the West Bank many Palestinians have joined the partisans to defend themselves against marauding settler gunmen. In the north Israeli incursions are paid back in kind by the Lebanese resistance on a daily basis. 
Now the anti-war movement is growing even in Israel. Former Israeli Chief of Staff Dan Halutz says Netanyahu is leading Israel “from bad to worse”. A junior minister has resigned in the first public crack in Netanyahu’s emergency grand coalition while demands grow for Netanyahu to step down and call fresh elections.
While the Palestinians and Yemenis take on the Zionists head-on the millions on the Arab street and the millions upon millions throughout the world who have taken to the streets in support of their just struggle must step up the campaign to stop the Israeli slaughter and force the Zionists to recognise the just demands of the Palestinian Arabs. 

A landslide for Putin

 Vladimir Putin was swept back to the Kremlin in the Russian presidential elections last week. In a 77 per cent turn-out an overwhelming 88 per cent of the electorate voted for Putin, the leader of the ruling United Russia party, in last week’s poll much to the dismay of the Western media that routinely dismisses all elections that Putin wins as rigged.
Despite the best efforts of imperialist intelligence their fifth column inside the Russian Federation failed in its feeble attempts to disrupt the ballot while the Ukrainian raid across the border ended in yet another spectacular defeat for the fascist regime in Kiev. Putin now has a renewed mandate to lead the country in its confrontation with the United States and the rest of the imperialist pack.
The Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) candidate came second with just over four per cent of the vote followed by two other candidates from right-wing parties in the Duma, the Russian parliament as people closed ranks around their veteran national leader in times of war. But the communists ran a good campaign that they believe will lay the future foundations for Party growth throughout the Russian Federation.
“The party did a great job,” the CPRF said.”We participated in all debates, presenting our programme in all the constituent bodies of the Russian Federation and understood that the party and our patriotic union have great support. Our candidate was backed by one million supporters and we believe that’s a big deal. As a result, the CPRF candidate came second and the party confirmed its status as the country’s main opposition party”.

Stop the slaughter 

Israel has now killed over 31,000 Palestinians in its genocidal assault on Palestinian Arabs in the Gaza Strip. Many more are trapped beneath the rubble of their own homes. We must keep taking to the streets in solidarity with Palestine.
The Israelis want to drive the Palestinian Arabs out of the Gaza Strip to make room for Zionist settlers. Starvation is being used by Israel as a weapon of war. The Palestinians in the besieged enclave are desperately short of food, water and other essential supplies and UN experts warn that Gaza is facing imminent famine.
But the partisans stand firm. No street or alley is safe for the Israeli marauders in Gaza or indeed for the Zionist settler gunmen whose reign of terror has fired a new wave of armed resistance in the occupied West Bank.
The Establishment, which as a whole does whatever the Americans say, has been rocked by a wave of protests that has turned into a mass movement demanding an end to British support for Israeli aggression. That’s why the bourgeoisie demonise the demonstrators and want to stop the demonstrations.
But nothing can silence the cry for justice for the Palestinian Arabs. We will keep demanding an immediate and permanent ceasefire and an end to the UK-Israel arms trade. We will keep protesting until Palestine is free. Let them hear it in Tel Aviv! Let them hear it in Washington!

Chaotic scenes in Parliament

The chaotic scenes in Parliament that followed the Speaker’s decision to take the Labour amendment to a Scottish National Party demand for an “immediate cease-fire” in Gaza certainly staved off the Labour revolt Keir Starmer was most desperate to avoid. Whether Sir Lindsay Hoyle’s handling of the motion on the Gaza crisis was a breach of the arcane rules and conventions of the House of Commons is a matter that only MPs can judge. Over fifty of them already have done so – signing a motion of no confidence in Sir Lindsay Hoyle, whose position is now seriously in question.
The Labour amendment calling for an “immediate humanitarian cease-fire” was clearly intended to move closer to the worthless platitudes of Joe Biden and his minions who drivel on about striving to end the bloodshed and talk about a “two-state solution” to meet some of the Palestinian demands while vetoing every cease-fire call at the United Nations and rushing weapons to Israel to help them continue the mass slaughter of civilians in the Gaza Strip.

Boycott the Zionist state

The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign is a Palestinian-led movement for freedom, justice and equality. BDS upholds the simple principle that Palestinians are entitled to the same rights as the rest of humanity.
Israel is occupying and colonising Palestinian land, discriminating against Palestinian citizens of Israel and denying Palestinian refugees the right to return to their homes. Inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement, the BDS call urges action to pressure Israel to comply with international law.
BDS is now a vibrant global movement made up of unions, academic associations, churches and grass-roots movements across the world. Since its launch in 2005, BDS is having a major impact and is effectively challenging international support for Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism.
The tragedy of the Palestinian Arabs began when British imperialism first occupied their land in 1918 and encouraged Zionist immigration through the Balfour declaration. British imperialism sought to create a community of Zionist settlers who would prolong their occupation of Palestine indefinitely. The Zionists helped British colonialism crush the Palestine Revolt in 1936. But after the Second World War 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 an American protectorate. It 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. 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.
While licking the boots of the Americans is second nature to Labour leaders Starmer is mindful of the mass support for the Palestinians on the street that threatens to undermine the Labour vote, and not just amongst the Muslim community. That’s why the protests that have swamped the capital time and time again over the past few months must continue until the Israelis are forced to cease-fire and end the bloodshed. That’s why the campaigns across the country supporting the Palestinians and calling for a boycott of the Zionist state must continue until the legitimate rights of the Palestinian Arabs are restored.