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.

The thin end of the wedge

Though the supporters of Palestine Action have won their bid to legally challenge the British government’s decision to ban them in the High Court the witch-hunt continues as the Establishment lashes out in feverish attempts to put a lid on the mass movement in solidarity with the Palestinians who are being starved to death in the Gaza Strip.
The ludicrous interpretation of the anti-terrorism laws has led to a protester being threatened with prosecution by a policeman in Canterbury for holding a Palestinian flag and displaying signs saying “Free Gaza” and “Israel is committing genocide” and the arrest of hundreds of others across the country on terror charges. In most cases simply for carrying a placard supporting the banned direct action movement at a demonstration.
Now the campaign set up to overturn the ban on the direct action group, which the government banned on the grounds that spray-painting RAF jets and vandalising the offices of arms manufacturers that supply weapons to Israel constituted acts of “terrorism”, has also been shut down. 
The Defend Our Juries website was taken down this week. The Terrorism Act 2000 specifically ensures that it is lawful to organise for the de-proscription of a group. But their web hosts imply that the campaign may have been in breach of their terms and conditions. Defend Our Juries have checked it out. They say there is no breach. 
Innuendo, threats, the hidden hand...this is what happens when a witch-hunt begins. 
Thousands of people have now been blocked from legal information to ensure their legal rights are upheld. This is an attack on our supposed freedom of speech. This is what happens when the Government uses anti-terror law to silence dissent.

It's still the same old story…

...a fight for love and glory – that’s how the old song goes. Or as Napoleon said: a soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of coloured ribbon. And some people, even today, crave for the acclaim of the world and the medals and fame that go with it. Men like Donald Trump who does nothing to mask his desire for a Nobel Peace Prize. 
Though the Donald has been nominated for the Nobel on four occasions over the years
 his supposed efforts to promote peace and resolve global conflicts have, so far, failed to impress the Nobel Peace Committee.
He, no doubt, hopes that the committee will now be more than impressed by news from Moscow that suggests that an end to the war in Ukraine is finally in sight.
The Russians say they’ve received an “acceptable” offer from the Americans on settling the Ukraine conflict following a visit by Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff to Moscow this week. There’s even talk of a Trump/Putin summit, possibly in the Emirates, later in the month.
Though not in the same league as Obama or a Biden Trump still has plenty of blood on his hands. Syria; Iran; the Gaza Strip – not a good start for a wannabe peace prize winner. Still he’s now got a new nomination from the Cambodians. Whether his latest initiative on Ukraine can tip the balance in his favour when the Norwegian Nobel Committee meets, however, remains to be seen...

The Nobel road to peace

Though Donald Trump has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize on four occasions over the years his supposed efforts to promote peace and resolve global conflicts have, so far, failed to impress the Nobel Peace Committee.
This rubbishy prize, with a 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. And a prominent Chinese anti-communist writer, Liu Xiaobo, got his Nobel for "his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China”. 
Bizarrely enough the European Union was collectively awarded this glittering prize in 2012 for contributing “to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe”.
Needless to say the Dalai Lama is on the list of winners together with Henry Kissinger, who was jointly given the prize together with the chief north Vietnamese negotiator Le Duc Tho in 1973 for negotiating the Vietnamese peace accord. Comrade Le, the only communist ever to get this accolade, took the principled stand and refused to accept the prize on the grounds that the war in Vietnam was still raging.
But Trump may be lucky this time round. His efforts to end Joe Biden’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine have soon borne fruit with a positive response from the Kremlin and a summit with Vladimir Putin in Saudi Arabia in the offing.
The Russians have made it clear that they want international recognition of the autonomous republic of Crimea’s accession to the Russian Federation. They intend, one way or another, to liberate all the territories of the two Donbas people’s republics that have joined the Russian Federation as well as the two former southern Ukrainian provinces that have also been liberated. They want equal rights for all the remaining members of the Russian community in Ukraine and a guarantee of permament Ukrainian neutrality.
The Trump team are talking about a standstill cease-fire but offering the Russians what they’ve already got is not the most generous opening gambit. It’s nevertheless a start. 
However Trump’s people do seem to accept the justice of some of the Russian claims while outlining their own demands for exclusive American exploitation of Ukraine’s priceless rare earths and other mineral deposits after the end of the fighting.
Though only Trump and Putin can set the seal on a deal to end the war most of the hard bargaining will have already been resolved before they meet in the secret talks between their envoys that are already preparing the terms of a settlement. 
Secret diplomacy, that has sadly became the norm since the end of the Cold War, is rarely the best pathway to peace. But both the Russian and American sides are clearly working towards a win-win agreement that ends the war – and that clearly will be in the benefit of the Ukrainian and Russian people. Perhaps Trump will get his Nobel afterall...who knows, maybe Putin too!

No Big Deal

 None of us should be surprised at the collapse of the summit talks between Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump in Hanoi last week. Over the past few months the Trump camp had given the impression that they were going to seriously respond to the Democratic Korean call for an end to sanctions and the state of war that still exists between the United States and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). But at the end of the day the chief American war-lord was unwilling, or possibly unable, to put anything on the table to match the Korean side’s reasonable and balanced stance towards peace and security on the Korean peninsula.

            In Vietnam Trump told the media that the DPRK was asking for too much. “It was about the sanctions,” he said. “They were willing to denuke a large portion of the areas that we wanted, but we couldn’t give up all of the sanctions for that. Sometimes you have to walk and this was just one of those times”. Now he’s blaming his Democrat foes in Congress for undermining his position during the talks with the DPRK leader.

 Others, however, will maintain that Trump has become a prisoner of the most reactionary and aggressive elements of the US ruling class. He has surrounded himself with aides who represent the “war party” that some Americans call the “deep state” that cuts across all party, regional or religious divides to serve the interests of the big corporations and finance houses of American imperialism.

            The Americans had missed “an opportunity that comes once in a thousand years” said Choe Son Hui, the deputy foreign minister of the DPRK. What happens next depends entirely on the Americans.

Trump, a property speculator who claims to be a brilliant negotiator, has hinted that he still wants to talk to Kim Jong Un. Whether he will depends on what the Americans are willing to put on the table next time round.

            Trump bitterly resents the fact that Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between people” and even more absurdly for “reaching out to the Muslim world”.

This rubbishy prize has been the preserve, with a few honourable exceptions, of retired Western politicians and prominent agents of imperialism. The anti-communist Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov won it in 1975.  The reactionary Polish union leader Lech Walesa was rewarded for his counter-revolutionary campaign in 1983.  Gorbachov was similarly rewarded for his treachery in 1990.

 Needless to say the Dalai Lama is on the list of winners together with Henry Kissinger, who was jointly given the prize with the chief north Vietnamese negotiator Le Duc Tho in 1973 for negotiating the Vietnamese peace accord. Comrade Le, the only communist ever to get this accolade, took the principled stand and declined the prize on the grounds that the war in Vietnam was still raging.

            Shinzo Abe, the Japanese premier, has nominated Trump for the gong on the basis of his master’s supposed efforts for peace on the Korean peninsula. Well Trump will have to try harder if he still wants the glory he believes the medal will bring him.