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.

Creeping fascism

Only the Starmer leadership and their toadies in the BBC could turn the Glastonbury music festival into a massive rally in support of the Palestinians. But that’s what they did when forgot about the rap-punk Bob Vylan duo and tried to censor Kneecap. These artists are not afraid of police action. Nor are their fans or the millions upon millions who had never heard of them until last week but are now echoing their calls for “free Palestine” and “death to the IDF [the Israeli army]” all around the world.
Now Palestine Action faces is going to be outlawed as a terrorist organisation. It would be one of, if not the, most draconian attack on everyone’s freedom of speech and right to dissent.
The police have been given powers to arrest and charge with terrorism anyone declaring support for Palestine Action. It is a chilling attack on the right to non-violent protest.
Palestine Action has been proscribed as a terror organisation. Anyone supporting the non-violent activist group could face up to 14 years in prison.
Since the 1990s there has been a procession of Police and Crime Acts, Immigration and Asylum Acts and anti‑terror legislation. And since the 11th September 2001 attacks on the United States, there has been an avalanche of very repressive anti‑terror measures, including detaining suspects indefinitely without charge or trial along with the introduction of control orders that amount to house arrest. These anti‑terror laws have been used against people who are plainly not terrorists – usually peace protesters. Now they’re being used to suppress the direct action Palestine solidarity movement that campaigns to end British involvement in the genocidal war against the Palestinian Arabs. 
Shamefully only a handful of Labour MPs voted against the proscription of Palestine Action. Jeremy Corbyn’s Independent Alliance took the principled stand. So did the Greens and the SD&LP from northern Ireland.
Supporters of Palestine Action have voiced concern about the precedent this sets for protestors who are calling for an end to Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza. Critics decried the chilling effect of the ban, which puts Palestine Action on a par with the gunmen suicide bombers of the sectarian al-Qaeda and ISIS movements, making it a criminal offence to support or be part of the protest group.
“Let us be clear: to equate a spray can of paint with a suicide bomb isn’t just absurd, it is grotesque. It is a deliberate distortion of the law to chill dissent, criminalise solidarity, and suppress the truth” says Zarah Sultana, the maverick Labour MP suspended from the party for opposing Starmer’s plans to ends the two-child benefit cap. Or as the journalist and environmentalist campaigner George Monbiot put it “you can blow the limbs off a child...you can directly and deliberately target journalists, academics, you can blow up entire families, you can target people who are queuing for food aid. You can do what the hell you like and you will not be condemned by this government. But spray a bit of paint on some war planes, on some weapons of war, and that paint becomes the true weapon of war. That becomes the true aggression. That becomes in [Home Secretary] Yvette Cooper’s words a ‘disgraceful attack’”.

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)

Peace on Earth…

...and mercy mild. God and sinners reconciled. Or so we’re told at this time of the year. But though it’s supposed to be the season of goodwill we won’t see much of it in this sceptred isle the heartland of imperialism. The great and the good will make their annual obeisance to the Prince of Peace, whom they claim to worship, while ignoring his teachings for the rest of the year. They rejoice at regime change in Syria while turning a blind eye to the sectarian violence that is now sweeping the country. They fuel the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine while ignoring the Zionists’ genocidal war against the Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Celebrating the winter solstice goes back to hallowed antiquity. Stone Age hunter-gatherers whose lives revolved around the seasons appeased the gods to ensure the return of spring. The Romans called it Saturnalia – when masters served their slaves in orgies of feasting and drinking in a festival in which all the rules of society could be temporarily broken.
Though some of these traditions linger on in today’s orgy of consumer delight we are still supposedly celebrating the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, the man who told his followers that it was “easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God”. But do any of the rich, or his latter-day apostles, believe it?
The Pharisees churn out the usual platitudes about the “poor and needy” while ignoring the words of their Master who drove the money-changers out of the Temple and told his followers to “go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven”. Meanwhile the Archbishop of Canterbury resigns after a report revealed that he failed to act on allegations of boys being flogged by a man closely linked to the Anglican hierarchy while the Archbishop of York comes under similar fire for not taking action against another pervert within the Church of England. 
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”.  
But there are reasons to be cheerful. The Starmer government is deeply unpopular and the Tories are split over the Faragist challenge. Though Starmer has driven Jeremy Corbyn and most of his supporters out of the Labour Party the former Labour leader is back in Parliament leading the Independent Alliance on the opposition benches. A new fight-back against austerity has begun and London is rocked on a monthly basis by hundreds of thousands of protesters demanding justice for the Palestinians and an end to the genocide in Gaza.
The ruling class maintains 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 the millions upon millions of working people. There is only one solution to the capitalist crisis and that is socialism. Let’s make that our resolution for the New Year. Speed the day!

When the shooting stops…

Hezbollah has forced Israel to cease-fire – but not on Zionist terms. The Lebanese resistance movement has achieved a strategic success by thwarting the Zionist plans to drive the resistance and the UN peace-keeping force out of southern Lebanon and replace it with an Israeli occupied “buffer zone” to pave the way for annexation.
Many towns in Lebanon are now in ruins. The Israelis pounded Beirut and the other towns and cities of the Lebanon for over a year forcing hundreds of thousands of civilians to abandon their homes in waves of terror bombing designed to break the morale of the Arab resistance. But they failed. They themselves paid a heavy price for their aggression. Some 300,000 Israelis fled to safety out of the range of the drones and missiles of the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance.  Over a hundred Zionist settlements in northern Israel were evacuated. The “Generals’ Plan” for Gaza has been put on hold. The dream of a “Greater Israel” died in the fields of southern Lebanon,
After the imperialist inspired "Arab Spring" swept across the Arab world, destabilising them one by one and paving the way for normalisation with Israel came the imperialist attempt to “regime change” Syria. Terror gangs armed and funded by the Americans and their NATO allies fermented sectarian violence and civil war in an attempt to overthrow the Baathist-led government in Damascus. The Western media went into top gear to justify imperialist intervention  spreading lies throughout Europe and the United States while the Arab world became a battleground for one of the most ruthless propaganda wars in modern history. This was the first conflict to weaponise social media, exploiting it to deepen the divide between the Shia and Sunni Muslim communities and to fracture the unity between the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance. 
Syria, the lifeline of the resistance’s weapons pipeline, was targeted for destruction. But the Syrians closed ranks around their popular front government to beat back the sectarian militias and with the help of Russian peace-keepers drove the terror gangs and their Western military advisors out of most of the country. But the fabricated narrative of "Hezbollah’s crimes in Syria", heavily propagated by the feudal Arab media, continues to serve as a tool to attack Hezbollah and the entire Axis of Resistance to this day.
Though the guns fall silent in Lebanon the Yemeni blockade continues and the Palestinians fight on. They have no other choice, The Israelis are continuing to pursue their genocidal war against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip that has now become a wilderness of rubble and ruins. The Zionists still dream of driving all the Palestinian Arabs out to seize their land and make room for more Zionist settlement.
Nevertheless the ceasefire agreement in Lebanon could pave the way for a similar agreement in Gaza. But only if there’s mass pressure in the Western world to force the imperialist leaders to recognise the legitimate rights of the Palestinian Arabs. Over the past 14 months millions in Britain have rallied to demand justice for the Palestinians. It’s already having an effect on the people in the corridors of power. We must keep up the momentum for as long as it takes. If Starmer will not speak up for the people living through a genocide in Gaza and under siege in the West Bank, then we absolutely must continue to raise our voices for them.

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?”.

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.

The old remember…

...the young people wait. The 15th May is Nakba Day. On that day in 1948 the first Arab‑Israeli war began. It has never ended. But the tragedy of the Palestinian Arabs began when British imperialism first occupied their land in 1918 and encouraged Zionist immigration through the Balfour doctrine. British imperialism sought to create a community of Zionist settlers that would prolong their occupation of Palestine indefinitely. The Zionists helped British colonialism crush the Palestine Revolt in 1936. But following the defeat of the Axis in 1945 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.
The first war led to the expulsion of around 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 that has led to five full‑scale conflicts, endless confrontation and the current war in Gaza.
The Zionists originally wanted the entire Middle East “from the Nile to the Euphrates” and Israel’s ruling clique’s still cling to the dream of turning the whole of Palestine into a “Greater Israel”. They claim to serve a mythical Zionist ideal as a bulwark against persecution. In reality they simply provide imperialism with cannon fodder for the strategic aims of American imperialism. Far from being a Zionist paradise, Israel today is one of the worst places for Jews to live, racked by continuing conflict with Palestinians and economic hardship due to its isolation and total dependency on American imperialism.
Israel is economically and politically entirely dependent on American arms and economic assistance and successive Israeli governments exist simply 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.
At the end of the day Israel is an American protectorate that can do nothing without the say-so of Washington. The tail does not wag the dog and Israel and the American “Zionist lobby” do not dictate American foreign policy. They serve it.
The Americans say they want a “two‑state solution” that would leave Arab Jerusalem and large swathes of occupied Palestinian West Bank territory under Israeli occupation in exchange for largely underdeveloped land around the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians get a powerless, puppet regime in what’s left of the West Bank and the refugees, now millions strong, get nothing. And even these crumbs are too much for the current Israeli government which wants to keep all the occupied territories open for continued Zionist settlement.
The Americans think they call all the shots in the Middle East today. They believe that all resistance can be crushed and they hope to find willing Arab tools to do their bidding, hoist up the white flag and sign a surrender peace.
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 that triggered the first Arab-Israeli war that has now spread across the whole world. A lasting solution must be based on the right of return of refugees and an independent Palestinian state with Israel giving up all territories seized since 1967.

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….

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. 

Take action for Palestine!

It didn’t take long for Israel to resume fighting in Gaza. The Netanyahu government has shown its true colours, jeopardising the lives of the remaining Israeli prisoners held by the Palestinian resistance by its indiscriminate bombing that is clearly intended to make the Gaza Strip uninhabitable for many years to come. 
On the Arab street millions upon millions are demanding action to stop the carnage. Across the world, not least in Britain, millions more are demanding an end to the fighting and justice for the Palestinians.
The Sunak government crawls to US imperialism and turns a blind eye to Israeli war-crimes. The Labour leaders who soon hope to form the next government do much the same. But the mass protests that week after week rock the streets of London and the protests that are taking place right across the country are fuelling the opposition to Starmer & Co within the broader labour movement. 
The demand continues for a ceasefire and for our politicians to halt their support for Israel’s war crimes. Make sure they hear it by supporting the protests until the fighting stops.

Kissinger leaves the stage

Though it ill behoves anyone to speak ill of the dead it would nevertheless be hard to find a good word to mark the passing of Henry Kissinger, the former US foreign minister who passed away last month at the ripe old age of 100.
Kissinger, the academic turned diplomat who served US imperialism during the Nixon era will, of course, be remembered as the pioneer who made a historic contribution to the normalisation of American relations with People’s China. He was also a supporter of detente which led to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union that curbed the nuclear arms race during the 1970s.
The political career of the man who was said to be the master of “realpolitik” in his hey day ended in 1977 with the defeat of the Republicans in the presidential elections. Kissinger returned to academia to promote his own legend while retaining an advisory role in Republican ruling circles right up until his death in November.
Kissinger may have called his dealings with the USSR “reciprocity” or “realism”. In reality it was just horse-trading with the Brezhnev leadership that was pursuing a futile attempt at achieving nuclear parity with the Americans to divide the world into Soviet and American spheres of influence.
But in what US imperialism considered to be its own “sphere” Kissinger merely continued the Cold War tactics of supporting worthless kings like the Shah of Persia and military dictators throughout the Global South who willingly sold themselves to US imperialism while supporting what we would now call “regime change” with disastrous results for the people of Chile and Cambodia. 
In reality Kissinger achieved little during his years in Washington. While he remains one of the few post-war American foreign ministers any can recall this is simply because those that followed him were much, much worse.

DFLP: Israeli war-crimes in the Gaza Strip

by Fouad Baker

Commander Abu Khaled of the DFLP

The barbaric Israeli aggression supported by the West, especially the United States, which has been continuing since the 8th October, was not the first. Rather, it was preceded by many wars on the Gaza Strip, resulting in thousands of martyrs in addition to the systematic destruction of homes and infrastructure.

Aggression, massacres and war-crimes are an inherent feature of the Zionist entity. The Gaza Strip is an area with the highest population density – 2.2 million people live in the 365 km enclave. Over the last 17 years, from the start of the brutal siege that began in 2006, on Israel has launched 12 incursions into the Strip, including six destructive invasions. Over 4,300 Palestinians were martyred in these wars and over 19,500 wounded while the number of Israeli deaths did not exceed 136 dead and about 4,000 wounded.

2006: 277 Palestinians were killed and 1,167 wounded in Israeli raids that continued for three months.

2008:125 Palestinians were killed and large numbers of wounded over the course

of five days of bombing.

2008 – 2009: 1,430 Palestinians were martyred, including about 400 children and 240 women, 5,400 wounded, in addition to the complete or partial destruction of more than 10,000 homes. In the Battle of the Shale Stones about 180 Palestinians were martyred, including 42 children and 11 women, and about 1,300 others were injured. In the battle of the Eastern Storm 2,322 Palestinians were killed and 11,000 wounded. In the Battle of the Cry of Dawn 34 Palestinians were killed, and more than 100 others were injured and some 250 Palestinians were killed and over 5,000 wounded in the Battle of Saif al Quds (the Sword of Jerusalem).

The Gaza Strip is an integral part of the occupied Palestinian territories and it is not possible to create any kind of geographical or political separation between them. These territories are a single and unified territorial unit. Any dealing with them in a partial manner is an attempt to divide the Palestinian land  and divide the Palestinian people. We will fight to defend the unity of the land, the people, and the cause.

What must be emphasised repeatedly is that what happened on 7th October is an extension of what was happening before that date in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and the city of Jerusalem in terms of criminal practices against the Palestinian people. Therefore, the battle of Al-Aqsa Flood must be seen in the context of responding to the massacres and crimes committed against our people in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and in the Gaza Strip. 

It was a response to the daily killings, arrests, theft of land for the purposes of

settlement, demolition of homes, the burning of entire towns and the storming and destruction of cities and refugee camps by the Israeli aggressors. 

  Therefore, we say that there is no solution to our national issue without recognising that the basic issue is the occupation and settlement of our land.

Israeli aggression is not against any Palestinian faction or party, but rather against all the Palestinian people and all their parties and political and social components.

It is a systematic aggression, a genocide, against an entire people – women and children, the sick and the elderly –  everything that lives and moves in the Gaza Strip.

It’s not just in Gaza. It’s all over Palestine. This year over 500 Palestinians have been killed on the West Bank –   200 martyrs since 7th October. This, the bloodiest year for the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Jerusalem, confirms that the main problem is the physical presence of the Israeli occupation army and the Israeli settlers.

The United Nations and its resolutions consider the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem to be Palestinian lands occupied by Israel. International law allows persecuted peoples to resist invaders. The Palestinian people have the right and even the duty to resist the Zionist occupier, and the legal, political, moral and humanitarian duty of the international community is to support the people’s resistance.

The Palestinians struggles to liberate their land and enable them to freely exercise

their national rights free from occupation, subjugation and colonialism.

The Israeli occupation and the Israeli settlements are the main root of the problem, and any solution that does not take into account the national rights of the Palestinian people will perpetuate the conflicts in Palestine and the region.

The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) calls on all parties of the world and its political and popular institutions to condemn the war of extermination pursued by the Israeli enemy against the Palestinian people, to take punitive and deterrent measures against Israeli war criminals, and to exert pressure on Western governments that support the aggression to stop their partnership in killing and crimes against civilians of the Palestinian people and to work from In order to stop the series of crimes against humanity.

A call to all free people in the world

communist & workers' parties joint statement

Amidst the continuous and severe Zionist airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, targeting residential, civil, and healthcare facilities, particularly escalating attacks on hospitals and their surroundings, notably the Al-Shifa Medical Complex, one of Gaza's largest hospitals, which has ceased operations due to the lack of fuel, supplies, and necessary medical drugs for treating the injured and ill. According to the director of Al-Shifa Medical Complex, there have been over 100 corpses for days in the hospital's yard, starting to decompose, unable to be buried due to continuous gunfire targeting anyone moving inside or outside the hospital. Continuous fatalities of infants and critical cases persist due to the halt of medical equipment, including incubators, ventilators, and other vital devices, with similar conditions prevailing in other hospitals across the Gaza Strip. 

Given these dire and dangerous circumstances and due to the stubborn refusal of the fascist occupation to heed international appeals from organizations like the Red Cross, the United Nations, and others to allow the necessary medical supplies into hospitals, the Palestinian Communist Party calls upon all freedom-loving individuals worldwide and all Communist and Workers' Parties globally to rally and demonstrate outside the embassies of the fascist occupying state, and the embassies of the United States of America. This is to pressure their governments to sever ties with this fascist occupation and form a global alliance to halt aggression, lift the siege on Gaza, and allow all humanitarian and medical aid without conditions.
 
We call upon all parties to sign this appeal
 

• Communist Party of Albania  
• New Communist Party of Britain
• Colombian Communist Party
• Communist Party of Chile
• Socialist Workers' Party of Croatia
• Communist Party of Denmark
• Communist Party of Greece
• Communist Party of Kenya
• Kuwaiti Progressive Movement
• Lebanese Communist Party
• Communist Party of Pakistan
• Palestinian Communist Party
• Philippines Communist Party [PKP 1930]
• Romanian Socialist Party
• Communist Party of the Russian Federation
• Communists of Serbia
• New Communist Party of Yugoslavia
• Communist Party of Sri Lanka
• Communist Party of Swaziland
• Syrian Communist Party [Unified]
• Communist Party of Turkey

Justice for the Palestinians!

Rage on the Arab street. Protests throughout the Global South and huge demonstrations in Britain and the rest of the Western world. The world has reacted with horror, shock and anger at Israel’s relentless bombardment of the Palestinian Arabs in the beleaguered Gaza Strip.
Tower blocks razed to the ground.Whole streets smashed to bits. Even hospitals are, as we have seen, not immune from the onslaught. 
Israel has cut-off basic supplies like electricity, water, food and fuel. Over 3,000 Palestinians have been killed in under nine days, over a thousand of them children. That's one child in every 15 minutes of Israel's assault. Gaza is experiencing massacre after massacre.  
The Palestinians are calling on the world to stand by them to halt the slaughter and end the brutal Zionist occupation and colonisation of the West Bank. They are calling on the world to uphold the promises made to the Palestinian Arabs in 1948.They want the Great Powers to honour the resolutions upholding the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people –he end to the occupation, the right to return and  the right to self-determination that are repeatedly passed by the world forum to end the fighting but routinely ignored by Israel and its imperialist masters when the price of Arab oil falls on the world market. 
Zionism is based on four myths. The first is that all Jews are descendants in one way or another of the ancient Israelite tribes. The second is that therefore all Jews have a “divine” right to Palestine based on a legendary covenant that the Israelite tribes made with their god during the Bronze Age. The third is that Jews need a state of their own as a safe-haven from pogroms and persecution. And the final one is that Israel is an independent country whose policies are determined by their elected leaders.
While the meaning of the Covenant is best left to religious scholars it is certainly not a divine title deed to land that was inhabited by others long before Abraham and Isaac and long after most of the Jewish population was dispersed by the Romans following an abortive revolt against Roman rule in 70 AD.
We can also see that the modern state of Israel is far from being a sanctuary for Jews. It is, in fact, one of the most dangerous places for Jews to live and this is entirely because Israel’s Zionist leaders consistently refuse to recognise the rights of the Palestinian Arabs. And they themselves are just pawns of imperialism.
Israel supported a futile Anglo-French move to overthrow the Egyptian government and regain control of the Suez Canal in 1956. They then turned to the Americans when  US imperialism became the dominant force in the Middle East. 
Israel is an American protectorate in all but name. It would and could not survive in the Arab world without the billions of dollars that keep its war-machine going and its economy afloat. And ultimately it relies on American military know-how and American military might to key the Arabs at bay. That’s why American aircraft carriers, backed by the Royal Navy and other NATO warships, are now patrolling the Israeli coastline.
The imperialists think rockets and drones can crush the Palestinians. But that’s what they thought in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan too...

A slap in the face for the Israeli security system

by Fouad Baker
Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) 

No one expected that this would be the response of the Palestinian resistance to the plan of the fascist and racist Israeli occupation government based on Judaisation, displacement, expansion of settlements, annexation of lands, storming the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Palestinian camps in the West Bank, administrative arrests, and the liquidation of the Palestinian cause and the national rights of the Palestinian people.
  Although Israel possesses the latest technologies, its security system failed to protect the settlers living on stolen Palestinian land. A number of Palestinian resistance fighters were able to cross the border fence separating the Gaza Strip and the settlements killing dozens of settlers and taking others prisoner back to the Haza Strip.
  Some  5,000 missiles  were fired from the Gaza Strip towards these illegal settlements, which paralysed the Israeli ‘Iron Dome’ and the Israeli security system. The joint Palestinian operations room, which includes all the Palestinian factions, took part in this military operation. The most prominent of which were Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine...
The news was greeted with astonishment in the West Bank. Astonishment at the success of  the military operation carried out by the Palestinian resistance in the Gaza Strip. Celebratory marches in Palestinian cities in the occupied territories soon led to clashes with Israeli troops.
  Israeli troops opened fire on Palestinian demonstrators in towns throughout the West Bank and an Israeli police station was torched in Jerusalem
The Palestinian resistance called the attack on the Israeli settlements located on the border of the Gaza Strip ‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’.
The offensive was designed to regain the initiative and block Saudi-Israeli normalisation, which aims to liquidate the Palestinian cause and deprive them of their national rights. Rights which include the right of the refugees to return to their land, ending the Israeli occupation, establishing an independent Palestinian state.
The Israelis called the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation a terrorist operation, ignoring the fact that they are the occupiers of lands belonging to the Palestinian people. If they want real peace in the Middle East they must end the occupation.
The Palestinian operation exposed the weakness of Israeli intelligence that failed to discover the resistance plan despite all the support from the USA, and the failure of Israel’s surveillance and espionage programmes such as their Pegasus spyware which they’ve also sold to some Arab regimes.
The operation’s success was down to the full coordination between the Palestinian resistance factions working in complete secrecy. 
The Palestinian bet on using parachutists to penetrate the border fence in the Gaza Strip to destroy Israeli tanks and open the way to the advance towards the illegal settlements worked.
     The emergence of a qualitative development in the work of the Palestinian resistance, which transformed primitive rockets and simple shells into semi-precise missiles that reach deep into Israel enabled it to capture Israeli soldiers to use in negotiations for the release of the Palestinian prisoners languishing in Israeli prisons for decades.
The Al-Aqsa Flood operation was launched only after all diplomatic means had been exhausted. It was a specific confrontation due to the racist policy implemented by the Israeli occupation government headed by Benjamin Netanyahu. It was a move to prevent the Arab regimes from signing peace agreements with Israel and derail American attempts to build economic blocs in the region to besiege China, Iran, and Russia – the most recent of which is the India-Middle East-Europe ‘corridor’.
The Israeli response to the Palestinian offensive has been to bomb the Gaza Strip including residential tower blocks and other civilian targets resulting in over 250 Palestinian martyrs and hundreds more wounded.
But the fascist Israeli government wants to avoid a long and multi-fronted conflict as it knows that any military operation that crosses the red line will ignite the Middle East in defence of the Palestinian people, as happened in the October War of 1973.
In the occupied territories, the refugee camps in Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan and the Palestinian communities in Europe the people are rallying behind the defence of the Gaza Strip. Support is coming from Iraq, Yemen and Syria and the Lebanese resistance has already intervened...
Around the world social networking sites are ablaze with congratulations to the Palestinians for this qualitative military operation while the Arabs took to the streets with fireworks and sweets to celebrate a Palestinian victory that has been seen since the birth of Israel in 1948.
Those who think that the Palestinian people can be fobbed of with email messages of support or agree to becoming political pawns of the Great Powers are only fooling themselves. The deluded are those who think that the Palestinian people will accept political settlements that do not meet demands that recognise their legitimate national rights. And the most delusional are those who think that peace in the Middle East can be achieved without real justice and an end to the Israeli occupation of the occupied Palestinian territories.
Just as the Battle of Saif al-Quds in Gaza in 2021 ended a stage in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Al-Aqsa Flood operation opened a new page in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Palestine: Absent justice...

the horror of Sabra and Shatila

by Fouad Baker

Though 41 years have passed we can still smell the stench of death and hear the voices of the martyred men, women and  children when we pass through the streets of the Shatila camp and the Sabra neighbourhoods in West Beirut.
  The massacre,  carried out by the Israeli army and their Lebanese militia allies, lasted for three continuous days during the Israeli occupation of the Lebanese capital in 1982. Some 3,000 Palestinian and Lebanese civilians were killed. Their mothers and children are still waiting for international accountability and justice for the victims.
When a Palestinian refugee visits the Sabra and Shatila camp, the scenes of the massacre still come to mind. They have become engraved in the conscience of every Palestinian. The images of the victims being butchered while militiamen stopped ambulances entering the camp and refused to allow the International Committee of the Red Cross to provide relief supplies for the refugees makes the Palestinians even more determined to return to their land.
The Israeli goal was to eliminate the Palestinian refugees who fled after the pogroms organised by Zionist extremists drove them from their lands in 1948. Their plan continues to this day but the features have changed as the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon no longer have the right to live in dignity. They are deprived of their rights to education and health services, work, or own property, ... especially with the decline in international financial support for the United Nations relief agency, UNRWA.
The Sabra and Shatila massacre is not the only massacre committed by Zionist and Israeli gangs against the Palestinian people. We have not forgotten the Qana massacre or the massacres in Deir Yassin, Haifa, Balad al-Sheikh, Jerusalem, Abbasiya and Jaffa... and with the absence of justice and accountability of the Israeli occupation government, these pogroms continue every day against the Palestinian people.
These massacres show that the Israel wants to eliminate the Palestinian people in order to prove to the world the false narrative of the Zionist movement that Palestine is ‘a land without a people for a people without a land’, which is refuted by all historical and scientific evidence.
What Israel is doing is a real holocaust to annihilate the Palestinian people wherever they are, whether inside or outside Palestine. But when the Palestinians want to hold the Zionists accountable, they are accused of “anti-Semitism” even though the Palestinian people are Semites themselves
We saw how the Belgian government amended its laws, when charges were made against General Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Defence Minister, over Sabra and Shatila, to prevent him from being tried for war-crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. We saw this repeated at the International Criminal Court when the Trump administration imposed sanctions on Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda when she announced the opening of an investigation into Israeli war crimes committed in the Gaza Strip in 2014.  When Attorney-General Karim Khan took over, the investigation was frozen in 2020 and it remains like that today..
Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir (1969-1974) said when she was asked about peace in Palestine that the old die and the young forget, but how can the young forget their martyred fathers, their wounded brothers, and their prisoners’ mothers? How can they forget how the Israeli occupiers demolished their homes and displaced them from their homes? 
They are still refugees to this day. They do not have the right to self-determination and establish their independent state. We are talking about peace while justice is absent, the land is still usurped, and thousands of settlers live in homes of Palestinians, stealing Palestinian land and falsely ascribing Palestinian food, heritage culture to themselves! 
Despite all these crimes and massacres committed by the Zionist and Israeli gangs against the Palestinian people, the major powers are still trying to force the Palestinian people to give up their legitimate rights that are recognised by international law.
Some Arab regimes have now normalised relations with Israel as if nothing had happened while the Israelis impose a siege on Gaza Strip, depriving Palestinians of benefiting from the natural resources the Israelis have stolen.
But when the Palestinian people resist the occupation some countries accuse them of  violence and terrorism. They ignore the Palestinians’ non-violent struggles, such as the boycott of Israeli goods movement, which they criminalise. They ignore the prisoners’ hunger strikes. There are 5,000 Palestinians jailed in Israel without charge or fair trial, including women, children and the elderly. They are living martyrs sentenced to life imprisonment, because they struggle against injustice and the occupation.
The countries that support Israel refuse to hold Israel accountable. Rather, they support it with weapons and money to kill the Palestinian people and commit more massacres and crimes against them. Not only did the countries that financially and militarily support Israel fight the Palestinians, but they also take control of the media to spread the false Israeli narrative over the true Palestinian narrative, and restrict content supporting the Palestinian question on social media. 
Our hope lies with the freedom fighters and the free people of the world who reject injustice wherever it exists. As  Che Guevara said “wherever there is injustice, this is my homeland,” and we call on them to put pressure on their governments with the aim of boycotting Israel, imposing sanctions on it, withdrawing investments from it, and stopping its support financially, militarily, and politically... and holding it accountable for its crimes committed against the Palestinians, and supporting the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, establishing their independent state with Jerusalem as its capital, and the return of refugees to their homes.

The author is a member of the  international criminal court bar association and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) 

A Day of Shame

Last Saturday Palestinian solidarity campaigners evaded security to gain access to the House of Commons Private Members Lobby in the Palace of Westminster in London. Once inside, they doused the statue of Lord Arthur Balfour in fake blood and unveiled the Palestinian flag, before gluing themselves to the plinth to state their intentions.
    Lord Arthur Balfour was the architect of the declaration that sealed the fate of the Palestinian people in the 20th century.
    On 2nd November 1917 the British government pledged its support for the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine, which was then a province in the Turkish Ottoman empire, Germany’s chief ally in the Middle East.
    Lord Balfour, the foreign secretary in Lloyd George’s war-time government, issued the declaration that authorised Zionist settlement in Palestine when it became part of the British Empire following the defeat of Germany and its allies in the first world war.
    But in 1917 the outcome of the war was still in doubt. The Germans had knocked Russia out and they held the line along the Western Front. British imperialism was looking for new allies in a conflict with Germany that plunged Europe into war in 1914. Locked in a stalemate on the Western front they sought support from the influential Zionist lobby within the Jewish community in Britain and the United States. At the same time British agents had encouraged feudal Arab leaders to rebel against their Turkish masters with false promises of British support for an independent Arab kingdom when victory came.
    What these Arabs didn’t know was that behind their backs Britain had already agreed to partition the Ottoman Empire – Britain would get Palestine and Iraq: the French got Syria and Lebanon and the Russians would get Constantinople. Even Italy and Greece were promised small slices of the take that would leave the Turks with just a rump state in Asia Minor. The Arabs would get nothing.
    And that’s what largely happened after the defeat of Germany and its allies in 1918. Despite the Russian revolution and America’s entry into the war the Ottoman Empire was partitioned along the lines of an Anglo-French plan. A resurgent Turkish nationalist movement thwarted Italian ambitions and threw the Greeks out of Asia Minor but the Arabs were powerless to stop the recolonisation of their lands under Western rulers.
    Britain’s feudal Arab allies became puppet rulers of Iraq and Jordan while France set up bogus sectarian statelets in Syria and Lebanon. Palestine came under direct British colonial rule.
    Balfour promised the Zionists a “national home” in Palestine while stating “that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”. But Palestine was not Balfour’s to give and the Arabs, the overwhelming majority of the population in the British “mandate” of Palestine, never consented to this and in any case they were never consulted.
    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.

Talking about Jerusalem

The sectarian violence in Jerusalem that has enraged the Arab and Muslim world is a warning to the world about the consequences of allowing Israel to maintain its illegal and brutal occupation of the West Bank.
    The Zionist mob that swarmed through the Muslim quarter of Arab East Jerusalem last week chanting “Death to Arabs” was a deliberate incitement to violence. Under the protection of Israeli riot police and security forces they deliberately goaded the Palestinian Arabs as they gloated over their victory in June 1967.
    The Zionist settlers and their political sponsors in Tel Aviv want to drive the Palestinians out of the homes and land they hope to steal – as they did when around a million Palestinians were forced to flee by Zionist gunmen during the first Arab-Israeli war. They talk about the 1967 “Six-Day War” and think they are invincible but some clearly have short memories. They sang a different song when Hezbollah missiles rained down on Haifa and northern Israel in 2006.
    Wherever there is oppression there is always resistance. There can be no peace in the Middle East until the legitimate rights of the Palestinian Arabs are restored.

Poor Old BoJo

It seems that Boris Johnson’s luck has finally run out if this week’s vote of no confidence is anything to go by. Though Johnson won the Tory 1922 Committee ballot it was by such a narrow margin that it is difficult to see how he can long remain leader of the Conservative Party.
    Though always good at advancing himself Johnson’s performance when Mayor of London and Foreign Secretary showed that he was never fit for the highest office in the land. Johnson’s only asset was his ability to get the Tory vote out when needed. He did it to beat Ken Livingstone for the London Mayoralty and he did it again at a national level to “get Brexit done” in 2019. Had he heeded his advisers and curbed his irresponsible personal behaviour he would have been remembered as the politician who tore up the Treaty of Rome. Now he will recalled, if at all, as the man who spent a fortune lavishly redecorating Downing Street and partied during the Covid lockdown – much like Nero, to use one of Boris’ classical examples, who supposedly fiddled while Rome burned.
    Anyone else could have seen this coming and changed course. but not Johnson, which all goes to show that going to Eton and reading Classics at Balliol College, Oxford is not a measure of intelligence at all.

Pay the Tube workers

The RMT transport union showed it meant business when it shut down London’s underground network on Monday following the breakdown of talks with Management on jobs and pensions last week.
    Six hundred workers jobs could go if London Underground gets its way. So far Management has shown no interest in constructive talks to settle the dispute. It’s time for the Mayor of London to intervene. Sadiq Khan has the authority to raise taxes. Just four banks made a profit of £34 billion last year and are set to pay out over £4 billion in bonuses to London traders. A windfall tax on those profits would more than adequately fund London’s transport network. The Mayor should meet and heed the union to keep the Underground network running in the future.

Bad news on the doorstep

Rising prices, logjams at the ports, uncertainty on the jobs market and a damning report on the Government’s mishandling of the Covid crisis. Boris Johnson has, predictably, crept off to sun himself in Spain to avoid the flak. Not that there’s much of it these days. What little opposition there is to Johnson is limited to some columnists in the bourgeois press and the backstabbers in his own party. Starmer confines himself to ritual jousts with Johnson in Parliament while his party sinks into a morass of its own making over the Blairite drive to boot out all the remaining Corbynistas from Labour’s ranks.
    Johnson says his government is going to “level up” society with a “high-wage high skill” and “low tax economy” which he claims the capitalist market can deliver. But only where there is a clear labour shortage like the current need for more lorry drivers and the dearth of fruit pickers due to the end of cheap labour from the European Union.
    Pay rises are rarely the gift of the employer. They have to be won by unions determined to fight for their members’ interests and not those of their own bureaucracies whose only interest is to advance their own careers and pump up their own juicy pension pots.
    Johnson and Starmer both foster the illusion that we are all in it together, But we’re not. Workers don’t have a stake in capitalism not do they benefit from some trickle-down effect.
    All we get from the capitalist table is the crumbs and that’s all we’re ever going to get while capitalism survives. It is either us or them; the workers or the bosses. The alternative to workers’ power is a festering morass of exploitation of working people and the environment, racial and communal strife, rapid growth in crime, drug trafficking, violence and conflict from local to international levels. The capitalists must not be allowed to destroy society; it is they who must be supplanted.
    Until such time as socialism replaces capitalism, there needs to be a continuous political struggle to defend and improve social services and benefits. In tandem with this fight there must be a collective industrial struggle for better wages and working conditions that takes on the capitalist class head on

Standing up for Palestine

Congratulations to Sally Rooney, the Irish novelist who refused to allow her best-selling new book to be translated into Hebrew by an Israeli company. The author says she was answering the call from Palestinian civil society to impose “an economic and cultural boycott of complicit Israeli companies,” referring to BDS – boycott, divestment and sanctions – as an “anti-racist and non-violent” movement.
    The acclaimed writer turned down a bid by the Modan Publishing House to translate and publish Beautiful World, Where Are You because she could not "accept a new contract with an Israeli company that does not publicly distance itself from apartheid and support the UN-stipulated rights of the Palestinian people”.
    But "the Hebrew-language translation rights to my new novel are still available, and if I can find a way to sell these rights that is compliant with the BDS movement's institutional boycott guidelines, I will be very pleased and proud to do so."
    Ms Rooney cited reports published by Israeli human rights group B’Tselem and Human Rights Watch earlier this year belatedly recognising Israel’s system of apartheid imposed on Palestinians. These reports “confirmed what Palestinian human rights groups have long been saying: Israel’s system of racial domination and segregation against Palestinians meets the definition of apartheid under international law,” she said.