A step in the right direction

The Starmer government’s decision to recognise the State of Palestine may be no more than a diplomatic gesture of support but it nevertheless clearly recognises, at long last, the legitimate rights of the Palestinian Arabs to self-determination and independence. The United Kingdom, together with a number of its Western allies, have now joined the overwhelming majority of countries around the world that have long recognised the Palestinians right to establish a state of their own on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The United States and Israel can now only count on the support of a handful of venal puppets in the international arena.
The surge of support in the corridors of power throughout the Western world reflects a new realism towards the Palestinians and the Zionist entity. At the same time it is a response, and an attempt to pacify, the overwhelming support for the Palestinian Arabs on the street that has led to the despatch of Italian and Spanish warships to protect the aid flotilla sailing to Gaza and fired calls to kick Israel out of the Eurovision song contest and the World Cup.
Zionist drones have repeatedly harassed the Global Sumud Flotilla to Gaza. Luckily nobody has been hurt, but all those onboard are now on high alert. These boats are on a mercy mission to break Israel's illegal siege and deliver much-needed aid to the Palestinians in Gaza who are facing Israel's genocide. The British government must also act now to protect the flotilla and those onboard, and take action to end its complicity in Israel's genocide.
Much more now needs to be done. The international community must sever all economic ties with Israel over its actions in Gaza and should question its membership of the United Nations. Israel must withdraw from all the occupied territories and recognition of a Palestinian state must be followed by recognition of the legitimate rights of the Palestinian Arab refugees whose homes are now in Israel.  They must be allowed to return or, if they so wish, be paid appropriate compensation in exchange. 

Burnham shows his cards

By all accounts Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, is on the verge of returning to front-line Labour politics. He says Downing Street has created a “climate of fear” within the Labour Party and tells the media that Labour MPs have privately urged him to challenge Starmer for the leadership. That, of course, is easier said than done.
The not so young pretender first of all needs to find a safe, vacant Labour seat to return to the House of Commons before he can move to oust Starmer – and though some seats may soon be up for grabs getting the nomination largely depends on the goodwill of the Labour bureaucracy. He then needs to win the seat in a by-election – no mean feat these days with Labour in the doldrums and Farage on a roll – to garner sufficient support needed within the Labour bloc in parliament before a challenge can even take place.
Burnham is, nevertheless, preparing his platform and already saying he’s willing to work with the Liberal-Democrats and Jeremy Corbyn to face off the Faragists. But there’s plenty of others waiting in the wings who want to fill Starmer’s shoes. If Burham doesn’t move quickly he’ll miss the boat.

Stormy Days for Starmer

Peter Mandelson’s been sacked and Angela Rayner’s jumped before she was pushed. The sacking of Lord Mandelson is the second time in less than a week that Keir Starmer has shoved a prominent member of his government out of the door.
No-one’s going to miss Mandelson. He should never have been appointed ambassador to the United States in the first place. Starmer clearly thought that the veteran Blairite’s supposed networking skills would help him build a position of trust with the Trump administration. But after media exposure of Mandelson’s correspondence with Jeffrey Epstein, the notorious procurer who hanged himself in prison after being jailed for sex trafficking in New York, Mandelson’s position became untenable.
 It emerged that he had coached Epstein through "years of torture" over under-age sex charges. He told Epstein that “your friends stay with you and love you” and he urged him to "fight for early release". Health Secretary Wes Streeting said he was "completely disgusted" by the messages,while Mike Tapp, the Home Officer minister, said they were "really disturbing and sickening".   
No-one’s going to miss Angela Rayner either. Though compared to Mandelson the former deputy premier got off lightly retreating to the backbenches over the furore over her failure to pay the correct amount of tax on one of her properties – something she insists was a genuine mistake.
This doesn’t bode well for Labour. Despite it’s immense parliamentary majority Starmer’s team already looks like a government on its last legs. The Faragists are snapping at their heels while more and more Labour activists are swinging over to the Corbynistas and the Greens.
 Starmer’s Blairite revival, a trashy imitation of a failed past, has brought Labour to its knees. 
The sooner they all go the better. No-one will miss them either…

From the river to the sea...

The Israeli air-raid intended to wipe out the entire Hamas negotiating team in Qatar has provoked angry responses throughout the world. Qatar’s prime minister calls for a “collective response” from the Arab and Muslim world. Russia called the Zionist raid “a gross violation of international law and the UN Charter” and People’s China linked it to what it called the "unbalanced stance of certain external powers on Middle East issues" – an unspoken but clear reference to US imperialism. 
A growing campaign in support of the boycott, divestment and sanctions on Israel platform is spreading across the country. Hundreds of thousands of people march through London every month to demand justice for the Palestinian Arabs whilst the guilty men in Downing Street wine and dine the President of Israel in London.
The ongoing genocide and the continuous ethnic cleansing perpetrated by the murderous Zionist state, the use of terror and hunger as a weapon of war, the expansion of its settlements in the West Bank and the displacement of Palestinians from their historic land, are actions that are in clear conflict with every notion of humanity and respect for human life.
The World Federation of Trade Unions, based on the principles of solidarity and internationalism, has therefore decided to declare a global week of solidarity with the Palestinian people from 15th  to 22nd  September 2025.The working class will not remain silent in the face of the atrocities committed by the Zionist state. Let us all march together, across the length and breadth of the world, at this critical moment for the Palestinian people, under the slogan: No to Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing! Free Palestine!

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.

After the guns fall silent…

...real negotiations must begin – and not just on the thorny issue of Iran’s nuclear energy industry. The American-inspired truce that some say was brokered at Israel’s request may have put the Israeli-Iranian conflict on hold but it hasn’t stopped the fighting in Palestine. In occupied Palestine Zionist gangs spread terror in the West Bank while the Palestinian resistance fights on against a brutal foe who kills scores of civilians every day in what is clearly an attempt to drive the Palestinian Arabs out of their Mediterranean enclave to make room for more Zionist settlement.
Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian leader who signed the Camp David surrender treaty, with Israel once said that the United States held “99 per cent of the cards” in the Middle East and that he relied on the Americans to advance the peace process in the region by “bringing Israel to reason”. The Arab traitor, who was assassinated by Islamic militants in October 1981, was wrong.
Sure – recent events have shown that the United States can bring “Israel to reason” any time they like as the Zionist entity is a total dependency of the United States. But the Americans, who certainly hold 99 per cent of the cards in Tel Aviv, have little or no sway in the corridors of power in Tehran let alone the Palestinian resistance. 
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.
Iran is perfectly entitled to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. While Trump and his Israeli and European followers bleat on about Iran’s supposed nuclear bomb project the International Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed that the claim by Israel and the USA that the Islamic Republic is secretly building a nuclear weapon is false. Likewise the continuous monitoring of Iranian nuclear activities by the agency has not unearthed any evidence of departure from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) that Iran has signed. 
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 in October 2023.
But what the Americans want and what they get is another matter altogether. They failed in Iraq. They failed in Afghanistan. They will fail in Syria and they will fail in the rest of 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 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, including Israel, 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.

Israel lights the fuse

The Israeli attack on Iran is the opening shot of a war that could plunge the whole of the region into flames. The Israelis originally said their objective was to destroy Iran’s atomic energy industry, which they claim is a cover for efforts to produce nuclear weapons. Now they’re calling on the Iranian people to overthrow their government.
These have always been the objectives of Benjamin Netanyahu and the rabid Zionist leaders of the parties in his coalition government. More to the point they are also the objectives of American imperialism that has long worked for regime change in the Islamic Republic. 
Netanyahu’s coalition is deeply divided over moves to end Orthodox Jews exemption from conscription. Some of the Ultra-Orthodox parties have threatened to resign over the issue which would bring down the government and lead to fresh elections – elections Netanyahu would almost certainly lose.
Israel is in a quagmire of its own making fighting a war in Gaza it cannot win amidst rising inflation and economic stagnation. Many Israelis think Netanyahu is indifferent to the fate of the remaining Israelis held by the Palestinian resistance. Public opinion polls show a growing number of Israelis support the anti-war movement while calls for army reservists to refuse service have also been increasing.  So while doing the Americans bidding war with Iran provides a new prop to hold Netanyahu’s coalition together.
Though there is a growing peace movement in Israel the Netanyahu government thinks it can do whatever it likes regardless of the consequences because it believes that the Arabs and the Iranians are weak and that the United States will always be there to lend a hand when the going gets tough.
What they didn’t take into account was the Iranians’ ability to withstand their first wave of attacks. Nor did they foresee the devastating missile response which has shattered the myth of the so-called “Iron Dome” defence and left parts of Tel Aviv in ruins. Neither did Trump.
The ludicrous dreams of the US president of winning a Nobel Peace Prize have died in the dust of the streets of Gaza and the rubble in Tel Aviv. The Iranians say that as the Americans are the main supporter of Israel, the United States "will also be responsible for the dangerous effects and consequences" of Israel's attacks. Even some of Trump’s closest supporters have broken ranks with him over Iran including Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News anchorman, who says his former icon was  “complicit” in Israel’s attacks on Iran. Carlson says “Washington knew these attacks would happen. They aided Israel in carrying them out. Politicians purporting to be America First can’t now credibly turn around and say they had nothing to do with it”.  Or as Mollie Hemingway, another Republican pundit, put it: if Trump gave Israel the “green light” to target Iran, it “would be seen as an unforgivable betrayal by millions of American voters”.
 Israel has not been able to kill or drive out the defiant Arab population of the Gaza Strip. Gaza is not going to become a Trump-style American leisure resort. The Palestinians fight on. And so do the Iranians.

Stop the genocide against the Palestinian people

Joint Statement of Communist and Workers’ Parties

 
The Communist and Workers’ Parties condemn the new crime against the Palestinian people, which is being carried out before the eyes of the whole world and has been brought about by the intensification of the barbaric military aggression and the criminal Israeli blockade on the Gaza Strip.
The genocide that Israel is committing in the Gaza Strip, with thousands of dead civilians, children and elderly people, with millions of people deprived of food, water, electricity and medical supplies, with the complete destruction of hospitals and with millions of people displaced, is supported by the USA, NATO, the EU and all those bourgeois regimes that support Israel or keep silent about this inhuman crime.
We express our full solidarity with the Palestinian people and defend their right to a free homeland, to be masters in their own land. We condemn the decades-long Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, the killings, imprisonment, persecution and settlements.
We demand an end to the Israeli occupation, the creation and recognition of an independent Palestinian state, the cessation and dismantling of the illegal settlements in the Palestinian territories, the release of prisoners from Israeli jails and the return of refugees in accordance with UN Resolution 194.
We salute the massive internationalist solidarity with the Palestinian people that has been expressed in many countries and we call on the workers, the peoples and the youth in all countries tointensify the struggle to stop the massacre in the Gaza, to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine and to express their solidarity with the just struggle of the Palestinian people in a decisive way.

Everyone on the path of struggle!
Freedom for Palestine!
 
SolidNet Parties

• 1. Algerian Party for Democracy and Socialism  (PADS)
  2. Communist Party of Australia
  3. Party of Labour of Austria
  4. Communist Party of Bangladesh
  5. Brazilian Communist Party
  6. Communist Party of Britain
  7. New Communist Party of Britain
  8. Communist Party of Canada
  9. Socialist Workers' Party of Croatia
  10. Communist Party of Denmark
  11. Communist Party of El Salvador
  12. German Communist Party
  13. Communist Party of Greece
  14. Communist Party of India (Marxist)
  15. Iraqi Communist Party
  16. Communist Party of Kurdistan-Iraq
  17. Tudeh Party of Iran
  18. Workers Party of Ireland
  19. Communist Party of Israel
  20. Socialist Movement of Kazakhstan
  21. Lebanese Communist Party
  22. Communist Party of Mexico
  23. New Communist Party of the Netherlands
  24. Communist Party of Pakistan
  25. Palestinian Peoples Party
  26. Palestinian Communist Party
  27. Philippine Communist Party [PKP 1930]
  28. Romanian Socialist Party
  29. Communists of Serbia
  30. Communist Party of the Workers of Spain
  31. Communists of Catalonia
  32. Sudanese Communist Party
  33. Communist Party of Sweden
  34. Communist Party (Switzerland)
  35. Swiss Communist Party
  36. Syrian Communist Party
  37. Communist Party of Turkey
  38. Communist Party of Ukraine
  39. Union of Communists of Ukraine
  40. CPUSA
  41. Communist Party of Venezuela

   

 
Other Parties

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

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 cowardly, craven BBC

Hundreds of film, TV, and media professionals, have condemned censorship and racism after the BBC removed a documentary about the children of Gaza. In a letter to BBC executives, they criticised the decision as “racist” and “dehumanising”, blaming pressure from pro-Israel groups. Billed as “following the lives of four young people trying to survive the Israel-Hamas war as they hope for a ceasefire - a vivid and unflinching view of life in a warzone” the documentary has now been pulled by the BBC.
Gary Lineker and Miriam Margolyes are among more than 800 media figures who have condemned the BBC's decision to pull a documentary about children's lives in Gaza. 
The BBC says it removed Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone from iPlayer while it carried out "further due diligence" after discovering that the young narrator was the son of a Hamas official. Zionists, including the Israeli ambassador Tzipi Hotovely, had written to the BBC asking how a child with alleged family ties to Hamas was allowed to be the focus of a documentary about the lives of ordinary Palestinians.   
The open protest letter published by Artists for Palestine UK criticised what the signatories said was a "racist" and "dehumanising" campaign targeting the documentary. It called on the BBC to reject efforts to have the film permanently removed or “subjected to undue disavowals” saying that surrendering to efforts to stop its return to iPlayer would indicate “racialised smears against Palestinians outweigh journalistic ethics and public interest”.
The signatories also warned against intrusive scrutiny of Abdullah Al-Yazouri, a 14-year-old  child who narrated Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone. His father, Dr Ayman Al-Yazouri, served as Gaza’s deputy agriculture minister – a civil service role concerned with food production.
“​​Almost half of Gaza’s population are children. What they have experienced over the past 17 months is something no child deserves to ever go through” said Liam O’Hare, an award-winning documentary producer/director who signed the letter. “As journalists and filmmakers we have a duty to help tell their story and that’s what this film did so brilliantly. The BBC cannot allow a politicised campaign to succeed in silencing the children of Gaza.”
Artists for Palestine UK (APUK) is a growing network of artists and cultural workers standing together in support of Palestinian liberation and for a just resolution for all in Israel/Palestine, including Palestinian refugees. 
The campaign that was launched in 2015 believes that those who work in the arts have a responsibility to consider the impact of their work when engaging in a situation of radical inequality.
APUK says that the arts are of particular significance where a people’s history, cultural heritage and future are under constant threat of erasure and it believes that the arts have an important role to play in connecting audiences with Palestinian experience. It opposes all forms of racism, including anti-Arab racism, Islamophobia and antisemitism.
“The UK film and TV industry will no longer be intimidated by those whose sole mission it is to censor the voices of the many who are defending the rights of children, the marginalised and those in desperate need. All stories have the right to be told and journalistic scrutiny should not be at the whim of those who deem certain lives unequal,” said letter signatory Nada Issa, an award-winning producer/director and journalist who is part Palestinian and Lebanese. We whole-heartedly agree.

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)

Freedom for Palestine – no to ethnic cleansing!

No one, apart from the Israelis, can take Donald Trump’s plan for Gaza seriously.The Zionists always denied that the true aim of the genocidal assault on Gaza has been the destruction of the Palestinian population, and denial of all of their rights including the right to self-determination. They lied. 
So did those lackeys of US imperialism in Britain and Europe that not only provided diplomatic cover for Israeli aggression but armed and funded the Zionist state in its drive to crush the Palestinian resistance.
Jeremy Corbyn, the former leader of the Labour Party who now heads the Independent Alliance bloc in Parliament has, however, taken the principled stand  holding Israel and those who are still sending arms to the regime rrsponsible for genocide in Palestine.
"The death toll in Gaza has already been updated to 61,709," Corbyn said. "The true scale of Israel's atrocities is only just emerging - and officials must face justice for every single life lost. So should those who continued to send weapons, knowing full well they were enabling genocide”.
Trump’s proposal is. of course, nothing new. It echoes plans that have been discussed by Israeli officials for many decades. Kicking out the Palestinians to turn the Gaza Strip into a millionaires playground may seem a good idea to the likes of Trump and Netanyahu but it is only a recipe for yet another war – and this time round, going on what Trump is saying, it will be American troops confronting the Arabs.
The Americans came unstuck in Iraq and the Israelis lost the Gaza war. Trump’s threats will not succeed in what the Zionist guns failed to achieve. Trump will not achieve what Biden could not do. 
Despite their vast resources, US imperialism and its Zionist lackeys have not broken the will of the Palestinian people. The Palestinian people, who faced Zionist terror armed with American weapons for 15 months, will not bow to the empty threats of Donald Trump.

New Labour woes

This week a Scottish Labour MP  warned that the next government may be a “hard-line far-right effort” if Labour does not deliver “improved living standards”. Brian Leishman, who represents Alloa & Grangemouth, criticised his own party's government for not providing financial compensation to the ‘Waspi’ women who campaign against the way in which the state pension ages for men and women were equalised at the expense of many women.
Leishman was one of 10 Labour MPs who supported a Bill introduced by the SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn that would require ministers to publish measures to address the findings of the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) report which recommended paying compensation to women born in the 1950s whose state pension age was raised so it would be equal with men.
Labour’s embrace of Tory austerity has led to further unpopularity on the street. And this week a new public opinion poll puts Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party ahead of Labour and the Conservatives. A YouGov survey puts Reform, at 25 per cent, narrowly ahead of Labour at 24 and the Tories on 21 per cent. The Liberal Democrats stand on 14 per cent, while the Greens are now at nine.
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.  

Palestinian flag over UK town halls

by Theo Russell

 
Sheffield City Council, along with several other cities in England and Scotland, marked the UN Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People on 29th November by flying the Palestinian flag, following a request by the PCS Yorkshire & Northeast Home Office branch.
Branch secretary Lawrence Barfoot said “we are delighted that Sheffield City Council has agreed to fly the Palestinian flag in solidarity with the people of Gaza and the West Bank, who are currently enduring a vicious assault by Israel.”
The branch supports the Sheffield Palestine Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid, a local, multi-faith organisation with the aim of making Sheffield an apartheid-free zone through boycotting, divestment, and sanctions.
Three other South Yorkshire local authorities including Barnsley, along with Glasgow, Newbury and Rochdale city councils, also flew the Palestinian flag on 29th  November, while Liverpool's city council refused.
Barnsley recently made a declaration of friendship with the Palestinian West Bank city of Nablus, and said in a statement that the council was "exploring ways to strengthen its cultural, educational and young people’s links" between the two cities.
The council's Chief Executive met with political and community leaders and "gathered professional opinions from stakeholders across the city" before approving the decision.
Councillors from Sheffield’s Green Party said the decision was the result of tireless campaigning by the people of Sheffield in solidarity with the people of Palestine, and called on the Labour government to impose a two-way arms embargo on Israel, and end negotiations for a free-trade agreement with Israel.
They also asked the UK to "cease aiding and assisting in the commission of violations of international law through diplomatic support for Israel, the use of the UK Akrotiri military base in Cyprus, and intelligence sharing, reconnaissance and all other military support", and to "investigate the Israeli ambassador to the UK, and dual-nationals returning from service with the IDF, as potential perpetrators of international crimes and grave human rights violations, including the crime of incitement to genocide".
Unfortunately, The London Borough of Tower Hamlets, which has one of England's largest Muslim communities, decided to remove Palestinian flags from council buildings last March, after receiving a letter from UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) that claimed that the council's officers and managers, including the mayor Lutfur Rahman, were personally guilty of criminal offences under the 1990 Town and Country Planning Act. Lutfur Rahman approved the removal of Palestinian flags on council-owned buildings, on advice from the council's chief executive.
The flying of Palestinian flags over public buildings clearly reflects the feelings of the overwhelming majority of the British people. According to an Ipsos poll in October, 73 per cent of people in Britain wanted an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and 60 per cent believed that Israel’s actions in Gaza have "gone too far".
The Ukrainian flag has been flown on hundreds of public buildings since the Russian intervention began in February 2022, in support of the criminal, illegitimate Banderite Nazi junta in Kiev. To see the Palestinian flag being flown on a handful of public buildings in Britain is a very welcome change, and a definite step in the right direction.

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?”.

We stand against the widening of war in the Middle East!

 Joint Statement of Communist and Workers Parties

We, the undersigned communist and workers parties campaigning for peace and progress in the Middle East, hereby express our most profound concerns over the unprecedented escalation of the situation in the region with the Israeli multi-dimensional attacks on Lebanon and full-scale invasion of the country. This has predictably resulted in the retaliatory missile strikes by Iran on Israeli targets, following on from Israeli attacks on Lebanon and other provocative infringements on Iranian sovereignty.
We believe that if the current trend of developments continues, the region will be plunged into a cycle of conflict that could very easily lead to a globalised war.  This would endanger the security of all states and peoples in our region.
In Israel, the Netanyahu government, which has flagrantly violated international law in its perpetration of a genocidal war in Gaza for the past 12 months, assassination of political leadersin Tehran and Beirut,and now in its invasion of Lebanon and blatant recourse to terror tactics to eliminate its foes there, is seeking a direct military conflict with Iran in order to expand the war across the Middle East, in collusion with the US and UK governments, to aggressively implement schemes fundamentally aimed at the re-drawing of the political map of the Middle East and imposition of their imperialist hegemony.
The state of Israel conducts itself as the wild arsonist in the Middle East, while Western powers continue to cover, support, and arm it to the teeth, since it constitutes their long and steely arm in the region.This despite Israel's repeated brazen thumbing its nose to the international community, under the auspices of the United Nations (UN), as well as the rule of international law.
We recognise the definitive peaceful and political resolution of the Palestinian issue as being central to the current situation in the Middle East.  We therefore call for an immediate full ceasefire and end to the genocidal war in Gaza andthe West Bank and the withdrawal of all Israeli forces from those territories; the release of all Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli gaols and detention centres; the release of all remaining Israeli hostages held in Gaza; as well immediate concrete and legally enshrined steps towards the recognition and implementation of a fully sovereign Palestinian state within the borders as they stood on 4 June 1967 as per the relevant UN resolutions.  In accordance with international law, the illegal occupation of Palestine must be brought to an end.
We furthermore call for the immediate withdrawal of all Israeli military forces from the sovereign territory of Lebanonand reaffirm our solidarity with the struggle of the Lebanese and Palestinian people and support for their fundamental and inalienable right under international law to resist foreign invasion and occupation. We also call for an endto the bombardment and military targeting of sites in Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Yemen, and further afield.
Pursuant to this, we call for an end to all exports of military armaments, ammunition, as well as technical assistanceto Israel in order to force a reversal from its dangerous military adventure in Palestine, Lebanon, and other countries in the Middle East.
We call for the rulings of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) regarding theIsraeli genocidal war in Gaza to be upheld and implemented without delay or obstruction.
We call for the UN's appeals to all sides to be heeded in order so as to earnestly row back from and avert the nightmarish scenario of a generalised war, which edges over closer and would spell disaster for all peoples of the region.
 
SolidNet Parties signing the Joint Statement
 

• Communist Party of Armenia
• Communist Party of Australia
• Communist Party of Austria
• Party of Labour Austria
• Communist Party of Bangladesh
• Communist Party of Brazil
• Communist Party of Britain
• New Communist Party of Britain
• Communist Party of Canada
• AKEL of Cyprus
• Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia
• Communist Party of Denmark
• Communist Party of Finland
• French Communist Party
• German Communist Party
• Communist Party of Greece (KKE)
• Hungarian Workers Party
• Communist Party of India
• Communist Party of India [Marxist]
• Tudeh Party of Iran
• Communist Party of Iraq
• Kurdistan Communist Party -Iraq
• Workers Party of Ireland
• Communist Party of Israel
• Italian Communist Party
• Socialist Movement of Kazakhstan
• Communist Party of Luxembourg
• Communist Party of Malta
• Communist Party of Mexico
• New Communist Party of the Netherlands
• Communist Party of Norway
• Communist Party of Pakistan
• Palestinian Peoples Party
• Portuguese Communist Party
• Communist Party of the Russian Federation
• Russian Communists Workers Party
• Communists of Serbia 
• Communist Party of Spain
• Communist Party of the Workers of Spain
• Communists of Catalonia
• Communist Party of Sri Lanka
• Sudanese Communist Party
• Communist Party of Sweden
• Syrian Communist Party
• Communist Party of Turkey
• Communist Party of Ukraine
• Communist Party of Uruguay
• Communist Party USA
• Communist Party of Venezuela  

Other Parties

• Communist Front of Italy
• Communist Workers' Platform USA
• Party of Communists USA

Solidarity with the Palestinian and Lebanese people

against occupation and the genocidal war
 
We, the undersigned communist and workers parties, hereby express our strongest condemnation against the escalating Israeli crimes against the Palestinian, Lebanese and all peoples of the Middle East.
Following months of the genocidal war against Gaza, which has resulted in the killings of tens of thousands of civilians - including 12,000 children - and the massive destruction of its schools, hospitals and infrastructure, we are now witnessing a new phase of murderous aggression on Lebanon and the initiation of a full-scale invasion of the country. This has led to a humanitarian catastrophe over the past few weeks, resulting in the martyrdom of more than 2,000 Lebanese citizens, the injuring of more than 10,000 and the displacement of about 1.2 million citizens who were forced to leave their homes, seeking shelter in other regions as well as on the streets and in cars and tents.
The assassinations of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and Hezbollah General Secretary Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut have resulted in retaliatory missile strikes by Iran on Israeli targets. We believe that these aggressive actions and crimes conducted by the Zionist entity, with full support by imperialist powers, are leading the Middle East into a disastrous cycle of conflict and possibly a regional war.
The imperialist governments, especially those of the US and NATO countries are responsible for the crimes committed against the Palestinian and Lebanese people by being fully involved in the armament of Israel and open support through all financial, political, diplomatic, media and intelligence resources at their disposal, as well as sending their air and naval forces to the region in preparation for broader aggressions.
We hereby express our full solidarity with the peoples of the region, in particular the Lebanese and Palestinian people and their rightful resistance, in all its forms, to achieve their liberation and independence.
We salute the persistence, steadfastness and resistance of the peoples of the region, including communist and progressive forces that are striving for national liberation, independence and sovereignty.
We call for an immediate unconditional ceasefire in Gaza. We support theending of the occupation of Palestine, as well as guaranteeing the right of self-determination and the implementation of a fully sovereign Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital. We call for the return of all refugees.
We furthermore call for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all Israeli military forces that are occupying sovereign territories in South Lebanon, and the Golan heights in Syria and to end the bombardment of sites in Syria, Iran, Yemen, and further afield.
Pursuant to this, we call for an end to all exports of military armaments, ammunition, as well as technical assistance to the Israeli occupation army. We call for the rulings of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) regarding the Israeli genocidal war in Gaza to be upheld and implemented without delay or obstruction.
We also call upon the peoples of the world, and the communist, workers, and progressive forces in various countries, to assist the growth and strengthening of the wide political, popular, and media solidarity campaign to achieve the immediate ceasefire and to put an end to the Zionist aggression and its crimes against the Lebanese and Palestinian people and all peoples of the region.
 
SolidNet Parties signing the Joint Statement

• Communist Party of Australia
• Party of Labour Austria
• Democratic Progressive Movement Bahrain
• Communist Party of Bangladesh
• Brazilian Communist Party
• Communist Party of Brazil
• New Communist Party of Britain
• Communist Party of Denmark
• Egyptian Communist Party
• German Communist Party
• Communist Party of Greece
• Hungarian Workers' Party
• Communist Party of India
• Communist Party of India (Marxist)
• Iraqi Communist Party
• Communist Party of Ireland
• Italian Communist Party 
• Communist Party (Italy)
• Jordanian Communist Party
• Kuwaiti Progressive Movement
• Lebanese Communist Party
• Communist Party of Mexico
• New Communist Party of the Netherlands
• Communist Party of Norway
• Communist Party of Pakistan
• Palestinian Communist Party
• Palestinian Peoples Party
• Communist Party of Poland
• Portuguese Communist Party
• Romanian Socialist Party
• Communist Party of the Russian Federation
• Russian Communist Workers Party
• Communists of Serbia
• Communist Party of Spain
• Communist Party of the Peoples of Spain
• Communist Party of the Workers of Spain
• Communists of Catalonia
• Sudanese Communist Party
• Communist Party of Swaziland
• Communist Party of Sweden
• Syrian Communist Party
• Unified Syrian Communist Party
• Communist Party of Turkey
• Communist Party of Uruguay
• Communist Party USA
• Communist Party of Venezuela

Other Parties

• Coordinadora de Movimientos Sociales y Politicos Marcha Patriotica de Colombia
• Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
• Danish Communist Party
• Party of Popular Alliance - Egypt
• Communist Party of Germany
• Communist Party (Germany)
• Communist Front of Italy 
• Workers Democratic Way Party- Morocco
• Party of the Federation of Democratic Left - Morocco
• Unified Socialist Party - Morocco
• Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine
• Galizan Peoples Union
• Party of Popular Will - Syria
• Communist Workers' Platform USA
• Socialist Party - Yemen

Stop arms to Israel!

 While Boris Johnson and other Tory has-beens join Netanyahu and the rest of the Zionist chorus in condemning Britain’s ‘shameful’ decision to suspend some arms exports to Israel others point out that past Labour and Tory governments, including those of Edward Heath, Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and even David Cameron had imposed similar sanctions on Israel in the past.
The decision to block 30 arms export licences for Israel is, in fact, a very small step forward for the Starmer government and though some pundits say it marks a breach with the Biden administration it is hard to believe that Sir Keir Starmer would do anything against Israel without clearing it in advance with the White House.
This week we’ve seen waves of protests and strikes sweep across Israel as the demand for a cease-fire grows even in the heart of the Zionist state. We see millions upon millions throughout what the imperialists call the “free world” demanding a halt to the genocide and justice for the Palestinians. We see this in London and on the streets of all our major cities and we must keep up the fight to economically and politically isolate Israel to stop the the fighting and ensure that the legitimate rights of the Palestinian Arabs are restored.

After Grenfell

Following years of interviews and evidence, and after repeated delays, the families, bereaved and survivors of Grenfell fire have, at last, obtained an official account of the causes of Britain’s deadliest residential fire since the Second World War. The blaze that roared through the tower block in one of the poorest parts of Kensington & Chelsea, the wealthiest borough in London, took the lives of scores of people and devastated the local community.
Some years ago, when the Corbynistas were at the helm of the Labour Party, the Kensington Labour Party Research Unit published their own report which said "the borough of princes, Sultans, plutocrats and billionaires” was actually the most unequal borough in Britain'. How, in what one Councillor called “the richest borough in the universe”, with three billion pounds in reserves, could 72 people burn to death in a fire which, even in the earliest days, was blamed on 'cheap cladding'?
The borough has the highest life expectancy in the country, but across the borough the gap in years lived is a massive 27 years. Even more shocking, since 2010 – when a decade of austerity began to pay for the 2008 banking crash – average life expectancy in Golborne Ward where the tower block stood, fell by six years, the worst decline in the country.
On Wednesday, the final 1,700-page report of a six-year public inquiry into the fire was published. The report, as Matt Wrack the leader of the Fire Brigades Union says “demonstrates beyond doubt that central government’s deregulation agenda cost lives. Decades of ministerial failure to regulate the building industry gave the green light for businesses to prioritise profit over human life”.
The report makes over 80 recommendations, which the FBU will assess in detail over the weeks to come. But the union wants much more than that. The fire-fighters rightly highlight the need for national standards set by a statutory advisory body on fire policy, giving a voice to firefighters and control staff and drawing on the best expert advice.
It also exposed a deliberately created system that provides genuine health and safety for the rich but not for the poor. Endless chains of sub-contracting and downgrading of checks made a tragedy like Grenfell virtually inevitable, and the only surprise was the horrific form in which it came.

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!

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.

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.