By Martin Suchanek
Hundreds of thousands in Gaza and throughout Palestine have attended rallies celebrating the recent ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas.
This agreement promises an end to a year and half of war and destruction, and the entry of aid including food, medicine, clean water, clothing and building materials. Furthermore, hundreds of Palestinians, including children, will be released from Israeli prisons.
Hamas claims this agreement as a victory. Indeed, Israel failed to achieve its goal of destroying Hamas’ political and military infrastructure, much less expelling the Palestinians wholesale from Gaza. Israel had to recognise Hamas as a negotiating partner, even if only through the mediation of the USA, Qatar and Egypt.
By contrast, hardly anyone in Israel cheered the ceasefire. The relatives of the hostages have not forgotten that it was the Israeli government itself that repeatedly sabotaged prisoner exchange deals in order to continue its genocidal war. Ben Gvir’s fascist Jewish Force party regards the agreement as a ‘capitulation to Hamas’, arguing to continue the genocide. The far right party, National Religious Party-Religious Zionism, led by Finance Minister Smotrich, remains in government, purportedly after Netanyahu promised a return to the bombing after the first phase of the ceasefire.
Balance sheet
Whilst the Zionist state has failed in its maximum goals—eradicating Hamas and expelling the Palestinians—this victory has come at enormous cost. The Israeli army has left a destroyed, devastated country, with 50,000 people killed directly by the Israeli army while at least an equal number—and potentially many more—died from the ‘indirect’ consequences of the genocidal war.
The ceasefire agreement has three projected stages. In the first phase, lasting 42 days, 33 of the 98 hostages still alive are to be released in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. The Israeli army will remain in Gaza, and negotiations are to take place on the details of its withdrawal, the exchange of further hostages and prisoners, and the ‘self-government’ of Gaza.
The reality is that a lasting agreement on the future of Gaza is virtually impossible as long as Israel insists that Hamas must be excluded from any political participation.
The Israeli far right will campaign against the agreement. However, if Smotrich and his party leave and oppose the Likud government, opposition leader Yair Lapid and his party Yesh Atid have offered to support it and save Netanyahu for the entire duration of the ceasefire agreement.
Whatever the uncertain future of the ceasefire agreement it is a result of the pressure of newly elected US president Trump that forced the deal, against the resistance and reservations of the Israeli government. The pressure of mass protests in Western states and the political exposure of the character of Zionism in the eyes of millions may have contributed to the US and its Western allies enforcing the ceasefire, but it was not decisive.
Unfortunately, the causes are different. First, Israel, the US and wider West have achieved significant goals in the last year and a half. Most Arab states have not lifted a finger for the Palestinians. Their reactionary regimes have once again made it clear that their economic and geo-strategic interests are always more important to them than solidarity with the Palestinian people, to whom they grant only verbal and symbolic support. China and Russia also allowed the West and Israel to get on with it, limiting their criticism to UN resolutions and diplomatic jabs.
The so-called ‘Axis of Resistance’, on which Hamas and the Palestinian left relied, has been massively weakened: Hezbollah defeated, the Syrian government overthrown and Iran attacked and isolated. Though unstable, Syria will not pose a threat to the Zionist state for the immediate future.
The Axis has been exposed as a paper tiger but more fundamentally, Hamas’ assumption that their allies would be forced into the fight was also misguided. The leaderships of Hezbollah, Iran and Syria had no intention of doing so.
While Biden and his Western allies considered the total annihilation of Hamas and any other resistance organisation to be politically unrealistic because it would require the complete expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza. They were unwilling to force a ceasefire on Israel despite its genocide, which they hypocritically denied while shedding crocodile tears for ‘the Gazan people’. Their only concern is that its continuation could strengthen the solidarity movement and see it extend into blockades and boycotts of military and economic links, or worse the Arab street, angered beyond patience with their rulers, begin to move. Above all, the US and its allies want to revive Israel’s economic and political cooperation with the reactionary Arab regimes, particularly Saudi Arabia—and the ceasefire allows restarting the process of ‘normalisation’ interrupted by 7 October.
Where next?
The promises of a ceasefire and ‘self-government’ in Gaza and the West Bank are intended to pacify and appease the Palestinian masses. As with the Fatah movement and the PLO in the past, some imperialist powers would have nothing in principle against also openly or indirectly involving Hamas in government, ideally for them a ‘government of national unity’ with Fatah, but either way under Israeli supervision—i.e. one just as powerless, if not more so, than the current Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Even this however is unacceptable to Zionist hardliners.
The ceasefire may lead to a lull in the violence, but it will not and cannot lead to a solution to the real problem, the systematic 76-year-long expulsion, disenfranchisement and oppression of the Palestinians. A ‘peace agreement’ negotiated by the imperialist powers and Israel with Hamas cannot bring genuine self-government, let alone liberation, to the Palestinians.
While Gaza would continue to languish in poverty, dependent on Western aid and under a regime of scarcity for years, the construction of settlements, land grabs and evictions in the West Bank would continue at the accelerated level the Netanyahu government launched before 7 October. Such a solution would itself be a malicious caricature of the two-state solution, which has always been reactionary and utopian.
If the war and the experiences of recent years have shown anything, it is that there has not been, is not and will not be a just and lasting peace in the Middle East as long as the oppression by the Zionist state of Israel, which acts as a pro-imperialist gendarme, continues. Peace will only be possible if the oppressive Israeli state is replaced by a unified, secular, democratic and socialist Palestine in the context of a regional socialist revolution.
However, this also means that the Palestinian left and working class need a strategy and programme that goes beyond the orientation towards the ‘Axis of Resistance’. Rather, the liberation struggle must be placed in the context of a revolution in the entire Middle East, in Arab states such as Syria and Egypt, but also in Iran and Turkey. But this also requires the fight to build new revolutionary workers’ parties in Palestine as well as in the entire Middle East and a new International based on a programme of permanent revolution.
The solidarity movement
In Western countries, we must continue the fight for the liberation of Palestine, which the ceasefire in itself will not deliver. In the period ahead, the task is to deepen our organisation and mobilise to provide aid and support for the Palestinian people. We must demand not only money and material aid, but also an end to all support for the Zionist state and the right of Palestinians to defend themselves against Israeli oppression and fight for liberation. Building a broad movement rooted in workplaces, schools and universities also requires fighting in the trade unions and reformist parties for a break with the pro-imperialist and pro-Zionist leadership.
