By Dave Stockton
The Israeli rejection of the Hamas’ proposal for a ceasefire, in return for the release of 10 live hostages, makes clearer than ever that Netanyahu, his fascist collaborators and Donald Trump will stop at nothing until all Gazans have been driven out of the Strip.
Benjamin Netanyahu spelt it out in testimony to the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee: ‘We are destroying more and more homes. They have nowhere to return to. The only inevitable outcome will be the desire of Gazans to emigrate outside of the Gaza Strip.’
Meanwhile, the Israeli Defence Force is overseeing the expulsion of Palestinians from the West Bank by armed Israeli settlers. Defence Minister Israel Katz and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, fascist ministers in Netanyahu’s war cabinet, announced the official approval of 22 settlements in—the biggest expansion in decades.
Nine will be completely new. Katz made clear it was a ’strategic move that prevents the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger Israel, and serves as a buffer against our enemies’. Smotrich declared that the ’next step is sovereignty!’
Yet, even now, with at least 54,000 dead and the towns of Gaza reduced to rubble, Britain, along with other Western governments, refuses to recognise the reality of Israel’s war aims, namely, the occupation of all Palestinian land and the expulsion of the great majority of Palestinians.
That is made clear by the starvation policy Israel has adopted to force the depopulation of the north of the Strip where thousands of men, women and children are facing death from disease, malnutrition or outright starvation.
As cover for this operation, Netanyahu and Trump have dreamed up another cruel machine of torture, miscalled ‘humanitarian aid’. A US based entity, the ‘Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’, is meant to replace the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, Unwra, hundreds of whose trucks have been barred from entering the Strip and now stand in rows at the crossings.
Instead of the hundreds of distribution points through which Unwra provided essential food supplies, the GHF has opened just two, in the south of the Strip, to try to force the evacuation of the north. If successful, this will no doubt be described as ‘voluntary relocation’.
Rather than providing supplies to local bakeries, GHF only releases small cardboard boxes with a few days’ rations, for which thousands had to queue for hours in the sun, with little or no provision of water and fuel to cook with. When, inevitably, the crowds surged forward, they were met with volleys of gunfire, even tank shelling.
As a commentator on Aljazeera justly observed, ‘What the world witnessed was not a tragedy, but a revelation. The unmasking of the pretence of humanitarian aid as an instrument of control, dehumanisation, and humiliation, dispensed by armed US contractors [mercenaries] under the eyes of the Israeli occupier.’
Both the US and Israel have long resented the role of UNWRA in providing support for the Palestinians and cuts to its funding started long before the present war. In January 2018, during Trump’s first term, he slashed the $364m (£283m) US funding by half. The US, which had been by far the largest donor to UNRWA, described the agency as ‘irredeemably flawed’. ‘Genocide Joe’ Biden temporarily suspended it altogether and it has never been restored.
Cut all ties with Israel
What has continued has been the provision of most of the weapons destroying Gaza. Now, finally, after 18 months of the most obvious atrocities, which they covered up by suggesting they were part of Israel’s right to defend itself, Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and newly elected Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said that the new military actions in Gaza were ‘wholly disproportionate’, concluding:
‘We will not stand by while the Netanyahu Government pursues these egregious actions… If Israel does not cease the renewed military offensive and lift its restrictions on humanitarian aid, we will take further concrete actions in response.’
As suppliers of the weapons and the intelligence with which Israel is carrying out its ‘egregious actions’, as countries with deep economic ties to the Zionist state, it might seem obvious what ‘concrete actions’ they should start with. In fact their statement is the purest hypocrisy made only to cover their record when the full scale of the genocide is known to history.
True ‘humanitarian aid’ would be to use all the many means at their disposal to force the complete dismantling of the siege and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, none of which are recognised by treaties, UN resolutions or international law. It would be to cease all trade with Israel and seek the prosecution of Israeli war criminals. Even this would only be a start of justice for the Palestinian people, driven from their homes.
Solidarity
However, it is clear that none of these leaders are actually planning any serious actions against Israel. Instead, the international solidarity movement that has put millions on the streets, needs to redouble its efforts. Unions like Unite and the GMB in Britain, whose members work in arms factories, should stop work on anything destined for Israel; 15% of every F35 that Israel is using to bombard Gaza is made by British industry (see the Workers in Palestine factsheet).
Workers in both the docks and airports need to launch their own blockade in answer to Israel’s. On campus, students and teachers, and broadcast, print and web-based journalists need to break the embargo on denouncing the crimes being perpetrated in Gaza and abetted by Western governments.
Last, but not least, we need to demand that trade union leaders and backbench MPs do likewise. These actions, combined with continued mass demonstrations, are a vital part of the aid needed for Gaza and can bring nearer the liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea.
