Gaza ceasefire: keep up the fight for a free Palestine

Palestinians in Gaza wildly celebrated the initial announcement of the ceasefire agreement. But their hopes for a better future after 15 months of hell and misery turned to trepidation when Israel immediately unleashed a further furious campaign of airstrikes on civilian targets.

It was a clear message of Israeli intentions. Yes, a ceasefire might be coming, but Israel will maintain and enforce its military control over the Palestinian population of the enclave. Gaza will remain an open-air prison camp on which Israel will unleash hell whenever it suits its interests.

The ceasefire, if it holds, will of course be a relief after all the suffering. However, the complex three-stage deal is fragile, and the Israelis may well try to disrupt or sabotage it.

The Israeli far right and fascist forces are furious about any pause in the genocidal war. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich demanded “complete victory”—endless war against the Palestinian population and the destruction of any hopes they have of achieving a state of their own. The far right is demanding that the attacks resume after the six-week first phase of the ceasefire deal and the release of hostages.

The lives of the people of Gaza will be only minimally improved by the ceasefire. On top of the tens of thousands killed, and the much greater numbers wounded, the whole infrastructure of Gaza has been laid waste—hospitals, schools, housing, roads, the sewerage system, agriculture, bakeries, electricity and water supplies. There are no jobs. Disease and famine stalk the streets. The bombs might stop, but none of this will change.

Gazans will be allowed no genuine democratic rights under the ceasefire agreement. There will be no free elections. A military dictatorship is to be imposed upon them.

The US government wants an interim international body, made up largely of troops from “reliable” authoritarian Arab states, to police Gaza, followed by the appointment of the Palestinian Authority (PA) to run the show. The PA is attempting to establish its credentials with the US and Netanyahu for a role as a reliable Vichy-style regime in Gaza by waging a brutal offensive in the West Bank to destroy all democratic opposition to its dictatorship.

Having ravaged Gaza, Israel now has the green light from the US to step up its assault on the West Bank, which is the main game for the Zionists. The Israelis are rapidly expanding their illegal settlements and relentlessly driving Palestinians from their land. To make their intentions crystal clear, immediately after the ceasefire was announced, a murderous crew of Zionist settlers were released from detention and unleashed on the West Bank population.

US imperialism has been the decisive winner of this prolonged war, even more so than Israel. The US’s rival Iran has been much weakened—its strategic position in the Middle East severely set back.

Iran’s key ally Hezbollah has taken major blows militarily and politically. Hezbollah’s leadership was decimated by Israeli attacks, and much of its military apparatus destroyed. And after long months of political stalemate in a further attempt to isolate Hezbollah, a new US-backed president and prime minister have been installed in Lebanon.

The monstrous Assad regime in Syria, another key piece of the supposed “axis of resistance”, has been overthrown. Hamas has been battered, the pro-Iranian militias in Iraq weakened.

The US ruling class and political establishment, not simply Trump and Biden, appear to have laid down the law to Netanyahu that Israel had achieved all it could out of the war on Gaza. The US was for moving on after its victory in the Middle East and focusing back on the main game for US imperialism: preparing for a future war with China.

A series of utterly hypocritical Western leaders came out declaring the ceasefire in Gaza should be the prelude to a two-state solution for the Palestinians. This is a monumental facade to make it appear that they have a shred of moral decency and care about human rights.

These capitalist politicians know full well that the Zionist state is never going to accept a Palestinian state being set up alongside Israel. And Western leaders have never been prepared to seriously take on Israel to obtain even an ounce of justice for the Palestinians. A powerful Israeli state very much serves Western imperialism’s strategic interests in the vital Middle East.

The radical international movement in support of Palestine that emerged over the last 15 months is one of the few positive developments to come out of this terrible genocide. We have seen the largest and most sustained protests ever across the Western world in support of Palestinian rights. Political opinions have shifted substantially, especially amongst a layer of younger people.

The movement can’t let up the fight. Even if the ceasefire holds, it will not resolve the terrible problems facing the Palestinian people.

The movement must demand as a very minimum that the Western powers, which backed Israel, pay for the rebuilding of Gaza with no strings attached. This must begin immediately. Food, medical supplies, fuel and temporary housing need to be poured in.

The sick and wounded must be allowed to leave Gaza for proper medical treatment. Palestinian refugees must be allowed into Australia and granted immediate asylum.

The Israeli army must be immediately withdrawn from all of Gaza. Israeli raids in the West Bank have to end now. Netanyahu and the whole Israeli war cabinet should be arrested and tried for genocide. The Australian government should break all ties with Israel. We must not forget what happened in this genocidal war.

But more than that, the movement needs to be fighting for genuine social and national freedom for the Palestinian people, from the river to the sea. The only solution worth fighting for is a completely democratic society in which all the people of historic Palestine, whatever their religion or no religion, whatever their ethnic background, have genuinely equal rights.

The pro-Palestine movement also needs to address and debate out the road forward for liberation. How can the freedom of the Palestinian people be achieved in the face of the military might of the Zionist state with its strident backing from the US and other Western imperialist states such as Australia?

It is clear after all the horrors of the last 15 months that we can’t rely on capitalist politicians of whatever political hue, Democrat or Republican, Labor or Liberal. There is no point begging them to be humane or electing the supposed “lesser evil” alternative, which always turns out, once in government, to be simply another form of evil.

The whole Western capitalist order needs to be challenged. That means building a socialist movement with a strong base of support amongst the working class.

That is not some simple or easy task. It is not going to happen overnight but it is the only hope for genuine liberation.

In the Middle East, the so-called “axis of resistance”, which sections of the Palestine movement looked to, has been revealed as a complete paper tiger. It was never willing nor able to deliver meaningful support for the Palestinians, let alone defeat Israel.

The axis of resistance was simply a mechanism to protect the reactionary Iranian state’s interests. It was not about standing up for the rights of the Palestinians and the oppressed and exploited of the Middle East.

Many decades of experience have also amply demonstrated than none of the capitalist regimes of the region, for all their at times radical pretensions, have ever been prepared to wage an all-out fight against imperialism and for the liberation of Palestine. Such a struggle would necessitate the mobilisation of the mass of workers and the oppressed, which would inevitably threaten the wealth and power of the ruling class elite.

As well, guerrilla struggle, no matter how heroic, is not going to be able to defeat the might of the Zionist state backed to the hilt by US imperialism. This was the approach for decades of first the old Palestine Liberation Organisation under Yasser Arafat and now Hamas, but without success.

The only force capable of decisively rocking the whole of the Arab world and bringing revolution to the very borders of Israel is the working class. The interests of the Palestinians are closely aligned with the workers of the surrounding states suffering under brutal dictatorial capitalist rule.

The 2011 Arab Spring revolt showed the potential for mass uprisings to sweep across the region. Next time round, the revolts will need to go much further, not just toppling dictators like Mubarak in Egypt, but workers taking power directly into their own hands. That will mean rebuilding a fighting revolutionary left that is prepared to take the struggle all the way.