“BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS!”, US President Donald Trump wrote on social media last month after Hamas and the Israeli government agreed to the first phase of the so-called Peace Plan for Gaza. The same day, as Palestinians began the annual olive harvest in the West Bank, armed and masked Israeli settlers descended on the village of Aqraba, south-east of Nablus. They brandished batons and guns, attacking farmers and their supporters to prevent them from accessing the farms. On this day, as on all subsequent ones, these settlers were backed by the Israeli military. 
Two days later, on 11 October, 13-year-old Ayssam Jihad Ma’ala joined his family to help with the harvest. He was teargassed by the Israeli military. For a month, Ayssam lay in a coma, suffering from brain damage. He died on 12 November, joining the ranks of more than 1,000 Palestinians killed in the West Bank and Jerusalem since October 2023. This is what “peace” looks like. 
“Peace” sounds like the cheering and applause that <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israelis-applaud-soldiers-accused-raping-palestinian-prisoner-court-hearing">echoed through the Israeli Supreme Court</a> in Jerusalem on 10 November. The reception was for two soldiers from Force 100, a special unit of the Israeli military, who face charges relating to the gang rape last year of a blindfolded and handcuffed Palestinian prisoner at the Sde Teiman military base in the Negev desert. The soldiers were caught on CCTV carrying out the rape.
According to a report in Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the detainee was so violently assaulted that he sustained a ruptured intestine, a torn rectum, broken ribs and damaged lungs. Minister for National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir, responsible for overseeing Israeli prisons, described the accused soldiers as “our best heroes”. 
There have been other accounts of abuse at Sde Teiman. Khaled Mahajneh, a lawyer granted access to the site last year, <a href="https://www.972mag.com/sde-teiman-prisoners-lawyer-mahajneh">told +972 Magazine</a>: “The situation there is more horrific than anything we’ve heard about Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo”. A spokesperson for human rights organisation B’Tselem describes Sde Teiman as “the tip of the iceberg”. Discussing a B’Tselem report on Israeli prisons, titled “<a href="https://www.btselem.orghttps://cms.redflag.org.au/sites/default/files/publications/202408_welcome_to_hell_eng.pdf">Welcome to Hell</a>”, Shai Parnes told Al Jazeera’s Simon Speakman Cordall last year:
“We heard similar accounts of sexual abuse, starvation and assault from separate prisoners held in sixteen different locations across Israel. It was depressing. As we gathered the testimonies, we realised that every witness account was almost identical, no matter what their age, gender or location was. There’s no doubt. This kind of abuse is systematic.” 
Blessed are the peacemakers. 
Since the creation of the Israeli state in 1948, there has never been peace for the Palestinians. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, which <a href="https://www.pcbs.gov.ps/post.aspx?lang=en&amp;ItemID=5750">released an estimate</a> in May last year, some 134,000 Palestinians had been killed by the Israeli state.
In 2020, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs <a href="https://www.ochaopt.org/page/publications1">estimated that 3,624 Palestinians were killed and more than 100,000 injured</a>
over the previous decade. Of the killings, 87 percent were in Gaza, mostly during the 2012 and 2014 Israeli offensives, as well as in the Great March of Return demonstrations that started in 2018. Three out of four Palestinians killed during the decade were civilians, including 805 children. This is the status quo that our political leaders would have us believe is the basis for a peaceful future. 
The violence in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem has a purpose. Israeli politicians such as Naftali Bennet, the former prime minister, have referred to the policy of regular military offensives in Gaza as “mowing the lawn”. Before 2023, this referred to a policy of semi-regular bombings of Gaza as a method of restraining Palestinian national aspirations. The Gaza genocide since 2023 represents something else: an apocalypse of Old Testament proportions, enacted upon a besieged population, designed to settle the question. The goal is to smash the Palestinians in body and soul, once and for all.
“Peace” for the Israeli state and its backers in the West has only ever meant a pause in open warfare—a time in which they could get on with the somewhat quieter project of “everyday” ethnic cleansing and colonisation. In the West Bank, the Israelis have a longstanding project of creating “facts on the ground”—the expansion of Israeli-held territory in order to undermine the prospect of a Palestinian state. This project has been waged nonstop, through “peace” and war. 
“By the end of 2022, there were 483 Israeli occupation sites and military bases in the West Bank, including 151 settlements and 25 inhabited outposts that were considered as neighborhoods following established settlements, in addition to 163 settlement outposts, and 144 classified as other sites (industrial, tourists, service areas and Israeli army bases)”, notes the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics report. By the end of 2022, the number of Israeli “settlers” in the West Bank reached 745,467. 
Under the fog of the most recent war, Israel rapidly increased the number of settlements in the West Bank. Peace Now, an Israeli NGO, <a href="https://peacenow.org.il/en/settlements-watch/settlements-data/population">has documented 121 new outposts</a> since October 2023, representing 40 percent of the 298 outposts established since 1996. <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/09/1165988">Another United Nations report</a>, covering June to September this year, finds that the Israeli state has approved more than 20,000 housing units in the occupied West Bank. The hope among Israeli officials is that the ceasefire in Gaza will allow them to take more and more of the West Bank.
The world’s major capitalist powers, such as the United States, aren’t religiously or ideologically invested in Israel conquering the West Bank. Nor is their sole focus the destruction of Palestine. Nevertheless, they do care about the strength of the Israeli state. And they care about profiting from death. The Wall Street Journal’s Middle East correspondent Benoit Faucon <a href="https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/the-gaza-war-has-been-big-business-for-u-s-companies-8830b54a">recently described</a> the “unprecedented arms pipeline from the US to Israel” over the last two years. The trade resulted in billions of dollars in profits for companies such as Boeing, Caterpillar, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. 
Profits are just part of the picture, though. The global capitalist order is built on savagery. In an era of big power rivalry, Israel, the US and their defenders also have a project to normalise extreme violence. They carried out a genocide and now present themselves as peacemakers. If the status quo in Palestine is “peace”, and those responsible for it are the peacemakers, then damn them. We should never leave them in peace.

Vashti Fox

‘Blessed are the peacemakers’: Palestine after the ceasefire

So this is “peace”. 
Seven days after the ceasefire came into effect, a family of 11 were blown up by an Israeli tank shell. On 19 October, Israel bombed a Gazan school, a makeshift coffee house and the area around Al-Ahli soccer club. The International Court of Justice has just confirmed that Israel is still forcibly starving people in Gaza by refusing to allow in enough aid. Israeli troops occupy 60 percent of Gaza, and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has explicitly argued for soldiers to “shoot children and donkeys” on sight if they are deemed to be in the occupied area. This, they tell us, is peace. 
There can be no peace for Palestinians while Israel exists. Israel is an expansionist state committed to ethnic cleansing. The Gaza genocide is merely the latest—and particularly brutal—phase of annexations and forced displacement. Israel can do this with impunity because it is a crucial linchpin in Western domination of the Middle East and North Africa. 
In 2023, then US President Joe Biden repeated a line he first said in 1986: “If there were not an Israel, we’d have to invent one”. The Middle East and North African region is oil-rich, home to important trade routes and geopolitically vital. Without Israel, the US would have to maintain a significant—and unwelcome—military presence in the region to guarantee its interests. Instead, in Israel, it has a loyal ally that is well armed and belligerent. 
Israel has carried out a twofold process of ethnic cleansing since its creation in 1948. On the one hand, through intense, devastating wars that fundamentally alter the region’s balance of forces and geographic boundaries. The Gaza genocide has been one of these. Before, it was the 1948 Nakba, the 1967 Six-Day War, the 1973 Yom Kippur War and others. 
These wars are coupled with a continuous strategy of annexation, imprisonment, displacement and periodic massacres. In the words of David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, “No Zionist can forgo the smallest portion of the Land of Israel. A Jewish state in part [of Palestine] is not an end, but a beginning”. 
Ben-Gurion’s vision included all of occupied Palestine, as well as sections of Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan and Syria. In its brutal 1967 war, Israeli forces took Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and Syria’s Golan Heights at the same time as occupying the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East and West Jerusalem. 
Israeli politicians, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, continue to argue for this expansionist vision, and have used this war to expand further into Lebanese and Syrian territory. In January, Israel began a new invasion of the West Bank and has carried out the largest expulsions there since 1967. More than 40,000 people have so far been expelled in Operation Iron Wall. Israel sent snipers into Jenin refugee camp, conducted home raids and mass arrests, and carried out aerial strikes. The Jenin, Tulkarm and Nur al-Shams camps have been almost emptied. Hundreds of homes have been demolished, and the IDF has outlined a strategy to prevent destroyed roads and homes from being rebuilt. 
In late October, the Knesset passed a bill to annex the entirety of the West Bank, which even the Trump administration is not willing to support. But plenty in Israel do, which means Israeli encroachment in the West Bank could well accelerate in the near future. 
Our leaders talk of peace. In reality, we are witnessing the beginning of the brutality that is to come if the capitalists are allowed to blast their way through in the coming decades. 
Yet a different world is possible. The proof of this is every student who has protested, every grandparent arrested on terror charges to defend Palestine Action, and each of the Italian and Spanish workers who shut their countries down. We know that a radical workers’ movement can be rebuilt. The task of the resistance is to throw themselves into that project. We have to fight like hell with what we have, with a vision for a mass movement that can defeat imperialism and capitalism for good.

Jasmine Duff

The fight for Palestine continues as long as Israel and Western imperialism exist

While the grieving of Israelis has been a media spectacle over the past two years—revisited again and again each time Israeli hostages’ remains have returned to their families—the trauma of Palestinians now returning to their destroyed homes receives relatively little attention.
UNICEF estimates that over the past two years of Israel’s genocide, 28 children have been killed by the Israeli occupation forces every day on average. Let that sink in: a classroom of kids murdered each day.
You won’t hear much about the tens of thousands of grieving Palestinian families in the corporate media. Yet you will hear, again and again, about Israeli trauma, even as Palestinians continued to be killed in their dozens.
US President Donald Trump, addressing the Israeli Knesset on 13 October, claimed that the ceasefire deal he brokered will open a new “golden age” for the Middle East and end some 3,000 years of conflict. It was laughable.
Yet a largely uncritical Western media seriously pondered whether the Trump administration—which, like the Biden administration before it, provided the finance and weaponry to Israel as it carried out genocide—really was some great peacemaker.
The reality for Palestinians, however, is that the war is far from over. 
Israel continues to occupy 53 percent of Gaza, after withdrawing behind an invisible “yellow line”, and continues to prevent vital aid and recovery equipment from entering Gaza. In the first week of the so-called ceasefire, the Israeli army committed 80 violations, killing 97 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. 
Imagine if it had been 97 Israelis killed. There would be no handwringing about the ceasefire holding. It would be wall-to-wall condemnations of Hamas and justifications for Israel to continue the genocide. In the Western media, Palestinian lives don’t matter.
Israel has returned the remains of 1,718 living and 150 deceased Palestinians from Gaza, along with 250 Palestinian political prisoners. However, 154 of these political prisoners were immediately deported to Egypt by Israel, according to Hamas, denying them reunification with their families. 
According to the director of Gaza’s Health Ministry, Dr Munir al-Bursh, documents that accompanied 135 mutilated bodies of Palestinians returned to Gaza reveal that they were held in the notorious Sde Teiman, a military base in the Negev desert. According to photos and testimonies <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/23/whistleblowers-allege-widespread-abuses-at-israeli-detention-camp-sde-teiman">published in the Guardian</a> last year, Palestinian detainees at Sde Teiman were held in cages, blindfolded and handcuffed, shackled to hospital beds and forced to wear nappies. 
On 20 October, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/20/mutilated-bodies-palestinians-held-notorious-israeli-jail-gaza-officials">the Guardian reported</a> that several of the recently returned victims were blindfolded, with their hands tied behind their backs. In one photo, a rope is fastened around a man’s neck. No identification accompanied the victims’ bodies, adding to their families’ grief and trauma.
Imagine for a moment the media reporting if Israeli hostages had been returned like this. The images should have provoked the kind of outrage generated by the revelations of torture by US troops of prisoners at <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/abu-ghraib-twenty-years-on">Abu Ghraib prison</a> in Baghdad in 2004. Yet these crimes received little reporting.
The reunification of 1,718 Palestinian detainees with their families in Gaza was news for a day. Many told their families of brutal treatment in Israeli prisons, including beatings and torture. But those are the “lucky” ones. Some 9,000 West Bank Palestinians remain in Israeli custody, having been kidnapped and transferred to Israel in breach of international law. More than 3,500 are “administrative detainees”, who have never been charged with any crime, while 2,763 are deemed “unlawful combatants” by the Israeli military, according to <a href="https://hamoked.org/prisoners-charts.php">Israel Prison Service data</a>.
Their families’ separation from loved ones—in many cases for years—and their encirclement and harassment by an increasingly aggressive and violent settler movement, is not considered worthy of the media attention given to Israeli families whose loved ones were taken hostage on 7 October.
American journalist Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize winner and former Middle East Bureau Chief for the New York Times, is the latest to fall foul of the conservative media establishment. After being scheduled to address Australia’s National Press Club on 20 October, Hedges was informed that the event was cancelled. Everyone knows why: Hedges reports the truth, and the truth is embarrassing to Israel, Australia, and the corporate media.
In a <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/latenightlive/chris-hedges-national-press-club/105913174">Late Night Live interview</a>, the ABC’s David Marr took Hedges to task for accepting an invitation from the Australian Friends of Palestine Association to deliver the annual Edward Said Memorial Lecture, “Requiem for Gaza”. He claimed Hedges had compromised his credibility as a journalist by accepting such an invitation. 
This isn’t just a disgraceful slur against Hedges, but a racist attack on the Palestinians. If reporting the truth about what they face under the boot of Israeli occupation, apartheid, and genocide is a mark against any reporter, the insinuation is that Palestinian oppression itself is some lie. In the Said Memorial Lecture, Hedges hit back:
 “October 7 marked the dividing line between an Israeli policy that advocated the brutalisation and subjugation of the Palestinians and a policy that calls for their extermination and removal from historic Palestine.
“The genocide in Gaza is the culmination of an historical process. It is not an isolated act. The genocide is the predictable denouement of Israel’s settler colonial project. It is coded within the DNA of the Israeli apartheid state.”
The obfuscation and lies of Western politicians and their media mouthpieces have enabled and emboldened Israel, Hedges argued:
“The funding and arming of Israel by the US and European nations, as it carries out genocide, has imploded the post-World War Two international legal order. It no longer has credibility. The West cannot lecture anyone now about democracy, human rights or the supposed virtues of Western civilisation.”
This loss of credibility—the exposure of the hypocrisy of the capitalists and their institutions—is perhaps the greatest achievement of our solidarity movement over the past two years. It should give us the strength to continue the fight for Palestine.
Nick Everett is the secretary of Friends of Palestine WA.

Nick Everett

Racist dehumanisation of Palestinians continues

Morocco is one of the latest countries to erupt under the “Gen Z” banner. Young people, organised largely through anonymous social media channels, have taken to the streets to demand an end to corruption and inequality. The hashtag #freekoulchi (free everyone) has also been a rallying cry for the release of political prisoners.
The government in Morocco is made up almost entirely of wealthy capitalists, while most of the population increasingly struggles to survive. The president, Aziz Akhannouch, has a net worth of US$2 billion, and is the current CEO of the Akwa conglomerate, owned by the Akhannouch family, which is a major player in several key sectors of the economy. As agricultural minister from 2007 to 2021, Akhannouch allegedly stole $2.2 billion of public funds. Akwa has colluded with other corporations to keep the prices of fuel and other essential goods extortionately high, and the company was one of the targets of a 2018 boycott organised to protest these practices.
Morocco has the largest wealth inequality in North Africa. The government maintains control by criminalising dissent, controlling the media and arresting journalists who criticise the government. While social services have been pushed to the brink of collapse by insufficient funding, the government is spending $3.3 billion on lavish stadiums and beautifying tourist areas of major cities in preparation for the African World Cup later this year and the FIFA World Cup in 2030. A primary school in Benslimane, a city in the country’s west, was recently demolished to make way for a stadium. The former pupils were left without access to education.
The national unemployment rate was <a href="https://sonofgao.substack.com/p/stadiums-are-cool-but-where-are-the">13.3 percent last year</a>, but among 15 to 24-year-olds it was 36.7 percent and as high as 48.4 percent in cities. This age group makes up a quarter of Morocco’s total population (in Australia, it is half that). <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.MED.PHYS.ZS?locations=MA">There are only 7.7 doctors for every 100,000 people</a>, according to the World Bank, and in poorer areas like Agadir, on the southern Atlantic coast, it drops to 4.4, well below the World Health Organisation’s recommendation of 25.
Neglect of public services has deadly consequences, especially in the most deprived cities. Last month, eight women died in a maternity ward in a public hospital in Agadir. After the deaths, residents held a small protest outside the hospital, unfurling a banner that read “Hospital of death”. The image and story spread across the country. On 29 September, an anonymous collective on social media called for protests across the country under the banner of GenZ 212 (+212 is Morocco’s country code), inspired by similar youth rebellions in places like Nepal.
Protests began in the largest cities—Casablanca, Marrakech and Rabat—but soon spread. Young people gathered and marched, chanting, “The people demand the end of corruption!” and “The stadiums are here, but where are the hospitals?” In Agadir, protesters blocked the central highway, and in smaller rural cities, riots broke out. In Ait Amira, just south of Agadir, a bank branch was set on fire and police cars were overturned.
The government’s response was severe. More than 500 protesters were arrested; many were beaten by police. But this only inflamed the anger. Protests and riots continued nightly, even after a 19-year-old student in Oudja, a town near the Algerian border, had his leg amputated after a police car drove into a crowd.
On 1 October, three young men were shot and killed in Lqliaa after allegedly trying to storm a police station. The victims’ families have denied the allegation, pointing out that one of the victims—24-year-old Abdessamade—was a filmmaker documenting the movement to share with the world.
A 22-year-old protester who is facing up to six months in prison <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/oct/14/this-generation-is-defiant-gen-z-protests-set-to-resume-in-morocco-despite-deaths-and-arrests">described</a> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/oct/14/this-generation-is-defiant-gen-z-protests-set-to-resume-in-morocco-despite-deaths-and-arrests"></a>his motivations to the Guardian: “I went to protest because I’ve seen government violence all my life; not physical, but psychological. In hospitals, there are no doctors. In schools, classrooms are packed with over 50 students”.
The GenZ 212 Discord channel, launched on 18 September, now has more than 200,000 people in it. Members discuss religion, key demands, and tactics and strategy. There is a main announcements server, on which only the anonymous admins can post, a general chat where anyone can message, groups for localities and districts, press videos, resources and much more. Decisions on whether to protest, and the time and location of the protests, are decided in real time through voting in the general chat. There is a heavy emphasis from the anonymous admins on peaceful tactics and on rallying rather than rioting.
I attended a rally in the north-western city of Tangier on 2 October. It was in a park in the middle of the city, and police and military personnel, in uniform and plain clothes, were everywhere. Small groups of young people were scattered around, but, initially, there was no obvious congregation. In the Discord chat, people began to ask where the rally was going to be, and, if people were in the park, who was going to start it. Other messages, probably government and police bots, argued that there was no point rallying, that the king would listen to young people, that the movement was over, along with other generally derailing efforts. An hour and a half passed like this, with messages getting more frustrated and urgent.
Eventually, five young men in their late 20s stood up in the square and began to chant. Instantly, twenty or so of us surrounded them and formed a circle, clapping and chanting. More people joined, mostly young men and boys, some who looked no older than four.
The chants were themed around the movement’s demands: “The people demand the end of corruption!”, “The people demand Alhannouch leave!”, “The people want the king’s intervention!”. The rally slowly grew to a couple of hundred, all encircling the initial leaders and almost all young. A woman also arrived and led the chanting, and more young women joined. Some people wore Palestinian scarves.
The police watched on, surrounding the action and likely outnumbering the protesters even at the rally’s peak. There were no arrests.
At midnight on the Discord channel, a meeting discussed the demands the movement should make to the king. The next day, the admins shared a draft, and debates about the demands began. While there were disagreements about emphasis (many people wanted health care to be the focus), most people seemed to agree that dismissing the current government and implementing some reforms would be enough to resolve Morocco’s crises.
There were also suggestions to create an organising committee and an electoral political party. However, these were not taken up, and the general mood was strongly in favour of a leaderless, anonymous movement. Political parties were banned from participating.
Notably, there was no criticism of the king, which may be because such criticism can result in fifteen years’ imprisonment. However, it is a shift from earlier protest movements that called for an end to the monarchy. King Hassan is the fifth richest monarch in the world, and the richest in Africa, with a net worth of US$8.2 billion, according to Forbes. He is Morocco’s leading businessman, the Moroccan royal family holding the majority of stakes in <a href="https://businessempires.africa/king-mohammed-vi-moroccos-reclusive-ruler-with-6-billion-deep-pockets/">Al Mada</a>, a previously state-owned conglomerate with holdings in almost every major part of the economy, from mining and banking to food processing.
King Hassan has long been suspected of corruption. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/239525">WikiLeaks cables</a> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/239525"></a>previously revealed that he used his power to solicit bribes, especially in the real estate sector. To say the least, he is an unlikely ally in the fight against inequality and corruption, but his ability to dismiss the government seems like the easiest way forward from the point of view of many protesters.
A rally the following evening started in the same way as the 2 October protest, but in a more prominent place close to the tourist area around the medina. Again, police and military personnel swarmed surrounding streets. The same five men from the night before began the chanting. It grew more quickly this time, and people were more confident.
A woman in her 20s arrived halfway through. It was her first time at a protest, because her mother hadn’t let her attend initially because of the violent police response. But once the rallies seemed safe, she felt she had to come.“No one is going to help us, we have to fight for ourselves”, she said.
The rally was bigger this time, although still less than a thousand, and much more visible to cars and pedestrians, which meant it attracted many honks of support, curious tourists and locals, and a significant media presence. There were also many more women than the previous night, making up probably half the demonstration, and they again led chants.
At one point, a flag of the Berbers (an oppressed indigenous group in the region) was raised alongside the Moroccan flag. Protesters broke out into wild cheers. More people were wearing and waving Palestinian scarves. People had placards calling for the president to step down, for an end to corruption and to free all the political prisoners. After a couple of hours, people dispersed without any arrests or confrontations with police.
On 3 October, an <a href="https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2025/10/261456/moroccan-gen-z-212-issues-open-letter-to-king-mohammed-vi-demanding-accountability-and-reform/">open letter</a> <a href="https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2025/10/261456/moroccan-gen-z-212-issues-open-letter-to-king-mohammed-vi-demanding-accountability-and-reform/"></a> to the king from the GenZ movement was released. It asked him to use his power to dismiss the government, and for decent health and education for all, an end to corruption and the release of all political prisoners. <a href="https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2025/10/262656/genz212-over-60-intellectuals-artists-and-activists-address-open-letter-to-moroccos-king/">An open letter from 60 journalists, artists and other key figures in Moroccan society</a> was also released in solidarity with the movement, calling for a complete overhaul of government practices and priorities.
A boycott of corporations linked to the president was also initiated through social media. King Hassan’s annual <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20251010-morocco-king-calls-for-social-reforms-amid-youth-led-protests">address</a> <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20251010-morocco-king-calls-for-social-reforms-amid-youth-led-protests"></a>on 10 October reflected the pressure he was under. He called for more investment in social services and announced an initiative to create rural jobs, although he did not address any of the movement’s demands specifically.
Through discussion and voting in the Discord channel, the protests then moved from nightly to specific dates. The next was called for 18 October, with a call out for everyone, not just young people, to attend. There were also calls to expand the resistance into other areas, like deepening the boycott movement.
The GenZ212 movement is a beacon of hope for workers and young people around the world struggling under capitalism. The global Gen Z movement shows that many young people are prepared to resist in the face of deepening crises.

Elliott Shaw

Protesting with Gen Z in Morocco

The ceasefire in Gaza is bringing blessed relief to 2 million Palestinians whose lives have been made a living hell by Israel’s genocidal war. For now, Palestinians can wake without dreading imminent bombing. 
But nothing guarantees that Israel, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, will not resume attacks as it did when it broke a previous truce in March. Supporters of Palestine must demand complete withdrawal of the Israeli military from Palestinian territory and an end to military, economic and diplomatic relations with Israel. This is no time to be easing up on our demands.
Halting the violence is only the beginning. Western and Arab governments need to deliver large-scale humanitarian aid—food, water, medicine and housing supplies. They certainly have the resources: the United States has spent at least $18 billion arming Israel since the war began.
An end to the war demands more than only peace. US President Donald Trump’s twenty-point plan keeps Gaza under Israeli control. The IDF may be “withdrawing” but still controls 60 percent of the territory, with no schedule for final departure. Even if fully enacted, this plan leaves a buffer zone in Israeli hands, granting control over supplies, movement and military incursions. Gaza remains the world’s largest open-air prison.
Under Trump’s plan, Palestinians lose any prospect of democracy. It installs a committee of unelected Palestinian technocrats and “international experts”, overseen by a “board of peace” chaired by Trump. No part of this scenario allows Palestinians to freely choose their future.
Even as Gaza’s ceasefire stands, Israel’s annexation of the West Bank proceeds unchecked. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is likely to intensify this process to keep far-right coalition partners happy, meaning further dispossession for Palestinians.
Given the appalling nature of Trump’s plan, the support of Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong is no surprise. They lavish praise on Trump for “leadership” and “the biggest contribution to peace in the Middle East for a generation or more”. These are the same leaders who have stood behind Israel since the start. Satirical website the Onion sums up the result: “Israel agrees to go back to killing Palestinians on less frequent basis”.
Justice also means that those responsible for this genocidal war should pay for their crimes. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity. ICC member states must arrest them if they enter their territory.
Israeli leaders were supported by many, not just the United States and its allies, but also by governments in Russia, China, Arab and Muslim countries—whether supplying weapons, providing diplomatic cover or simply doing nothing. If Netanyahu belongs in The Hague, so do fellow war criminals Trump, President Joe Biden, British Labour leader Keir Starmer, Prime Minister Albanese and the complicit Arab and Muslim leaders.
The widespread complicity of governments with Israel reveals much about capitalist priorities. Capitalism breeds wars, tramples on human rights and destroys livelihoods. Trillions are wasted on weapons, while millions go hungry.
Governments backing Israel include democracies, dictatorships and military regimes—liberal, conservative and social democratic. Even supposed democracies have used Israel’s war as an excuse to curtail civil liberties at home. 
The genocide in Gaza exposes the reality of capitalism. Yet global resistance to the war has also pointed to an alternative. The mass antiwar marches since October 2023 show that millions of people will not simply sit back and watch as a genocide takes place. They have learned the power of solidarity on the streets. 
In recent weeks, workers’ power has come to the fore. Israel’s attack on the Gaza flotilla in early October has been the catalyst for mass strikes. In Italy, millions of workers and students took part in four days of mobilisations, including a 2 million-strong general strike and a million marching in the streets. On 14 October, Greek workers will be out in their millions; the day after that it’s the turn of workers in Spain. In every case, they are demanding, and through direct action halting, the movement of weapons for Israel.
These strikes arose from years of mass demonstrations against the war but also rising anger at government austerity.
Workers see the connection: the same forces behind war in Gaza are those cutting wages and services at home. A Greek socialist explained: “An Italian striker sent us a message and said, ‘The hand that bombs the Palestinians, is the hand that exploits us in our workplaces’, and that is really felt here”. This is why anti-austerity demonstrations in France that began on 10 September under the slogan “block everything” featured Palestinian flags alongside union banners. Struggle on each front helps the other: the Greek strike for Palestine on 14 October builds on big strikes against government plans to lengthen the working week.
Collective working-class power can stop wars and austerity. But lasting change requires much bigger socialist organisations, forging ties between progressive causes and putting workers at the centre. Protest matters, but strikes can grind the system to a halt—and ultimately, lead to its overthrow. That is what’s needed as capitalism drags society ever deeper into barbarism.

Tom Bramble

Ceasefire in Gaza: relief, but not enough

An illegal invasion unleashes mass slaughter in the Middle East. Western leaders clamber to justify the horror. Those responsible commit untold war crimes but never face prosecution from spineless international courts. When the occupation finally ends, airstrikes, disease and malnutrition will be estimated to have killed a million people.
This is not 2023 in Gaza. It’s 2003 in Iraq. The perpetrators are not the openly fascistic ethno-state of Israel, but the “civilised” rulers of Britain, the US, Australia and others like them. 
The chief ideological <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/blair-defends-war-on-iraq/">spokesperson</a>
and international defender of this massacre was Tony Blair, British Labour prime minister from 1997 to 2007, whose notorious <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2003/6/8/dodgy-dossier-haunts-blair">“dossiers”</a>
claimed the Iraqi government was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction.
While the US provided the main military force behind the invasion, Blair supplied troops, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-36712735">false justifications</a>
and rhetorical ammunition. Twenty-two years later and still dripping in blood and complicity, this butcher of Iraq is returning to the Middle East to oversee a so-called peace process in Gaza.
US President Donald Trump’s “20-point peace plan” for Gaza—a document that Blair himself <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10-02/leaked-document-reveals-details-of-trump-peace-plan/105839640">helped</a>
to develop—specifically designates a role for the former prime minister. Under the proposal, he will serve alongside the US president on a transitional body that overrides any Palestinian representation and indefinitely dictates the future of postwar Gaza.
Disturbingly, the White House <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c70155nked7o">directs</a> this “Board of Peace” to “create modern and efficient governance that ... is conducive to attracting investment” into a low-tariff “special economic zone”. This is business shorthand for low wages, corporate handouts and violations of workplace rights.
Such a task could find no more enthusiastic enforcer than Blair. Indeed, Trump’s previous dystopian vision for a free-market Gaza “Riviera” first <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/07/06/tony-blair-think-tank-worked-trump-riviera-plan-for-gaza/">originated</a>
from the twisted hive mind of the “Tony Blair Institute for Global Change”, one of the ex-Labour leader’s numerous think tanks and <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-37416855">consultancy</a> firms.
Well before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Blair government’s priority was “ensuring British companies benefit from any post-war reconstruction contracts,” as was <a href="https://inthesetimes.com/article/in-lead-up-to-war-u-k-officials-and-businesses-planned-on-dividing-the-spo">revealed</a>
in a 2002 telegram brazenly entitled “Iraq: Dividing the Spoils”.
Blair’s appointment is a deliberate message from the Trump administration that Western imperialism’s arch-criminals still reign supreme and that Gaza’s reconstruction will be pounced upon as a shameless profit-making exercise.
All this is familiar ground for Blair, whose ten years in government hinged on market deregulation and the privatisation of Britain’s public infrastructure. Upon losing power in 2007, Blair was immediately appointed as Middle East envoy by fellow warmonger George W. Bush, and turned his attention to merging his political responsibilities with private business ventures.
While serving in Jerusalem, Blair took up a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2008/jan/10/blairjpmorgan">part-time position</a> as senior adviser with investment bank JP Morgan, for which he quickly brokered a deal between the Palestinian Authority, the Israeli government and Wataniya Mobile to establish a privately run cell network in the West Bank, according to UK current affairs program Dispatches.
Jacobin magazine <a href="https://jacobin.com/2017/09/the-ghoulish-post-politics-career-of-tony-blair">reported</a>
in 2017 that Blair had also used his connections as envoy to orchestrate the development of oil fields off Gaza’s shoreline under the aegis of the British Gas Group, another JP Morgan client.
All told, Blair has leveraged the political ties he developed as UK prime minister and peace envoy to win lucrative deals and amass a personal fortune of £60 million as of 2015, according to the Telegraph’s <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/tony-blair/11670425/Revealed-Tony-Blair-worth-a-staggering-60m.html">analysis</a>.
And while he continues to <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/tony-blair-putin-cant-use-iraq-to-justify-ukraine-invasion/a-65037323">insist</a>
that invading Iraq was about spreading “democracy” to the Middle East, he’s had no qualms accepting <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/aug/12/tony-blair-institute-continued-taking-money-from-saudi-arabia-after-khashoggi">sizeable donations</a> to his “Global Change” think tank from US-aligned dictatorships in Saudi Arabia and the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jun/27/tony-blair-conflict-interests-middle-east">Gulf states</a>. He has long fostered personal and political ties with tyrants from Muammar <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jan/23/-sp-blair-gaddafi-letter-thanks-spy-cooperation-libya-uk-dissidents">Gaddafi</a>
to Hosni <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/feb/02/tony-blair-mubarak-courageous-force-for-good-egypt">Mubarak</a>.
Whatever form Gaza’s postwar governance takes, this man’s involvement ensures Western and Israeli interests will be imposed on Palestinians as ruthlessly as decades of occupation and neoliberal ransacking were forced upon civilians in Iraq. As former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak told the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/09/29/tony-blair-gaza-strip/">Washington Post</a> last month, “the Israelis ... respect him”.
Tony Blair is an unindicted war criminal and foremost embodiment of rapacious capitalism. A gold-class seat in hell is waiting for him.

Ruby Healer

Tony Blair: war criminal in charge of Gaza peace

“From there we came outside and saw the stars.” 
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno
After two years, Israel’s genocidal campaign of bombing in Gaza could be over. In the days since the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was signed in Egypt, videos have emerged of children roller-skating through the ruins of Gaza City and hundreds of thousands of people making the long march northward along Rashid Street to return to blasted homes and ravaged land.
For millions across the world who have fought for the Palestinians, time seems to have a different quality, no longer measured by videos of ashen limbs and wrecked bodies. While Palestinians rightly celebrate the reprieve, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s statement calling this ceasefire the “biggest contribution to peace in the Middle East for a generation or more” recalls the words of the Roman historian Tacitus: “They make a wasteland and call it peace”.
The fate of Gaza is being decided by the very people who imposed starvation and approved the bombing of homes, schools and hospitals. The global Palestine movement must push for the right of Palestinians to self-determination, not a future designed by their killers.
Of course, Israel could break the agreement—just as it did both previous ceasefires, in November 2023 and March 2025. Under the “Phase One” arrangement, Hamas will release all Israeli hostages still held in Gaza. Israel will release thousands of Palestinians from its prisons, and the Israeli military will withdraw from cities. Once the Israeli hostages are released, Hamas will have no leverage left.
At this point, the ceasefire looks likely to hold. The US military is sending 200 troops to oversee it, unlike the last ceasefires. And key US regional aims have been met, with blows struck against Hezbollah and Iran. Gershon Baskin, a US negotiator, wrote for the Times of Israel
that Hamas agreed to something like the current deal in September 2024, and for more than a year, the outcome depended on whether the US government would push Israel to sign on. The role of President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration in this genocide must be remembered.
But it’s important for those who stand with Palestine to be clear that Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians will never end until Israel is defeated. Israel is fundamentally expansionist. Since its foundation, its rulers have aimed at the creation of Greater Israel, incorporating Gaza, the West Bank, and sections of Lebanon. In that sense, any ceasefire is only a pause and we can be certain that the barbarity will resume.
While President Donald Trump’s twenty-point plan has been widely publicised, it’s unlikely to be fully implemented; a special economic zone among rubble and devastation is far from reality. Gazan analyst Muhammad Shehada said, based on discussions with mediators involved in the negotiations, that he’s certain the plan is a propaganda exercise.
While the details are yet to be settled, it’s clear that if President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu get their way, life in Gaza will remain unbearable for decades. Before 7 October 2023, Gaza was already an open-air prison, besieged by land, air and sea. Israel staged regular bombings and restricted construction materials, so rebuilding was impossible. Israel even calculated calories to allow in only enough food to keep people barely alive.
The West Bank is broken up into isolated villages, fenced off and blocked to control Palestinian movement. Israeli settlers regularly seize land and commit atrocities. Now, conditions are even worse. Half a million Gazans face famine, disease is spreading, and all of the key infrastructure has been destroyed. 
In an 8 October Fox News interview, Trump claimed that he phoned Prime Minister Netanyahu and told him, “Israel cannot fight the world, Bibi, they cannot fight the world”. Who is this world he’s referring to? Not the Western and Arab governments, which have watched the genocide play out without lifting a finger. Even small gestures like statehood recognition were won only by the Palestine solidarity movement. Israel hasn’t been fighting rulers; it’s been fighting the masses.
The movement for Palestine has opened the floodgates in country after country, unleashing workers and young people into the streets.
Israel and the US now have reasons to end the genocide. Hamas is militarily defeated and Gaza’s population is decimated. But the movement seems to have played a role in Trump’s push for an end, against Netanyahu’s wishes, and created a political cost to continuing. In silence, Netanyahu might have kept destroying Gaza and seizing the West Bank.
We can’t stop now. 
The Palestine movement worldwide must keep marching, striking, occupying and sailing for a complete end to genocide—not just what Israel started fast-tracking in 2023, but the longer-term genocide of Palestinians it’s been carrying out since 1948. Gaza must be rebuilt on Palestinian terms with freely given food, medicine and building supplies. The blockade must end. The illegal settlement of the West Bank and the apartheid system must be dismantled. War criminals must be held accountable.
But more is needed. An international working-class revolution must overthrow the capitalist system that produced this genocide. Every grave in Gaza is an indictment of the capitalist institutions that brought us here: from the market, which incentivises imperialist domination of oil-rich regions and rewards the creation and sale of weapons, to the capitalist governments built to put the flow of profits before every single human life. 
“Never again” means little in a system soaked in violence. Destruction of the oppressed has happened, again, before our eyes, and will again, unless socialists build a movement strong enough to finally replace capitalism with a system organised for collectivity and human liberation—a world where no-one wakes to the sound of bombing or the barrel of a gun. It’s time to step out of this hell and see the stars.

The Palestine solidarity movement must continue

In the second week of September, a two-day strike and plant-gate sit-in at the Nile Linen Group in Alexandria forced management and officials from the Labour Ministry to concede to a <a href="https://manassa.news/en/news/27111">package of demands</a> after an infant died in her mother’s arms inside the factory. 
Workers said the mother—just ten days back from maternity leave—was blocked from leaving for emergency care because of punitive leave rules and a cost-of-living allowance clawback that effectively trapped her at work. Security forces ringed the free-zone compound, two workers were briefly detained, and management tried a “cool-off” lockout by sending everyone home. It backfired. Workers returned en masse to continue the strike, elected negotiators, and won commitments on an investigation, compensation and changes to pay and leave practices. By 15 September, production resumed following management’s written pledge to address demands.
The same week, <a href="https://revsoc.me/-50409">a wave</a> of labour unrest across upper Egypt’s sugar industry—Edfu, Kom Ombo, Armant and Dishna—subsided after weeks of stoppages over pay, arrears, hazard allowances, overtime and the non-application of state-announced minimum wage measures. Envoys from the regime-run General Federation of Trade Unions and local officials descended on plants, <a href="https://www.madamasr.com/2025/09/14/news/u/%D8%B9%D9%85%D8%A7%D9%84-%D8%B3%D9%83%D8%B1-%D8%A5%D8%AF%D9%81%D9%88-%D9%88%D9%83%D9%88%D9%85-%D8%A5%D9%85%D8%A8%D9%88-%D9%8A%D8%B9%D9%84%D9%82%D9%88%D9%86-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A5%D8%B6%D8%B1/">promising</a> October raises and a review “at the highest levels”. Some groups ended strikes under pressure, including threats of dismissal and state security referrals; others suspended action with explicit warnings they’ll down tools again in January at the start of the production season if promises aren’t honoured.
Read together, these two episodes show how shopfloor bargaining in 2025 is actually happening in Egypt: a combustible mix of desperation-driven action, security containment and last-minute fixes that arrive only after escalation. Even under today’s repression, strikes still force the state–capital nexus to bargain—grudgingly, temporarily, and case-by-case.
A slow, stubborn uptick
Granular national strike statistics are deliberately hard to come by, but we have credible signals from 2024-25 that collective action is ticking up despite the climate of fear.
The year 2024 saw a <a href="https://revsoc.me/workers-farmers/49598/">broad rise</a> in labour complaints and protest events, dominated by wage and minimum-wage issues amid currency collapse and runaway prices. Employers in both public and private sectors used exemptions and procedural loopholes to dodge mandated increases. Workers responded with petitions, stoppages, and plant-gate rallies that triggered targeted arrests, firings, and prosecutions.
Throughout 2025, according to my labour sources, the country has witnessed more than 70 strikes and protests spanning textiles, ceramics, sugar mills, retail, petroleum, chemicals, utilities, and education. Workers’ demands have centred on overdue wages, annual bonuses, enforcement of the minimum wage, and improved conditions, with large-scale actions including a 4,000-strong strike at Ceramica Inova and coordinated stoppages across Upper Egypt’s sugar industry. Employers and authorities frequently responded with repression—including arrests of T&amp;C and greenhouse workers, suspensions and investigations at El-Shorbagy, and dismissals of union leaders—while others sought to defuse unrest through Ministry of Labour-led mediation or emergency fund payouts.
This isn’t a <a href="https://merip.org/2007/05/strikes-in-egypt-spread-from-center-of-gravity/">2006-style explosion</a>. It’s an incremental curve—a rise in frequency and breadth from the post-2013 nadir, expressed as short, defensive, economic strikes that are extremely sensitive to local triggers (a fatal accident, unpaid arrears, a humiliating rule). Workers are calculating, not reckless: they end strikes when repression bites or when tangible wins are secured; they hold their fire until leverage peaks (e.g., the January sugar campaign season).
Why is it happening? Inflation, repeated devaluation cycles, and a wage floor that is either eroded by prices or not applied at all. Put bluntly, the cost of living has crossed the threshold at which fear of the police competes with fear of hunger. That’s the inflexion point at which Egyptian workers historically move from complaint letters to stoppages.
What the strikes tell us about the regime’s playbook
Policing first, bargaining later: plants are surrounded, entrances controlled, and small numbers are picked up early to chill momentum. Only when production halts and workers hold their ground do mediators appear—labour directorates, federation officials, MPs and governors.
Procedural fixes, not structural change: The “solutions” offered are narrowly tailored: suspend one manager, promise an investigation, pay a tranche of arrears, float a month-X raise. No change to the underlying enforcement vacuum on wages and safety, and no recognition of independent organising.
Time-buying. The favourite tactic is to defer: “October”, “three months”, “after the presidency’s review”, “at budget time”. That punt only works if workers disband, and in the sugar case, they explicitly set January as a hard deadline.
Free zones, not free unions: the Nile Linen case underlines how “export zones” pair hyper-discipline (leave rules, docked allowances, gate control) with weak inspection and security gatekeeping. It’s the quintessential model of privatised coercion under public cover.
Under the surface, though, the state’s posture betrays anxiety. When local stoppages reverberate—through national supply chains (sugar) or foreign-currency exports (textiles)—the case files travel “up”. That upward escalation is the workers’ leverage.
Labour lit the fuse in 2011
Egypt’s modern labour insurgency didn’t begin in Tahrir. It was forged on the shop floors of <a href="https://merip.org/2007/03/egyptian-textile-workers-confront-the-new-economic-order/">Mahalla</a> and across transport, civil servants and public services in the mid-2000s. Those strikes disoriented the state’s forces, birthed strike committees and then independent unions—most famously the <a href="https://flickr.com/photos/elhamalawy/albums/72157607027521066/">real estate tax collectors’ union</a>—years before the revolution began on 25 January 2011.
When the 2011 uprising peaked, wildcat strikes in transport, textiles, steel and the public sector on 8-10 February <a href="https://arabawy.org/24959/permanent-revolution/">were decisive</a>. They took the revolution from square to system: from spectacle to shutdown. Within months, new federations and dozens of independent unions proliferated. For the first time in decades, Egyptian workers could credibly bargain outside the state’s official federation.
The revolution’s <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/bread-freedom-social-justice-9781780324333/">social soul</a> was not a romantic abstraction; it was the organised power of workers to halt production. That force helped topple a president and briefly opened a window in which wages rose, corrupt managers were purged, and shopfloor dignity was renegotiated.
After the coup—how it was crushed
The 2013 military takeover set out to extinguish politics by decapitating the networks most capable of paralysing the state: political parties, youth groups, community organisations, and independent unions (including informal labour networks) inside workplaces.
Legal crackdown: protest and public-order laws criminalised assembly; the 2017 trade-union framework forced re-registration under state terms, starved or dissolved independents and restored de facto monopoly to the official federation, now coupled with <a href="https://eipr.orghttps://cms.redflag.org.au/sites/default/files/reports/pdf/a_lopsided_law_1.pdf">draconian restrictions on the right to strike</a>.
Security filtration: factory union committees were either purged or co-opted. Activists were harassed; labour leaders faced case-by-case <a href="https://revsoc.me/-50223">prosecutions</a> for “obstructing production” or “inciting”.
Managerial impunity: plant bosses learned that police would enforce internal discipline, from gate control to forced leave to lockouts dressed up as “maintenance”.
Wage theater: headline “minimum-wage” decrees and presidential “allowances” became PR covers, unevenly applied, easily dodged through exemptions or hollow claims on “inability to comply”.
The result was not a pacified labour force so much as a frozen one. From roughly 2014 to 2020, strikes became rare, brief and isolated. People still suffered; they just suffered silently. The state proved it could jail thousands, kill by example, and make union legalism a dead end.
Then prices did what police could not: they melted the freeze. The pandemic’s aftershocks, global food and energy spikes, and repeated devaluations pulled the last nails from household budgets. By 2022-25, the “no strike” equilibrium had eroded, not because repression eased, but because survival left no slack.
Where the movement stands now
This is not 2006-11 redux. Today’s labour fights are defensive and economic—not overtly political—focused on arrears, allowances, safety, childcare, meal stipends, shifts, and even the right to reach a hospital when a child is dying. They are short-cycle and local, measured in days rather than months unless the state stonewalls. They are also networked yet atomised: WhatsApp groups, ex-unionists and NGO veterans still share tactics and draft demands, but no national coordination with real teeth exists.
The risks are also clear: targeted arrests, mass firings, “disciplinary” dockings that erase the very raises you just won, and blacklist-style threats inside free zones. That’s why many stoppages end not in victory but with a warning and a date to resume if management backslides.
Sceptics will say that a few concessions here and there change nothing. They’re wrong. In Egypt’s current political economy, every shopfloor win—whether restored hazard pay, scrapped punitive leave rules, back pay for overtime, or a posted safety notice—has cumulative effects. Each gain raises the reservation wage, as even modest improvements, once normalised, set baselines that other plants imitate. They also expand the repertoire: once a plant has struck and survived, the next stoppage is less daunting and better organised. Most importantly, such victories rebuild confidence, the rarest resource under repression, built incrementally not through manifestos.
This is countercyclical politics from below. While elite pacts revolve around asset sales, debt service and foreign backing, workers are quietly renegotiating the daily reproduction of labour. It is not glamorous, but it is how movements survive long winters.
The state dilemma
Egypt’s rulers face a structural contradiction they cannot ideologically resolve. They need exports and domestic production to secure foreign currency and sustain patronage. They need docile labour to offer investors predictable costs and avoid disruptive headlines. At the same time, they need public credibility that “the state cares” even as real incomes collapse.
They can’t have all three. When prices surge faster than wages, labour unrest becomes a cost of doing business. The regime compensates with selective coercion (to deter organisation) and transactional concessions (to keep assembly lines moving). That’s precisely what the September strikes showed.
The longer arc
Egypt’s labour movement ignited the 2011 revolution’s decisive phase by translating street protest into stoppage power. The counter-revolution understood this perfectly and built a system designed to defang workers: re-monopolise representation, criminalise assembly, make managers de facto police, and flood the airwaves with a cult of “order”.
For a while, it worked. But no authoritarian model can repeal arithmetic. When the grocery bill doubles while allowances vanish, plants don’t stay quiet forever. What we’re witnessing now is not a return to the old days—there is no national wave, no open federation, no safe civic space. It is a learning process under extreme constraints. Workers are rediscovering what they already knew: if you don’t stop the machine, nothing changes.
September’s strikes didn’t rewrite the system. They did something more important for the long haul: they showed thousands of workers, again, that the machine still stops when they decide it will.
That’s the line that matters in 2025. Not the fantasy that one grand strike will topple a militarised political economy, but the reality that incremental, repeatable, local wins—backed by credible threats to escalate when promises fail—are rebuilding the only power that ever made Egypt’s rulers blink.
The question for 2026 is not whether Cairo will suddenly allow free unions. It won’t. The question is whether, plant by plant, shift by shift, workers continue converting unbearable living conditions into precision strikes that win real money, real safety, and real dignity, and whether those informal networks begin talking to one another again. If they do, the regime will face a familiar headache: a labour movement that doesn’t need permission to breathe.
The Egyptian labor movement is alive, conservative in tactics, brutalized by context, and—because of the economy—becoming unavoidable again. The state can’t crush prices. That’s why it won’t crush strikes forever.
Most importantly, such victories rebuild confidence, the rarest resource under repression, built incrementally rather than through manifestos.
First published by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.

Hossam el-Hamalawy

Egypt’s workers stir again

After decades of hegemony, the two-state solution is no longer considered a viable or desirable solution to the decades-long oppression of the Palestinians among pro-Palestine activists in Australia. In Melbourne, where I am involved, the phrase “two-state solution” has been essentially banned from the platforms of the regular Gaza solidarity demonstrations. 
This is an extremely positive development. For decades, the two-state solution has served as a means to browbeat the more principled and radical supporters of the Palestinian people. Prior to the 1980s, the majority of Palestinian political parties supported the full liberation of historic Palestine, and the two-state solution was used by Labor Zionism to denounce them as extremists and coopt them into a more moderate position. 
The two-state solution reached its zenith in the 1990s during negotiations for the Oslo Accords between the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and Israel. During this period the Palestinian leadership under Fatah abandoned all sorts of rights and principles in exchange for the chimera of a Palestinian statelet in the West Bank and Gaza. While a minority of Palestinian capitalists and politicians have become fabulously wealthy as a result of this process, the Palestinian people have continued to go backwards, losing further rights and territory.
So the clear rejection of the two-state solution by the majority of serious pro-Palestine activists is an important breakthrough. It provides a stronger basis from which to build a movement that can demand real justice. And importantly, it opens up space for discussion about what sort of scenario might actually succeed in achieving genuine liberation for the Palestinian people. 
For most people, the alternative to the perpetual apartheid and oppression entailed by the two-state solution is the creation of a democratic state for all inhabitants of the area. Far from “driving Jews into the sea”, the idea is for Arabs and Jews to live together peacefully, with equal rights in a liberal democratic set-up. In many ways this is a worthy goal, and when it was developed in the 1960s, it was a progressive position for the Palestinian liberation movement to adopt. 
But many of the same issues that make the two-state solution unworkable also apply to one state. Most importantly, the Israeli state will not accept equality between Jews and Palestinians. Its founding ideology is that of an ethno-state: a state that exists for a particular ethnic group, with others as second-class citizens. This means a single state based on equal rights will never be achieved through negotiation or brought into existence through UN mandates or diplomacy. It requires the overthrow of the Israeli state. 
The Western powers, to which Israel is an important strategic and economic ally, would of course never accept this. The only one-state outcome it’s possible to imagine is one in which Israel is in effect allowed to annex the entirety of the Palestinian territory and expel millions of refugees.
Supporters of Palestine often refer to the defeat of apartheid in South Africa as proof that a transformation from a system of apartheid to democracy is possible. But mainstream accounts of this important history tend to downplay the crucial role played by the economically powerful, politically sophisticated and industrially militant black working class, which existed in South Africa but does not in Palestine. By repeatedly bringing the economy to a halt through strike action, these workers made it impossible for South African mines and ports to function reliably, and for capital to profit. This hit the rich where it hurts, and created enormous pressure for change. 
Only when it became clear that the old order was doomed did Western governments impose sanctions to try to expedite the transition so that the vital mines and ports of South Africa could remain functional and be relied on. 
Palestinians have no comparable economic power, excluded as they are from large parts of the Israeli economy, particularly its most strategic sectors. So traditional class struggle at a domestic level cannot create the economic disruption needed to break apartheid and end the occupation of all Palestinian lands.
At a global level, Israel is a nuclear-armed imperial outpost in a central region of world politics and a long-term strategic ally of the US. Far from facing crippling sanctions for its many crimes, it is still being armed, funded and courted by the world’s elites. Indeed, its utility to US empire has been reinforced in the last two years, given the ease with which it has crushed Hezbollah and subdued Iran. 
This alliance is likely to continue as long as imperialist domination remains a central plank of US foreign policy. Even if the US is somehow dethroned, then China or any other rising power would have a strong interest in allying with such a well-armed and strategically important state. China is already the second largest importer of Israeli goods, and Israel imports more goods from China than any other country, $19 billion worth annually according to the United Nations Comtrade database.
So while the apartheid system in South Africa could be ended without fundamentally disrupting the structures of global and regional imperialism, the same is not true in Palestine. In any case, the end of formal apartheid has not fundamentally changed the experience of the vast majority of working class and poor Black South Africans. Their living conditions are actually worse, meaning this is hardly a model to be aspiring to.
The harsh reality is that while many former colonies have been able to achieve some measure of national independence within the capitalist system, there are a number of cases where it is just not possible. In the Middle East, the examples of the Palestinians and the Kurds stand out, where the maintenance of national oppression is absolutely essential to the functioning of capitalism as it has been established over the last century. So just as it is impossible to imagine a capitalist America without anti-Black racism, there will never be a capitalist Middle East without the whole suite of religious, national and caste hierarchies that have been deliberately entrenched in the region. 
It’s long been argued by revolutionaries in the Middle East and elsewhere that overthrowing the Arab regimes, which pose as champions of the Palestinians while simultaneously accommodating to Israel and repressing movements that challenge it, is a prerequisite for a liberated Palestine. But the experience of the Arab revolutions that erupted in 2011 shows that simply replacing one capitalist government with another in no way brings closer the goal of ending the injustices that face the workers and the oppressed of the region. It’s clear now that in a very direct sense the struggle for Palestinian liberation, and that of the masses in the region and beyond, will require a more radical goal. To be precise, only the successful overthrow of capitalism across the region, particularly in key states such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, can make possible the liberation of Palestine.
This doesn’t change the fact that the Palestinians will continue to have a central and leading role to play in organising popular resistance to Israel and capitalism, both inside occupied Palestine and in the neighbouring countries. But it does mean that the practice of seeking allies among the Arab regimes, which has been the long-term approach of the leading Palestinian factions, has to be opposed. Not only is it a betrayal of the Arab masses living under these regimes, but it is a dead end for the Palestinian struggle. 
Instead, efforts must be made to link up with the many economic, social and geopolitical grievances of workers and the poor across the region. This can most effectively be done by locating Palestinian oppression in a wider context of regional exploitation, oppression and imperialism, and Israel’s role in maintaining this unequal and oppressive status quo. This involves popularising a systemic critique of Arab capitalism and its role in propping up Western imperialism, and building a movement that can turn this critique into action. 
Those of us outside the Middle East also have an important role to play. Israel can survive and get away with its atrocities only due to endless Western support and funding. We have seen that a mass movement in Australia has been capable of shifting the terrain of discussion and politics, but not core aspects of government policy. It is similar elsewhere. To force Western governments even to begin to break ties with Israel would take immense struggle by workers, the kind of struggle that would make clear to the Albaneses of the world that the choice is between profits and social stability and continued support for genocide.
Standing in the way of this is the existing leadership of the workers’ movement, which has no interest in mobilising workers to make Australia’s support for Israel unviable. Such action would threaten not only the interests of Australian capitalism, which the union leaders do not oppose, but also the electoral fortunes of the Labor Party, which most union leaders are aligned with, and the relatively privileged position of the leaders themselves within the system, not to mention their future career prospects. 
To make the kinds of strikes that could lead to real sanctions against Israel and the arms industry happen today would require a profoundly more radical and organised working-class movement than what currently exists. This in turn presupposes the existence of a serious left in the workers’ movement, both able to lead action and carrying weight ideologically. Socialist-led unions, backed by a militant rank and file, could organise black bans of weapons companies and Israeli shipping lines, and engage in targeted actions to enforce them. The places where this has happened in recent years, for instance the dock workers in Greece, have long traditions of communist influence in the union. 
So both in the Middle East and in the imperialist West, fighting for revolutionary socialist politics grounded in mass working-class organisations is a vital step on the road to Palestinian liberation. This means rejecting both the two-state farce that serves to validate the status quo, and also the sort of liberal utopianism that assumes a single Palestinian state in the framework of capitalism is possible and able to bring liberation. 
Instead, a revolutionary socialist approach means a relentless and uncompromising struggle against all of the institutions that have become so discredited by their response to Israel’s genocide, including every powerful nation state on earth. Only a struggle for a socialist Palestine that unites the revolutionary workers and peasants of the Middle East with an insurgent, anti-imperialist working class movement in the West can hope to achieve liberation.
Omar is a long-time pro-Palestine activist based in Melbourne

Omar Hassan

Two-state solution is rubbish, what will it take to liberate Palestine?

Close to two years of savage Israeli war on Gaza have created a humanitarian catastrophe. But while Israel and the US are responsible for the butchery, another force also shares the blame: the Arab leaders who have stood by and let Israel run amok. 
The problem is not that the Arab governments lack the power to hurt the US and Israel. After all, they sit atop the world’s biggest oil reserves and, in Egypt’s case, control the Suez Canal, one of the busiest maritime corridors. The Arab regimes don’t lack the power; they choose not to use it.
It hasn’t always been this way. For several decades, many Arab governments positioned themselves as anti-colonial forces. At the end of World War One, European powers controlled the entire Arab world from the Atlantic to the Arabian Gulf. The colonialists were motivated by greed for oil, territory and other resources. In some cases, they ruled directly. In others, as in Egypt, they installed puppet monarchs to do their bidding. 
The oppressed grew angry at their servitude and the theft of their land. Inspired in part by the Russian Revolution, anti-colonial revolts broke out in Egypt and Iraq after the war and, later, in Syria and Palestine, but these were savagely put down. 
A fresh nationalist tide surged after World War Two. A new generation of fighters emerged to drive out the occupiers and their accomplices. They were led in many cases by middle-class intellectuals, professionals and army officers eager to take over from the colonial powers. 
Arab nationalism dominated these struggles. Its leading figures wanted to eliminate the shame of national subjugation and to modernise their countries, seize the oil wealth then in the hands of Western companies and diversify their economies. They tapped into popular grievances—anger over poverty, unemployment and landlessness—but their project was to leverage this anger in their bid for power.
Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser’s seizure of power in Egypt in 1952 at the head of the Free Officers Movement announced to the world Arab nationalism as a force. Nasser transformed Egypt and the broader Middle East and enraged the former colonial powers. 
In 1956, Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal, which had been controlled by the British and French since its opening in 1869. In a secret alliance with Israel, the two European powers attacked Egypt. Determined not to allow the restoration of colonial power, the population rose against them, fighting alongside the Egyptian army. Fearing that revived British and French colonialism in the Middle East might scotch its own imperialist ambitions, the US ordered them out, ensuring Nasser’s victory.
Nasser’s victory over Suez made the president a hero in the Arab world. Enormous crowds would turn out to hear him speak. They saw in him someone who had led Egypt out of colonial slavery and into a new world of Arab pride and independence. 
Nasser joined independence leaders from across Asia, Africa and the Middle East at the 1955 Bandung conference to promote the anti-colonial movement. He was one of the most important figures in the Non-Aligned Movement of former colonies seeking a path independent of the big imperialists.
Nasser ran a pragmatic foreign policy in a world of Cold War competition, initially seeking support from both the US and the Soviet Union. But when the US would not supply arms, the USSR stepped in and provided Nasser with weapons, aid and technicians. The tilt towards the USSR was matched by a shift in economic policy. Nasser sought to emulate Joseph Stalin’s program of economic reconstruction, setting up dozens of state enterprises to encourage industrialisation.
Nasser described his project as “Arab socialism”, as did the other nationalist regimes, but there was nothing socialist about them. They presided over authoritarian one-party states that imprisoned, tortured and killed thousands of working-class activists. Standing in opposition to the Arab nationalist governments were the US-aligned governments, chiefly Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iran and Morocco.
Regardless of their differing political alignment, all the Arab governments proclaimed their support for Palestine. In 1964, Nasser set up the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and in the following years, other governments sponsored and armed factions of the liberation movement. Partly, they were motivated by domestic political considerations, given the popularity of the Palestinian cause at home. But more important was their calculation about how best to control the Palestinian movement, which in some countries threatened internal stability.
What happened to Arab nationalism?
Several things put paid to Arab nationalism, paving the way for the region’s embrace of the West.
The first and most dramatic event was the 1967 Six-Day War, in which Israel routed the Arab armies and seized Gaza, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank and the Golan Heights. The mighty Arab nation had been humbled. Nasser’s prestige tumbled, and the Arab nationalist project was irrevocably weakened. The US now fully embraced Israel as its main ally in the region, opening the spigot on billions of dollars in economic and military aid.
In 1970, Jordan’s King Hussein attacked the PLO following a challenge for power by Palestinian nationalists and leftists, demonstrating again the illusion of Arab unity. Following his victory, Hussein drove the PLO into exile in Lebanon.
Then in 1978, Egypt, now ruled by Nasser’s successor President Anwar Sadat, signed a peace deal with Israel and normalised diplomatic relations. This was a breakthrough for Israel, ending its isolation in the region and removing its main military threat. It also signalled Egypt’s abandonment of Arab nationalism, its betrayal of the Palestinian cause and its embrace of the United States, which it has adhered to since that day. 
The Arab League registered its displeasure at Sadat’s agreement with Israel by suspending Egypt’s membership. But Egypt was simply ahead of the pack. Informal links between Arab nations and Israel were growing, and in 1989, the Arab League readmitted Egypt. In 1993, the PLO itself signed a peace treaty with Israel and, in 1994, Jordan followed. 
Other nations—Syria, Iraq, South Yemen, Sudan and Libya—opposed normalisation with Israel. But they were no friends of the Palestinians. In 1970, they stood by and watched as King Hussein smashed the PLO, and in 1976, Syria’s President Hafez al-Assad invaded Lebanon to crush an insurgency by Palestinians and Lebanese leftists, killing thousands.
The economic promise of Arab nationalism—state-led industrial development and self-reliance—also fractured in this period as economic growth stalled. In 1974, the Egyptian government opened up to Western capital, selling state enterprises, winding back price controls and reducing social programs. Soon, most governments in the region followed suit, seeking closer integration into the world economy. 
Arab nationalism also fell victim to national rivalries as the post-colonial states promoted their national interests in a world where the struggle against colonialism no longer united them. This was evident early on: Nasser spoke of pan-Arab solidarity, but his main goal was to project Egyptian power in the Middle East. The same was true of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in the 1980s. 
The collapse of the Soviet Union, which had provided Arab governments with weapons and finance, was another nail in the coffin of Arab nationalism. Many who had looked to Moscow now embraced US imperialism, taking loans from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, imposing savage austerity on the working class and poor and enriching themselves. 
Arab governments also became increasingly complicit in US wars in the Middle East. In 1990, the Arab League backed the US in the Gulf War against Iraq, with Egypt, Syria and Morocco all sending troops to support the Americans. Several Arab governments also supported the 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan, allowing the US to use their airspace and facilities. When the US invaded Iraq in 2003, the Arab League opposed it, but this did not stop many Arab governments from helping the US. Egypt gave free passage to the US navy through the Suez Canal; Saudi Arabia invited the US to fly cruise missiles over its territory; and Jordan provided the US with bases from which to mount special forces operations across the border into Iraq. 
Years of austerity and political repression, along with the betrayal of the Palestinian cause, created a pressure cooker in the Arab world. The pressure cooker blew in 2011, as popular uprisings from Tunisia to Bahrain challenged and, in some cases, overthrew, repressive governments. The US and Israel looked on aghast as the Arab leaders they had supported for decades fell or tottered under the impact of mass protest. They were alarmed as hundreds of thousands took to the streets of Cairo and Alexandria to demand liberation for Palestine.
The revolution opened the door to freedom in the Arab world. But the counter-revolution that followed, fully backed by the US and Israel, slammed the door firmly shut. Political repression returned, even more ferocious than before. The US and Israel breathed a sigh of relief that the genie of revolution had been put back into the bottle.
Where are things today?
Most Arab countries have embraced the US-led world order, while others have oriented toward Russia. None can be described as anti-imperialist or anti-colonial. US bases can be found across the Middle East, the Gulf region in particular. Qatar hosts the US Central Command along with 10,000 US troops and 100 US aircraft. 
The Arab regimes are deeply embedded in Western markets. The Gulf states, responsible for much of the world’s oil trade, work with the US to stabilise world oil prices. They trade in US dollars, which helps maintain the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency. Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE committed hundreds of billions of dollars in orders for US military supplies, energy equipment, commercial aircraft, critical minerals and infrastructure investments during President Trump’s recent visit.
Arab states aligned with Washington have close relations with Israel. Four more countries—the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco—established diplomatic relations with Israel as part of the US-led Abraham Accords in 2020. The Arab League did nothing to censure them. Only mass domestic sentiment for Palestine holds back Saudi Arabia from joining their ranks.
Egypt’s collaboration with Israel stands out. The Egyptian government reinforces the Israeli blockade of Gaza, tightly controlling supplies to the beleaguered strip. The regime refuses to allow international solidarity missions to cross the Sinai to reach the Rafah crossing to Gaza.
The motivations of these governments are several. Because Israel is central to US power in the Middle East, these regimes will not help Palestine win its freedom because such a struggle must challenge the US, which is an important prop of their own power. 
Economic factors play a part. Israel is the region’s most advanced economy. For many years, Egypt supplied Israel with vital gas supplies and, now that Israel has gas supplies of its own, Egypt imports Israeli gas. As long as there is money to be made from collaboration with Israel, the Palestinians are discarded.
Part of the explanation lies in understanding the military balance of forces. For a period, some of the Arab governments believed a united Arab offensive could defeat Israel. The 1967 disaster, followed by a stalemate in 1973, made clear that this was not on the cards. As national governments seeking their place in the region, they now recognise the reality of Israeli military supremacy, reinforced by Israel’s bloody victories since 7 October. 
Other Arab governments collaborate with Israel in their joint opposition to Iran, which rose as a regional power following US defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan. In April last year, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Jordan all worked with Israel to shoot down Iranian missiles. Two months later, Saudi generals, along with those from Jordan, Bahrain, the UAE and Egypt, met the Israeli military’s chief of staff and the chief of the US Central Command in Bahrain to discuss “security cooperation”. 
It is not just those states closely aligned with the US that betray the Palestinian cause. Other countries in the region, Iran and Syria (until recently) most notably, have cleaved more closely to Russia. Syria hosts Russia’s only naval base in the Mediterranean. Iran and Russia worked closely with the former Assad regime to wreak terror in Syria. Russia supplies both with most of their military arsenals. The Hussein and Gaddafi regimes in Iraq and Libya were close to Russia at times. But close relations with Russia mean nothing for their attitude to Palestine. Russia, like the US, wants a strong Israel. Israel supplies Russia with drones for its war in Ukraine and backs it diplomatically in the UN. Israel and Russia work together in Syria. Whichever camp they back, none of the region’s governments will put itself out for Palestinian freedom.
Like any other part of the global ruling classes, Arab leaders do not believe in ethnic or national solidarity. They are committed only to profit and power—especially their own. They mouth support for Palestine and condemn Israeli war crimes to maintain their credibility with their populations. But when activists mobilise in solidarity with Palestine, the regimes batter them off the streets. The Arab regimes understand that the demand for Palestinian freedom can easily bleed into demands for freedom at home.
As far as the Egyptian leaders are concerned, the sooner Israel wipes out Hamas, the better. Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, which forms the main opposition to the Sisi regime in Egypt. The president’s predecessor, Hosni Mubarak, fought to prevent Hamas from taking power in Gaza following its win in Palestinian Authority elections in 2006, and Sisi is now working with the Arab League to exclude Hamas from any role in governing postwar Gaza. Israel has reciprocated by helping the Sisi regime entrench the Egyptian counter-revolution. 
Why would these leaders put themselves out to support an oppressed people when they deny their own people their basic rights?
The connections between the Arab ruling classes, the US, Russia and Israel tell us that the fight for a free Palestine cannot be separated from the fight for a free Arab world. Revolts against the regimes by Arab workers, students and the poor for their own demands for bread and justice strengthen the fight for democracy at home but also loosen Israel and America’s choke hold on Palestine. If Israel gets away with its atrocities only because the Arab regimes let it, the fall of these regimes in popular revolutions is a precondition for the liberation of Palestine.

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