Israel & Palestine

Israel has recently renewed "peace" talks with Syria. The problem is that on the crucial question of the return of the Golan Heights to Syria, Israel cannot afford to grant this demand and Asad cannot sign an agreement without such a concession. That explains the lack of enthusiasm of the Israeli masses.

On the 14th May 1948 the state of Israel was proclaimed independent. The immediate results were an outbreak of killings and the creation of huge numbers of Israeli and Palestinian refugees. Palestinians refer to it as the naqba (catastrophe). Luke Wilson explains how Israel has become a bulwark of imperialism, what it has meant for the politics of the Middle East, for Israeli Jews and Palestinians, and how the creation of Israel has perpetuated anti-semitism elsewhere.

Recently there was a protest in Tel Aviv - of both Jews and Arabs - against a reunion of Etzel, one of the terrorist Zionist groups used against the Arab population in the process of the formation of the state of Israel. In the "only democracy in the Middle East" these peaceful demonstrators were brutally manhandled by the police.

After the defeat of the Israeli army in Lebanon two years ago, the Israeli Defence Forces have been trying to win back their image as the only real defenders of the people in Israel. Now they are constantly provoking Syria in the hope that Syria will hit back, something it seems unwilling to do.

We received this interesting article from Israel that shows the contradictions piling up within the very foundations of the Israeli state: the Israeli Defence Force.

The recent dramatic events in the Gaza strip are a clear indication that the Zionist ruling class that governs Israel will never concede genuine national self-determination to the Palestinian masses. These events also confirm that on a capitalist basis there is no solution to the problem. On the Palestinian side neither Hamas nor Fatah offer a solution. We must base ourselves on the perspective of renewed class struggle across the whole of the Middle East.

The events in Gaza underline more than ever the barbarism that can emerge from the national conflict in Palestine. Israeli imperialism backed by the US is responsible for this bloody mess. So long as there is no genuine independent voice of the workers on both sides of the divide, we can expect nothing but more bloodshed.

George W. Bush has been visiting the Middle East. He is presently in Israel to try and promote his latest solution to the conflict: two capitalist states! These are all words, as US imperialism collaborates with the Israeli ruling class, as well as the rotten Arab regime, to hold down the masses throughout the Middle East.

The mountain has laboured and borne a mouse. That would be a fitting epitaph for the Annapolis conference on Palestine. After four months of endless talks about talks Condoleezza Rice, the American secretary of state, failed to obtain what Washington and Abbas desperately need: an agreement on at least the main points of a deal that would ultimately create a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Israeli vice-premier Haim Ramon has suggested ceding Arab neighbourhoods to a future Palestinian state. This has divided the Israeli political establishment… obviously. But what it reflects is the pressure on the Zionist ruling elite to make at least some verbal concessions in an attempt to stabilise the situation.

A critical comment by Moroccan Marxists on the line of thought developed in the article, The victory of Hamas in Gaza and the questions facing Israeli and Palestinian workers by Yehuda Stern in Jerusalem, that we published on Wednesday, 11 July 2007. It is the opinion of the Editorial Board that the Moroccan Marxists are absolutely correct in their criticisms.

Many tears have been shed over the fall of Gaza under Hamas control. In reality what has happened is that the carefully prepared plans of imperialism have exploded in their face. They had bought off and corrupted the leaders of Fatah in order to get them to police the Palestinians for them. Because of this the Palestinian masses turned away from Fatah and embraced Hamas. So where do we go from here?