Middle East

At the funeral of Crown Prince Sultan we had the spectacle not only of the Saudi monarchs but most of the rulers who had flown in to attend the ceremony. Fear of the mass revolt that has been raging in the region was palpable at the gathering.

After a spontaneous general strike broke out and lasted for a few days in the Southern Horan region (the city of Dar'aa and its surrounding towns and villages), a call was made by the various co-ordinating groups and committees, including the newly found National Council, for a one-day national general strike on Wednesday, October 26 urging all public and private sector employees, shopkeepers, farmers, artisans, and students to take part.

Faced with ever increasing contradictions, the military rulers in Egypt have looked to cut across the recent wave of class struggle by attempting to divide the workers and youth along religious lines. This is the context in which the recent deaths of 24 Coptic Christian Egyptian protestors must be seen.

In the seventh month of its life, the Syrian revolution has passed through many stages, experienced ebbs and flows, and reached new layers of the masses while others have passed into inactivity or suffered brutal oppression. However, the youth and the oppressed are determined to carry the torch of the revolution to the end, to "victory or martyrdom". The revolt has spread like wildfire, and all the efforts of a decaying regime to extinguish the fire have resulted in no more than a temporary relief. The masses have awakened from their slumber to come onto the stage of history, and a nation is being reborn baptised in blood and fire.

Since Sunday, September 25th more than 6000 casual workers at the Bandar Imam petro-chemical complex – Iran’s 14th largest company, based on reported sales – in the south eastern part of Iran have been on strike. In solidarity with them, workers from at least four other petrochemical plants in the “Petrochemical Special Economic Zone” (PETZONE), housing some of the largest petrochemical complexes of Iran, have been involved in the conflict.

With the re-introduction of the emergency law, the military junta is desperately trying to strangle the revolution and return to the “normality” of the Mubarak era. But the workers are on the move. The recent upsurge in strikes and protests could spell the end for the SCAF regime.

The euphoria amongst the Egyptian masses that followed the fall of Mubarak in February has disappeared. The hard reality of the situation – in which political, social, and economic conditions have barely changed – has set in. The revolution has not ended, however, but has, after a brief lull, transitioned from the streets to the workplaces. The working class in Egypt – the motor force of the revolution – is organising and is on the move.

Almost seven months after the fall of Mubarak, the revolution in Egypt is far from over. The old regime is still in power and the masses can feel the revolution slipping through their fingers. Everything has changed, and yet everything remains the same. However, the anger of workers and youth has not gone away as the recent spate of strikes indicates.

On Saturday 3rd September, the Israeli masses unequivocally announced that they would not allow themselves to be sidetracked and divided by the ruling class’ old trick of divide and rule, nor would they allow their movement to run out of steam in the summer heat, as half a million came out onto the streets to demand social justice and revolution.

The social protest movement in Israel, after a hiatus, is now planning to gather one million people in Tel Aviv on September 3. The ruling class is certainly worried by this prospect and the Israeli railways have announced that they will shut down train services between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and between Tel Aviv and Be'er Sheva, supposedly for "for maintenance work". Clearly this is a manoeuvre to try and weaken the mobilisations that are being prepared.

Incredible scenes in Tel Aviv. On Saturday, August 7, over 300,000 took to the streets of a city with a population of less than half a million. Other demonstrations also took place on Saturday, with 30,000 gathering in Jerusalem, and thousands gathering in other cities across the country. The total figure of demonstrators is difficult to estimate, but it could be anything between 400,000 and half a million, in a country of 7.7 million inhabitants. Amongst the familiar demands for “social justice”, a number of banners could be seen bearing the slogan, “Resign, Egypt is here.” Tellingly, resign was written in Arabic.

All the 223 oil workers at Shiwashok oil company in Kurdistan Iraq have begun an open-ended strike since 05:00 this morning, August 1, 2011, which has stopped the work of the entire field.

The latest news coming out of Israel is that municipal workers across the country have declared a one-day general strike in support of the wave of protests sweeping Israel, taking place today [Monday, August 1]. This is a hugely significant step, as it begins to link Israel’s powerful industrial labour movement with the political demands of the wider youth and working-class, something which has not happened on a large scale for decades.

Friday 8th July saw the largest protests since the departure of Hosni Mubarak as tens of thousands took to the streets of Cairo, and thousands more came out to protest in other cities across Egypt, such as Alexandria and Suez. Material conditions have not improved for the workers and youth of Egypt, and Tahrir Square has once again become a visible epicentre of the revolution.