Gaza: Israel Injured 41 Palestinians Demonstrating Against the Ongoing Criminal Siege
Statement by the Internationalist Socialist League (RCIT Section in Israel / Occupied Palestine), 24.08.2021, http://www.the-isleague.com
The Internationalist Socialist League (ISL) condemns the new right-wing government led by the ultra-nationalist Naphtali Bennett injuring 41 Palestinians among them 10 children and one child aged 13 who was shot in the head and died, at the fence blockading Gaza. One Zionist Border Police officer Barel Shmueli was shot in the head by a Hamas militant who had been able to approach the perimeter fence and fire a handgun into Shmueli’s firing position used by him to shoot children. We do not have any tears for this killer. The Zionists are sending reinforcements that will include two units of Special Forces, an armored company, and snipers.
This Wednesday, the Palestinians of Gaza are planning more demonstrations near the fence. The Palestinians have called these demonstrations part of the new intifada “The Sword of Jerusalem shall not be sheathed".
The ISL unconditionally sides with the resistance of the oppressed Palestinians against the Zionist apartheid of the settler colonialists.
The Intifada Continues-the History of Gaza
“Gaza is an ancient place. "Under the Roman Empire, Gaza was both a prosperous and diverse coastal city led by a 500-member Senate, receiving grants from several different emperors. Centuries later, under the Mamluks, a Muslim dynasty, it became the capital of a province that covered areas from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula to Caesarea, a town now in northern Israel.” (1) "In 1947-8 Israel drove out 900,000 Palestinians, many of them settled in Gaza. Many of them tried to return to their villages but the Israeli army shut them and in addition attacked Gaza killing many civilians. According to the Zionist historian Benny Morris probably up to 5000 Palestinian called by the Zionists" infiltrators" were killed between 1949-1956.” (2)
"In November 1956, Israel marched on Gaza. First launching military raids on refugee camps, Israel then occupied Gaza for four months, culminating in two massacres at Khan Yunis and the Rafah camps. The human cost was so high that E. L. M. Burns, the head of a special UN observer mission in Gaza, said Israel’s actions showed it intended to get rid of Gaza’s refugee population". (3)
At the same time the Israeli border police/gendarmerie (Mishmar Hagvul) butchered more than 50 Palestinians citizens of Israel in Kafr Qasim. This massacre was part of Ben Gurion’s plan to drive out more Palestinians citizens of Israel. After the massacre General Shadmi who was responsible for the massacre faced a trial and had to pay one Agora, less than a penny.
In 1967 Israel occupied Gaza alongside the West Bank, Sinai and the Syrian Golan heights. The following year Israel took one-third of the lands of Gaza (28,750 acres) by using declaration of a state land and direct confiscation (See also: “A sixth category existed, known as mahlul, land that reverted to the state if left uncultivated for 3 years or left vacant and up for re-grant”, Ottoman Land Code of 1858(!). (4) It was used to build 18 Zionist settlements. At that time the economy of Gaza was integrated into the Zionist economy serving the Zionist capitalist masters. From the very beginning of the occupation of Gaza fishing was restricted. Many Gazans were used as cheap labor inside Israel as unskilled workers (paid about 40% of the salaries of the Jewish workers). Right after the occupation, then-Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol who wanted to get rid of many Palestinians reportedly said that "perhaps if we don't give them enough water they won't have a choice, because the orchards will yellow and wither." (5)
The heroic struggle of the Gazans forced Israel to evacuate Gaza in 2005 and instead it has put a siege on Gaza turning it to the largest Ghetto in history. "Despite Israel's extensive control over the Gaza Strip, in its decision on the disengagement plan, the government stated that implementation of the plan would "invalidate the claims against Israel regarding its responsibility for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip." In response to several petitions filed in the High Court of Justice following implementation of the disengagement plan, the State Attorney's Office has argued that, with the termination of the military government in the Gaza Strip, Israel has no obligation whatsoever under international law toward residents of Gaza, who should now direct all their claims and requests to the Palestinian Authority". (6)
The Settler Colonialists of the USA
This criminal history of the Zionists brings to mind the American government that forced the Indians into the reservations where they were starving in order to steal their lands. "On May 28, 1830, the Indian Removal Act was signed by President Jackson. The Act allowed the government to divide land west of the Mississippi to give to Indian tribes in exchange for the land they’d lost. The government would pick up the cost of relocating the Indians and helping them resettle. The Indian Removal Act was controversial, but Jackson argued it was the best option since settlers had rendered Indian lands incompatible with sustaining their way of life. Over the next few years, the Choctaw, Chicasaw and Creeks were forced to move westward on foot, often in chains and with little or no food and supplies. Even some Indians in the North were forced to relocate. In 1838; President Martin Van Buren sent federal troops to march the remaining southern Cherokee holdouts 1,200 miles to Indian Territory in the Plains. Disease and starvation were rampant, and thousands died along the way, giving the tortuous journey the nickname “Trail of Tears.” (7)
"Federal policy was enshrined in the General Allotment (Dawes) Act of 1887 which decreed that Indian Reservation land was to be divided into plots and allocated to individual Native Americans. These plots could not be sold for 25 years, but reservation land left over after the distribution of allotments could be sold to outsiders. This meant that the Act became, in practice, an opportunity for land-hungry white Americans to acquire Indian land, a process accelerated by the 1903 Supreme Court decision in Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock that Congress could dispose of Indian land without gaining the consent of the Indians involved. Not surprisingly, the amount of Indian land shrank from 154 million acres in 1887 to a mere 48 million half a century later". (8)
The Right of Return
Since the "disengagement plan" after decades of brutal Israeli occupation of Palestine, Gaza has become an enclave under siege, one of the world’s most impoverished places. It is the world’s third most densely populated city as more than two million Palestinians have been forced to live in an area of 362 square kilometers. It is just 41 kilometers long and between 6 to 12 kilometers wide. After pulling out its troops in 2005, the Israeli state not only put Gazans under siege, but also bombed and invaded it several times, killing thousands of Palestinians.
The Palestinian refugees have the right to return to their country stolen by the settler colonialists. Of course, Israel will do everything it can to prevent the Palestinians refugees from returning home. For this reason, the refugees will return with the victorious Arab revolution.
The Centrists and the Struggle of the Oppressed
This is not a nationalist violence between two extremists as "Socialist Struggle" – the Israeli section of the right centrist ISA – claimed during the protest of Palestinians citizens of Israel last May. They wrote:" Shock and fear was felt from both sides of the national split when with the beginning of the war on May 10 some centers of civil war developed within the green line. Four human beings from both nations paid with their lives. Musa Hasona (32), Yegal Yehusua (56) Avi Har Even (84) and Muhamad Hahmid (17) shot by the police. Hundreds of innocent civilians were injured in the violence clashes...These are nationalist clashes between civilians within the green line. Something we have not seen since 2000." (9)
Putting on the same level the violence of the oppressed Palestinians and the violence of the oppressor Zionists put Socialist Struggle’s leaders on the other side in the class war, in the camp of the Zionists. Indeed, what happened in 2000, last May and this Saturday are the same struggles. In 2000 there were demonstrations against the occupations of 1948 and 1967. The outrage of the Palestinians citizens of Israel in May this year was in solidarity with the people of Gaza fighting against the Zionist army, as part of the intifada. The demonstrations of the people of Gaza are protests against the oppression. This demonstration last Saturday was encouraged by the victory of the Taliban. The defeat of US imperialism has pushed the Zionists to shoot with live ammunition out of hysterical fear. Fear the ISA share with the Zionists.
The Stalinist Party of Israel (Maki) that historically helped to form the Zionist state has not made any statement on Gaza, nor has its front Hadash. Ballad also did not come with a statement in its Hebrew Facebook page.
Victory for the Palestinian resistance!
Break the siege on Gaza!
Down with the Zionist Apartheid!
For a free red Palestine from the River to the Sea!
Footnotes
1) How Gaza was shackled and reduced to ‘Gaza Strip’, https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/how-gaza-was-shackled-and-reduced-to-gaza-strip-46806
2) Nur Masalha: The 1956-57 Occupation of the Gaza Strip: Israel Proposal to Resettle the Palestinian Refugees, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (1996) 23(1) 55-68
3) https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/05/israel-refugees-gaza-strip-occupation-apartheid
4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Land_Code_of_1858
6) https://www.btselem.org/gaza-strip/gaza-strip-israels-obligations-under-international-law
7) https://www.history.com/topics/native-american-history/indian-reservations#section_4
8) https://www.historytoday.com/archive/native-americans-and-federal-government
Other recent articles of the RCIT on Palestine:
Yossi Schwartz: Israel: The Real Face of the Left-Wing Zionists Article by, https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/africa-and-middle-east/israel-the-real-face-of-the-left-wing-zionists/
ISL: The new right-wing government has the same politics as the former one! 21.06.2021, http://the-isleague.comhttps://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/africa-and-middle-east/israel-the-new-right-wing-government/