Solidarity with Gaza!
Statement by the Internationalist Socialist League (RCIT Section in Israel / Occupied Palestine), 18.07.2018, http://www.the-isleague.com
1. The Internationalist Socialist League stands, unconditionally, with the Palestinian struggle for freedom against Zionist oppression.
2. Since March 30, Israel has killed more than 180 Palestinians and injured many thousands of Gazan protesters. These are war crime as the protesters were unarmed and no Israeli was in danger for his life.
3. The crime of the Palestinians in the eyes of the Zionists was the attempt of the Gazans under siege to leave the largest Ghetto in history and return to their lands, stolen by the Zionists in the ethnic cleansing of 1947-1948, in order to create a Zionist state with a Jewish majority.
4. The people of Gaza, in response to the cold blooded murder by the Israeli army, has been the sending of kites that burn large portion of the fields and the groves surrounding Gaza. The message is clear as was written on one of the balloons: "If we were destined to live in misery, we will not suffer alone."
5. While such actions are a reflection of despair and do not advance the liberation of Palestine, Israel’s killings are responsible for them.
6. The escalation of last Saturday, July 14, is the result of the closing down of the Kerem Shalom passage, in order to create even more misery for the people of Gaza.
7. Ever since Hamas was elected by the Palestinians as their government, Israel has been acting to bring it down as part of its attempts to break the will of the Palestinians to struggle for their right to self determination.
8. The only reason that this time the tension was resolved by a cease fire agreement, rather than a full scale war by Israel against the Gazan population, is the decision of the Zionist politicians and of Trump's "peace plan" of breaking the ties between Hamas and Hezbollah in order to focus on Iran and its allies.
The plan is to bring down the regime in Iran and replace it with a regime loyal to US imperialism. While the regime in Tehran is extremely oppressive, only the people of Iran have the right to decide its fate. A government imposed on the Iranians, that will serve the US and Israel, will be even worse than the current government.
9. In order to “sell” such this “Pax Americana” to the Israeli colonialist settlers, it was necessary for Israel to escalate the tension and later claim that Hamas’ agreement to the cease fire is a direct result of blows inflicted upon it by Israel.
10. While we do not view the state of Israel and Hamas as equals, since the Palestinians are an oppressed nation fighting for their right to self-determination, it is clear that many Palestinians in Gaza do not support Hamas anymore.
Israel would of course claim that Hamas’ dwindling support is a direct result of the Palestinian people holding it responsible for their misery at it its hands. However, the real reason is that it has not presented any plan or strategy to lead the struggle for Palestinian freedom to victory.
Nevertheless, it is the interest of the international working class to side with Hamas in any military clash with Israel, being an imperialist settler colonialist state - while opposing its politics of misleadership.
11. The only solution is a democratic Palestine from the river to the sea. This state will include the Palestinian refugees and guarantee the cultural and social rights of the Palestinian Arabs and the Israeli Jews from the river to the sea.
However, centuries upon centuries of class struggle have decisively proven that, in this epoch, the bourgeois and the privileged classes are either unwilling or unable (depending on concrete circumstances) to lead a successful struggle for neither democracy nor national liberation. Their class interest in keeping the working, peasant and oppressed classes, weak, divided, expropriated and exploited supercede both their national pride and any ideals of freedom or democracy they might claim to advocate.
Therefore, the only way to bring real freedom to the people of Palestine is for the working class, Fellaheen and oppressed classes to replace the ruling and privileged classes and establish the Free Socialist Palestine from the River to the Sea!