End Gaza slaughter, Fight for socialist change
James Collett, Gloucestershire Socialist Party
Dozens have been slaughtered daily in Gaza by Israeli state forces. After nearly two years of genocidal slaughter, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the United Nations (UN) general assembly his government intends to “finish the job”.
Then came a proposal from Trump to end the war, which included that former UK prime minister and scourge of the Middle East, Tony Blair, would be part of “a new international transitional body” for Gaza that would oversee a ‘transitional technocratic governance committee’.
Trump previously expressed his grotesque vision of ethnically cleansing the entire Gaza strip and turning it into the “Riviera of the Middle East”.
None of the proposals involve the Palestinian people deciding their own fate. Instead, the conversation is taking place amongst the capitalist classes about how to impose a new unelected administration in Gaza.
As prime minister between 1997-2007, Blair led the UK to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, in which hundreds of thousands were slaughtered.
This ‘qualified’ Blair for his next job as Middle East envoy for the UN, EU, US and Russia between 2007-2015. During this period he also worked for investment bank JP Morgan Chase and as a PR man for the repressive regime of Kazakhstan, helping to polish its image after the 2011 Zhanaozen massacre.
Since leaving this role, Blair founded the Tony Blair Institute, which has massive financial backing from Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest men and also a donor to ‘Friends of the Israeli Defence Forces’ and a close friend of Netanyahu.
As Middle East envoy Blair focussed on, according to the BBC: “Bringing economic development to Palestine and creating the conditions for a two-state solution”. To see how successful he was, you only have to look at Gaza today, where over 68,000 have been killed in the last two years and almost the entire population has been internally displaced, facing famine.
Only the Palestinian people should decide their own future. Any ‘solution’ drawn up by the capitalist ruling classes internationally will be unable to offer a decent future for Palestinians. Instead, it is mass struggles of workers and poor people, establishing their own mass working-class organisations and parties fighting for socialism, which offers the way forward.
We say:
- End the siege of Gaza and the occupation of all the Palestinian territories. For the permanent withdrawal of the Israeli military from those areas
- The release of the thousands of Palestinian political prisoners held in Israeli prisons and the Israeli captives held in Gaza
- A mass struggle of the Palestinians, under their own democratic control, to fight for liberation and the right to self determination
- The building of independent workers’ parties in Palestine and Israel and links between them
- An independent, socialist Palestinian state, and socialist change in Israel, with guaranteed democratic rights for all minorities, as part of the struggle for a socialist Middle East
- No trust in capitalist politicians internationally. Fight to build workers’ parties that stand for socialism and internationalism
