Strike a blow against Sunak and Starmer
Scott Jones, Newham and East London Socialist Party
Death is still a daily reality for Gazans – either from Israeli air strikes or the ‘slow death’ of hunger and disease with food and water scarce, replaced by rubble, rubbish and sewage. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim that the “intense phase” of fighting in Rafah in southern Gaza is nearly over will come as little comfort. 1.7 million of Gaza’s 2.2 million people have been displaced. Almost 40,000 are dead.
And the war won’t seem any less intense for those in its way. If anything it is due to get worse with all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah poised and the IDF being shown to strap a wounded Palestinian man to a jeep as a sort of ‘human shield’.
But Netanyahu is becoming increasingly isolated, with mass protests all over the world a weekly occurrence, accompanied by anti-government protests in Israel itself. He has been forced to dissolve his war cabinet amid a split in his government and rumoured divisions between him and the IDF leadership.
Some international capitalist institutions and many individual governments voice support for a Palestinian state, and oppose the war.
Having largely simply echoed the Tories’ and Biden’s support for the Israeli state, Labour could recognise a Palestinian state when it likely takes power after 4 July. We say the Palestinian people should have the right to their own state.
That can only be won by a mass movement of Palestinians and of working-class people across the Middle East and internationally, fighting for a socialist programme.
We also need a mass working-class movement here, and a party that fights in the interests of working-class people at home and internationally.
40 Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) candidates are standing across England, Wales and Scotland to give an anti-war, socialist alternative to the main parties.
The Socialist Party fights for:
- End the siege – for the permanent withdrawal of the Israeli military from the occupied territories
- For a mass struggle of the Palestinians, under their own democratic control, to fight for liberation
- For the building of independent workers’ parties in Palestine and Israel and links between them
- For an independent, socialist Palestinian state, alongside a socialist Israel, with guaranteed rights for all minorities, as part of the struggle for a socialist Middle East
- No trust in the capitalist politicians, internationally or in Britain. Fight to build a workers’ party in Britain that fights for socialism and internationalism
