Judy Beishon, Socialist Party Executive Committee
While the media worldwide focused on the Israeli regime’s horrific war on Lebanon and its exchanges of firepower with Iran, 100,000 civilians in the north of Gaza were under a devastating siege. Their conditions have massively worsened, with day after day of bombardments obliterating lives and infrastructure; making emergency services, humanitarian aid and even media coverage impossible.
Gaza’s death toll has gone over 43,000, with over 100,000 injured, and more than 2,500 people have died so far in the war in Lebanon. In addition is the enormous suffering inflicted on millions of civilians who have been made homeless and lack basic necessities. Outrageously, deliberate denial of the means of survival is being pursued further by Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli government, with its recent parliamentary vote to derecognise the United Nations relief organisation UNRWA, the main provider of aid and services to Palestinian refugees.
That ultra-right wing government is trying to depopulate zones in Gaza, the West Bank and South Lebanon, serving its ambitions for expansion and ‘reshaping’ the region. It uses the pretext of bringing security for Israelis, but its extreme military brutality hasn’t succeeded in recovering the remaining Israeli hostages held in Gaza, never mind enabling Israelis evacuated from border areas to be able to return to their homes. And the bloody wars are creating heightened outrage, despair and a desire to fight back in parts of the Palestinian and Lebanese populations.
Meanwhile, the military exchanges between Israel and Iran, while each time pitched to try to avoid all-out war between them, become more forceful, raising fears worldwide of a rapidly worsening spiral of war that has already directly impacted on six countries across the region.
For the Western capitalist governments, that possibility of a destabilising wider war is part of their underlying reasons for limited sanctions being applied against Israel. They also fear that mass movements will erupt from below across the Middle East, but have the more immediate pressure of great anger in their own populations at their unwillingness to alleviate the terrible plight of Palestinians in Gaza.
French president Emmanuel Macron recently called for a total arms embargo on Israel and even Israel’s most powerful and loyal backer, Biden’s US administration, threatened to suspend arms sales if aid is not allowed into Gaza. But such declarations are while at the same time staunchly defending western imperialism’s ties with Israeli capitalism, so they are just warning shots to the Israeli regime to keep its barbaric actions within limits, rather than seriously trying to stop them.
The plight of ordinary people in Gaza or Lebanon isn’t among their real concerns, as shown by their lack of action to stop the war for over a year now. Opposition to them must be stepped up – including against Keir Starmer’s New Labour government’s intrinsic support for the Israeli military actions. Measures in genuine support of workers, the poor and refugees in the Middle East will only be taken by workers’ movements in Britain and globally – through building the anti-war demonstrations, and workers’ actions against the wars and in solidarity with those effected by them in Gaza, Lebanon and elsewhere.
In Israel, regular anti-war protests take place, drawing from a small minority at present but their size will come to grow, as was happening before the Israeli government’s drive for war against Hezbollah in Lebanon temporarily cut across that development.
No brand of pro-capitalist government anywhere offers a solution that can deliver national liberation for the Palestinians, or be able to satisfy the aspirations of both Palestinian and Israeli workers for security and decent living standards.
Urgently needed is the building of independent workers’ organisations that can put forward a socialist alternative in Palestine, Israel and across the Middle East – for a future free from oppression, poverty and war.
