End Israeli state terror – End war in the Middle East
A year after the October 7th attacks we publish a feature article from Socialism Today
JUDY BEISHON from the CWI IS discusses the prospects for peace and national liberation in Israel/Palestine and the wider region.
Brutal wars have repeatedly been carried out by Israeli military forces on Gaza since a ruthless blockade was imposed on that strip of land in 2007. Each one brought terrible death and destruction but the present war, now approaching a year in duration, has taken the bloodshed and suffering to a horrific new level.
Through twelve months of heavy bombardment with hi-tech weapons, the Gaza strip has been made virtually uninhabitable, with its 2.3 million people trapped there in the most dire conditions imaginable. The number confirmed dead has gone over 41,000, with a further 10,000 reported missing, probably buried in the rubble of destroyed buildings. More than 95,000 have been injured, over a quarter of them to a physically life-changing degree. The reactions of shock and anger worldwide have been heightened by the fact that nearly half the Gaza strip’s population are children, whose trauma and suffering is off the scale.
Trying to counter the starvation, malnutrition and disease escalating in Gaza, aid workers have regularly warned that nowhere near enough food and medical supplies are allowed in by the Israeli authorities. A US-based aid organiser, Amed Khan, who has experience of working in a number of conflict zones globally, felt driven to say: “Not one decision-maker on the planet cares about this issue… for anyone in a position of power, humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza is just not a priority”. He also said: “This is the worst situation I have ever dealt with. There is never a situation where you’re trying to help people inside a border controlled by an ally, but one that doesn’t want aid to get to the people you’re trying to help”.
Khan’s justifiably sharp remarks reflect the inaction of the Western imperialist powers as well as the shockingly brutal war offensive of the right-wing Israeli government. It is sophisticated weaponry from both those sources that is slaughtering Palestinians; and the capitalist governments supplying arms to Israel have only taken deliberately inadequate steps to curb their use. This has been in keeping with their close relations with the Israeli ruling class and the importance of Israel to them as a strong geo-political ally in the unstable region of the Middle East.
Following the Hamas-led military attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 they tried for as long as possible to go along with the war on Gaza as a ‘legitimate right’ of Israel to defend itself. But expressing no criticism became increasingly untenable faced with grassroots reactions worldwide to the disproportionality of the suffering. The 7 October callous attacks on Israel killed 1,139 people – 695 Israeli civilians, 71 foreign nationals and 373 members of the Israeli security forces – in total less than 3% of the death toll of Palestinians in the war on Gaza so far. The anger being expressed through anti-war movements internationally has included large demonstrations in many cities of the world, growing criticism in the US of president Joe Biden’s inaction, including from within the Democratic party, the election of four anti-war candidates to the UK parliament – plus Jeremy Corbyn who has long been involved in anti-war movements.
Escalation
Another concern of the world powers has been that the war could spread across the Middle East, severely harming world trade and the world economy. There have already been many military clashes outside of Gaza between Israeli forces and those of the Iran-led ‘axis of resistance’ across the region, particularly Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and Islamic Jihad in the West Bank. Now, at the time of writing, the clashes with Hezbollah are being escalated by Netanyahu’s government into a full war on Hezbollah and Lebanon, in which Lebanese civilians are being made to pay a terrible price.
Throughout the Gaza war Hezbollah has launched missiles on Israel and the Houthis have attacked merchant ships and have directly hit Israel. Israeli forces have brutally bombed sites in Lebanon, Iran, Syria and Yemen, assassinated Hezbollah and Hamas leading figures in Beirut, and assassinated Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas’s political wing while he was visiting Tehran. In September came the shocking simultaneous explosion of over 3,000 pagers and walkie-talkies in the hands of Hezbollah personnel in Lebanon, injuring most of them and killing 42, including two children. At the same time Israel’s defence minister declared “a new phase in the war”, leaving no doubts that those barbaric blasts were inflicted by Israeli secret services, and then Israeli fighter jets were sent over Lebanon to inflict death, destruction and terror.
This has brought global tensions to the highest level since April, when Iran fired a barrage of hundreds of missiles directly at Israel in retaliation for the Israeli bombing of the Iranian embassy complex in Damascus, and Israel then carried out a limited retaliatory attack on Iran. The Iranian missiles fired at Israel were largely intercepted, not least because Iran gave advance notice of the action and Israel received interception assistance from the US and a number of other countries, including some of its Arab neighbours.
Western military aircraft and warships have also intervened in the region, including US and UK forces firing missiles at infrastructure in Yemen. Throughout all this, the elites across the Middle East and the world powers have tried making diplomatic interventions to prevent the war from spreading, but not in a unified way because at the same time the region is a battleground between the world’s main powers for influence. The Iranian axis has close links with China and Russia; Israel with the US and other Western powers; and influence over the Arab regimes is sought over by both of those poles. Yet their interventions haven’t stopped Israel’s leaders from pushing ahead with war on Lebanon and the danger remains of a spiral into the whole region becoming engulfed in an even more widespread war.
Backing and sanctions
Out of fear of that potential for much greater instability, and also as a result of anger over the enormous suffering in Gaza in their home populations, the US administration and other powers allied with Israel moved to call for a Gaza ceasefire and started to apply limited sanctions to try to push Israel’s leaders in that direction.
The US continued to send billions of dollars’ worth of weaponry to Israel but imposed sanctions on some of the Israeli Jewish settlers involved in abusing Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank; and at one stage Biden temporarily delayed sending a batch of heavy weapons to Israel. Biden has also uttered some verbal criticisms, including pointing out that the assassination of Haniyeh ‘didn’t help’ the talks to achieve a Gaza ceasefire.
A number of other governments have also adopted sanctions against certain Israeli settlers and there have been various other gestures, such as formally recognising the Palestinian Authority (PA) as a Palestinian state, supporting the International Criminal Court seeking arrest warrants for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defence minister Yoav Gallant, and supporting decisions made by the International Court of Justice against some of Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank. Some governments have stopped or restricted normal arms sales to Israel, though in the case of the UK only around 9% of those exports have been stopped.
These measures haven’t stopped the war on Gaza and the Western powers are very reluctant to step up pressure further on Israel’s leaders. It is necessary and right for anti-war movements to demand much more, including for student protesters on many campuses internationally to demand that their universities disinvest from funds that assist the prosecution of the Gaza war in any way. Without massive pressure from below, governments and other pro-capitalist institutions will only take measures that suit the interests of their country’s capitalists who, while wanting to stop the spread of the war, have no genuine concern for the plight of the Palestinian people. Mass pressure can be built and applied to force those institutions to take more sanctions than they want to.
While supporting such pressure for more sanctions, socialists must add the important warning that when capitalist governments or bosses apply sanctions they have no real concern over whether workers at home or abroad might be affected by them. So support for sanctions has to be accompanied by trade union insistence against any loss of jobs or pay for workers. Alternative employment must be demanded where necessary.
However, the role of trade unions needs to be much more far-reaching than that. They have the ability to bring the weight of their millions of members to bear in swelling and escalating the demonstrations and through deciding on workers’ actions which can be directly applied, for instance against the transport of arms or other goods being used to kill and repress Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Building pressure and action from the organised working class is the only certain way the war can be stopped, because workers have the power to bring their home economy to a halt, giving them a decisive say on the issue at stake.
The ability to carry out the strongest and most effective pressure against the Netanyahu government lies in the hands of the working class in Israel. The massive demonstration and general strike at the start of September gave a glimpse of the power of Israeli workers to bring the Israeli economy to a halt. It was an important step towards exposing who has the real power in society, the working class or the capitalist class and its government. The latter can do nothing without the work of ordinary people in producing goods and delivering services.
General strike in Israel
The general strike was called by the Histadrut trade union federation, which like most trade union federations today has leaders who collaborate with capitalist interests and move in establishment circles. Therefore they try to limit action taken and can’t be trusted to escalate it to the point of removing the Netanyahu government and moving on to further action in workers’ interests. But that doesn’t remove the potential collective power of the workers in the Histadrut; it just brings home the task that lies ahead for the members to build and democratise their sector unions and federation, electing new leaders, so they can take action in their own interests.
The Histadrut is dismissed by some left organisations internationally as incapable of representing Palestinian workers’ interests because of its origin as a Jewish-only arm of the Zionist capitalist establishment that was at the helm of Israeli society in its early decades. In that period it itself even owned around a third of the top enterprises. It eventually sold off those companies and focused on the role of workers’ representation. It also admitted Arab and migrant workers into membership and has organised joint struggles of Israeli Jews, Palestinian residents of Israel and other workers in workplaces where those categories are present. Notwithstanding the importance of those joint actions, the task remains for its 800,000 strong membership to change the rotten leadership. (See also Unison And The Histadrut, in Socialism Today Issue No.251, September 2021)
The turnout on the streets on 1 September was one of the biggest in the history of the State of Israel and the general strike the following day was extensive, lasting for more than half a day before the Histadrut’s leaders accepted a Labour Court order for it to be stopped. It involved much of the public sector workforce as well as workers in many large private companies and small businesses. The news that led to those stormy two days was the discovery of the bodies in Gaza of six Israeli hostages who had survived nearly eleven months in captivity only to seemingly be killed by their captors to avoid them being taken alive. The mass movement directed its anger at Netanyahu’s government for refusing over many months to agree a ceasefire and hostage exchange deal – reflecting a majority mood in Israel for such a deal and an end to Netanyahu’s government.
That government still has a presently quite resolute base of support for resisting a ceasefire in a minority layer of society. But a recent opinion poll reported by Israel’s Channel 12 News indicated that the government’s six coalition parties would lose their majority if a general election was held today and one of the two far-right parties in the coalition would lose all its parliamentary seats.
In the meantime Netanyahu clings on to power propped up by right-wing ultrareligious parties and the two ultranationalist far-right parties who threaten to collapse his coalition if he stops the war. A strong personal element is at play, because Netanyahu wants to avoid trial on corruption charges that await him when he is voted out of power. He is also no doubt troubled by the legacy of unprecedented crisis and insecurity he would leave behind – he has so far created no exit strategy from the war and instead is extending and widening it.
The toothless international sanctions don’t mean that the whole international climate regarding the war hasn’t had any effect on Netanyahu’s decisions. He has clearly been trying to carry out a balancing act between criticisms of the war internationally, the majority of people in Israel wanting a ceasefire, and right-wing demands that he continue the war and step up military attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon and Palestinian militias in the West Bank.
Determined to make use of the upheaval of the Gaza war to expand and solidify Israeli annexation of the West Bank, at the end of August the Netanyahu’s government launched a wave of military assaults on West Bank towns, ripping up roads, destroying utility infrastructure, and trapping people in their homes without water, electricity and other necessities. Since October 2023 over 650 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank and 9,000 arrested, many undergoing torture and abuse in Israeli detention.
Israeli authorities have also largely turned a blind eye to violent attacks by right-wing nationalist Jewish settlers against West Bank Palestinian communities. As well, previously illegal outposts have been approved and thousands of new settlement houses authorised.
This is with a background of economic devastation for the Palestinians across the West Bank: after 7 October Israel cancelled around 160,000 work permits of West Bank Palestinians who worked in Israel or the settlements and withheld tax revenues from the Palestinian Authority’s population, with the result that the PA halved public sector wages.
Volatility and consciousness
While not comparable with the present level of mass trauma and threat to existence for the Palestinians living under war and occupation, it’s true to say that much of the Israeli population has felt profound shock since 7 October. The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) that they had assumed could be relied on didn’t stop the invasion on that day and around 100 hostages have still not been recovered. Most question whether the war – and extending it into the West Bank and Lebanon – will lead to greater security, which clearly it won’t do: war and brutal repression are only preparing the ground for more rounds of bloodshed.
The political consciousness of Israeli workers on the national question is presently shaped by their great fears over physical security and they don’t yet have a mass party of their own with a programme offering a way out of that vulnerability. Their fears are reinforced by a constant stream of divisive right-wing Zionist propaganda in the Israeli media, which weaponises antisemitism and the holocaust carried out by Hitler’s regime in Germany for a right-wing agenda.
Trotskyists rightly opposed the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 in Palestine because of the injustice to Palestinians who lived there and warned in advance of the inevitable national conflict that would result. Today Israel is a developed state with a strong national consciousness in all its classes and with one of the most powerful military forces in the world. Some left organisations refuse to recognise the repercussions of this reality. It is why a solution to the national conflict can only be delivered by the working classes of both Israel and the Palestinian territories – they will both need to challenge and move against their ruling elites in order to remove the system that laid the basis for the conflict in the first place.
Workers’ struggles in Israel will inevitably lead to more exposure of the nature and interests of the Israeli ruling class and understanding of the need to build a workers-based alternative. During that process it will be possible to start to erode the present political and racial divisions among ordinary people – not only between Israeli Jews and Arab residents but also between the many different strata in Israeli Jewish society – uniting them along class lines. Such moves will not only be on economic and social issues but can also be for democratic rights for all, an end to oppression and a way out of the cycle of wars.
Shifts and developments in consciousness are inevitable, as has been seen during the course of the Gaza war, with more Israelis now demanding a ceasefire. There isn’t just growing alarm among Israeli workers over where Netanyahu’s government is taking the national conflict and Israeli society, but in Israel’s ruling class too. This has been shown in open divisions at the top, with big business tycoons, the tops of the state security apparatus and pro-capitalist opposition politicians in parliament expressing strong criticism of the government. Their fears include military over-stretch, increased polarisation in society, economic decline and further development of the mass opposition movement. Desperate to curb the government’s actions, some of them even encouraged the general strike – a risky step for establishment circles because of the raised political consciousness that a general strike can stimulate in the workers’ movement.
Some use quite catastrophic language. For example Major General Yitzhak Brik, whose career has included being commander of the IDF military colleges and IDF ombudsman, said the refusals of the government to cease hostilities in Gaza “are bringing the military closer to collapse and the state to its downfall” and “if we continue fighting in Gaza by raiding and re-raiding the same targets… with every passing day the Israel Defence Forces grows weaker and the number of dead and wounded in action among our soldiers rises. Hamas, in contrast, has already replenished its ranks with 17- and 18-year-olds” (Haaretz, 3 September 2024).
He spoke of many IDF reservists “no longer consenting to being redrafted again and again” and added that “Israel’s economy, international relations and social cohesiveness are severely damaged by this war”. He also warned that “the IDF does not have enough forces to fight a multifront war”.
Israel’s economy is large, with an annual GDP higher than national debt, so it has room for manoeuvre. But the war has definitely caused economic damage in a long list of ways: the cost of the weapons and military apparatus; workers being displaced or serving in the IDF so unable to work in their normal jobs; workers denied entry to Israel from the West Bank or unwilling to immigrate from other countries during the war; a decline in consumer spending; rising inflation; a fall in tourism; disruptions to shipping; and foreign sanctions – including Turkey suspending all trade with Israel. Businesses are closing at a rate higher than usual and Israel’s credit rating has been downgraded by global financial institutions.
No ruling class solution
Israeli workers should place no trust in any of the pro-capitalist figureheads who oppose the present government, including the recently formed Democrats party led by Yair Golan, a merger of the Labour Party and left party Meretz. Golan calls for eventual separation from the Palestinians in the territories, arguing against full annexation of the West Bank on the grounds that Israel would cease to be a democracy. He has no problem with continued repression and occupation in the meantime or with stepping up the war against Hezbollah.
The wing of the ruling class favouring separation over annexation are not putting forward a solution to the conflict; they won’t allow a genuine Palestinian state to exist after separation. None of the pro-capitalist politicians in Israel or internationally have a solution, because no solution is possible on the basis of capitalism – the Israeli ruling class has a prime interest in keeping workers divided along national lines and in denying self-determination to the Palestinians. It is all part of maintaining its wealth accumulation, social base, prestige and influence, and in fact its very existence which will be threatened by future class-based battles waged by the working class in both Israel and the Palestinian territories, and by workers across the region against their own elites.
Israel’s working class and middle class will have absolutely nothing to lose by moving to end capitalism in Israel and then living alongside Palestinians and other Arabs in a socialist confederation, because on a socialist basis – with public ownership of the main corporations and socialist economic planning – all workers and the poor in Israel, Palestine and the region, regardless of the disparities in living standards today, will be able to have vastly improved living standards. Neither a capitalist Israel or any type of capitalist Palestinian entity will be able to provide decent jobs, services and homes for all, or real security and peace through an end to the conflict – which only benefits capitalist interests.
It isn’t surprising that faced with the heightened bloody conflict today, workers on both sides of the national divide express little confidence in achieving peaceful coexistence in two neighbouring states. On the basis of continued capitalism that lack of confidence is completely justified and correct; a building of consciousness on socialist ideas will be essential to build trust in a democratically decided solution. That solution can be arrived at through workers in Israel and in the Palestinian territories acting independently of all capitalist interests and building their own organisations that can act in their own interests, with links between them. We in the Socialist Party call for a socialist Palestine alongside a socialist Israel, with full rights for minorities, while recognising that workers’ representatives will democratically decide the borders and state forms.
Palestinian resistance
For the Palestinians in the occupied territories, extremely urgent at present is an end to the war and a massive increase in humanitarian aid. Also essential is a renewal of mass struggle to push the occupying forces back. The Fatah party that runs the PA is detested by Palestinians for its corruption, collaboration with the occupation and having no realisable programme to end poverty or achieve Palestinian liberation. The numerous Palestinian armed militias are turned to by many Palestinians, especially youth, for at least actively trying to resist the occupation. But in isolation from a mass movement and without democratic organisation and control by such a movement, they can’t seriously counter the far superior military force of Israel.
Hamas, the leading political party and militia in Gaza since 2006, is based on right-wing political Islam. Socialists can’t support its ideology or methods, which include suppressing opposition within Gaza and military attacks against Israel that are aimed indiscriminately, so they kill and wound civilians. To be effective, as well as armed resistance needing to take a mass form, socialist ideology needs to start to take root in the Palestinian struggle so that it targets the Israeli ruling class’s apparatus of occupation in ways that can begin to help erode that ruling class’s ability to draw Israeli workers behind it.
Taking this position doesn’t mean echoing the propaganda against Hamas carried in the capitalist media in Israel and its allies. For instance, Israel’s right-wing media automatically attributes virtually every brutal act in Gaza to Hamas, ignoring the many other militias and armed gangs there. Also, the Israeli authorities blame Hamas for the massive number of civilian deaths caused by IDF bombs, accusing Hamas of hiding in residential areas, but there have barely been any non-residential areas in Gaza.
In any case, it isn’t the task of outside military forces to counter the likes of Hamas – and the IDF can’t completely remove Hamas anyway. It is the task of the Palestinian people themselves, through building a workers’ political party that can come to power in place of Hamas and Fatah – to achieve a Palestinian government that can genuinely push ahead with resolving their needs and aspirations. Likewise, regarding Hezbollah, which is also based on right-wing political Islam; workers in Lebanon need to build a workers’ party that can unite ordinary people across the sectarian and religious divides, providing an alternative to all the pro-capitalist parties and their militias.
Perspectives for the war
At the time of writing it isn’t possible to predict how long the war on Gaza will last, what its outcome will be, and how far the Israel-Hezbollah war will develop, devastating lives on a more widespread scale. Even when Netanyahu’s government is removed it can’t be excluded that the IDF will remain in Gaza and military assaults and repression continued for a further period.
When the war does end, neither the Israeli political parties in government nor those in the parliamentary opposition have a workable plan for the ‘day after’, and future rounds of bloodshed are inevitable for as long as capitalism exists. Various world leaders and a number in Israel have said that Arab leaders in neighbouring countries can step in to help govern Gaza after the war but none of the Arab regimes want to run the risk of being seen to aid Israeli needs because of the backlash they would get from their own populations – at least without some concessions being granted to the Palestinians by the Israeli regime and its Western backers.
Out of self-interest the imperialist powers and Arab regimes are raising that some form of Palestinian entity needs to be conceded, but they will stop well short of trying to deliver a genuine and independent Palestinian state. The Arab leaders, and those in Iran and Turkey, all backed by various world powers, are far more concerned about preventing their own populations from rising up to overthrow them – as happened to the presidents in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen thirteen years ago – than they are about aiding the Palestinians. However, with young people across the region only being offered a future of poverty and frustration, further revolutions are inevitable. The vital task for the masses of the region is to build their own organisations armed with programmes for socialist transformation. Workers in Israel and Palestine would be inspired by such a wave as they started to be in 2011, aiding a process of revolutions that can sweep rotten capitalism away there too.
