Editorial of the Socialist – the paper of the Socialist Party England and Wales

Most of the capitalist media worldwide reacted with astonishment and condemnation to US president Trump’s monstrous assertion that he plans to oversee an expulsion of Palestinians from the Gaza strip, with the US taking ownership of the land and investing in it as a playground for the rich.

But that moral uproar was only skin deep. It reflected a view of the capitalist ruling classes that Trump is just going ‘too far’ in trampling over the norms of ‘international law’ and capitalist relations, and is increasing the risk of new eruptions in the region, as opposed to the genuine outrage felt by workers and the poor worldwide.

The 1948 Nakba – the forced mass expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinians from their homes around the time of the creation of Israel – is deeply ingrained in Palestinian consciousness, to the extent that many Palestinians in Gaza say they would rather die than be faced with a similar catastrophe today. This will be even more the case as Trump shockingly declared that Palestinians would again be denied the right to return.

Trump’s offered bribe of moving to “far safer and more beautiful communities” would be no such thing. If he eventually succeeds in pressurising other  countries to host them, the prospect would be poverty-stricken refugee camps with inadequate facilities, as previous waves of Palestinian refugees have suffered.

Trump’s real attitude towards the Palestinians’ wellbeing is clear in his rapid reversal of Biden’s token sanctions on violent Israeli Jewish West Bank settlers and his resending of 2,000 pound bombs to Israel. Also, he has appointed some officials who have few differences with Israel’s far right, such as Elise Stefanik, the new US ambassador to the United Nations and Evangelical Christian Mike Huckabee, now US ambassador to Israel, who both believe that Israel has a biblical right to the entire West Bank.

Middle East editor of the Financial Times, Andrew England, after referring to the Nakba, wrote: “Nobody in the region – with the exception of Israel’s far right – can countenance a repeat” (6.2.25). He is wrong; In ruling class circles, those who can countenance a new mass expulsion go way beyond Israel’s far right. The mainstream right in Israel has long desired mass expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank.

Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition reiterated just before taking power: “The Jewish people have an exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the Land of Israel”. Its subsequent bloodbath and mass destruction in Gaza, together with ongoing brutal repression in the West Bank, show very clearly its wish to remove Palestinians from their homeland and aim of preventing a Palestinian state.

The ‘centre’ parties in Israel are also willing to embrace Trump’s ethnic cleansing ideas. For instance, Benny Gantz, presently a parliamentary oppositionist to Netanyahu’s government, praised Trump’s proposals and said that Israel has ‘nothing to lose’ from them. Likewise with some of the leaders of pro-capitalist former left-leaning parties.

Arab elites

Also wanting to jump on the bandwagon of Trumpism, with its rabidly overt form of capitalist exploitation and super-enrichment, are the already super-rich Arab elites. They feigned outrage over Trump’s pronouncements on Gaza, while pledging billions of dollars in deals with the US. Saudi Arabia alone pledged $600 billion, with Trump promising in return to make that country his first foreign destination.

It’s the Saudi Arabian masses and their sisters and brothers across the region who are the obstacle to the desires of Trump’s administration, the Israeli capitalists and the Arab rulers, not the fake protests of the region’s elites. Those ruling classes haven’t forgotten the 2011 ‘Arab Spring’ uprisings that overthrew dictators and they rightly live in fear of the next round of explosive struggle from below.

So, while Trump tries leaning on the autocratic leaders in Egypt and Jordan to agree to resettle Palestinians from Gaza – using threats and bribes – those same leaders warily watch the mood of their populations and join the list of governments once again paying lip service to the need for a Palestinian state.

That list is long, stretching from Saudi Arabia, to Turkey, France, Germany, Australia, Japan and more. Yet those same capitalist powers have never put forward a realisable plan for a genuine Palestinian state and nor will they be able to, faced with the limitations of their own interests and the overall global crisis and decline of the capitalist system on which they’re based.

It’s therefore no surprise that according to polls, neither a majority of Palestinians or Israelis currently see a two-state solution as possible. Such poll results have of course been part of the strategy of Netanyahu and Co in their turning of Gaza to rubble.

What now for Gaza?

Meanwhile, Gaza’s Palestinians continue to face the worst conditions imaginable, with no certainly that the ceasefire will hold. Netanyahu repeatedly says he will resume the war in order to destroy Hamas, an impossible mission, because for every Hamas fighter killed there are others stepping into their place.

Neither would the horrific objective of expelling the entire population of Gaza remove the existence of Hamas and other right-wing Islamist militias, as adherents would remain among the newly created refugees and are present in the West Bank and other parts of the region.

A layer of the Palestinians will continue to look to them for resistance to the occupation and repression until the time when the Palestinian masses move to take the future into their own hands by entering the road of mass struggle and building their own independent, democratically controlled organisations to take that struggle forwards.

Immediately, as well as demanding an end to the war and building the class-based pressure that can deliver it, workers’ movements internationally – including in Israel – must demand that Gaza is rebuilt for the people of Gaza, and with money from the profits and wealth of the capitalists who have done nothing to stop the destruction there, rather than from ordinary people.

This means building to a higher level the regular demonstrations that have been taking place worldwide against Israeli state aggression, and developing trade union-based workers’ actions. Also vital are advances in workers’ political representation.

The presence of five MPs in the UK parliament who were elected on the basis of opposition to the war on Gaza is a potential step forward on the road to the building of a new mass workers’ party in Britain that can give solidarity and assistance to Palestinian and other working-class people across the Middle East. Workers’ parties in Britain and internationally will also be able to discuss and debate socialist ideas – the only ideas that can lay the basis for an end to the rounds of bloodshed. 

No amount of Israeli military force, backed by the world’s strongest imperialist power, will ever lead the Palestinians to give up their desire for self-determination on their own land.

At the same time, on a capitalist basis, Israel’s ruling class will never concede a genuine Palestinian state, nor be forced to do so. It will only be through workers in Israel – both Jews and Palestinian residents – organising independently as a class to challenge and remove capitalism in Israel, and Palestinian workers in the occupied territories doing likewise against their own pro-capitalists, that socialist economic and social relations can be brought in and two socialist states achieved.

Such massively transformative revolutions would inevitably spread across the region, leading to a socialist confederation of the Middle East and the ability of the people of the region to provide a decent future for all.

---

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
• 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 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