Nowhere in Gaza is safe. Rafah, the southern Gaza city into which over one million Palestinians have been driven by Israeli forces, faces fresh assault.

The full scale of the attack on Rafah is not yet known at the time of writing. But the consequences will be horrific. Hundreds of thousands of families – starving, thirsty and without adequate shelter and sanitation – wait to find out what scale of destruction the Israeli state will inflict next.People around the world watch on with dread.

Young people in universities internationally are setting up encampments and occupations following the brutal police repression of student protests in the US (see below). Hundreds of thousands have protested in Britain in the seven months since the onslaught on Gaza began – many of them and more expressed their displeasure with Tory and Labour politicians at the ballot box in the 2 May local elections (see pages 6-7).

Above all, the Palestinian masses and the working class in the Middle East have the power to decisively change things. The Socialist Party and the Committee for a Workers’ International have been making the case for a socialist intifada – a democratic mass struggle of the Palestinians – to bring an end to the horror in Gaza, and international working-class action to halt the war.

The development of such a movement would light the touch paper for working-class struggle across the region, threatening the ruling elites. Israel’s fragile right-wing coalition government would not be insulated from its effects.

For socialists in Britain, the task is to help strengthen the working-class movement here and build mass support for socialist ideas – the alternative to capitalist crisis driving war and oppression internationally.

The Socialist Party is fighting 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 mass workers’ party in Britain that fights for socialism and internationalism

Build the student protests against war

Seamus Smyth, Socialist Party East Midlands organiser

University students across the United States have set up encampments to protest against the brutal onslaught on the Palestinian people by the Israeli state after the US Government agreed an extra $15 billion for the Israeli military. Students are calling on universities to cut ties with companies making huge profits aiding the Israeli military and its occupation in Gaza.

There has been vicious police suppression against the protesters, showing how cruel the university managements are by encouraging these attacks on students and staff. In Columbia University, for example, students were faced with hundreds of riot police who barbarically attacked protesters and arrested students and staff en masse.

It is not only university management; the pro-capitalist Democratic and Republican parties support and encourage these cruel responses by police and university security.

UK protests

Students here have seen the events in the US and have taken action onto their campuses with solidarity protests and encampments. Students fighting against the war do not have a mass party that represents them either.

In order for students to defend the right to protest in solidarity with the Palestinian people, students need to have their own democratic organisations. They could link up with the workers’ movement and the trade unions. Socialist Party members are fighting in trade unions to bring together workers in the arms and logistics industries to discuss and debate what action they can take against the war – workers in the same companies students are protesting against.

Students, linked to the workers’ movement, could help take the necessary steps for genuine workers’ political representation, to fight against the barbaric war on Gaza and the right to protest on campuses and in the workplaces, but also to fight against the housing crisis, never-ending cuts and exploitation here in Britain.

The fight against war means fighting for socialism. It’s the working-class and students internationally who have the power to bring that change about.