The last week has seen three unsurprising but related and significant developments in the Palestinian struggle against Israeli apartheid that provide the pro-Palestinian forces with tremendous clarity about the road ahead.
ICJ interim Orders
The first significant event is the ICJ finding that Israel has a genocide case to answer and ICJ’s imposition of “interim orders” to protect Palestinians against this genocide. Given that Israel conducts its genocide boastfully in broad daylight before the world’s cameras the judges of the ICJ could not have come to a fundamentally different finding – despite the shameful efforts of Judge Sebutinde of Uganda.
In the court of world opinion, Zionism already stands condemned for its crimes against humanity.
The ICJ ruling will not change Tel Aviv’s pitiless conduct. The Zionist state has no regard for international law or morality and will probably ignore ICJ interim measures. Nor will the ICJ ruling dilute the support of Israel’s allies and role models – “successful” genocide practitioners – the US, the UK, Japan, Canada, Germany, Australia, and New Zealand or the Western countries generally.
These governments will continue to pour weapons and money into Israel’s war machine even as they shed crocodile tears about Israeli “excesses”. And their frightened little stooges in the Global South will continue slavishly and shamelessly to line up and declare their impotent support for Israel. They will continue with weak and shameful diversionary tactics such as sanctioning UNRWA a UN programme whose staff continue to provide humanitarian support to Palestinian civilians even in the face of Israel’s genocidal rage.
The importance of the ICJ ruling is its affirmative impact on the consciousness and resolve of billions of ordinary people all over the world. It helps billions recognise that something is fundamentally wrong with the world order and to reject and defy the imperialist status quo, they have taken for granted their whole lives.
The judicial recognition that Israel is perpetrating a holocaust with the support of the imperialist countries takes humankind one step towards rebellion and revolution. The road may be long and hard but we will topple not only Israeli apartheid but the entire rotten global power structure that supports a myriad of injustices around the world.
Israel rejects the “Two-State Solution”.
The second significant event is Prime Minister Netanyahu’s infamous rejection of the two-state solution. Netanyahu’s rejection of Palestinian statehood is also not a surprise. Israel has for 40 years systematically sabotaged any attempt at peaceful coexistence between the Indigenous people of Palestine and Israeli settlers as sovereign neighbours. And several other high ranking Israeli officials have also stated this position over the years. For years, many considered the “two-state” solution as a fig-leaf that gave the illusion that the imperialist powers’ support for Israel has a decent end-goal.
Now, the mask has dropped and there is consistency between Israeli word and deed. Now ordinary people everywhere can see the true evil face of Israel and its allies. Because if there is no longer a two-state solution on the table then it is easy to see that Israel is pursuing a “Final Solution”. Israel is working to wipe the Palestinian people out of history and to occupy all their lands – and the imperialist powers support them. This war is not about Hamas and Gaza. It is about exterminating every Palestinian everywhere. It is genocide in the best traditions of Hitler’s Nazi Germany.
Regionalisation
The third significant event, or trend that crystalised last week, is the spread of the conflict. So-called “Iranian backed” militias near the Jordanian border have killed three US service personnel in a drone attack. Again, not surprising. There was no realistic chance that Imperialism would not seize on the opportunity of renewed Israeli-Palestine conflict to attempt to shore up its waning influence in Western and Central Asia.
In recent years the US influence with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar in Western Asia has visibly declined (but is by no means ended). Under President Trump the US pursued a programme of “Abraham Accords” designed to entice despotic Arab states to “normalise” relations with Israel and isolate Palestine’s institutions. This policy was extremely unpopular in the streets of the Middle East.
The Hamas strike on 7 October and Israel’s genocidal response has completely collapsed this strategy and Arab states are compelled to endorse Hamas’ agenda if not the 7 October attack itself.
The US is no longer able to lead morally, politically, or even economically in West Asia despite frenetic diplomatic activity. Predictably the US is responding militarily to retard national liberation struggles (and contain its perceived global and regional competitors) even though this conflict is 10,000 kilometres away from Washington. Within 24 hours of Hamas’ October 7 attack the US had committed.
2 aircraft carrier groups to the Mediterranean and placed its 30 odd military bases in West Asia on high alert to prevent solidarity actions by Israel’s neighbours. The US has warned Iran, the main regional power, and a sworn enemy of Zionist Israel, not to intervene. The US (with the UK) is bombing Yemeni infrastructure and engaging Houthi fighters in the Red Sea. The US is conducting drone attacks on Lebanese, Iraqi, Syrian and other militias that support Palestinian independence. It was purely a matter of time before the US suffered retaliatory action by these forces. There is now escalating danger of a direct confrontation between the US and Iran which may mean a global and not just regional conflict.
Call to Higher Forms of Struggle
What do these interlinked developments mean for all the right-thinking peoples of the world who support Palestine in thought, word, and deed? They provide clarity about the nature of this struggle and the conditions for victory.
- Allegations of genocide are not emotional Palestinian or Left histrionics. The International Court of Justice recognizes this. The Prime Minister of Israel literally declares this. Israel’s main allies recognize this and are deploying military resources to enable Israel to ignore the ICJ at the risk of a regional or even global conflagration. This is the holocaust. It is Armageddon.
- We must collectively increase pressure for an immediate and unconditional cease-fire that allows humanitarian assistance to the People of Gaza. And we call on Palestine’s neighbours and their institutions to coordinate this relief effort with the Palestinian authorities and with UNRWA.
- Now that it is abundantly clear to billions that the Palestinian struggle for self-determination is actually a global struggle between the ordinary people of the world against the powers of the imperialist states we must begin to struggle on a long-term, coordinated, global, strategic, basis.
Until Palestine is free, none of us can be free. And until Imperialism is defeated in each of our countries and in its global architecture we are not free.
- We must therefore commit to a programme of ideological struggle. We must confront Zionism, racism, and all other imperialist ideologies with better ideas about humanity’s mission and future.
- We must commit to a programme of political struggles. Our movements must begin to take seriously the question of political power. It is only when we have progressive forces wielding state power, that we can focus power on liberating humankind in Palestine and elsewhere.
- We must commit to strengthening our international networking and coordination. We must develop the capacity to disrupt and pressure not just Israel but also Israel’s allies – the true authors of this genocide.
- We must continue to insist that there can be no resolution to the crisis of Palestine other than solutions forged by the Palestinian people and their self-determined institutions.
The pattern we are seeing in Western Asia is completely consistent with US provoked developments in Central Europe, Western Africa, and East Asia. The US has decided that regions where it cannot prevail will be plunged into unproductive conflict.
Victory for the people of Palestine is concern.
Kwesi Pratt,Jnr
General Secretary
