2021-05-17

For a week now, the army of the racist Israeli government has been shelling the Gaza Strip from the ground and air. Hundreds of Gaza residents have been killed and wounded during the attacks, many buildings have collapsed on their residents and a large part of Gaza’s infrastructure has been damaged. Medical officials in Gaza say so far 192 people, including 58 children and 34 women, have been killed in Gaza since the Israeli army began bombing, with the death toll still rising. Fifty-two Palestinians were killed in the Gaza Strip on Thursday alone, the highest daily death toll since last Monday. Israeli officials say ten people have been killed in Hamas attacks, including a patrol soldier on the Gaza border, an Indian worker and Israeli civilians, including two children. The death toll on the fighting sides show the balance of power that governs this devastating war. Netanyahu and the Israeli army are announcing their brutal attacks in the name of self-defense, and the whole Western world is repeating the same thing in their media. This is how the place of the victim and the criminal is changed. Meanwhile, what lies behind the propaganda of the racist state of Israel and its imperialist defenders is the real cause of this devastating war. This vicious concealment erases the history of more than seventy years of occupation, repression and displacement of millions of Palestinians, and at the same time marginalizes the specific event that led to this round of devastating war.

One week ago, the Israeli government ordered the evacuation of Palestinians from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem, paving the way for new settlers. The Palestinians, especially the youth, resisted this decision. The Israeli government’s response was to send in military and security forces to suppress protestors and build a safe wall for the Israeli far-right. This sparked a war that is said to be one of the most devastating wars between the occupying government and the Palestinians. Now, on the 73rd anniversary of the catastrophe, Palestinian families must be evicted so that Palestinians live the same terrible historical experience once again. They recall the proclamation of the establishment of the state of Israel, where more than 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from their villages and homes. This was the beginning of a catastrophe that resulted in the displacement of more than four million Palestinians in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. The history of these seventy-two years is the history of the brutal occupation of a racist regime and the history of the resistance and just struggle of a nation that is fighting for its right to live. All this history describes the annexation of the land of the Palestinians. Even now, the one-fifth portion of the land that was given to the Palestinians during the unjust division at the time of founding the state of Israel is shrinking all the time. What is left for the Palestinians are fragments on the west bank of the Jordan River, which are constantly being devoured by the same Jewish settlements, and the large Gaza prison, which is surrounded on all sides by the Israeli government and is destroyed during the outbreak of any war.

The fact is that the situation is getting tougher for the Palestinians on a daily basis, and in the absence of a leading progressive force and a freedom and equality seeking horizon, this situation creates favorable conditions for those who are strongly reactionary and anti-freedom.

The question now is whether a new intifada will form from the heart of this devastating war, whether the nation’s resistance will spread throughout the occupied territories, whether the left-wing forces in the Palestinian movement and the progressive forces in Israel will be able to end the domination of the corrupt, autonomous state on the West Bank and the reactionary tendencies of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip as well as the interference and influence of Hezbollah and the Islamic Republic of Iran? And will they be able to find an alternative to the Israeli government’s policy of occupation and ethnic cleansing? And finally, can the working class and the socialist and progressive movement in the Middle East respond to this most critical crisis in the region? At least along this sad history, most of the inhabitants of this region have shown deep sense of solidarity with the fate of the Palestinians. Now, once again, this sense of solidarity must come to the fore in defense of the right to life of the Palestinian people and in defense of the right to form a Palestinian state. The imperialist governments of the West paid the price for their centuries-old crimes against the Jews by displacing a nation, and now after seventy-three years, they showed their inhuman essence by declaring solidarity with the oppressive state of Israel. And this, of course, is not new. All these years, they have supported any apparent aggression of the occupying regime against the Palestinian people. All these years, they have shamelessly called the government formed on the basis of the displacement of a nation the only democratic government in the region.

The fact is that resolving the Palestinian crisis will pave the way for class struggle throughout the region, both among the Palestinians and in Israeli society. It is for a reason that all the forces that see their interests in opposing the emergence of a class movement are diligent in fomenting conflicts and wars among the inhabitants of this region in the name of ethnicity and religion. Hatred and enmity between the Palestinian and Israeli workers, between the workers throughout the region, has to take the place of class solidarity, so that all racist tendencies, all Jewish extremist tendencies and all branches of political Islam keep the upper hand. This obliges progressive humanity to come to the aid of the Palestinian people by creating a broad front of support and solidarity. This destructive war should not be allowed to bury the last hopes and aspirations of a nation to create an independent state and get rid of the current sufferings! Progressive humanity must and can put an end to the racist and aggressive policies of the Israeli government. It is in this way that the hopes and aspirations of a nation for liberation become a reality.

Bureau of International Relations of the Communist Party of Iran

17 May 2021