Israel & Palestine

The so-called Peace Process is dead. It will be not be revived until the Israeli army has done its bloody work in Gaza thoroughly. Ultimately, both Jews and Arabs must have the right to live in peace and control their own destinies in a homeland of their own. It is easy to state this aim, but not so easy to say how it can be achieved. In the concluding part of his article Alan Woods shows the relation between war and revolution and explains that the prior condition for solving the Palestinian question is the overthrow of the reactionary Arab regimes in the Middle East.

Just over one year after the Annapolis Conference that was supposed to produce a deal between Israel and the Palestinians, the Israeli ruling class has concentrated all its military might to pulverise Gaza. Once again the Middle East is engulfed in the flames of war. Alan Woods explains the reasons for Israel's invasion of Gaza and analyses the wider implications for relations between the powers in the Middle East and on a world scale.

We are publishing here two leaflets against the war in Gaza. Click here to download the leaflet produced by Socialist Appeal in Britain and here for the flyer of Socialist Appeal in the U.S. Download, print and distribute widely!

A statement of the Iranian Marxists on the recent Israeli attack on Gaza, that explains the need to build a genuine Marxist leadership throughout the Middle East in opposition to the Zionist regime in Israel, the reactionary Arab regimes, and also Islamic fundamentalist movements that offer no real way out to the masses.

We have received this interesting comment from a Marxist in Israel, who looks at the logic behind the Israeli attack on Gaza, how it is being used for domestic political interests in Israel, the chauvinism whipped up by the mainstream media, but also the voices of protest from within Israel, which although relatively small at this stage can grow later. He also looks at the role of Hamas and its inability to solve any of the problems facing the Palestinian masses.

Two years after the Israeli ‘Defence’ Forces indiscriminately slaughtered over a thousand Lebanese civilians in the quaintly-titled Operation Just Reward, Israel has turned its attention to Gaza, in the form of Operation Cast Lead. Stripped of its innocuous-sounding name, this operation becomes a lot less palatable: according to Palestinian medical sources, nearly 300 Palestinians have been killed, including numerous women and children. Israel’s targets have included police stations (which are unsurprisingly situated in densely-populated areas), the headquarters of a Hamas-owned satellite television channel, and the Islamic University,...

The recent municipal elections in Tel Aviv, although won by the right wing, produced a massive swing to the Israeli Communist Party (ICP), which gained 35% of the vote. Jewish and Arab workers, Jewish and Arab youth, voted massively for the ICP. In the commercial, industrial and financial centre of Israel, in the biggest city in the country a radical left mood is brewing among the workers and youth.

Three years have passed since Israel's disengagement from Gaza. This article draws a critical  balance sheet of these events and  explains why the Israeli left and many others internationally were so wrong in regarding Sharon's decision as a step towards peace in the region. The choice to pull-out from Gaza, on the contrary, served the strategic interests of the Israeli ruling class.

Hamas has reached an agreement whereby they will cease rocket attacks across the border from Gaza and Israel will lift the economic blockade. Hamas however, must now police Gaza for the Israeli state, making sure no one carries out attacks. The Hamas leaders are going down the same road as the PLO leaders before them.

Israel has recently renewed "peace" talks with Syria. The problem is that on the crucial question of the return of the Golan Heights to Syria, Israel cannot afford to grant this demand and Asad cannot sign an agreement without such a concession. That explains the lack of enthusiasm of the Israeli masses.

On the 14th May 1948 the state of Israel was proclaimed independent. The immediate results were an outbreak of killings and the creation of huge numbers of Israeli and Palestinian refugees. Palestinians refer to it as the naqba (catastrophe). Luke Wilson explains how Israel has become a bulwark of imperialism, what it has meant for the politics of the Middle East, for Israeli Jews and Palestinians, and how the creation of Israel has perpetuated anti-semitism elsewhere.

Recently there was a protest in Tel Aviv - of both Jews and Arabs - against a reunion of Etzel, one of the terrorist Zionist groups used against the Arab population in the process of the formation of the state of Israel. In the "only democracy in the Middle East" these peaceful demonstrators were brutally manhandled by the police.

After the defeat of the Israeli army in Lebanon two years ago, the Israeli Defence Forces have been trying to win back their image as the only real defenders of the people in Israel. Now they are constantly provoking Syria in the hope that Syria will hit back, something it seems unwilling to do.

We received this interesting article from Israel that shows the contradictions piling up within the very foundations of the Israeli state: the Israeli Defence Force.