The house seizures and evictions in Sheikh Jarrar, East Jerusalem/Al Quds, the attacks on worshippers at the Al Aqsa Mosque/Dome of the Rock, and the murderous attacks on Gaza by Netanyahu’s ‘caretaker’ government, are a further escalation of the genocidal Zionist project of destroying the Palestinian people. One obvious purpose of this is to prolong Netanyahu’s own personal rule, facing a real possibility of jail for corruption, and having failed for the third time to form a stable government after an election, provoking a conflict with the Palestinians is no doubt a deliberate ploy to stay in power.
The Israeli regime took advantage of Ramadan to brutalise worshippers at the Al Aqsa Mosque while at the same time the ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem, given a green light by Trump’s move of the US Embassy to Jerusalem (which the US will not reverse under Biden), has escalated as Palestinian homes are confiscated to be handed over to more Jewish settlers, part of the annexation plans which the US okayed. The Sheikh Jarrar issue is now tied up in the Israeli Supreme Court, but no one should have any illusions as to the outcome of that; it is the latest episode in the ongoing Nakba of the Palestinian people since 1948. The attack on Al Aqsa is even more serious, as it prefigures what Zionist extremists have long planned to do: destroy Islam’s third most holy site and erect a ‘Third Temple’ on the site; an incredible provocation against the world’s Muslims and an index of Zionism’s vanguard role on the Western far right in trying to foment more predatory wars using religion and a supposed ‘clash of civilisations’ as a weapon.
In response to Israeli attacks on Al Aqsa and Sheikh Jarrar, Palestinian militants in Gaza have fired hundreds of their home-made rockets at Askelon, at Jerusalem itself and Tel Aviv, as a show of force in solidarity with those under attack. Giving rise to agonised calls from the Biden administration and from UK Labour’s Keir Starmer for ‘de-escalation’. Biden will do nothing to stop Israel, of course. Even if the current US administration finds this inconvenient, it has to reckon with Israel’s supporters in in the US ruling class, and at best will most likely continue to vacillate before falling into line with the Zionists. They are, after all, the strategic allies and supporters of US and Western imperialism, which will not lightly cross them. Meanwhile the UK Johnson government has condemned the ‘attacks’ on Israel from Gaza. Openly supporting the genocidal Zionists, of course they say nothing to condemn the ethnic terrorism in Jerusalem, or the murderous ariel bombardment of Gaza that has already led to 24 dead today, including nine children killed.
We in the Liaison Committee for the Fourth International condemn these barbaric attacks and call on the working-class movement and all oppressed peoples to express solidarity with the Palestinians. This must include where possible political strikes and labour movement boycotts directed at the Zionist regime. The Zionist state must be overthrown by the working class of the region, with the Palestinian masses in the lead, and Israel’s population of colonial-settlers must be subordinated to basic democracy. For the unconditional right to return of all Palestinian victims of Zionism! Smash Zionism and all its racist laws and impositions! The Zionist state must be replaced through a process of permanent revolution, mobilising the oppressed masses behind the working class as the champion of all the oppressed, with a multi-ethnic state of Palestine, part of a wider, regional revolutionary offensive.
