Current positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières (ESSF) has published a number of statements about the Israeli-Palestine conflict from across the globe. In addition we publish a letter which appeared in the October 11 2023 edition of the Irish Times, and solidarity statements issued by the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, and the SIPTU Global Solidarity Committee.
Israeli Apartheid Must Be Dismantled
Sir, – Michael Jansen (“Hamas attack on Israel followed years of containment and dire poverty in Gaza”, World, October 9th) rightly notes that the attack on Israel by Hamas was inevitable. Gaza has been under siege and blockade for 16 years, with 60 per cent of its people living in poverty, and tens of thousands suffering from post-traumatic stress after suffering four full-scale Israeli military attacks between 2008 and 2021. When people protested at the Gaza fence in the Great March of Return, they were met by snipers’ bullets.
The response of the Israeli government to the Hamas attack in recent days is shocking. It intends to punish the civilian population of Gaza, in knowing breach by a government of international law.
Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant has ordered a total siege on Gaza. “There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel, it’s all closed. We are fighting against human animals,” he said. The dehumanisation of Palestinian residents is the prelude to massacre. The bombs have started to fall on Gaza wiping out entire families. The statement by the Israeli ambassador Dana Ehrlich (News, October 9th) that lawyers sit with “very strict rules” observing each target is palpable nonsense.
There is no care to avoid civilian fatalities, and now starvation of the people is to be added as a weapon of war. Israel has told Gazan residents to leave the area, but they know full well that they prevent movement out of the territory. The ambassador disingenuously says people can seek safe places in Gaza, but there are no safe areas in the overcrowded enclave, as the bombs rain down.
The violence and racially based apartheid against Palestinian civilians has intensified under the current Israeli far-right government. For months we have read of teenagers shot dead, of house demolitions leaving Palestinian families homeless, of water springs blocked and Palestinian farmers being chased off their land by armed Israeli settlers. This year alone over 200 Palestinians were shot by the Israeli military, including 45 children. Yet the international community remained silent and complicit.
It is time to address the fundamental issue of the injustice that has been done to the people of Palestine, the seizure of their land and the growing armed settlements being sponsored by Israel.
It is beyond time for Ireland to make its mark by insisting on the dismantling of apartheid, and by passing the Occupied Territories Bill. – Yours, etc,
BETTY PURCELL (Irish Times Letter, October 11 2023
We are publishing a series of positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We may publish more at a later date. Statements from Palestinian or Israeli movements are published on our site separately, as are articles. Source https://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article68144
INTERNATIONAL
ILNSS: A turning point?
For decades Israel has not respected international law and continues to colonise, repress, segregate and flout the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination.
For some years now, Israeli propaganda has been claiming that there is no longer any “Israeli-Palestinian conflict”, that the Israeli army has subdued the Palestinian population, that their military superiority guarantees their security, and Western governments have been pretending to believe it.
Taken by surprise yesterday morning by Hamas and the Palestinian resistance, Western governments did not have time to update the press releases they always issue in this kind of situation. They condemned “terrorist” actions, reiterated Israel’s right to defend itself, and called for an end to the violence on the part of the Palestinians.
The absurdity of these communiqués stems from the fact that they focus only on the events of the last few hours. However, to understand the situation in Palestine in general and Gaza in particular, we need to remember that most Palestinians in Gaza are the descendants of refugees from the 1948 war. The UN has given them the right to return to their homes within the current borders of the State of Israel, which refuses to let them do so. We must remember that for decades Israel has not respected international law and continues to colonise, repress, segregate and flout the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination. We must remember that the Palestinians in Gaza have been under an illegal blockade, condemned but without effect, for 17 years. Finally, we must also remember that for a year now, the extreme right-wing Israeli government has not negotiated anything with the Palestinians. All it has done is use force, blindly, in the hope of subjugating them and diverting attention from the corruption scandals in which it is implicated.
Since the beginning of the year, there has been an increase in the number of Palestinians murdered (over 230, far more than in the last 10 years), as well as expulsions amounting to ethnic cleansing, incarcerations, including without trial, with an unprecedented number of children, and the retention of the bodies of murdered Palestinians. These state practices go hand in hand with a blank cheque given to Israeli settlers, who also attack Palestinian villages in the West Bank in veritable pogroms, as well as Muslim and Christian religious sites, causing death and destruction, encouraged by far-right ministers.
Contrary to the hopes of these arsonists, the daily humiliation of the Palestinians has not made them lower their heads. On the contrary, it has fuelled their anger and prompted them to take up arms again, a tactic that had been abandoned for years. This turning point began with the return of armed groups to the West Bank in 2022, and we are now seeing the Palestinian resistance in Gaza inflict on the Israeli army and government the worst debacle in its history.
There is no such thing as a clean war, we condemn all war crimes, and we know that such an attack will unfortunately cause hundreds of Israeli civilian casualties, while Israeli civilians and soldiers are already being held in Gaza. We also know that the Israeli government currently knows no other strategy than to respond with bombardments and cause further Palestinian casualties, which are already in the hundreds. It is also possible that armed forces from neighbouring countries will intervene, thereby risking putting the whole region under fire.
Let’s not forget that the civilian casualties have only one culprit: Israeli colonisation and the violence it produces. This is where the international community must act and put pressure on the Israeli state to finally change its ways and stop adding death to death. In addition to the humanitarian arguments, yesterday should be enough to convince us that Israel’s 70-year strategy is not working. The Palestinians will fight as long as they suffer injustice. It is therefore also out of pragmatism that Israel must seek a lasting solution and take the path of international law: lift the blockade on Gaza, evacuate the occupied territories, let the refugees return to their homes, and put an end to the apartheid situation by granting full equality to all its inhabitants. Without these common-sense measures, the succession of massacres will only continue.
If our governments refuse to apply such pressure, it is up to us to put pressure on them, to make them listen to reason, and to demand an end to impunity for Israel. There is still time to avoid a bloodbath, and the people of the world must put pressure on their governments to stop the military operation undertaken by the Netanyahu government, humiliated by Hamas, and bring it back to the negotiating table. This is how the current turning point could unblock the situation and finally lead to a just peace in Palestine.
October 7, 2023, The Network
International Labour Network of Solidarity and Struggle
• https://laboursolidarity.org/en/n/2892/a-turning-point
Fourth International: Solidarity with the Palestinian people – end the occupation!
We condemn the hypocrisy of those who act as if the violence came out of nowhere
The root cause of the violence is the occupation of Palestine by the Israeli state. Palestinians have borne the brunt of the death and destruction of the last 75 years. The situation in the Gaza strip is particularly inhuman. Here, the population has been subjected to ongoing humiliation, collective punishments and violence from the Israeli state. Appeals for “de-escalation” are pointless, one-sided condemnations of violence by Hamas are hypocritical, as long as this root cause is not addressed.
The Israeli state, governed by varying coalitions, has adapted a strategy of turning the Gaza Strip into an open-air prison, subjecting its population to regular violent offensives. The offensive by Hamas has shown the unsustainable nature of this inhuman strategy. But rather than looking for ways to end the violence and the suffering, the colonial Israeli state, supported by governments across the West, is only doubling down on this strategy, thereby making more bloodshed and suffering inevitable.
Already, we are hearing voices demanding an intensification of the oppression of the Palestinian people, with members of the Israeli government adopting genocidal rhetoric about fighting “inhuman beasts” and utterly cynical calls on Palestinians to leave the Gaza Strip if they want to save themselves from Israeli operations. This means worsening even further a situation that is creating many Palestinian as well as Israeli civilian casualties, casualties that we deplore.
We condemn the hypocrisy of those who act as if the violence came out of nowhere and ignore 75 years of colonial oppression of the Palestinian people by the Israeli state. Nothing can justify attacks targeting civilians and this standard should be upheld universally in the condemnation of all such war crimes. We refuse to join the chorus of those who condemn violence when committed by Palestinians but ignore, or, like Western governments, actively support it in the form of the continuing war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Israeli state. The so-called international community is deeply complicit in making violence inevitable, and offers no solutions to address its cause: the continued occupation of the Palestinian people. This oppression, carried out by a state that is militarily vastly superior and supported by the most powerful countries in the world, will make future violent explosions inevitable. All those who have for decades supported this occupation are responsible.
We do not share Hamas’s strategy and tactics because this path cannot put an end to the occupation, which is the only way to end the violence. The end of the occupation is only possible through the collective resistance of the Palestinian masses, along with the anti-war activists in the Israeli state, and supported by their international allies. As the Fourth International, we take pride in being among these allies.
We are with the Palestinian people in their continued resistance against Israeli colonialism and their struggle for self-determination. That is why we call for intensification of support for the campaign of BDS, for statements and demonstrations of solidarity with the Palestinian people.
Our goal is an end to Israeli colonialism and a state with equal rights for all its people. On the immediate level, we demand the cessation of the Israeli state’s actions against the Palestinian population in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem and end to relations of any kind with the colonial Israeli apartheid-regime.
10 October 2023
Executive Bureau of the Fourth International
AUSTRALIA
Red Flag: Stand with Gaza!
Red Flag stands unequivocally with the Palestinians who are currently under Israeli bombardment. We oppose this Israeli war and defend Palestinians’ right to self-defence and national self-determination.
For background, see :
Five things to remember when Israel ‘defends itself’:
https://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article68143
FRANCE
NPA: Gaza offensive: the NPA supports the legitimate struggle of the Palestinian people
Great powers looking the other way when the UN has multiplied resolutions against the apartheid policy of the State of Israel.
Over the past two days, the struggle for the rights of the Palestinian people has intensified. The number of civilian casualties and the battle of numbers and images are rightly shocking, but we must not forget that the latest events surrounding the Gaza offensive can only be appreciated in the light of the dramatic situation of the Palestinian people. Daily humiliations, murders, imprisonment, the amplification of the policy of occupation and colonization by Netanyahu and his extreme right-wing government, the inhuman blockade of the Gaza Strip which has lasted for some fifteen years… All this is suffered by the Palestinians in the total indifference of the “international community”, with these great powers looking the other way when the UN has multiplied resolutions against the apartheid policy of the State of Israel.
Here [in France], the tears of many political leaders and commentators are of variable geometry. After decades of indifference to, and even invisibilization of, the plight of the Palestinians, an ideological offensive is now being waged against the “terrorism” of Hamas, a consensus aimed at preventing solidarity with the Palestinian people’s legitimate struggle for their rights.
Hamas’s political and ideological project, strategy and means of struggle are not those of the NPA. In this context, we denounce the killing of civilians by Hamas. The Palestinian resistance is made up of forces with different political projects. We deplore all civilian victims, whether Israeli or Palestinian, and we denounce all war crimes.
We share the necessary fight against the colonization carried out by a bellicose and warlike state, that of Israel, which today throws hundreds of thousands of people into the street in a matter of hours before bombing and wants to set up a “complete siege” of the Gaza Strip. We do not confuse this state and its policies with the people, the activists, or the anti-war currents, like the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which headlines “Netanyahu bears responsibility for this Israel-Gaza war”.
We reaffirm our full support for the Palestinian struggle for emancipation, including armed struggle, and for the right to self-determination, the only condition for Palestinians to live in peace on their land.
Over the past two days, several political figures, including Prime Minister Borne, and associations such as LICRA, the Union des étudiants juifs de France [Jewish students Union of France] and Avocats sans frontières [Lawyers without borders], have stepped up aggressive statements and threats against the NPA. The campaign unleashed against us is indecent and misleading, and we ask to be allowed to explain our position in the media. No threat of trial or ban will silence our solidarity with the oppressed. This is why we reiterate our call for united street mobilizations in support of the Palestinian people and the legitimate struggle for their rights.
Montreuil, Monday October 9, 2023
Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (New Anticapitalist Party, NPA)
French version :
• NPA. 9 October 2023 à 13h16. :
https://nouveaupartianticapitaliste.org/communique/offensive-de-gaza-les-solidarites-du-npa-vont-la-lutte-legitime-du-peuple-palestinien
• Translation DeepL and Pierre Rousset
GREECE
Yorgos Mitralias: Middle East stalemates and carnages
Beyond Zionism and Jihadism!
More than at any time in the 75 years of the State of Israel’s existence, these days we have witnessed the spectacular yet tragic collapse of the Zionist movement’s great promise to the persecuted Jewish people… that only a Jewish state in Palestine would be able to bring them the security and peace they have been deprived of for centuries! Today, Zionism’s patent failure to deliver on its promise is more evident than ever, as it is now generally accepted that the Jewish diaspora around the world may still be subject to anti-Semitism (once again on the rise), but nevertheless lives in far greater security and peace than the Jewish population in Israel. Clearly, the most dangerous place in the world for a Jew today is… Israel!.…
Alas, the last people to admit this are Israel’s current leaders, who are leading their country more than any Hamas, Jihad or Hezbollah to catastrophe. Racist to the extreme, chauvinistic, unconditional supporters of Greater Israel, obscurantists and professional warmongers, the various far-right politicians who make up the Israeli government have no other project than to continue worsening the crisis, constantly nibbling away at Palestinian land, oppressing and humiliating the Palestinian people to the extreme. Because their political survival – and not only that – demands it. Because only war-mongering and nationalist hysteria can enable their leader, the infamous Bibi Netanyahu, to relieve the suffocating pressure exerted on him for a year (!) by the hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens who have been demonstrating twice a week (!), demanding his impeachment, trial and condemnation for both his incredible corruption and his attempt to demolish the country’s democratic institutions. Seventy-five years on, the great (Jewish) Albert Einstein’s public denunciation of Mr. Netanyahu’s political masterminds and ancestors as “fascists”, “racists” and “terrorists” who can only do great harm to the Jewish people is more useful and topical than ever… (1)
So, if we can expect nothing remotely promising from Israel’s leaders, but also from their official opposition, we can also harbor no democratic or progressive illusions whatsoever about Hamas, Hezbollah and their “protecting power”, the Iran of the obscurantist and ultra-repressive Ayatollah regime. And, of course, we can expect nothing good from Western leaders, who are only capable of turning a blind eye to Israeli crimes in order to give unconditional support to Netanyahu and describe Hamas fighters as “terrorists”. The (provisional?) conclusion is therefore inevitably pessimistic: the resistance, the more than just struggle of the Palestinian people against both their enemies and their “friends”, has yet to find a political expression capable of inspiring and mobilizing the Arab masses, including the Palestinian people, in the way that socialism and then pan-Arabism did in the past, at least in part.
Since it is on the ruins of the emancipatory socialist and communist message that the reactionary obscurantisms, both religious and neo-liberal, that plague humanity today are flourishing, it is clear that the beginning of a way out of the current impasse must and can be sought through the reinvention of an anti-imperialist movement for national and social liberation, based on the internationalist solidarity of “those from below”. A “reinvention” that concerns us all directly, including in our own country. After all, given Israel’s enormous military superiority and the ongoing and increasingly scandalous betrayal of the Palestinian cause by all the otherwise so authoritarian and undemocratic Arab regimes, the only way to prevent the indefinite continuation of the mutual massacres of Palestinians and Jewish Israelis is through their militant solidarity and common struggle against their common enemies. The task looks and is indeed difficult. But it is the only realistic option…
Yorgos Mitralias
Note
1. https://www.cadtm.org/When-Einstein-called-fascists-those-who-rule-Israel-for-the-last-44-years
INDIA
Radical Socialist Appeal: Mobilise Solidarity for the People of Palestine
That Hamas is currently leading the people of Palestine does not indicate that something called political Islam is escalating violence on the ’innocent’ State of Israel. Israel was created by a racist myth, that Palestine was a “Land without a People”. The victors in World War II washed their hands off the long history of Christian Europe’s anti-semitism and chose the option of pushing all Jews to a place on which their claim is ridiculous, since Jewish and antecedent tribes had been evicted from this part of the world in the days of the Roman Empire.
Moreover, violating the UN’s proposed template, the Zionist aggressors depopulated and destroyed over 500 Palestinian villages, expelled over 7,00,000 Palestinians, and started a never-ending process of encroaching on Palestinian territories. The Israeli Nationality Law of 1952 formalized the process by declaring the former Palestinian citizenship to be devoid of substance.
Palestinians have fought back under increasingly difficult circumstances, with Arab states making peace with Israel, and the United States backing Israel in a sustained way.
Palestinian resistance has in recent years of necessity mostly been peaceful, even though Israel takes violent action against any resistance whatsoever. Gaza has been under blockade for 16 years and has suffered a dramatic humanitarian situation ever since, not to mention the repeated humiliations, deaths and bombings. For a long time, the news focused on the cycle of provocations, rockets, bombings and calls for “de-escalation” from “both sides”. The Israeli strategy has consisted of repeated physical elimination of activists and opponents of the occupation.
The scale of the attack on Israeli occupiers yesterday, has taken the Israeli establishment, including its military, by surprise. This attack has of course been condemned by “world leaders”—the pack of global reactionaries that include the likes of Biden, Macron, Sunak and Modi, whose regime has been using methods and practices perfected by Israel in Kashmir and in other parts of India. What is surprising is the hesitation on the part of those outside such circles to take a principled political stand.
An oppressed people have the full moral right to resist, including by military means. The oppressor, however, does not have the moral right to oppress by military or any other means and cannot justify such behaviour in the name of ’self-defence’ While it is not for us to decide on the particular tactics adopted by the Palestinian Resistance, we do urge that all efforts be made to avoid targeting or hurting unarmed civilians. This is a fundamental humanitarian principle applicable to all sides involved in any kind of armed struggle.
We call upon the Left, working class organisations and all civil society associations committed to democratic rights to express solidarity with the people of Palestine.
Oppose Israel’s indiscriminate and terroristic air bombardments and military action
Support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Campaign against Israel,
Call for the dismantling of the Settler-Colonial Apartheid state of Israel
Say no to the Abraham Accords
From the river to the sea
Palestine will be free
Radical Socialist
MALAYSIA
PSM: Solidarity with the Palestinian people’s struggle for self-determination
The recent escalation of Palestinian resistance against Israel is the culmination of the anger and frustration of the Palestinian people over the prolonged blockade of the Gaza Strip, illegal occupation of the Palestinian homeland, ethnic cleansing, forced evictions, brutal assaults, violent repressions, bombings, and torture, committed by the Zionist apartheid regime of Israel.
While we deplore the loss of civilian lives in the escalation of conflict, we must never forget to address the most fundamental cause of the Question of Palestine and the suffering of the Palestinian people – the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land for the last three-quarter century.
The world needs a political solution to the conflict in Palestine and the Middle East, not a military solution, but any solution to bring about peace in the region can only be achieved through the recognition, respect, and realization of the Palestinian right to self-determination, as well as an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
The Socialist Party of Malaysia (PSM) reiterates our solidarity with the Palestinian people in their struggle for self-determination. The struggle of the Palestinian people for self-determination is a struggle against the apartheid regime, colonization, imperialism, and social injustice.
We call for
An end to the Israeli occupation of Palestine;
Recognition, respect, and realization of the Palestinian right to self-determination;
An immediate end to the blockade of the Gaza Strip;
The fulfillment of the right of the Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland;
A comprehensive arms embargo on Israel;
All parties in the conflict should refrain from inflicting casualties on civilians.
There will be no sustainable and lasting peace in Palestine and the Middle East, as long as the right to self-determination and justice for the Palestinian people are not upheld.
Stop the violence! End the occupation! Free Palestine!
Released by,
Choo Chon Kai
Central Committee Member
Socialist Party of Malaysia / Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM)
Press Statement – 9th October 2023
See Also Irish Trade Union Solidarity Statements issued by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (endorsed by the SIPTU Global Solidarity Committee)
Tomás Ó Flatharta 
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