Stop the Israeli slaughter of the Gaza Strip!
STATEMENT of the International Workers League (Fourth International)
The state of Israel is carrying out a massacre in the Gaza Strip. More than 1,000 Palestinians are dead because of the indiscriminate bombardment by the Zionist army. Israel seeks to defeat the Palestinian people by this slaughter of civilians. Hamas, who won elections in 2006, gained independence for a piece of their land from which they expelled the agents of Israel, as we said in our statement of the LIT (CI) on the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the State of Israel.
Despite the conciliatory efforts of Hamas, who called for the formation of a national unity government with Fatah in mid-2007, the situation led to open clashes between the two forces in a coup d’état organized by Abbas to remove Hamas and take full control of the government. The masses in Gaza reacted and pushed Hamas to rid the territory of the Fatah military and police of Abbas. Gaza was liberated which was a huge triumph of the Palestinian masses because it ended control by Israel and its agents, turning it, in fact, into an independent Palestinian territory, albeit in very difficult conditions of isolation.
Defeat Gaza at any price
This situation was totally unacceptable to a state like Israel, which began a combination of military strikes, first to destroy its infrastructure, power generation and water supply and later by bombing on civilians and a blockade to prevent food, medicines and fuel from getting through. Their aim was to defeat the resistance of the people of Gaza at any cost and force them to surrender.
The blockade, raids and bombings that have been happening on a continuous basis since 2006 is now become a brutal offensive. The Palestinian people have little more than their bodies to resist Israeli bombs. The attack comes just days before Barack Obama becomes the new U.S. president, and he has made it clear that the present path will continue. Obama has not acted on this occasion but when he visited Israel he said that he would do the same if he lived where Palestinian missiles fell.
The Bush administration blames Hamas and supports Israel in its further genocide. European representatives insist that the Arab world must accept Israels’ claims to Palestinian territory and the British foreign minister said: “The leaders of the Arab world have a great opportunity to make clear that the interests of the Palestinian people can only be ensured through a viable Palestinian state to exist alongside a secure Israel.”
Moratinos, the Spanish foreign minister of the Zapatero government, called for a truce with a return to negotiations, warning that those responsible for the current offensive by Israel are Hamas.
The puppet government of Mahmoud Abbas, joined with the monstrous Spanish minister and had the audacity to say that those responsible for the genocidal attacks by Israel was Hamas itself, for “not having renewed the truce with Israel, in a further betrayal of the Palestinian cause.”
That truce in reality has been used by Israel to maintain the blockade of food supplies, medicines and fuel and to demand that no missile or weapon could be used by the Palestinians under siege, while at the same time the Israeli state was able to maintain its ‘Nazi’ bombing anywhere in the Gaza Strip (30 deaths in 6 months). When the first period ended, Hamas called for the lifting of the siege.
Even officials of the UN body UNRWA for refugees said that Israel was committing crimes by maintaining this humanitarian blockade. In retaliation for this, Richard Falk and his staff were prevented by the Israeli government from entering the occupied territories.
The Egyptian government of Mubarak allowed prime minister Tzipi Livni declare their intention to invade Gaza from his own presidential palace in Cairo. Most seriously he has prevented the entry of refugees in order to keep the passages on the border with Gaza closed, to assist the Zionist siege. Mubarak is complicit in the deaths of hundreds of Palestinians.
The Israeli government has killed daily throughout this period and subjected more than 1,500,000 people to extremely inhuman conditions. They have used the excuse that Hamas did not ratify the ‘ceasefire’ (a death sentence for Palestinians) and of the few successful missiles at Israeli towns to justify their attack. The continuing attacks have taken place at a time of no ceasefire. Israel wants the ceasefire to be unilateral but the Palestinians must defend themselves to prevent being massacred.
The International Workers League – Fourth International fully support the Palestinian people and their right to end the occupation of their land that has already lasted 60 years.
We, the IWL (FI), call on all political organizations, unions and industry to take action on an urgent basis and to mobilize against this new slaughter that Israel is perpetrating. We must demand the severance of relations with the Zionist state and give full support to the Palestinian resistance.
DOWN WITH THE GENOCIDE IN GAZA STRIP
LONG LIVE THE RESISTANCE OF THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE
International Secretariat of the LIT (CI)
São Paulo, December 29, 2008
