Despite the appalling slaughter in Gaza, the Palestinian fightback has continued to block the declared goals of the genocidal Netanyahu government. A much wider conflagration is brewing, with the Lebanese front threatening grave danger to imperialist plans for the region. That the resistance has proven so effective speaks to both the failure of ‘peace processes’ and to the enduring popularity of the armed liberation movement among the Palestinian masses. Yet the very question of resistance faces hostility within Britain and other imperialist countries, meeting state crackdowns and featuring little on official solidarity platforms. Led by the Labour Party, the British ruling class regards any endorsement of Palestinian resistance as unacceptable. They are supported by ‘left’ social democrats and other opportunists who seek to separate the idea of a free Palestine from armed struggle and limit its aims to the two-state ‘solution’ acceptable to the ruling class. For revolutionaries, the question of resistance in Palestine is inseparably linked to the fight against opportunism. LOUIS BREHONY reports.
Gaza and Jenin lead the resistance
The Zionist onslaught on Gaza grows ever more chaotic as centres deemed clear of resistance one moment are pulverised by salvoes of bombs, shells and missiles the next. Shuja’iyya, east of Gaza city, is among the refugee camps to suffer the failure of Zionist plans. In early December 2023, the occupation bombed and killed over 300 people in the area, flattening over 50 apartment buildings. In the wake of this destruction, Israeli military leaders claimed victory over the Shuja’iyya resistance, announcing on 21 December that they had taken full ‘operational control’. In June 2024, however, Shuja’iyya re-emerged as a major site of confrontation as the resistance responded to massacres by blowing up Zionist tanks and inflicting heavy damage upon the invading forces. ‘Operational control’ was an empty boast in the face of agile guerrilla warfare.
In the camps of the West Bank, the example is set by the unyielding resistance of Jenin, which has defeated repeated attempts to quash the movement of the oppressed. On 27 June, after months of Israeli pogroms, invasions, arrests and home demolitions, the Jenin resistance launched a counterattack, killing a Zionist officer and injuring 17 troops, with IDF helicopters having to return twice to retrieve their wounded. The Popular Resistance Committees called on ‘all of our revolutionary youth to emulate the heroism and actions of the Jenin revolutionaries and resistance fighters.’ Like Shuja’iyya, Jenin has faced repeated invasions, including the infamous massacre of April 2002. The Jenin Brigades were founded amidst the wave of mass mobilisation that followed the May 2021 Unity Intifada, unifying fighters not aligned to the collaborationist Palestinian Authority across factional lines. Nablus, Tulkarem and Tubas are among other West Bank regions to develop resistance in this mould, daily confronting occupation forces.
The Lebanese front
Facing renewed military confrontation and Zionist atrocities since 8 October, resistance forces in southern Lebanon have intensified their operations. On 18 June, Hezbollah released a nine-minute video produced by its hudhud drone, which, undetected by the Zionist state’s US-funded Iron Dome ‘security’ system, flew over Haifa revealing sensitive information on Israeli military installations, the Rafael military-industrial complex, port logistics, and national energy capabilities. Israeli media warned that Hezbollah could paralyse energy production. 60,000 Israelis have been evacuated south and Hezbollah have set army barracks, colonial settlements and economic targets aflame, while hitting occupation forces in the Syrian Golan Heights. Indiscriminate Zionist airstrikes on southern Lebanon had killed 435 by 25 June and displaced over 100,000.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said in a major speech on 19 June that, while Hezbollah did not seek ‘total war,’ the Zionist state ‘knows well that we have prepared ourselves for the worst… and that no place… will be spared from our rockets.’ Hinting that Israeli energy sources in the Mediterranean could be targeted, Nasrallah also warned the Cypriot government that ‘the resistance will deal with it as part of the war’ if it allowed its land to be used for Israeli military purposes; in recent months British imperialism has used its two Cyprus bases to launch attacks on Yemen and to help the Zionist state to shoot down Iranian drones. Since 2017, Zionist forces have used Cyprus to train for a ground invasion of Lebanon. In the wake of these developments, the Financial Times revealed on 26 June that US officials had been warning of Israel’s ‘limited ability to defend itself’ should the confrontation with Hezbollah escalate, while Newsweek predicted ‘untold destruction’ for the Zionist state, not just in Lebanon. Back in October 2023, Zionist security minister Yoav Gallant had called on the government to ‘destroy both Hamas and Hezbollah’. In late June 2024, he changed his tune and was warning that ‘opening a new front would be undesirable.’ Defeats at the hands of Hezbollah-led forces in 2000 and 2006 remain fresh in the Zionist memory.
Resistance and Zionist crisis
Though committed to ‘total victory’ over the resistance in Gaza, the failure to defeat the guerrilla struggle is causing divisions among Zionist war strategists. On 18 June, Netanyahu’s previously loyal army spokesman Daniel Hagari said that, ‘[The resistance] is rooted in the hearts of the people. Anyone who thinks we can eliminate Hamas is simply throwing sand in the eyes of the people… The notion of destroying Hamas, making Hamas disappear – is wrong.’ Ivri Elbaz, commander of the Israeli 12th Brigade admitted on 29 June that ‘dismantling Hamas in Rafah, southern Gaza, will take at least two more years.’ Acknowledging the decentralised nature of the resistance, Elbaz added that ‘Hamas is waging a guerrilla war in Rafah consisting of independent groups, which makes the task of dealing with it more difficult.’ Internal anti-Netanyahu protests have further complicated this mission, while US calls for a ceasefire, redoubled by US Vice President Kamala Harris on 25 July following a meeting with Netanyahu, are de facto recognition that the resistance cannot be defeated.
As PFLP activist Abu Kan’an explains, the 7 October resistance operation was rooted in decades of genocidal oppression, with the people of Gaza suffocating under the inhumane conditions of an imperialist-backed blockade and constant, murderous Zionist invasions. Israel’s US, EU and British imperialist backers collaborated to punish Gaza for electing Hamas in 2006 and refusing pacification. With Gaza in ruins, Palestinian guerrilla struggle has become a potent force for preventing anything resembling a Zionist victory, a fact recognised by most Palestinians. On 12 June, a Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research poll of Gaza and West Bank Palestinians showed that a majority supported armed struggle, rising by 8% to 54% since its previous (March) survey. Support for Hamas had risen to 40%, double that of Fatah which is led by Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas. Two thirds maintained that the decision to carry out the 7 October resistance operation was correct. 60% of those polled called for the dissolution of the PA, with 89% demanding Abbas’ resignation.
Labour in government changes tune
While in opposition, Labour stood full-square with Zionist terror. In October 2023, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer infamously claimed that the Zionist state had the right to cut off water and electricity to the people of Gaza, while then Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy, a member of Labour Friends of Israel, repeatedly spoke of ‘Israel’s right to defend itself’ and regurgitated Zionist lies about beheaded babies and other supposed atrocities of 7 Oct-ober. 13 of 25 of subsequent Labour cabinet members received funds from Zionist lobbyists, according to Declassified UK.
In government, however, Labour has had to moderate its position. Now as Foreign Secretary, Lammy visited Israel ten days after the general election to show that Labour in government would remain a solid ally. But he also called for an immediate ceasefire and unfettered access for material aid. Elaborating on this in Parliament, he declared ‘I must be frank: Britain wants an immediate ceasefire. The fighting must stop. The hostages must be released. Much, much more aid must enter Gaza—Israel promised a “flood of aid” back in April, but imposes impossible and unacceptable restrictions.’
The reasons for his change of tune are several:
- The evident impossibility of defeating the armed resistance and the possibility that the war may spread to Lebanon.
- The horrendous scale of the genocide: the authoritative medical journal Lancet has used data on the number of bombs, missile and shells Zionist forces have used since 7 October together with their explosive power and the number of destroyed residences to calculate that the number of Palestinians killed so far could be over 180,000.
- The spread of famine and infectious diseases (now including polio) within Gaza threatens an even greater catastrophe which could spread out of control.
- The International Court of Justice interim ruling that the Zionist occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem was illegal and should be treated as such, the Financial Times describing the verdict as ‘damning’ and that the UN Court ‘found that virtually every Israeli action in the territory violated international law.’ (23 July)
- The scale of opposition in Britain, and the constant threat that anger at Labour’s Zionism may escape the control of the official Palestine movement as it did briefly in November 2023.
Further steps the government has taken include the restoration of funding to UNRWA, suspended by the Tory government on bogus claims by the Zionists that the relief organisation had been infiltrated by Hamas, and dropping the Tory government’s challenge to the International Criminal Court’s legal position in issuing arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. It is also likely to suspend at least some arms sales to the Israeli state.
These steps however have exposed the limited demands of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), which has for months called for an immediate ceasefire and more recently for an arms embargo. But it has also undermined the Palestinian struggle for self-determination by condemning the armed resistance, starting on 28 October when it publicly attacked its Manchester branch for ‘unacceptable’ social media posts defending the resistance. PSC director Ben Jamal confirmed its position claiming that the resistance had ‘targeted civilians’ and was therefore ‘in violation of international law’. Later the PSC banned a Birmingham PSC social because it advertised the Zoom attendance of Leila Khaled even though the British state has yet to proscribe her organisation, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The PSC has also issued instructions banning any expression of support for the resistance from its platforms; Labour ‘lefts’ such as Zarah Sultana, John McDonnell and Diane Abbott do not need such directives as they have all condemned the 7 October action even though it is the resistance that has created the crisis over the Zionist occupation for the imperialist powers, not the genocide itself.
By calling for an immediate ceasefire while openly condemning the armed resistance the PSC is implying that the ceasefire should be bilateral, and that the resistance must therefore also lay down its arms. Furthermore, who is the PSC placing this demand on? The Netanyahu government? The British state? But the Labour government can call for an immediate ceasefire for ever and a day: it will amount to no more than a gesture unless it imposes comprehensive sanctions on the Zionist state, and this the PSC and its allies have refused to demand. While Labour is prepared to distance itself from the Netanyahu government, it is not going to break its alliance with the Zionist state, and that is what the demand for total sanctions requires. The PSC with its opportunist opposition to the armed struggle is not prepared to take the struggle to the British state. Its narrow demands threaten to demobilise support for the Palestinian people further, and plays into the hands of the Labour government. Socialists and communists must take an anti-imperialist stand and fight for the total isolation of the Zionist state and self-determination for the Palestinian people.
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 301 August/September 2024
