Since breaking the ceasefire in March the Zionist state has intensified its genocidal attack on Gaza, killing thousands of Palestinians in a blitzkrieg of airstrikes that have burned children alive, razed hospitals and flattened entire villages. For months, Israeli has imposed a total blockade, using starvation as a weapon of war, with the United Nations warning on 20 May that more than 14,000 babies could die within days unless aid were allowed through. Zionist troops are now engaged in a ground operation that has the explicit aim of permanently occupying and ethnically cleansing the entire population of the Gaza Strip.
Yet not only have these methods failed to crush popular support for the Palestinian liberation movement, but so naked has the brutality of the Zionist entity become that it is increasingly alienating some of its closest allies. Britain, France, Canada, the Europe Union, even Germany – which for more than 18 months have staunchly defended the genocide – are finding themselves in an untenable situation as the international Palestine solidarity movement continues to put pressure on them. LOUIS BREHONY reports.
Gaza: hell on earth
‘What level of horror must be live-streamed before the international community fully steps up, uses its influence, and takes bold, decisive action to force the end of this ruthless killing of children?’
— UNICEF statement, 27 May, 2025
‘The enemy is not Hamas… Every child in Gaza is the enemy. We need to occupy Gaza and settle it, and not a single Gazan child will be left there. There is no other victory.’
— Israeli politician Moshe Feiglin, 22 May, 2025
On 2 March, at the end of the first six-week phase of the agreed ceasefire, the Zionists moved to block further entry of aid trucks into the Gaza Strip in a concerted effort to starve the Palestinians into submission. Zionist Defence Minister Israel Katz boasted that ‘the gates of Gaza will be locked, and the gates of hell will open.’ By early April, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Mirjana Spoljaric, said that Israel had turned Gaza into a ‘hell on earth’ amidst an ‘extreme hollowing out’ of international law.
By early May, the crisis was so dire that UNRWA reported having only 250 food parcels left for over two million people. UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini reported that ‘Gaza has become a land of desperation, with humanitarian aid being used as a bargaining chip and a weapon of war’.
At the same time, Zionist warplanes continued to rain hell from the skies. Cynically manipulating the brief pause to allow for the US-brokered release of a US-Israeli captive on 13 May, moments after midnight the occupation launched massive assaults on Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza and the European Hospital in southern Khan Younis, killing more than 50 people in just five hours and maiming dozens more. By 27 May, the UN children’s agency, UNICEF, issued a statement saying that since March, more than 1,300 children had been killed and nearly 4,000 injured, adding ‘These children – lives that should never be reduced to numbers – are now part of a long, harrowing list of unimaginable horrors: the grave violations against children, the blockade of aid, the starvation, the constant forced displacement, and the destruction of hospitals, water systems, schools, and homes. In essence, the destruction of life itself in the Gaza Strip.’
Since 2 March Israel has displaced over 420,000 Palestinians, killed more than 2,500 and injured more than 6,500 – this is in addition to well over 53,000 killed by the genocidal onslaught since October 2023. By 18 May, more than 130 Palestinians were being slaughtered daily across Gaza, including at least 30 Palestinians burned alive at Al-Jarjawi School in Gaza City on 25 May.
Ethnic cleansing
UNRWA estimated that a further 599,000 Palestinians had again been forcibly displaced since 18 March, shattering the gains of the previous ceasefire. Israel’s explicit mission to ‘entirely destroy’ Gaza, expel its population and colonise the land is accompanied by operations to accelerate the total annexation of the West Bank. This is ethnic cleansing, a crime under international law. In both regions, the steadfast resistance of the Palestinian masses remains the only barrier to total colonisation.
On 5 May the Israeli government announced a new plan based on the ‘capturing of the [Gaza] Strip and the holding of territories’. Under this blueprint for direct conquest, the population would be ethnically cleansed from northern Gaza and forced south. Fascist finance minister Bezalel Smotrich announced that ‘Gaza will be entirely destroyed, civilians will…start to leave in great numbers to third countries.’ A poll at the end of May showed that 82% of Israelis support the mass expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza.
Netanyahu and the Zionist ruling class had previously heralded as ‘revolutionary’ Trump’s plan for an ethnically cleansed US-owned ‘Riviera’ in Gaza. As part of this plan, Israel has attempted to set up its own private ‘aid hubs’ to provide assistance, using US security contractors. The United Nations has unequivocally distanced itself from the proposal, describing it as the politicisation and weaponisation of humanitarian aid.
A Zionist liability
Both the sheer scale and ineffectiveness of Israeli violence have caused dismay within the ranks of western ruling classes, who have until now given carte blanche to Zionist terror. The continuing Palestinian resistance has prevented any thoughts of a quick victory for the Zionist forces, and the longer the war drags on and the more Zionist brutality is exposed, the harder it is for Israel’s allies, such as Britain’s Labour government, to maintain even a veneer of credibility for their unequivocal material, political and economic support for Israel. Constant pro-Palestine protests have ensured that eventually images of starving Palestinian babies and murdered children find their way into the mainstream news. The Israeli state’s ever-more blatant flouting of international law becomes hard to cover for in that context. And so, on 20 May, Britain’s ultra-pro-Zionist foreign secretary David Lammy told the House of Commons that Israel’s actions in Gaza were ‘monstrous’ and ‘intolerable’. Minimal sanctions were imposed on extreme Zionist settlers and Britain joined France and Canada in threatening ‘concrete actions’. Sharp criticism has also been voiced by the European Union, with EU Commissioner Ursula von der Leyen – previously a fanatical apologist for Zionism – describing Israel’s current operation as ‘abhorrent’.
This new language signifies not a change of heart but a change of tactics. The imperialist powers are terrified that Palestinians’ steadfast support for the liberation struggle, alongside growing international solidarity, will threaten the very existence of the settler-colonial Zionist state that acts to safeguard their interests in the Middle East. They are manoeuvring for a solution that will neutralise that threat – and that involves finding compliant partners to negotiate an end to the war and restore stability to the region.
European powers, led by France, are increasingly signalling therefore their willingness to recognise a ‘Palestinian state’ headed by the collaborationist Palestinian Authority (PA), an entity that represents only a corrupt, isolated Palestinian bourgeoisie and that has constantly acted to attack and undermine the Palestinian resistance. In this it has the backing of the Arab League. To the imperialists, it is irrelevant that that the PA has no credibility amongst Palestinians and does not represent the mass of the Palestinian people. Meanwhile, on the Israeli side, European imperialism sees Netanyahu as an increasingly dispensable loose cannon who has failed in his appointed role of stabilising the situation in the Middle East. It is casting around for a more credible candidate – and Israeli politicians such as former prime minister Ehud Olmert and ‘Democrat’ leader Yair Golan are queuing up to audition for the role.
Similar pressures are in play in the United States, Zionism’s biggest military and political backer. In the run-up to President Donald Trump’s Middle East trip in May, Israeli media was awash with reports of a ‘spat’ between Trump and Netanyahu, with Israeli Army Radio reporting that Trump-Netanyahu relations had deteriorated to the point of no direct contact between the two. Trump bypassed Israel in favour of Arab bourgeois US allies, while visiting Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar. His lucrative visit solidified their alliance with US imperialism and almost completely sidelined any pretence of ruling class Arab sympathies with the Palestinian people. The Saudi regime signed $142bn in arms deals while the UAE promised $1tn of US investment over the coming decade. Qatar found itself welcomed back into the US sphere of influence. Qatar was instrumental in destroying the Syrian state and installing a pliant, neoliberal regime acting against resistance organisations. Trump praised Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa and ended over a decade of brutal, crippling sanctions. Among promises including the building of a Trump Tower in Damascus, al-Sharaa has ignored Israeli bombings and expanded occupation of Syria and pledged to recognise the Zionist state.
On 6 May the US struck an agreement with Yemeni resistance group Ansarallah to halt US bombings of Yemen in return for the group’s agreement not to strike US ships in the Gulf – a deal hastened after military losses forced the US to withdraw an aircraft carrier from the region. Clearly aggrieved that their US sponsors could not halt drone operations by Ansarallah that had paralysed Ben Gurion airport, Netanyahu responded that ‘Israel will defend itself by itself. If others would join us, our American friends, very well. If they don’t, we will defend ourselves.’ In language unprecedented in recent times, US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckerbee retorted that ‘the United States isn’t required to get permission from Israel.’
The ‘decisive’ Zionist victory promised by Katz has failed to materialise, stymied once again by the steadfast determination of the Palestinian people to remain on their land. Imperialism is impatient and new alliances are required.
Palestinian Authority – imperialist stooge
In a conference of the Arab League held in Baghdad in May, PA President Mahmoud Abbas called for an ‘Arab plan to end the war.’ This included calling for the freeing of Zionist hostages, the exile of Hamas liberation fighters and the rule of the West Bank and Gaza by the pro-imperialist PA. These words were lapped up by Arab autocrats who had spent days wooing Trump – and utterly rejected by the Palestinian revolutionary movement. As the Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement Masar Badil put it: ‘our true reliance remains on the stance of Yemen and its people, the resistance forces in the region, popular unity, and a strategy of revolutionary escalation, not on the tables of dependent and treasonous regimes.’ The lines of struggle are demarcated.
In April, as he touted for imperialist support for his bid for PA governance of Gaza, Abbas described Hamas as ‘sons of dogs,’ blaming them for the destruction of Gaza, and demanded the release of the Israeli captives held in Gaza. As part of the ‘reform’ process demanded by France in the run-up to any recognition of PA ‘statehood’, Abbas anointed loyalist Hussein al-Sheikh, a long-time go-between with the Zionist state, as his deputy and presumed successor. Hamas condemned the appointment as ‘a response to external dictates and a consolidation of a policy of unilateralism and exclusion, away from national consensus and the Palestinian people’s will.’
In April, the EU announced a €1.6bn aid package to support the PA, pinning any postwar reconstruction of Gaza on the expansion of PA control. French diplomats suggested that any recognition of Palestinian statehood would only come after formal Saudi normalisation with Israel. In a phonecall to Abbas, president Macron set out the EU stall: ‘It is essential to set a framework for the day after: disarm and sideline Hamas, define credible governance and reform the Palestinian Authority.’ On 30 May, Israel blocked Saudi Arabia and other Arab states from entering the West Bank to meet Abbas for discussions on any future Palestinian state.
This is of course the same Palestinian Authority whose forces shot dead Palestinians Rami Zahran and Abu Khalil al-Sab’aneh in Tubas and Jenin on 13 May. The continuation of this murderous campaign by PA security troops is linked directly to US funding of $680m. Collaborators in the West Bank come cheaper than in the Gulf. Representing a longstanding demand of the occupation, on 11 May the PA cut financial support to the families of 1,612 current and former political prisoners. This is the shape of further collaboration to come.
British complicity
The historical support of the Labour Party for Zionism, and the current Labour government’s unequivocal support for Israeli genocide have never been in question. As an 11 May communiqué by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine put it, ‘the British Labour government, led by Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Foreign Secretary David Lammy, is directly complicit in the genocide being committed by the Israeli occupation in the Gaza Strip.’ As the Zionist slaughter and blockade of Gaza intensified, Lammy held a cosy, unannounced ‘private’ meeting on 15 April with his Israeli counterpart Gideon Sa’ar, even as exposure of British covert weapons support for Israel surfaced (see article p3).
However, in the face of growing anger about the Israeli genocide, the British government has been forced into some limited action. On 21 May, it suspended trade talks with the Zionist state. The British solidarity movement’s central demand continues to be an arms embargo, despite Britain receiving more arms from the Zionist state than it exports. The British government is under sustained pressure from European countries, particularly France, to support a two-state solution – an ersatz form of self-determination designed to crush the real demand of the Palestinian masses for national liberation – by supporting a nebulous demand for ‘statehood’ for the Palestinians – if France does so first. These imperialist manoeuvres are all designed to undermine the Palestinian liberation struggle, which remains undefeated despite the horrors of the last 20 months.
Resistance at the gates of hell
The resistance of a coalition of armed Palestinian organisations continues to deal body blows to the Zionist state. Rafah for example continues to confront the occupation forces despite 90% of residential areas being bombed to rubble by Israeli drones. On 7 May, the Hamas military leadership announced the initiation of its own Gates of Hell operation in Rafah, to reaffirm that ‘after a year of fighting [the resistance] continues to shatter the enemy’s illusions and claim the lives of its soldiers. Let every house and alley in Rafah become a ticking time bomb targeting the elite forces of the occupation’. Following these statements, there was a plethora of Zionist media reports of ‘serious security incidents’ in the area and across Gaza. In one example of resistance ingenuity, Palestinian fighters booby-trapped a mannequin with a makeshift explosive and a loudspeaker emitting cries in Hebrew inside a bombed-out house, detonating it as Israeli troops entered the building.
Al-Qassam Brigades released new footage on 10 May showing the capacity of resistance fighters to triumph in close proximity operations against occupying troops, including sniper attacks. Despite Israeli claims to have debilitated the underground network used by Hamas and other factions, tunnels continue to be used efficiently by resistance forces, and released Zionist captives report vast, maze-like networks, where invading troops could be heard conversing overhead. One former hostage reported that resistance fighters ‘never stopped digging’ during more than 500 days underground.
Resistance is justified when Palestine is occupied
The armed resistance to the occupation and the support it enjoys amongst the Palestinian masses are the guarantors of the ongoing struggle for Palestinian liberation. To sideline or ignore this, as opportunist forces such as the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign (PSC) in Britain do, casting the people of Gaza and the West Bank solely as victims of Zionist brutality, is to undermine the demand for genuine self-determination and pave the way for a reformist solution. It plays directly into the hands of imperialism. Since 7 October 2023, the PSC has expelled its Manchester branch for supporting the resistance, cancelled socialist revolutionary Leila Khaled, promoted Jeremy Corbyn and Labour MPs who condemn the armed struggle and for more than 18 months attempted to isolate those calling for full sanctions on Israel. The armed struggle led by the people of Gaza is fundamental in unsettling any kind of stability claimed by Palestine’s colonisers and must prove an inspiration for a resistance movement in imperialism’s heartlands. For the masses in Gaza, this is a question of liberation or death to which there can be no liberal solution.
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 306 June/July 2025
