The beginning of May saw the Israeli state launch a renewed campaign of aggression against the people of Palestine, carrying out a devastating bombing campaign against Gaza while violently suppressing popular protests across historic Palestine. These attacks were a response to the Palestinians’ resistance to Israel’s latest ethnic cleansing campaign in East Jerusalem threatening the expulsion of Palestinians from the neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah. The Palestinian people conducted a united struggle against the Zionist state’s plans and succeeded in forcing it to accept a ceasefire, while exposing its inherent racism. WESAM KHALED reports.
In early May the Israeli state threatened to evict 169 Palestinians, including 46 children, from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of occupied East Jerusalem. A series of court orders had been issued over the preceding months for Palestinian families in the area to vacate their homes by May in favour of settlers. The orders were based on a series of Israeli laws that systematically discriminate against Palestinians in favour of Jewish claimants, and are in violation of international laws forbidding the expulsion of populations under occupation and the settlement of the occupying nation’s population in occupied land. This was just the latest step in Israel’s long programme of ethnic cleansing and building of illegal settlements in occupied Palestinian land.
The families of Sheikh Jarrah, who for years have suffered a barrage of harassment from settlers to drive them from their homes, launched a campaign of resistance to the evictions which garnered international attention and solidarity. As their eviction dates approached and the Zionists showed no sign of reversing the decision, Palestinian anger and resistance continued to build and mass demonstrations were held across historic Palestine. On the evening of 7 May, tens of thousands of Palestinians attended prayers at the Al Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem, with thousands of these staying late to protest in support of the Sheikh Jarrah families. Israel responded with a violent police raid on the mosque. As Palestinians carried out their evening prayers, Israeli police entered the mosque, firing stun grenades, rubber-coated bullets and tear gas at worshippers, wounding over 200 Palestinian people. Palestinians responded with more daily mass demonstrations, which were met with further Zionist state violence and attacks from racist Jewish mobs. Israel repeatedly raided the Al Aqsa Mosque over three consecutive nights, while Zionist mobs rampaged through Palestinian communities, smashing and looting businesses and savagely attacking residents. Several Palestinians were killed and hundreds injured by Zionist state forces and extremist mobs over the following days.
Alongside this, Palestinians were faced with threats by ultra-nationalist Zionist groups to carry out their annual Jerusalem Flag Day March, a celebration of Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967, which would have seen 35,000 Israeli extremists march through Palestinian areas of Jerusalem, including the Al Aqsa compound. Israeli police had been attempting for days to clear the Al Aqsa compound and secure East Jerusalem so the march could proceed, but the mass resistance of Palestinians driven by popular anger at the raids made this impossible. The march was cancelled at the last minute, a small victory which the Palestinian resistance celebrated.
Israel bombs Gaza – again
In response to Zionist attacks on Palestinians and the Al Aqsa Mosque, Hamas, the elected Palestinian government in the Gaza Strip, issued an ultimatum to Israel on 10 May demanding that Israel withdraw its forces from the Al Aqsa compound and Sheikh Jarrah by that evening, failing which Hamas would begin firing rockets into the Zionist state. Israel ignored this ultimatum, and Hamas carried out its threat, warning that more rockets would follow if Israel persisted with its raids or the evictions from Sheikh Jarrah. Rather than ceasing its attacks, the Zionist state responded with a bombing campaign on Gaza, killing 21 Palestinians in the first round of air raids. Israel continued to bomb the Gaza Strip relentlessly for 11 days, demolishing residential buildings, attacking critical facilities and infrastructure, and further terrorising the already suffering people of Gaza.
In the course of the Zionist terror campaign:
- 150 residential buildings were targeted, with three tower blocks and 450 housing units being destroyed;
- Approximately 50 schools, along with 18 hospitals and clinics, were damaged, and a health facility was destroyed. Dr Ayman Abu al-Ouf, the specialist leading Gaza’s Covid response, was killed in his home;
- Almost every large factory operating in Gaza was destroyed;
- Israel bombed several media outlets, including levelling a tower block containing offices belonging to the Associated Press and Al Jazeera;
- 91,000 Palestinians living in Gaza were internally displaced, many of whom are still living in UN refuges;
- 248 Palestinians were killed, including at least 129 civilians and 62 children. 14 Palestinian families reported losing three or more members in a single attack. Nearly 2,000 were injured, many of whom are still struggling to be treated amid Gaza’s crippled health infrastructure.
Palestinians across the West Bank and in the Zionist state intensified their protests in response to these assaults, which Israel continued to meet with overwhelming violence. 26 Palestinian protesters in the West Bank and one in the Israeli state were killed, and over 1,500 injured. 1,160 were arrested.
Imperialism backs Israel
As Israel carried out its bloodbath, its imperialist allies abroad refused to oppose its aggression, and indeed helped provide cover for it. The White House line was that it ‘supports Israel’s right to defend itself against indiscriminate rocket attacks’, while saying nothing of the Palestinians’ right to defend themselves, the war crimes committed by the Zionist state, or the programme of ethnic cleansing that triggered the fighting. The furthest US President Joe Biden would go was to offer meek statements encouraging a ceasefire. The US, which sends $4bn in aid to the Zionist state every year, also blocked three separate attempts by the UN Security Council to pass a resolution condemning Israel’s actions and calling for a ceasefire – a sign that the recently-elected Biden has no intention of meaningfully changing US policy on Israel.
Meanwhile the UK government, which has licensed over £400m worth of arms sales to Israel since 2015, was similarly muted on Israel’s crimes, instead saying it ‘unequivocally condemns acts of terrorism from Hamas’ and stressing Israel’s ‘legitimate right to self-defence.’ Despite the fact that British-made military hardware was undoubtedly used in the assaults, Boris Johnson could bring himself to do no more than urge both sides to ‘show restraint’; Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later accurately thanked Johnson for his ‘staunch and unwavering’ support during the fighting.
Equally damning was the response of the Labour Party. While criticising the initial raid on the Al-Aqsa mosque, once Israel’s bombing had started most Labour MPs were unanimous in condemning the violence on ‘on both sides’, including alleged ‘war crimes’ committed by Hamas, with 23 Labour MPs and peers signing a statement to that effect. Such rhetoric, pedalled by the BBC, that attempts to paint the issue as a balanced two-sided ‘conflict’ conceals the extremely one-sided reality of the most heavily armed military in the region bombarding and ethnically cleansing a largely unarmed population that it occupies and oppresses. It is a well-worn tactic of ‘centrist’ Zionists to attempt to draw equivalence between Israelis and Palestinians, rather than siding with the justified Palestinian liberation struggle. It should come as no surprise that Labour would adopt such a position; the party was recently criticised by a collective of British Palestinians who say they have been side-lined and ignored by what they call a ‘hostile environment’ against Palestinian concerns in the party. Labour has also been at the forefront of the campaign to silence criticism of Israel by equating it to anti-Semitism.
Ceasefire and beyond
Despite the overwhelming casualties they suffered, the Palestinian people maintained their resistance. On 18 May, Palestinians began a mass general strike encompassing the whole of historic Palestine, paralysing the Israeli economy. Gazans continued their armed resistance as well, demonstrating the progress Hamas has made in developing its military capabilities, striking targets in the Zionist state that were previously outside of its range. This resistance eventually brought Israel to a ceasefire, which took effect on 21 May; this was met with mass celebrations by Palestinians.
Though the bombs have stopped falling for now, Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians has not ceased. The residents of Sheikh Jarrah continue to face the threat of expulsion. Approximately half of the Palestinians arrested during the protests continued to be detained without charge even as the ceasefire took effect. The people of Gaza face the task of attempting to rebuild in the aftermath of Israel’s carnage, a task made immeasurably more difficult in the context of the crushing siege Israel maintains on the territory.
Yet despite Israel’s relentless aggression, these events represented a significant moment for the Palestinian liberation struggle. In recent decades Israel has pursued a strategy of divide-and-rule against the Palestinian liberation movement, sowing division between Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza while trying to stifle resistance within the Israeli state by offering its Palestinian citizens the relative privileges of citizenship (though they still face overwhelming discrimination). These events have shown that strategy has completely failed; the struggle over Sheikh Jarrah saw Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, and the Israeli state mobilised in a united, multi-faceted front to resist the Zionists’ ethnic cleansing project. The Palestinian struggle has achieved a historic moment of unity, and that momentum will continue to build.
