‘There is no neutrality in this battle. This is a historic epic, marking the beginning of the battles for liberation.’ Leila Khaled, 13 January 2024
The Zionist state, supported by imperialism, is waging a war of terror upon the people of Palestine. But, despite the slaughter, the Zionists and their sponsors have failed abjectly in crushing the Palestinian resistance. Months into the confrontation, not a single Israeli objective has been met. Faced with mobile, collective guerrilla struggle, Zionism flounders, while imperialist allies and their Palestinian Authority (PA) collaborators face isolation. The movement for Palestinian liberation demands action on all fronts.
Gaza faces famine
By 26 January, at least 33,000 Palestinians had been killed according to the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, with up to a quarter irretrievable under the rubble. 65,000 people were struggling to find medical care for their injuries and nearly two million had been displaced and were in need of shelter. UNRWA warned on 23 January that 570,000 Palestinians in Gaza faced ‘catastrophic hunger’, while communications blackouts and siege prevented aid from reaching them. Abeer Etefa of the World Food Programme warned that the inability of aid groups to reach anyone in central and northern Gaza threatened ‘pockets of famine.’ Even where food is available, blockade-driven scarcity has driven prices out of the reach of the majority.
The Zionists’ systematic, imperialist-backed war crimes against medical facilities, reported in FRFI 297, have continued. As bombardments intensified at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, Doctors Without Borders saw the ‘ground shaking’ while they attempted to treat patients. The Palestine Red Crescent Society reports that ‘anyone moving around’ al-Amal hospital, also in Khan Younis, is being targeted by drones and gunfire. Two thirds of Gaza’s hospitals have ceased to function. Dr Amber Alayyan says the surgeons now have no choice but to undertake amputations without anaesthesia.
At the time of writing, Khan Younis is the epicentre of the confrontation and subject to Zionist military encirclement. Among the stated targets of the invasion are Hamas’ Khan Younis Brigades, but the area is the site of hourly operations carried out by at least five different Palestinian guerrilla factions. The Zionists had announced their shift to the southern front with an invasion of the city on 18 November but, two months later, have nothing to show. Meanwhile, occupying forces remained mired in areas of central and northern Gaza claimed by occupation strategists to have been secured.
On 12 December, a senior White House figure claimed that the battle was now in its ‘most intense phase,’ predicting a calmer January. Wishful thinking. Over the space of a few hours on 23 January, al-Qassam fighters blew up enemy vehicles in the central al-Maghazi camp, targeted a military excavator in al-Bureij and seized three Zionist drones in al-Zaytoun. Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade and Saraya al-Quds jointly mortared Nahal Oz kibbutz in the Israeli-occupied Naqab. Socialist forces are involved in this resistance, with Abu Ali Mustafa (PFLP) and Omar al-Qasim (DFLP) brigades both bombarding Zionist positions in eastern Gaza and other regions.
Early on 23 January, Zionist spokespeople announced that 24 occupation soldiers had been killed during confrontations in al-Maghazi refugee camp in Gaza. This contradicts any claim of success on the part of the Netanyahu government. Israeli president Isaac Herzog lamented an ‘unbearably difficult morning’. The Guardian and others whose headlines had fallen silent on the genocidal killings of 250 Palestinians per day (Oxfam, 11 January), suddenly found their voices, shocked at the ‘deadliest day’ for the occupying forces since 7 October.
Massacres of Palestinians drive ongoing recruitment against the forces responsible for Gaza’s bloodshed. In and around Jabaliya – the scene of repeated pogroms of hundreds of civilians since October and, until recent waves of forced displacement, Palestine’s most populous refugee camp – Saraya al-Quds and Mujahideen forces regularly hit troops and vehicles with guided missiles. A joint statement by the Palestinian factions described Netanyahu’s promise of ‘total victory’ as ‘illusory’.
On 22 January it was revealed that Zionist foreign minister Israel Katz had proposed the displacement of Gaza’s population to an artificial island in the Mediterranean. Like the blueprints for forcing Palestinians into the Egyptian Sinai desert, such plans were met with dismay by Israel’s backers, with US, EU and British politicians instead pushing for a regurgitated two-state ‘solution.’ In light of ongoing resistance, such Zionist fantasies for the ‘transfer’ of the Palestinians represent a mere pipe dream. Imperialist plans for a ‘post-Hamas’ Gaza are based on the same colonialist authoritarianism.
West Bank: Zionism fears a second front
By 25 January, 52 Palestinians had been killed by occupying forces in the West Bank since the beginning of the year and over 4,350 injured, including 657 children. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the Israeli destruction of homes had displaced over 600 Palestinians, with around 94% of these in the refugee camps of Jenin, Nur Shams and Tulkarem. 487 West Bankers were killed by the Zionists in 2023, the bloodiest year since records began in 2005. Attempting to deal with reorganised armed resistance, including the emergence of the Lion’s Den, Balata Brigades and other organisations, the Zionist regime has fuelled resistance.
Since the 22 October airstrike destroying al-Ansar mosque, Jenin, fighter jets and drones have destroyed buildings in refugee camps across the West Bank, with 84 children among the 326 Palestinians killed between 7 October and 12 January. Drone strikes turned streets to rubble in Tulkarem and Balata refugee camp on 17 January, killing 10 people. By 12 January 2024, 381 Zionist settler attacks had been documented since 7 October, with 36 resulting in casualties and 297 in property damage.
National security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir smoothed the process for settlers to acquire gun licences and supported the setting up of ‘security squads’ of colonial fascists. In November, Bezalel Smotrich, in charge of the budget as well as of West Bank policy, allocated $105m towards ‘security’ needs in the West Bank, and $250m to colonial settlement projects. Smotrich ordered the forced displacement of 25 Palestinian Bedouin communities in October, including 266 families in the areas surrounding Ramallah and the Jordan Valley.
On 1 January, Palestinian Authority (PA) forces assassinated resistance fighter Ahmed Obeidi. Immediately, the Jenin Brigade called for a mass march in opposition to the PA. Its statement reported that PA forces ‘have taken it upon themselves to pursue our fighters, targeting our people… arresting the fighters, chasing them, confiscating their weapons, and even directly shooting at them.’ Activists and guerrillas remain under PA imprisonment.
On 10 January, the visit of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was met with huge protests outside the PA headquarters in Ramallah. PA forces violently suppressed the demonstration. Inside, PA President Mahmoud Abbas shook hands with this representative of US imperialism. Blinken’s main objective was to press the PA to quash the emergence of a wider intifada in the West Bank. The Zionists and their US backers share concern that the West Bank will explode into a third intifada. Haaretz voices these fears by pointing to the ‘real danger of a violent outbreak,’ exacerbated by Israeli refusals to authorise tax transfers to the PA, which are ‘bringing the West Bank to a boiling point’ (15 January 2024).
Lebanon: a potential third front
Following the 7 October operations launched from Gaza, Lebanese resistance forces have skirmished with Zionist forces in solidarity with the Palestinian people. The Zionist response has been brutal: in December, Netanyahu threatened to ‘turn Beirut and southern Lebanon… into Gaza and Khan Younis.’ By 16 January, cross-border attacks had killed 220 Lebanese, including 158 Hezbollah members, according to authorities in Lebanon. Towns and villages of the south face daily attacks by Zionist forces, who carry out blatant war crimes, including chemical attacks and the killing of journalists. On 16 January alone, Al Mayadeen reported that Israeli warplanes conducted airstrikes against at least 16 southern towns, with Israeli jets dropping phosphorus bombs.
‘No neutrality’ – fight for the future
A 13 December report by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research showed that the war had ‘led to a significant decline in the standing of the Palestinian Authority’s leadership.’ Among the findings, the armed struggle is shown to be the most popular route to ending the occupation, standing at 60% across Palestine and 70% in the West Bank. In both Gaza and the West Bank, 72% agreed that the 7 October operation was correct, while support for Hamas in the West Bank had increased by more than three times, to 44%. Support for Fatah had dropped to just 17%, and 90% of those surveyed called for Abbas to leave office. Conducted in the weeks that followed al-Aqsa Flood, a poll by Al-Akhbar daily found that 80% of Lebanese respondents supported the 7 October operations. The Palestinian and Lebanese masses remain clear that the path to liberation is resistance, not pacification.
Victory to the intifada!
Louis Brehony
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 298 February/March 2024
