With the Middle East on the brink of a regional war, and as the atrocities in the genocidal onslaught on Gaza continue, the following perspectives document was discussed and adopted by the National Committee of the Socialist Struggle Movement (ISA in Israel/Palestine)
The Middle East is at its closest point since 7 October 2023 to a large-scale regional war. At the time of writing (early August), tension is at its peak in anticipation of a retaliatory attack by the Iranian regime and Hezbollah — together or separately — against Israel. The US administration has dispatched an aircraft carrier and 12 warships to the region, and behind the scenes, alongside diplomatic pressure from the West and East on Tehran to restrain action, the rival regional coalitions are coming together in the context of another explosive turning point in this historic catastrophe.
The enormous number of Palestinians who perished in the Gaza Strip since 7 October continues to rise, and an end to the sickening atrocities does not seem imminent. The bloody capitalist government of Netanyahu and the Israeli far-right — under the auspices of the Western imperialism camp led by the US “Democratic” administration — demonstrates its role as the aggressive force, whose actions since 7 October have been the deadliest and most dangerous at the regional level.
Socialist Struggle Movement stood up from the outset and took part in the cross-border struggle, including a series of demonstrations under political persecution, to stop the historic bloodbath in the Gaza Strip — and the material and political aid it receives from governments around the world. We called for an “all for all” deal, to put a brake on the danger of regional war, and to topple Netanyahu’s bloody capitalist government.
The official, conservative figure of 40,000 deaths of all ages in the Gaza Strip has long exceeded the official death toll of Jews in the entire history of the Israeli–Palestinian and Israeli–Arab conflict in general since 1948 and the Zionist–Arab conflict as a whole. This figure alone is enough to illustrate how the war waged by the right-wing Israeli regime, formally against the Hamas organization, is in fact an all-out war against the Palestinian population, besieged in the midst of the barbaric hell fire that has been hurled at it around the clock for the past 10 months by order of Israeli ministers and generals from the sea, air and land, along with starvation, thirst, blackouts, and the systematic destruction of the basic infrastructure of life. The surge in morbidity, including the polio epidemic, underscores that the total number of casualties will skyrocket far beyond the current figure. According to an estimate published by the Lancet medical journal in early July, it could even reach the appalling magnitude of 200,000 deaths, around 7–9% of the population, as a result of this genocidal war.
The Israeli state media refers to the horrific killing of Druze kids and youths in Majdal Shams in the annexed Golan Heights as a massacre only because the warhead was, according to the findings so far, of Iranian origin, while justifying the daily endless killing of Palestinian girls and boys. The historic mass slaughter of Palestinians, the destruction, starvation, torture and abuse are taking place under the guise of “security” demagoguery, as a central element in the war propaganda of the Israeli ruling class on the international and local levels. This is based on the criminal exploitation of the surprise attack led by Hamas and the reactionary acts of murders, abductions and abuse on an unprecedented scale against ordinary people, particularly among the Jewish population on 7 October. But at the same time, what is also exposed is the indifference of the Netanyahu government and the Israeli far-right to the fate of the hostages, many of whom were directly killed as a result of the ongoing Israeli military offensive.
The root of the immense bloody crisis, whose center of gravity remains the barbaric assault on Gaza’s population, is not in 7 October nor in Netanyahu and his government. Rather, first of all, it lies in the regime of national oppression, the siege of Gaza, the dictatorial occupation and the colonial settler dispossession that Israeli capitalism imposes on millions of Palestinians, under the auspices of Western imperialism within the framework of its regional and global web of interests to consolidate its power. In the current military campaign, the Israeli ruling class, striving to repel any challenge to its own interests in the region, is particularly striving to reassert its power. Secondly, the super-context of the global inter-imperialist conflict led by the US and China has profoundly influenced the unfolding of the bloody crisis, which in turn is a dramatic influencing factor in itself. The global inter-imperialist conflict is intrinsically shaping the conflict in Gaza (which is predominantly characterized by the massacre of Palestinians), fundamentally a conflict between an occupying power and an enslaved nation striving for freedom. At the same time, it shapes the regional confrontation between the “anti-Iranian” camp under Washington’s auspices — including the Israeli–Arab “normalization” process, which the Hamas leadership sought to disrupt — and the regional alliance of the “Axis of Resistance” led by Iran, under the auspices of Moscow and Beijing.
The Gaza crisis, at the center of the spiral of regional conflict, is an event that has shaken global relations and mass consciousness. It is integrated as a polarization-sharpening factor in the global inter-imperialist power struggle between the US and China. Neither side wanted war and is not interested in the expansion of chaos in the region, but each side has a clear interest in weakening the opposing camp. Beijing and Moscow have sponsored the Hamas leadership and publicly sided with the Iranian counter-attack in April, which marked a step-up in the Israeli–Iranian conflict, and are working to bolster the military capabilities of Tehran and its allies. Also at the current turning point, on the day the commander of CENTCOM of the US military, General Michael Kurilla, arrived in Israel (5 August) for a coordination meeting with Israeli Security Minister Yoav Gallant, the head of Russia’s National Security Council, Sergei Shoigu (Putin’s former war minister), arrived in Iran for a meeting with President Masoud Pezeshkian and Iranian Chief of Staff Mohammad Bagheri. The convening of a public meeting of representatives of the Palestinian factions in Beijing in July is integrated in Beijing’s campaign, aimed at both the masses and regimes in the region and the neo-colonial “global south”, to build an image of challenging “Western” military aggression, and in Gaza in particular, and as a mediator and stabilizer in the face of the military support by Washington for the Israeli war machine. From the other end, US imperialism’s military intervention in the region seeks to maintain its undermined hegemony, including through arms shipments, direct attacks on forces identified as Tehran’s proxies, leading a coalition to intercept attacks by the Tehran camp, and “projecting power” through the transportation of aircraft carriers — an intervention that plays a key role in expanding Israeli capitalism’s military sphere of action.
This bloody crisis has sparked the most developed and widespread international protest movement in years, including initial steps taken among the organized working class. This movement, although not on a scale capable of stopping the machine of occupation and war, is a significant factor in the dynamic that drives a number of capitalist governments, including in the “West”, to take steps to moderate and even pose a soft challenge, via legal and diplomatic channels, in the face of the extreme oppression of the Palestinians. This is a testament to the magnitude of the complicating turn that the bloody crisis in Gaza has brought about for the camp of Western imperialism, when even in the “West”, capitalist governments are being pushed to distance themselves from political identification with the atrocities inflicted by Israeli capitalism in Gaza with the decisive aid of US and European weapon systems. However, this is not a fundamental undermining of Israeli capitalism’s international relations with Washington and the Western powers, since they still rely on it as the strongest fulcrum in the Middle East for defending their interests in the context of the regional and global balance of forces.
The Western imperialist bloc’s fundamental support for Israeli capitalism brings to the surface a fundamental conflict of interests between these ruling classes and the masses around the world who seek an end to the atrocities in Gaza and the oppression of Palestinians. The persecution of demonstrations to stop the offensive on Gaza and their trampling in a number of “Western” countries since 7 October, but also in countries in the region, particularly under the Jordanian monarchy and the el-Sisi regime in Egypt, as well as by Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, have exposed this contrast graphically. This was particularly evident through the delegitimization, political persecution, and police repression in many cases of the tumultuous wave of student revolt on campuses, which peaked in April–May. This revolt began among youth in the belly of the most destructive imperialist power globally, challenging the Biden administration, and inspired action around the world, including among Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line. It has ebbed under police crackdowns and with the semester’s end, but mass anger will continue to look for avenues for eruption.
The bloody capitalist government of Netanyahu and the Israeli far-right continues to face a severe crisis of legitimacy, including a semi-mass movement, with tangential centers demanding “deal now” and “elections now”, and calls by the militant wing of the hostages’ families for the Histadrut (the main central body of organized labor) to lead a general strike in the Israeli economy. While the call for a “deal now” is not categorically and consistently connected to opposition to the war, it challenges the Israeli right-wing regime to a deal that is allegedly supposed to include an end to the military offensive in Gaza, and the voices demanding an end to the war are expanding.
At the same time, there are Palestinian demonstrations and protest strikes recurring under the military occupation in the West Bank and in the face of its daily brutal attacks on the population and the savage push to expand the colonial settlement enterprise under the cover of the war. These illustrate that despite the killings, the arrests, the scale of oppression and atrocities, these fail to break the fighting spirit and the aspirations for freedom and life in dignity, which often overcome the barrier of fear. Within the Green Line, despite the persecution and repression, alongside the main demonstrations organized by the High Follow-Up Committee for the Arab Masses in Israel in recent months, an important trend of initiative and organization has developed among young Palestinians on and off campuses.
The threat of regional conflagration in the service of Israeli capitalism and the occupation
The 31 July assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, chairman of Hamas’ Political Bureau, while he was in Tehran at a regime “Revolutionary Guard” compound marking the swearing-in of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian of the “reformist” wing, came immediately after the assassination of Hezbollah’s senior military leader, Fuad Shukr, in Beirut’s Dahieh. Two children, a sister and a brother, were among the five civilians killed in the bombing in the southern suburb, which injured dozens. These were calculated, dramatic provocations that have pushed the region to the closest point so far to a scenario of a high-intensity regional war. This was preceded by the assassination of the commander of the military wing of Hamas, Mohammed Deif, on 13 July (where according to Hamas, he wasn’t killed), in the vicinity of the so-called “Safe Zone” in al-Mawasi, Khan Younes, killing 90 Palestinians and injuring hundreds. As one surviving resident of the tent camp testified: “The strikes hit two compounds, each with at least 100 tents. In each tent there was a family of seven or eight people. He said he saw children whose heads were cut off and people split in two, and when the rescue forces came, their people were also hit by missiles” (Haaretz, 16 July).
The purpose of the showcase assassinations is tactical and propagandistic, in an attempt to demonstrate intelligence and military superiority, while arrogantly gambling on the possibility of sliding into a strategic event of extensive military escalation, the heavy price of which would be paid by the masses in the region. In addition, those attacks serve to shift the focus towards Iran and to reboost support for the continuation of the military campaign. Gantz’s party and his former partner Sa’ar, who until recently were part of the bloody capitalist government, have turned to challenge the government from the right with warmongering competition.
This combined move came just days after Netanyahu, in his first official international visit since 7 October, was greeted with applause in an orchestrated display in the US Congress, while thousands protested opposite the Capitol Hill, whom he mocked, especially the LGBTQ+ people among them. Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race harmed Trump’s chances, which a moment earlier had gained momentum following his assassination attempt. But the fact that Biden remains a lame duck and the still possible scenario of a Trump comeback in the now closely contested race up to November are instilling determination in the Netanyahu and far-right Israeli government.
This is despite the fact that developments in the global “election year” illustrate that the crisis-inducing processes in the capitalist system — which in recent weeks have sparked mass struggle in Kenya and huge demonstrations over the cost of living in Nigeria and a mass uprising in Bangladesh that led to the resignation of the prime minister — are not only propelling dangerous forces to power, generally sympathetic to Netanyahu, of right-wing populism and the far-right, but are feeding anger towards governments and political polarization, including radicalization to the left. Netanyahu’s “friend” Modi lost his majority in the Indian parliament, and in parallel, the defeat of the Conservative Party in Britain and the defeat in France of Macron’s conservative right with the electoral victory for the New Popular Front (NFP) against the far-right, reflect social ferment and signal to the Netanyahu government slightly less patient official policies from the central powers in the Western imperialist bloc. In the US, while a Harris-led administration will continue its fundamental support for Israeli capitalism, it will also be under increased pressure to appease public anger over the atrocities in Gaza. A Trump-led administration will not “dance to the flute” of Netanyahu and the Israeli far-right, and will likely be volatile and under pressure to avoid large-scale military interventions. However, it will once again promote even more explicit, crude and blatant backing for the occupation and oppression of the Palestinian masses — even though this will only fuel more mass rage on a global level against US imperialism and provoke even more assertive counter-movements among the working class and youth.
Biden publicly criticized Haniyeh’s assassination, saying it “did not help” advance a ceasefire deal. According to The New York Times and The Washington Post, the Israeli government only retroactively informed the White House of the assassination in Tehran, for which no official responsibility has yet been taken, and invoked anger. The Pentagon’s top echelon was particularly surprised by the decision to carry it out in the heart of Tehran and thus spur the Iranian regime to retaliate. It was originally reported that Khamenei had ordered some sort of direct attack on the State of Israel. However, the Iranian regime and Hezbollah have no interest now in an all-out war due to the potential for great destruction and loss of control. They are not in a position to inflict a military defeat, and the consequences of an all-out confrontation may eventually include an intensification of a political challenge against them domestically (as implied through the mass uprisings in Iran and Lebanon in recent years).
Since 7 October, the Israeli ruling class has been working to exploit a “window of opportunity” in order to stabilize the order of the occupation and the rule of capital through an attempt to militarily impose substantial changes in the status quo. This is the case in terms of shifts in the configuration of the occupation in the Gaza Strip, while destroying the latter, scorching consciousness via state terrorism, reducing Hamas’ military power, and a wandering search for the possibility of imposing an alternative civilian administration infrastructure that can serve as a reliable subcontractor for the Israeli occupation. Voices in the Israeli establishment, even outside Netanyahu’s government, have repeatedly made clear their desire to keep direct occupation forces in parts of the Gaza Strip and continue the organized offensive there for years to come.
Now, Haniyeh’s assassination does not make the Hamas leadership more desperate. The Hamas top echelon is not shattered, it relies on a broad social support base — which also stems from its image as a defensive force against the brutal aggression of the occupation — and enjoys political, economic, and military support from Tehran, and even a modest sponsorship from Moscow and Beijing. Moreover, the barbaric military aggression of the occupation in recent months, given the weakness of left forces in the region, has, as expected, led to a relative strengthening of public support for Hamas. And although in the military balance of power, the Al-Qassam Brigades are from the outset clearly in an inferior position to the occupation forces and have been weakened organizationally, the fact is that for nearly an entire year, the strongest military power in the region, backed by the world’s strongest power, has been unable to subdue them and the other armed forces participating in partisan warfare against the invasion within the besieged, starved and destroyed small enclave. In a number of cases, there were also reports of regrouping by armed forces in various locations that were already the targets of intensive attacks by the occupation forces, including in the northern Gaza Strip. US intelligence estimates in early May claimed that 65% of the Hamas tunnels remained usable. As of early July, of the 24 Hamas battalions in the Gaza Strip, only 3 had lost combat capability (according to CTP and ISW research). Nonetheless, the occupying power is investing in building infrastructure for a long-term direct hold over the “Netzarim Corridor” and parts of the Gaza Strip.
It is yet unclear (at the beginning of August) what the nature of Tehran’s response following Haniyeh’s assassination will be, but while an “exchange of blows” that would allow for “containment” and subsequent negotiations on a possible deal cannot be ruled out, it would be surprising if the Hamas leadership dropped its main negotiating conditions at this juncture. All the more so given the growing international pressures against the Israeli military campaign.
The fact that the January assassination in Beirut of Haniyeh’s deputy, Saleh al-`Arouri, obviously did not lead to Hamas’ capitulation, and that the arrogant assassinations of leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah over the past decades have not weakened these movements in the slightest, whose relative military strength has only intensified, does not dissuade the Israeli right-wing regime from recycling its policy. It still vows to assassinate Sinwar as well, who in the meantime has been chosen to replace Haniyeh as the chairman of Hamas’ Political Bureau. The flexing of muscles with the assassination policy is intended to convey power, but it simultaneously reveals a deep weakness in the form of desperate “adventurous” conduct, facing the depth of the strategic crisis in which Israeli capitalism finds itself. This is another step-up in the escalating dynamics of the expanding regional conflict towards a major conflagration, despite the informal restraining “understandings” that seek to regulate the extent of the use of firepower. Each war has its own internal logic, and in the dynamics of conflict, in which neither side has an interest in “folding up”, the equations of response are stretched into new realms.
The Iranian regime has declared its intention to exact a “heavy” price, while the right-wing Israeli regime, which at least plays with the idea of a “pre-emptive attack”, continues to intensify threats of an all-out Israeli offensive on Lebanon, including re-occupation of territory in southern Lebanon. In particular, they cynically exploit the bloody incident of the killing of the children from the discriminated Druze population in Majdal Shams, though it should be noted that the Likud and Smotrich ministers who came there to dance on the blood provoked also cries of anger, including in the context of a government policy of house demolitions.
The threat of retaliation from Tehran joined that of Ansar Allah (the Houthis) following the unprecedented devastating showcase bombing of Al-Hudaydah on 20 July, following the deadly explosive drone launched at Tel Aviv. The decision of the Israeli regime top echelon to bomb “immense targets” in Yemen after months of preparation is integrated in the logic of imposing “shock and awe”, state terrorism, as reflected in Gallant’s declaration: “The fire currently burning in Yemen can be seen throughout the Middle East”. This is part of an effort to deter rival forces from taking military initiatives and to push for the shaping — by military means, aided by profound backing from Western imperialism — the regional order for “the day after” in accordance with the interests of Israeli capitalism. The Israeli bombing killed port workers, caused an environmental disaster and damaged a major economic artery as collective punishment for the Yemeni masses.
The ongoing military intervention of US and British imperialism in a failed attempt to stop the disruptions in world trade due to Houthi operations in the Red Sea — which they consider more disturbing than tens of thousands of lost Palestinian lives — did not include strategic bombing targets such as the port of Al-Hudaydah, apparently for fear of destabilizing consequences. It is a major import port, serving as an artery not only for arms shipments but also for the supply of fuel, food and medicine, essential for a population, who proxy wars between the ruling classes in the region have dragged into the ongoing threat of famine. After the showcase attack, the Houthis stressed that they had no intention of withdrawing military activity in the context of the Israeli regime’s military aggression, and continued to attack ships in the Red Sea.
The Israeli attack on Yemen was not Netanyahu’s whim. The entire Israeli ruling class rallied around the event, and far-right ministers protested that they had once again been pushed out of decision-making (although in the general dynamic, they are certainly an influential factor in pushing Netanyahu and the government in an even more aggressive direction). The drone launch the day before by the same reactionary Ansar Allah organization, which killed a resident near the US embassy branch in central Tel Aviv, provided the desired pretext. The purpose of the attack was not only to restore prestige after the missed interception of the drone’s launch to Tel Aviv, but to launch a burning threat towards Tehran and its allies, particularly Hezbollah.
Military analysts in the enlisted Israeli press emphasized the fact that “the target of the attack [in Yemen] was more than 1,700 kilometers away, 200 kilometers farther from Tehran”. The day before the attack on Yemen, US Secretary of State Blinken explained that “because the nuclear agreement was ‘thrown out’, it is estimated that Iran is now a week or two away from nuclear capability — instead of being a year away”. On 19 April, after the Iranian salvo, the Israeli military reportedly attacked the radar of an S-300 air defense battery in Iran linked to the regional defense of the Natanz nuclear facility. Although a direct attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would be a potentially complicating gamble on the part of the Israeli regime, such a scenario cannot be ruled out of hand in the dynamics of conflict in the region. On the other hand, the escalation of the Israel–Iran conflict may in itself spur the Iranian regime to advance toward developing military nuclear capability.
Israeli capitalism is in the midst of a multi-dimensional crisis and is turning to a more aggressive, pyromaniac reliance on firepower in an attempt to “extinguish” the crisis and restabilize. Gallant, who publicly opposes Ben-Gvir’s inclusion in Israel’s “war cabinet” because, he says, that is a “pyromaniac trying to ignite the Middle East” — as he tweeted on 24 July, after Ben-Gvir announced an alleged decision to allow Jewish prayer in the plaza of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Temple Mount — laments that in October the Israeli “war cabinet” decided not to wage an all-out war on Lebanon for fear of losing control over events, and openly promotes a “war that will change reality” on the Israel-Lebanon border. Tens of thousands have been evacuated on both sides of the border for months as the war of attrition continues to rage at medium intensity, clearly linked to the continuation of the military offensive on Gaza, which is also blocking the indirect Israeli–Lebanese negotiations under the auspices of Washington and Paris for a resolution on the land border.
The threat of all-out war on Lebanon expresses an aspiration among the Israeli ruling class to find an opportunity to “dwarf” Hezbollah’s military power in an attempt to stabilize the border — after decades of Israeli military aggression, with episodes of war, occupation and an attempt at regime change in Lebanon — and weaken the military challenge by Tehran and its allies. The Israeli threats of invasion have so far been postponed, both under open pressure from Washington, but also due to the reluctance of the Israeli ruling class to face complicating consequences. This is especially the case, at a time when the resources of the war machine of Israeli capitalism are still being intensively invested in the wave of death and terrifying destruction against the population of the Gaza Strip. But provocative attacks and assassinations in Lebanon, Syria and Iran continue, and the thirst among parts of Israel’s ruling class for a regional show of force in Lebanon is growing.
Although it is unclear so far whether Netanyahu and Gallant have come to a decision to initiate an all-out attack against Hezbollah, and although Hezbollah itself prefers to avoid sliding into an all-out war, the Israeli assassinations and showcase attacks could lead to precisely such a dramatic turn. An all-out war scenario between the Israeli army and Hezbollah would entail an extreme catastrophe for the Lebanese masses, but also extensive retaliatory fire into Israeli territory, as part of a regional military escalation. Given Hezbollah’s missile arsenal, the fatalities on the ground in Israel could reach 15,000, according to the estimate of a former head of the Israeli National Security Council.
The slogan of “total victory” and the splits in the Israeli ruling class
Immediately after the assassinations at the end of July, Gallant arrogantly called for a deal, allegedly in order to come out with a “triumph image” and prevent a scenario of a spiral of military blows that would escalate out of control, and apparently also in an attempt to appease the hostages’ families. But as Netanyahu, Gallant & Co. knew, the assassination on Iran’s ground is once again pushing the Iranian regime to harness a regional coalition to produce a dramatic response. The fact that it is a Palestinian leader who was assassinated could make it difficult for the Israeli regime to harness the same coalition that helped it intercept the Iranian barrage in April. On a side note, it is worth mentioning in this context that at that time, the cost of the Israeli interception alone was estimated at over NIS 2 billion, which is approximately equivalent to the amount that the Histadrut chairman Bar-David handed over this year, at the expense of convalescence pay for workers in the Israeli economy, on a silver platter to Smotrich to finance the war.
The indirect negotiations between the Israeli government and Hamas, of course, were first put on ice following the assassination. As the Qatari prime minister wondered: “How can a mediation succeed when one side assassinates the representative of the other side to the negotiations?”. Once again, the Israeli government decided to continue its military aggression and to reject, despite lip service, a ceasefire deal and an exchange of hostages and prisoners as part of a de-escalation move in the region. It is no coincidence that Netanyahu made no mention of the negotiations in his speech to the US Congress, while simultaneously seeking to repel both international pressures and a stubborn Israeli protest movement for a “Deal Now”. Indeed, a solid majority of Israeli public opinion has supported this general call in the recent period.
The outline of the deal that has been promoted for months by Washington, through reliance on Qatari, Egyptian, and even Turkish mediation, and with the support of circles in the Israeli ruling class and in the top echelons of the Israeli military and the “security” apparatuses of the State of Israel, is supposed to lead to an exchange of hostages and prisoners, and to an ostensible end to the extensive military offensive in the Gaza Strip. Time and time again, the Israeli government tried to militarily dictate the removal of the condition of ending the war and withdrawing all occupation forces from the Gaza Strip, brazenly making demands for control of the “Philadelphi Route” in order to tighten the siege and leave checkpoints in the heart of the Gaza Strip to control the population. But the months-long repeated reports that are then refuted, including past public announcements by Biden of a ceasefire deal expected to close “shortly”, reflect a real debate among Israel’s ruling class, which objectively lacks a clear path to a real stabilizing exit strategy.
Despite the overwhelming support from Washington, and despite the expanding parameters of retaliatory clashes in the form of increasingly extravagant fire strikes which take the region closer to the brink, Israeli capitalism does not have unlimited leeway in the “war of annihilation”. As we have explained, the limits of its power are rooted first and foremost in the regional and global class balance of forces. Especially in the Middle East in the era after the revolutionary wave of 2011, fear of the masses in the region, and especially of intervention by working-class forces, blocked in recent months cooperation by the el-Sisi regime and the Jordanian monarchy with the possibility of ethnic cleansing in the form of mass expulsion from Gaza to Sinai. These circumstances, combined with the need to justify the military offensive internationally but also locally in the eyes of the Israeli masses, are pressuring the Israeli ruling class to try to distance the ministers of the far-right from the decision-making focus of the military campaign. Despite the colossal scale of killing and destruction, the mainstream Israeli ruling class fears the far-right’s aspiration for the re-colonization of Gaza, and is deterred from the logic of solving what the ruling class considers as their “demographic problem” by resorting to a program of maximization of physical extermination. This point highlights part of the inherent weakness of the Israeli ruling class, which can seem as if no power in the world can stop it from the atrocities it inflicts on Gaza and the region. In this context, although a criminal record level of mass killing of Palestinians is underway, nevertheless, unlike during the mass ethnic cleansing in the Nakba of 1948, the Israeli ruling class is not in a position to force an actual withdrawal of the Palestinian national movement.
Meanwhile, the pursuit at all costs of a false image of “total victory” as Netanyahu puts it, for the occupation regime of Israeli capitalism and for Western imperialism over rivers of blood, is pushing opposition to the continuation of the Israeli military offensive on Gaza even more vigorously around the world and even in Israeli society. In this context, the divisions among the Israeli ruling class have deepened. The mainstream fears that a crude, adventurous and inflexible approach to “crisis management”, influenced by the narrow political considerations of Netanyahu and the far-right ministers, will exact what they see as unnecessary costs in international relations, particularly with Washington and regimes in the region, and will involve consequences that will exacerbate destabilizing processes in Israeli society as well.
Netanyahu was not the only factor torpedoing a deal between the Israeli government and the Hamas leadership in recent months. However, it is clear that the top echelon of the Israeli “security establishment” has recently entered into tension with Netanyahu, especially around the negotiations over a deal, which they see as necessary for Israeli capitalism as a stabilizing move, while Netanyahu slams them for being “wimps” and implores that “instead of pressuring the prime minister, pressurize Sinwar”. This is the main point of tension now in the context of “crisis management”, as part of a resurgence of tension between the right-wing populism of Netanyahu and the Likud ministers, and the programs of the far-right ministers on the one hand, and on the other, the ruling class and the top echelon of the “security establishment” and the state apparatus. The public political tension between Netanyahu and Gallant — as the former once again wants to oust the latter, even in the midst of a war crisis — is a subplot of this process.
This is a return to the main fault lines that faced the current government already before 7 October, which were expressed in the cross-class movement against the “judicial coup” plan, which culminated in the general strike of March 2023 (a strike whose preceding outbreak of protest was dubbed with the establishment superficial name “Gallant Night”, in reference to the roots of the outbreak). This followed Netanyahu’s attempt to fire Gallant, who expressed the reservations of the “security” apparatuses about the government’s agenda. The dissolution of the small “war cabinet” of the government following the withdrawal of Gantz’s “State Camp” party in June, after it tried to serve as a “watchdog” for the interests of the ruling class in its joining of the Netanyahu government to manage the crisis, signaled the relative weakness of the ruling class vis-à-vis Netanyahu’s ruling coalition. They are unable to bend his hand in the midst of the bloody crisis, let alone dismantle his government. The fact that Israeli public support for Gantz has only declined in recent months, and has not increased even following his resignation from the government, is another sign of the weakness of the ‘center-right’ bloc’s “opposition” vis-à-vis the Netanyahu bloc.
Although the government is unpopular, it relies on a substantial minority of the Jewish population and has so far managed to contain its sharp internal divisions — including in the context of pressure on it to show that it is working to enlist Jewish ultra-orthodox (Haredim) into the military while it is extending the period of general conscription for the needs of the occupation. The Knesset recess until the end of October makes it procedurally easier for Netanyahu to maintain the ruling coalition and postpone early elections, where he would face an electoral defeat. But crucially, his remaining in power is an expression of the weaknesses of the forces that challenge him, both among the ruling class and among the masses, who are unable to fold him up and move him aside.
Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari’s public statement in early July that the slogans about “destroying Hamas” and solving the hostage crisis by military means were in fact falsehoods reflected a sharp clash with Netanyahu and the slogan of “total victory”. That same month, ministers from the Likud and the Israeli far-right launched a right-wing populist attack on the top echelon of the military — in similar way to the dynamic around the affair of the execution by a soldier in Hebron/Khalil in 2016. They sided with reservist soldiers who sexually abused a Palestinian prisoner at the notorious Sde Teiman detention and torture facility, the “Israeli Guantanamo”, and were (exceptionally) arrested. Gallant publicly demanded that Netanyahu should investigate whether National Security Minister Ben-Gvir did not deliberately delay the arrival of police forces at the facility when a far-right gathering broke into it and into a military police base, along with government ministers. The far-right demonstrators were handled with silk gloves, not only compared to Palestinians, who would have been executed under such circumstances, but also to the families of the hostages and the “Deal Now” demonstrators who have been the target of violence by the Ben-Gvir police in the recent period.
International pressures
The Israeli government is facing a surge of international pressures influenced by concerns among the ruling classes about the expansion of military conflict in the region, destabilizing consequences for the global economy — at a time when the World Economic Forum is warning of a “geopolitical recession” and at a time when the unusual volatility in financial markets indicates fears of an impending recession in the US and China. This also reflects increased risks in the regional and global arms race, and the burden of enormous arms demands in the context of the war crises in Ukraine and Gaza, as well as politically destabilizing consequences, first and foremost in the face of mass outrage and the international protest movement. The Biden administration, the main enabler of the historic bloodbath, has been pushed into unusual tensions with Netanyahu’s government in recent months as it openly failed to impose US imperialism’s authority on the conduct of the Israeli military campaign.
At the same time, in Britain, under pressure from the public mood that toppled the Conservative Party in the elections, the (New)Labour government canceled the British objection to the possibility, now more likely, of the issuing of arrest warrants by the International Criminal Court (ICC) against Netanyahu and Gallant at the request of Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan. Unlike the decree issued against Putin in the context of the war in Ukraine, this case is potentially the first time such a move will be taken against representatives of a “Western” regime. This echoes the intensity of the shockwaves that the bloody crisis in Gaza is sending throughout the global system, the depth of the shock it has caused in mass consciousness around the world, and the attempts of the ruling classes to quell rage.
After the US veto in the UN “Security Council” against full Palestinian membership of the UN, during April–June another nine national states, including four in Europe, announced that they were joining most countries in the world in recognizing the Palestinian Authority as the State of Palestine. Meanwhile, the symbolic official denunciations, including by legal means, of the mass killing and oppression of Palestinians, are a positive development as a somewhat complicating factor for the Israeli ruling class, and they may sometimes have an effect that spurs determination and self-confidence within the international protest movement. However, it is important to take a sober view and note that they do not in themselves threaten the bloodbath in Gaza, do not represent a way to stop it, and are in fact used by governments as a substitute for more dramatic moves, while attempting to appease public opinion and blunt criticism, and in fact foster illusions in political forces and institutions that serve as instruments of the ruling classes. Thus, el-Sisi’s regime in Egypt converted its threat to suspend the peace treaty with Israel by announcing it will join the lawsuit asking the UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) to formally recognize the savage attack on Gaza’s population as genocide. It should be noted that this move, which for the capitalist government in South Africa was intended for PR purposes, did not prevent the ruling ANC from reaching a low point in the May elections and losing its absolute majority in parliament for the first time since the fall of Apartheid, as punishment for an ongoing capitalist crisis that enriched a handful of capitalists and perpetuated severe mass suffering.
The ICJ has so far refrained from issuing an “order” for a comprehensive ceasefire in Gaza, because it does not categorically challenge the very legitimacy of the military offensive on Gaza, but it has demanded that the State of Israel refrain from invading Rafah. So the ICJ demanded. In an advisory opinion, at the request of the UN General Assembly (from 2022), the ICJ ruled on 19 July that the Israeli occupation and settlements in the territories of ‘67 are not “legal”. So the ICJ determined. A certain loss of patience among the ruling classes, under the pressures of the international protest movement and geostrategic entanglement, towards the Israeli occupation in its current form, identifying it as an agent of chaos for their system, will lead to more symbolic moves, including limited state sanctions against the occupation and settlements in the territories of ’67. The ICJ may serve as a source of authority to justify specific measures, even though the idea of comprehensive state sanctions like the historic Arab League Boycott, which failed, is not on the agenda for the foreseeable future. Essentially, the appearance of a world order based on legal rules has never stopped the Israeli occupation, or imperialist aggression and repressive regimes as a whole, and certainly since neoliberal globalization gave way to the rise of global inter-imperialist conflict, the symbolic deterrent power of international legal mechanisms has only faded.
The convergence of geostrategic interests along fundamental global and regional lines of conflict underlies the fact that the “red lines” of Biden, or of the el-Sisi regime in Egypt, have been shown over months of barbaric bloodbath in the Gaza Strip to be remarkably elastic, and military aid on an unprecedentedly massive scale has continued to flow despite a slowing pace and high-profile delays for propaganda purposes. The bulk of Arab reactionary regimes, despite PR exercises to divert public anger, aspire to continue advancing on the path of the “normalization” process to the extent that circumstances would permit. On 18 July, US, Israel and UAE officials met in Abu Dhabi to promote a discussion on the “day after”. The participation of regimes in the region, including Saudi Arabia, in the US-led coalition that intercepted the Iranian response-barrage towards Israel in April, and the interception by the US military of part of the Houthi barrage towards Tel Aviv, brought to the surface the same fundamental strategic convergence.
On the opposite side, there is increasing cooperation between Russian imperialism and the Iranian regime, which has intensified following the war in Ukraine (and the Zelensky regime, for its part, has remained consistent in its support for the atrocities inflicted by the Israeli occupation on the Palestinians, as part of a campaign to push Israeli capitalism to provide it with extensive military support). According to media reports, while the Kremlin exerted pressure on Tehran to moderate the attack in response to Haniyeh’s assassination, Iranian sources familiar with the preparations for the attack confirmed that “Russia has begun transferring air defense systems and advanced radars to Iran”, amid regional tensions, and Tehran is pressing to speed up the supply of Su-35 fighter jets.
Meanwhile, Xi Jinping intervened directly to convince Palestinian Authority President Abbas to send a delegation on his behalf to the meeting of the Palestinian factions in Beijing, which ended on 23 July with the artificial declaration of another “reconciliation agreement” on paper. This supposedly lays the basis for a coalition government of Fatah and Hamas that will govern Gaza locally in the shadow of the occupation on “the day after”, even though it is clear that such an arrangement would not be acceptable in practice not only to the occupying power but also to the leadership of Fatah and the Palestinian Authority, with the latter relying on close cooperation with Western imperialism.
Erdoğan’s Bonapartist regime in Turkey is playing a double game. It attempts to gain public sympathy at the national and regional levels by cultivating a militant image of an amplifier for the shouts of protest against the bloodbath in Gaza — to the point of announcing a freeze on trade with Israel until the end of the war and hollow rhetoric threatening that “as we entered Karabakh, as we entered Libya, we may do the same to them [Israel]”. At the same time, he is sticking to NATO and only two years ago he fully renewed diplomatic relations with Israel. Against this background, Ankara has worked to become a major mediator between Hamas and the Israeli government, also as part of a policy that seeks to position itself as a mediator between the global imperialist blocs. However, its role in the mediation remains secondary.
Dialectically, the ruling classes in the “West” are pushed to simultaneously, both superficially scratch and more fundamentally, embrace Israeli capitalism. In contrast to the war in Ukraine, which initially allowed the Western imperialism bloc more space to cultivate a false “democratic” image, unite and polish NATO against the rival bloc led by Chinese and Russian imperialism, the massive military offensive on Gaza’s population has shone a spotlight on the role of US and Western imperialism in political, economic, and military backing for the oppression and mass killing of Palestinians, and fanned open divisions between the ruling classes in the bloc. Although the Israeli regime has always acted with a degree of independence with regard to military aggression in the region and its policies of control and settlement in the territories of ‘67, the Netanyahu government is now knowingly exploiting the understanding that US imperialism’s web of interests closely binds the US government to continued military, economic, and political backing to fortify the position of Israeli capitalism in the region.
As part of the international solidarity movement, at the end of July, seven unions in the US, representing some 6 million workers, demanded that the Biden administration “immediately halt military aid to the Israeli government”. This demand was joined by dozens of members of medical teams from the US who returned from participating in medical response in Gaza, treating victims of Israeli fire, most of them children and youth. As the medical teams explained regarding the barbaric nature of the attacks on the Palestinian population: “Children are not shot twice by a sniper by mistake”. The worldwide demand for an arms embargo against the bloodbath in Gaza and regional aggression, including growing protests in Britain and France, helps directly expose the active role of governments and of capital in the arms industry in fueling the atrocities.
The direct intervention in various locations around the world by official unions and by independent workers’ groups, including medical personnel, in protest against the bloodbath in Gaza and in solidarity actions to stop arms transfers and isolate the Israeli government and the occupation authorities, signals a necessary initial way forward for increasing pressure to stop the war machine of Israeli capitalism. Even protest boycotts against Israeli establishment elements with a central demand to stop the genocidal war, though they only carry symbolic weight, can strengthen protests on the ground against the bloody Israeli capitalist government, both among Palestinians, as well as by strengthening an appeal to ordinary workers in Israeli society who oppose the government and support a “Deal Now”. An approach that promotes the tactic of targeted, concrete protest boycotts against establishment elements, accompanied by an explanatory line that appeals to broad layers of Israeli working people who oppose the Israeli right-wing regime, has a greater complicating potential for the Israeli occupation and war machine than an approach that abstractly identifies the whole of Israeli class society as a single mass of reaction.
Struggle, Organizing, Alternative
Among Palestinians, particularly in the West Bank, the aversion to the Palestinian Authority and President Abbas, as forces that ultimately serve as subcontractors of the Israeli occupation, remains deep and consistent. The PA has been pushed into an attempt for cooptation of the demonstrations and protest shut downs across the West Bank enclaves in response to Haniyeh’s assassination, but independent protest initiatives that are not authorized by the PA have repeatedly faced persecution and trampling. These are in addition to attacks by state and non-state occupation forces — nearly 600 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by the occupation since 7 October. Alongside brutal attacks and ethnic cleansing in “Area C”, PA enclaves in the northern West Bank have become a major focus for frequent raids, arrests and killings by the occupation forces, including drone assassinations, such as the attacks that killed 9 Palestinians in the Tulkarm area on 3 August.
Public support for Hamas is perceived by many, especially in the West Bank, as a “fighting” alternative to the fundamental political trajectory offered by the PA elite and Fatah leadership (although Marwan Barghouti, imprisoned by Israel and affiliated with a faction that emerged from Fatah, remains the most popular Palestinian leader, and thus also Hamas is demanding his release as part of a deal now). However, the two main factions of the national movement represent a dead-end, with each side representing a different right-wing political program anchored in the capitalist system and ultimately in reliance on the backing and intervention of imperialist powers. However, while public support for Hamas has waned somewhat in recent months, the potential for independent organizing and steps to put forward an alternative on the left lies among a layer of Palestinians youth, especially among the working class, who raise their heads, even with their lives under threat, in the face of the occupation’s attacks and remain skeptical of the main factions.
The important trend of protest and organization among a young stratum of Palestinians within the Green Line, partly inspired by the international wave of student revolt on campuses, significantly included some new independent formations, including the new organization Jam`etna (جمعتنا) at the Technion, and the Joint Committee of Student Cells in Institutions of Higher Education (الهيئة المشتركة للكتل الطلابية في المعاهد العليا) — a coalition of 26 Palestinian student cells on Israeli campuses established at the beginning of the war. The coalition initiated the cross-campus day of action on 28 May, attended by Palestinians and Jews, which included an hour-long study strike and a demonstration of some 300 demonstrators on the Hebrew University campus, in response to the criminal invasion of Rafah, with key messages against the war of extermination in Gaza, and for liberation from national oppression. This trend emerged in combination with and after a record mobilization for demonstrations against the war organized by the Follow-Up Committee on Land Day (30 March) and Nakba Day (15 May). Along with the international wave, it now appears to be in a downward phase. However, the organizational framework may facilitate further initiatives for more days of action. Holding local and national-level discussion meetings, including with other forces in the anti-war movement, can help strengthen preparedness.
The “silencing law” promoted by the heads of the Israeli National Union of Students (a students’ federation) in cooperation with the bloody capitalist government is intended to increase nationalist McCarthyite persecution for the policing of faculties and the campuses in general, subject to the propaganda of the war machine and the occupation. The promotion of the law is funded by about half a million shekels (over €120,000) from student funds, without the support of some of the local students’ associations that make up the federation. This comes after last year, when the federation’s leadership blocked an attempt by students to mobilize the associations in the struggle against the “judicial coup” plan on the pretext that it is not its role to intervene in “political” matters. The fact that student associations that supported the Silencing Law withdrew under pressure from the campaign implies potential to obstruct the legislation. Despite the harsh political persecution, Netanyahu’s shaky governing coalition is not in the position of Putin’s Bonapartist regime, it is incapable of almost completely trampling any voice of dissent in the public domain. In the face of increased government intervention in institutions of higher education, the administrations of academic institutions are also re-entering into an increased confrontation with the government.
However, the weakness of left forces throughout the region, and in Israeli society in particular, is reflected in the relative effectiveness of the “security” demagoguery inflamed by the Israeli ruling class to promote nationalist reaction even beyond the base of support for the government. Thus, 69% of the adult general population in Israel supported the assassinations in Beirut and Tehran (Maariv, 2 August). While public distrust of the Knesset and the government is estimated at about 80%, this is simultaneously the rate of trust in the Israeli military, and a broad minority of 45% of the population in Israel — slightly more than the rate of support for Netanyahu — support an all-out war of the Israeli right-wing regime against Hezbollah (N12, 2 August).
After the showcase assassinations, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum — which has found itself in a deep crisis in recent months, including under pressure from the government to “soften messages” and has effectively ceased to function as a struggle organization — issued a right-wing statement, fanning illusions in government propaganda about “military pressure”. Here, it “commends the IDF for the important targeted killings carried out in recent days and weeks and for the military achievements of the past 10 months in Gaza“. This is evidence of the ideological pressures exerted by the mainstream of the ruling class on these struggles, which it seeks to harness to advance its interests against the Netanyahu government. It does so with propaganda justifying not only the oppression and mass killing of Palestinians, but also the continued killing and harm of hostages, and pressing the region to the brink of regional war. However, the leaders of the protest centers of the hostage families on the ground expressed a more critical and militant line. Thus, for example, they insisted on continuing the demonstrations even when the rightist establishment wing, in the form of organizers of the “Elections Now” protest centers, called to refrain from demonstrating due to the regional military tensions. At a demonstration of about 1,000 in Tel Aviv (3 August), Danny Elgart, brother of hostage Itzik Elgart, said that “Haniyeh’s assassination is the assassination of the hostages and the assassination of negotiations”.
The super-contradictory attitude toward the bloody capitalist government among the bulk of the Israeli protests against it is reflected in the fact that the same government that arouses abysmal mistrust, including mainstream voices identifying Netanyahu as a terrorist, can still rely on widespread confidence in its military actions. This situation reflects the success of the Israeli ruling class in systematically relying on the poison of national chauvinism, aided by security demagoguery, to harness to its agenda millions of Israeli workers and distance them from a vital path of struggle and international solidarity against it — first and foremost solidarity with the aspirations for freedom of millions of Palestinians.
Reactionary patriotic ideological pressure plays a hindering role in building an independent political alternative on the left vis-à-vis the Israeli establishment parties, one based on a program to resolve the underlying problems at the root of the bloody crisis. And objectively, such a program cannot offer a way out based on the capitalist system and imperialist relations, but only in a context of regional struggle against the regimes of oppression, capitalism and imperialism, and for socialist change.
At the same time, and this is a critical aspect, the same central contradiction, by its very nature, also entails the search for an alternative in the process of sharpening independent conclusions. Thus, the development of “war fatigue” sentiment, which has taken over the shock effect of 7 October, and under the spurring influence of the development of splits in the ruling class, reinforced a trend of growing support for stopping the war. It is evident that the space for intervention from the left in those Israeli demonstrations, with a clear message of opposition to the war, has increased compared to the first period.
While the movement for “Elections Now” is an incarnation of part of the establishment organizing coalition, around the line of “Anything But Bibi”, from the 2023 protest movement against the “judicial coup”, the tangential movement for “Deal Now” is led by the militant wing of the hostages families, and is also characterized by a more substantial mobilization of youth. As the struggle for “Deal Now” was met with the apathy of Netanyahu’s government and the far-right, it turned to various tactics to escalate pressure, and even placed on the agenda the demand that the General Histadrut chairman Bar-David — who makes do with hypocritical and hollow lip service — lead a general strike in the Israeli economy, including protest marches to the Histadrut headquarters in Tel Aviv. This incipient identification of the potential power of the organized working class also builds on the experience of the general strike and the centrality of the idea of the strike weapon in the movement against the “judicial coup”. It should be noted that understandably, although among Palestinian workers inside the Green Line there has been a similar process of relative increase in the weight of the idea of the strike weapon over the past few years, which was translated at its peak into the strong “Dignity Strike” of May ‘21, still, the right-wing approach of the Histadrut leadership, which supports the war, alienates them from the idea, given the impression that a general strike in the Israeli economy will not be harnessed against the national oppression of the Palestinians.
This is part of an international trend that has also manifested itself in Israeli society over the past decade in the initiatives of “civil strikes” as part of movements against discrimination and oppression. Now, in the specific aspect of pushing for a general strike in the economy, this movement is even more developed than the historic Israeli anti-war movement against the 1982 Lebanon War. Although the current Israeli protest movement — with the exception of a small left wing — is not categorically opposed to the war and the national oppression of the Palestinians, and is limited in scope, as evidence of the depth of the influence of reactionary security demagoguery at the heart of war propaganda, voices of opposition to the war among the movement are in an important trend of expansion.
Even at the beginning of 2023, Bar-David and the right-wing bureaucracy in the Histadrut repelled pressure “from below” to lead a decisive mobilization of the power of organized labor — and calls for a general strike in particular — to block the government’s plans. In the end, the Histadrut’s right-wing bureaucracy agreed, also under pressure from forces of capital that were desperate enough to gamble exceptionally (and in the long run dangerously for them, despite the collaborationism of the current Histadrut leadership) on attempting to harness for their goals a general political labor strike against the government. Now, when the scope of the demonstrations is still smaller in the shadow of the bloody crisis, and the forces of capital are reluctant to gamble on a similar action, so Bar-David, the “dictator” of the Histadrut, has more room to avoid leading real steps of struggle. For now, he can make do with “providing some logistical resources” to support the actions of the hostage families, while clarifying, even at a meeting of the Histadrut House of Representatives (BINA) in early August, that the leadership headed by him does not intend to lead any general strike “for a deal” or at all.
In an attempt to circumvent the brake placed by the right-wing bureaucracy in the Histadrut, “civil strike” days were declared, based on individual responses to the call for work stoppage, in accordance with the model of early 2023, but without similar momentum. The intervention of the protest organizations among some of the social services such as the White Robes, despite the expected substantial weakness at this stage of echoing patriotic establishment propaganda, can play an amplifying role in pressuring the bureaucracies in labor unions and trade unions. Even the Israel Medical Association, whose right-wing bureaucracy appears to be collaborating with the operating of the Sde Teiman torture facility, has been pressed and threatened organizational actions in response to police violence against medical personnel at anti-government demonstrations.
Overcoming the brake posed by Bar-David is not a simple matter, but it’s necessary to build momentum. Including, by harnessing unions individually, as well as workers’ committees (shop stewards), and advancing an agenda for a struggle across national communities to stop the war, for the return of hostages and prisoners, for massive reconstruction in Gaza and all affected communities, for welfare of all, and against the cost of living crisis — including the government’s intention to raise VAT in January to finance the war. Such a path could assist in building a generalized struggle for a way out of this deep crisis, harnessing the power of sections of the working class who currently do not take part in the demonstrations, and thus also strengthen steps in the direction of labor disruptions and strikes as necessary.
The socialist, class-based left does not adopt the slogan of “political agreement”, despite understanding the sentiment of many of the demonstrators who promote it, because it sows confusion. First, the demand to stop the Israeli offensive in Gaza and at the regional level must be unconditional, and parallel and not subject to the demand for the return of “all for all”. Secondly, it would be an illusion to assume that talks between the occupying power and the Palestinian Authority, which among other things suppresses protests against the war, are the key to exiting the crisis. The key is not in convincing people of the need for an agreement between them, but in building a sharp and clear struggle to end the war, the siege and occupation, the mass atrocities in Gaza, and the mass suffering on both sides of the fence; a struggle demanding massive reconstruction in Gaza and in all affected communities at the expense of the capitalists in Israel, in the region and in countries that provided support for the genocidal offensive; a struggle that is integrated in a campaign against the Israeli rule of capital and for socialist change in the region, with the aim of enabling a complete end to all forms of national oppression and guaranteeing an equal right to existence, to self-determination, to a life of well-being and to personal security.
The unification of Labor and Meretz into the framework of “The Democrats” party is no more than a laundered murmur of establishment parties from Netanyahu’s opposing camp, which propose a variant of liberal-nationalist, pro-capitalist ‘center’ politics under a thin cloak of lip service to “welfare” designed to deceive and capture support from layers of the Jewish population that are disillusioned with the ‘center-right’ parties. The Democrats chairperson Yair Golan, former deputy chief of staff of the Israeli military, expressed strong support for the military offensive on Gaza that he is now ostensibly calling to end, praised the assassinations carried out by the Israeli right-wing regime and promotes a policy of Jewish supremacy in euphemism. Not coincidentally, in the declarative vote in the Knesset on 17 July rejecting the establishment of a Palestinian state, Gantz voted in favor of the government’s position, while Lapid and The Democrats did not oppose but refrained from participating in the vote, as is typical of the forces that were part of the previous capitalist occupation government, which paved the way for Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir. The experience of the previous government, dubbed “the government of change”, should serve as a warning sign against illusions in a “lesser evil” route, which relies on establishment forces that seek to stabilize rather than replace the same capitalist system that created the bloody crisis and other enormous crises.
The Socialist Struggle Movement calls to strengthen and build the international struggle of ordinary people to stop the bloodbath, to promote protest and strike measures, and to strengthen solidarity in the workplaces and unions against nationalist incitement and “divide and rule”, and against exploitation and oppression, without illusions in capitalist establishment forces and imperialist powers of any shade.
As a socialist, internationalist, class-based force, we are active in demonstrations against the war and the occupation, and in demonstrations for “Deal Now” and “Elections Now” around calls to stop the war and to fight the rule of capital and occupation. As a Marxist class-based left, our aim is to intervene in a manner that is geared at contributing to the sharpening of conclusions about the way forward in struggle, the necessary demands, including resolving the problems at their systemic root, and in a manner that also takes into account the challenges of turning beyond the demonstrations, to broad layers of youth and workers from all national and ethnic backgrounds.
We call to advance steps to build a class-based, internationalist and militant political alternative on the left, in the form of broad struggle parties on both sides of the Green Line, which will aspire to cooperate with each other in the struggle against the Israeli rule of capital and occupation. Within the Green Line, it is necessary to promote a broad struggle party that crosses national communities among the working class, not on the basis of vague slogans about “change”, “democracy” and “peace”, but on the basis of a platform of categorical opposition to all forms of national oppression and all attacks on working people, and for socialist change — including public ownership and democratic control by the working class of the region’s resources for the sake of reconstruction, eliminating poverty and guaranteeing a life of well-being and personal security for all. This is in contrast to the nationalist capitalist politics that defend oppressive regimes and a whole system of inequality and multiple crises, which has given rise to the current historic bloodbath. We call on those who agree with the main points of the analysis presented here, to discuss with us, to act with us and to join us.
