Version imprimableThe Israeli regime launched its military aggression against the Gaza Strip, which is still living under an illegal and inhumane siege transforming it in a big open air prison, under the pretext of avenging the murder of three young Israeli settlers by two young Palestinians who acted on their own behalf and punishing collectively the Palestinians and also particularly Hamas, which despite accusations of the Israeli regime against it have denied any involvement in the assassination. Israel’s propaganda to present itself as a victim does not work and cannot hide that the Israeli State has pursued and intensified its policy of colonization, apartheid, expulsion and occupation against the Palestinian population, and that since the beginning of the year, previous to the Israeli military aggression on Gaza, a total of 22 Palestinian civilians were killed by Israeli security forces, while 1,226 Palestinians were injured es, and 629 have been displaced forcefully.
In the West Bank, following the announcement of the death of the 3 settlers, Israel launched military operations in the territories killing more than 10 Palestinians in couple of weeks and several others were injured, while more than 500 Palestinians were arrested, of whom more than 80 were held under the label of “administrative detention”, a form of detention without charge or trial. The number of children detained in Israeli prisons increased to 250. The Israeli occupation forces also imposed severe restrictions on movement in the West Bank, while searching over 1,000 houses and universities, vandalizing several of them.
In the Palestinian territories of 1948 ( Israel), a massive racist media campaign was launched, which falls into a deep institutional racism promoted by the State of Israel for decades now, and increased considerably through the weeks, following the announcement of the death of the three young settlers, calling for the killings of Arabs and Palestinians. Demonstrations were held in various Israeli cities calling for the killings of Palestinians while several of these latter were lynched in public by groups of young Israelis. These scenes reminded us of the gatherings of lynching in the southern states of the United States against black people every time a white person was found dead. This pogrom atmosphere also led to the murder of 16 year old Palestinian boy, Mohammed Abu Khdeir, who lived in a neighborhood of East Jerusalem annexed and occupied by Israel, who was kidnapped and burned alive by a group of Israeli youth. The boy “was burned from the inside and from the outside, because he was probably forced to drink the fuel,” said Palestinian Minister for Jerusalem, Adnan al-Husseini. Israeli media tried to cover the story through false propaganda declaring that the boy had been murdered because of his “sexual orientation” or due to clan feuds. The police only admitted after several days that the assassination of the young Palestinian was due to political reasons, without disclosing any information because of the censorship on the investigation.
Israeli police also arrested the cousin of martyr Mohammed Abu Khdeir, Tareq Abu Khdeir, 15 years old and a U.S. citizen, after beating him.
Following this, many demonstrations of Palestinians of 1948, inside Israel, were held to protest and denounce Israeli policies. Since the murder of Mohammad Abu Khdeir, several rallies were also organized by anti-racist organizations in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa. Demonstrations are now held also in support of the Gaza Strip.
We reiterate our total support and solidarity with the Palestinian people and the Palestinian resistance against Israeli military aggressions and policies, but these events should also remind us of two important strategic questions when its comes to the Palestinian Liberation.
Firstly, the nature of Israel’s State, as explained above, and its policies must lead us to the (re)confirmation that the only real solution for the Palestinian issue and the Jewish question is 1) the destruction of the colonial, occupation and Apartheid State of Israel, which has brought only suffering to the Palestinian People and has never brought security in Israel and elsewhere to the Jewish people as its propaganda promotes it, quite on the contrary, and 2) the establishment of a democratic, social and secular state in historic 1948 Palestine for all ( Palestinians and Israelis ) without any form of discrimination and in which any Palestinian, whether internal refugee or refugee in a foreign country, has the right to return to its land and original house which they were forcibly displaced in 1948, 1967 and after.
Secondly, it is also necessary to remind everyone that the liberation of Palestine goes through the overthrowing of all the authoritarian regimes in the region, which are complicit in the suffering of the Palestinian people. All the ruling class in the region, without any exception, benefits directly or indirectly from the presence of the Zionist State. The different regimes in the region may have political differences that leads to competition and tensions, but they all agree on the necessity of defeating the popular classes of the region in their will of freedom and emancipation. All these regimes have in addition opposed the Palestinian Liberation movement and / or tried to suppress it through different ways, notably harsh repression, expulsion and killing, and / or tried to co-opt it through funding and push it into submission to its own political interests that are in opposition to the interests of the Palestinian popular classes.
This is why opposing any popular revolution in the region is not only betraying the cause of the people of Syria, Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain and elsewhere, but also betraying the Palestinian cause and its people. One cannot decently support the Palestinian cause and in the same time support or take a centrist position regarding the Assad criminal regime responsible of the death of hundreds of Palestinians in the past three years in Syria and of the siege and bombing of Yarmouk refugee camp and other Palestinian refugee camps throughout Syria, while without forgetting the history of the Assad regime in trying to suppress any form of independant Palestinian resistance, wether during the civil war in Lebanon in repressing and trying to suppress the Palestinian Liberation movement, or in refusing to intervene in Jordan in September 1970 to stop the bloodshed against the Palestinians by the Hashemite Kingdom, or by preventing any form of resistance, both Syrian and Palestinian, in Syria to struggle for the liberation of the Golan and Palestine.
No difference exists between a Palestinian dead in Gaza or in Yarmouk, they are one, they are both struggling for liberation and emancipation.
This logic goes for all authoritarian regimes, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Iran, etc… The road for the liberation of Palestine goes through all these capitals.
A similar logic can be applied to political groups such as Hezbollah that claims to support the liberation of Palestine but has been cooperating for the past few years with the Lebanese state and security forces to prevent any popular or military mobilizations against Israel from South Lebanon, but above all that is participating alongside the Assad regime in the military fights against the Syrian revolutionaries. We can see that it’s political interests, linked to the ones of Iran, to defend a corrupt and authoritarian regime that has killed Syrians, Palestinians and Lebanese, attacked resistant movements in the past and prevented any form of resistance from Syria against Israel are more important than the liberation of Palestine.
This includes Palestinian groups, which we reiterate our total support in their fundamentral right to resistance against Israel and against Arab reactionary and authoritarian regimes and condemn the attacks on them all from Israel and other actors, which for their far majority have had a selected support to popular revolutions. Our support to Palestinian groups in their resistance against Israeli military agression do not prevent us from having criticisms in their political views and programs. We for example condemn the support of Mahmoud Abbas to Sissi’s authoritarian rule in Egypt, the support of the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine for the Assad regime and non condemnation of the siege imposed by the Assad regime on the Yarmouk camp, the support of Hamas to the Bahraini regime, visit of Prime Minister Hanieh to the Bahraini King and other ruling kings of various monarchies of the Gulf in addition to Iran in February/ March 2012 in which he saluted the King’s policies and “reforms”, against the Bahraini popular revolution and which was characterized by some Hamas leaders as a sectarian coup by Shias.
We need revolutionary political parties and activists that see the link between the liberation of the popular classes of the region and of Palestine, and that struggle for it. The liberation of Palestine and its popular classes is linked to the liberation and emancipation of the popular classes in the region against their ruling classes and the various imperialist, particularly the USA and Russia, and sub imperialist forces, such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar . In this similar logic we have to fight against all attempts by regimes and islamic reactionary forces to divide the popular classes according to their gender, religious sects, nationalities, etc… in an attempt to rule them and therefore prevent their liberation and emancipation and therefore of the Palestinian popular classes as well. The need to build these revolutionary parties is very important to understand.
In this perspective, the Syrian revolutionary people have expressed this feeling in demonstrations of support for the Palestinian people and showed their understanding, and that since the beginning of the revolution, that their liberation is linked to the liberation of the people of the region and more particularly of the Palestinian people. As written on a placard of a demonstrator during a protest in the occupied Golan on July 14 against the Israeli invasion: Freedom, a common destiny for Gaza, Yarmouk and the Golan. In conclusion, our path to freedom is linked.
Palestine and Syria are one! Our freedom is one!
