By: International Workers League – Fourth International (LIT-FI)
The global political situation is becoming increasingly polarized and unstable. Brutal attacks on workers are causing a decline in living standards in both imperialist and semi-colonial countries. However, these attacks are also generating intense class struggles with explosive mobilizations in various parts of the world, such as in Nepal, Angola, Madagascar, and Morocco, where impoverished youth have played a particularly prominent role. These mobilizations have also occurred in imperialist countries.
Nearly two years after the October 7 attack by the heroic Palestinian Resistance, the Palestinian question remains at the epicenter of the global class struggle.
It has galvanized the vanguard worldwide as an icon of struggles against oppression intertwined with all other struggles.
Unlike the Nazi-fascist genocide of World War II, which only became known years later, the Israeli genocide is being broadcast online by social media, and it has had an impact around the world.
Support for the Palestinian struggle is now more widespread than ever, despite the complicity of the vast majority of bourgeois governments and media with Zionism.
The Sumud Flotilla’s actions focused world attention on Palestine. Its detention provoked a spectacular international mass reaction. There were two general strikes in Italy in support of the Palestinians—the first of its kind—and massive mobilizations in several European countries, including Spain, France, and Germany, as well as in much of the global vanguard. In Italy, on October 4, one million demonstrators gathered in Rome.
We should follow Italy’s lead! On October 15, Spain’s major unions are calling for a two-hour strike. Several trade union federations have joined forces, calling for partial strikes or even a 24-hour strike, in order to organize a large national day of solidarity with Palestine. This will force the Spanish government to completely and truly break off relations with Israel and impose a comprehensive arms embargo.
This is one way that global polarization is expressed. Despite the inequality in Gaza, the resistance continues to fight against the brutal Israeli military offensive that has killed more than 60,000 people and uses hunger as a weapon of war. Internationally, Zionism is increasingly isolated, and support for Palestine is growing alongside discontent over neoliberal attacks. This is an expression of the process of permanent revolution at the international level, reminiscent of the struggle against the Vietnam War.
The Trump Plan
Trump’s “peace plan” aims to address this situation. The attrition and discrediting of Israel and Zionism had already forced a significant portion of European imperialist governments to “recognize a Palestinian state.” However, this has no practical value since those same governments continue to maintain trade relations with Israel, send weapons to Israel, and repress pro-Palestinian demonstrators in their own countries. However, this signaled an adaptation to the isolation of Zionism among the masses.
Trump then backtracked on the delusional plan to create a “Middle East Riviera” in Gaza and presented a proposal demanding the immediate handover of all Israeli prisoners and the disarmament of Hamas and all Palestinian resistance in exchange for the cessation of Israeli attacks and the withdrawal of the plan to expel Palestinians from Gaza.
This proposal was negotiated only with Netanyahu, not Hamas. Hamas then received a new ultimatum from the U.S. government. The “peace agreement” calls for the acceptance of a military occupation of Gaza, with a partial withdrawal of Israeli forces until a US-controlled international force arrives, as well as the establishment of a puppet government in Gaza that serves imperial interests. Obviously, the agreement does not guarantee peace and eliminates any possibility of self-determination for the Palestinian people in Gaza.
Trump is responding to the critical situation of Zionism’s isolation worldwide and the fact that it is becoming increasingly costly for imperialism to maintain this war. He is also expressing his ambition to win the Nobel Peace Prize. It would be another disgrace, worse than the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat for the Oslo Accords.
It is a colonial plan to hand Gaza over to imperialism and Israel and defeat the Palestinian struggle. Furthermore, demanding the handover of all hostages (living and dead) to Israel while the Zionist army occupies Gaza allows Netanyahu to resume attacks at any moment.
Trump and Netanyahu aim to achieve through diplomacy what they have failed to achieve militarily: the return of imprisoned hostages and the withdrawal of all resistance forces from Gaza to legitimize a new occupation of Palestinian territory. Netanyahu boasts of a “total victory” with the agreement and categorically rejects the idea of a “Palestinian state.”
The international acceptance of this plan highlights the complicity of imperialist and bourgeois governments with Zionism and the genocide in Gaza. They want the Palestinians to be disarmed and subjugated to imperialism and Israel.
Furthermore, the imperialists hope that the disarmament of the Resistance will also lead to an end of the mobilizations in solidarity with Palestine that threaten the stability of their governments in various countries.
What now?
Hamas’s response to Trump’s proposal revealed the pressure exerted on its leadership by bourgeois “allies” in the region and abroad. Hamas praised Trump’s plan and agreed to release the hostages and negotiate the “details” of the plan.
Hamas’s response to this new proposal is actually open. By showing its willingness to negotiate the handover of the hostages without specifying the terms yet, Hamas may resist the total handover before Israel withdraws from Gaza. By rejecting the puppet government of imperialism, Hamas questions the overall plan.
We do not question the brutal, concrete difficulties of the resistance in Gaza. They are isolated in terms of weapons and food, with closed borders, and have been in a struggle for two years. It is a brutal situation of military and food isolation.
However, we believe that the only way for the Palestinian resistance to win is to continue the military resistance in Gaza while receiving significant support from people worldwide. As the Palestinians know, we know that no peaceful coexistence with the colonial and murderous state of Israel is possible in the region. Any “peace plan” that legitimizes the Zionist entity will only pause the just and legitimate war of national liberation.
The Palestinian people must decide on any peace agreement and negotiate its terms on their long road to the total liberation of Palestine.
While Gaza is militarily isolated today, the opposite is true politically. Israel is increasingly isolated on the world stage, facing a rise in boycott actions and growing popularity among workers. This is why we must redouble our efforts to show solidarity with the Palestinian people and provide them with the necessary material, political, and moral support to resist imperialist blackmail.
Other signs of crisis in the Zionist plan are beginning to emerge. Significant mobilizations are taking place in Morocco, which could lead to new political crises and a potential Arab Spring-like movement in the region.
The coming days will have significant consequences for the Palestinian situation and the global class struggle.
To defeat Trump’s colonial plan, we must continue and expand mobilizations in support of the Palestinian people worldwide.
Free Palestine from the river to the sea!
