THE NEW WORKER

The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 17th August 2018


UNEASY PEACE IN GAZA

by our Arab Affairs correspondent

AN UNEASY peace has returned to Gaza following renewed undertakings between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood that runs the besieged Palestinian enclave on the Mediterranean coast. Hamas leader Ismail Haniya says that an end to the Israeli and Egyptian decade-long blockade of Gaza was “around the corner” amidst a new American initiative to resolve the Palestinian problem.

Rumours abound about a truce that would allow trade and humanitarian assistance to return to the beleaguered Gaza Strip in the return for the remains of two Israeli soldiers killed in 2014 and the release of two Israelis believed to be held by Hamas.

At the United Nations the Zionist entity has countered calls by the UN secretary-general to boost protection of Palestinians against persisting Israeli atrocities on protesting civilians in Gaza Strip and the occupied territories by demanding action against Palestinian leaders, for allegedly inciting violence, instead.

United Nations chief Antonio Guterres laid out options to protect Palestinian civilians, including the deployment of an armed military or police force to the occupied lands. But this would need the endorsement of the Security Council and would certainly be vetoed by the Americans if it was tabled. A small European-staffed observer mission was deployed in the West Bank city of Hebron in 1994 but the Zionist regime has since rejected calls for an international presence in flashpoint Palestinian areas.

Four months of unequal struggle between protesting Palestinians and the might of the Israeli army has more or less ended following indirect talks brokered by the United Nations and the Egyptian authorities. Mass Palestinian protests that began along the cease-fire line on the 30th March were met by indiscriminate gunfire and air attacks by the Israeli armed forces. Over 170 Palestinian demonstrators were killed and a further 18,000 wounded over the last four months.

Meanwhile US president, Donald Trump, is trying to revive his “deal of the century” by telling the Palestinians they will get “something very good” in future American-sponsored peace talks because “it’s their turn next” following American recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Trump’s chief henchman, John Bolton, claimed on Wednesday that “a lot of progress” had been made on a Middle East peace plan aimed at comprehensively resolving the Israeli—Palestinian conflict.

Bolton gave no clue to what this plan contained — but informed sources say that all it amounts to is yet another worthless ‘autonomy’ plan for Gaza and the parts of the West Bank the Zionists don’t want, along with massive amounts of compensation for Palestinians willing to sell their birth-right to the Zionist settlers. This, the US imperialists hope, will clear the decks for a new NATO-linked military pact in the Middle East that would revolve around Israel and the feudal Arab kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Because the Saudis want open Israeli and American military assistance to bail them out of their incursion into Yemen, the House of Saud is expected to foot the bill for all this nonsense. But the Saudis need not worry because it is never going to come to pass. Previous attempts to extend NATO into the Middle East, such as the ‘Baghdad Pact’ and CENTO (Central Treaty Organisation), were unstable from the start and eventually collapsed when the hated Iranian Shah was overthrown in 1979.

No Palestinian leader, not even those who run the ‘autonomous’ Palestinian administration in the West Bank, could sign up to such a surrender ‘peace’ and retain any credibility with the Palestinian community as a whole.