The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 24th November 2023
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 24th November 2023
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Israel has agreed to a four day truce in Gaza as part of a prisoner exchange deal with Hamas brokered by Qatar – but the Netanyahu government says fighting will resume once the hand-overs are completed. Vladimir Putin says Russia has a moral obligation to deliver humanitarian aid to the civilian population in Gaza. And the Ansarallah movement that controls northern Yemen, popularly known as the Houthis, has opened up a second front against Israel by seizing an Israeli-owned cargo ship in the Red Sea.
Israel has agreed to free 150 Palestinian women and children held in Israeli jails in return for the release of 50 hostages held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The deal will allow the delivery of hundreds of lorry-loads of humanitarian aid and fuel to the besieged Gaza Strip and should see the complete suspension of Israeli military flights over the Palestinian enclave for as long as the cease-fire holds.
The Zionists invaded the Strip following the Hamas raid on southern Israel that claimed the lives of over 1,400 Israelis last month. Since then, the death toll in Gaza has reached 13,000, most of them civilians.
Earlier this month the World Health Organisation (WHO) accused Israel of routinely targeting medical facilities. The international watchdog also said that child deaths were an everyday occurrence in the besieged Palestinian enclave. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the UN Security Council that “on average, a child is killed every 10 minutes in Gaza”. The WHO Director-General also said that Israel had attacked medical facilities, ambulances and patients in Gaza and the West Bank on at least 250 occasions since 7th October, bringing the medical system in Gaza to “its knees”.
This week Russian president, Vladimir Putin, told an emergency BRICS online summit that the “death of thousands of people, the mass displacement of the civilian population and the humanitarian catastrophe that has erupted” were cause for the “deepest concern”. He said he had been moved by videos depicting Palestinian children being operated on without anaesthetics. “When you watch how children are being operated on with no anaesthesia – this of course arouses very special feelings.”
While securing humanitarian truces is a key task in the short-term, the Russian government wants lasting peace in the region. This, Putin said, can only be achieved on the basis of previous UN resolutions that call for the creation of two states – Israel and Palestine.
Other BRICS members share Russia’s stance, as seen by the way they have voted at the UN General Assembly, and the bloc could “play a key role” in resolving the decades-old conflict.
Putin later told his Cabinet of plans to send humanitarian aid to the Gazans. Putin said: “This is a very important, humanitarian, noble mission. We need to help people suffering as a result of the ongoing events.” The Russian leader said the provision of aid to Palestinian civilians in Gaza was “our sacred duty”.
Meanwhile a new front against Israel’s war was opened, when Yemen’s Ansar Allah movement seized an Israeli-owned cargo ship in the Red Sea this week. The Galaxy Leader, laden with cars bound for India, was ordered to sail to the north Yemeni port of Hodeida.
The Israelis say the freighter is a British-owned and Japanese-operated cargo ship. But the maritime security company Ambrey says the vessel’s group owner “is listed as Ray Car Carriers”, whose parent company belongs to Abraham ‘Rami’ Ungar, an Israeli businessman.
Japan is leading international efforts to obtain the release of the vessel and its crew while Ansarallah says they will “continue to carry out military operations against the Israeli enemy until the aggression against Gaza stops and the ugly crimes … against our Palestinian brothers in Gaza and the West Bank stop”.