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The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain

Stop the War in Gaza Now!

by our Arab Affairs correspondent

Hundreds of thousands of Israelis heeded union calls for a general strike on Monday to demand a cease-fire and a deal to save the remaining captives in Gaza. The UN Security Council has expressed outrage over the lack of progress towards a ceasefire to end Israel’s months-long genocide against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip. But Hamas says Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is deliberately undermining efforts to end the fighting and secure a hostage release deal by refusing to withdraw Israeli troops from the Philadelphia Corridor along the Palestinian enclave’s border with Egypt. And on the West Bank the Palestinian resistance has finally driven the Israeli army out of the city of Jenin after ten days of fierce fighting.

On Monday, the Histadrut, Israel’s largest trade union which represents about 800,000 workers, called a one-day general strike backed by the Hostages’ Families Forum and Israel’s main manufacturers and entrepreneurs. Transport services, including the largest airport in Israel, were shut down and large parts of Israel’s economy were paralysed for hours before a labour court ordered the strikers to return to work at 2:30 pm.

But the protests are continuing. Crowds descended once again on Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, Eilat and other cities on Thursday carrying mock coffins to represent the six hostages found dead in a Rafah tunnel last weekend. “If Netanyahu continues as planned, more hostages will be killed,” Gil Dickman, whose cousin Carmel Gat was killed in Gaza, told crowds in Tel Aviv. Roni Adar, whose cousin’s body is being held in the enclave, said “Bibi [Netanyahu] – there’s only one way to save the hostages, and that’s to sign a deal”.

Meanwhile newly published documents show how Netanyahu and the Israeli negotiators deliberately prolonged the fighting by making new demands during ceasefire talks. The documents published by the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth (Latest News) also reveal that three of the six hostages found dead in Gaza last weekend were due for release under a ceasefire agreement drafted in May.

In New York the UN Security Council held its second emergency meeting on Gaza in less than a week on Wednesday, hearing a growing call for an immediate ceasefire and the humanitarian situation there as well as the escalating tension in the occupied West Bank.

Security Council members voiced their frustration over Israel’s refusal to accept the ceasefire outlined in Resolution 2735, which called for the release of captives and Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza.

“There is a sense of outrage felt around the globe,” said Slovenia’s Ambassador Samuel Žbogar, whose delegation holds the council’s rotating presidency this month. “Outrage in Palestine that the international community is failing them; outrage on Israeli streets that the hostages continue being held in Gaza; outrage of the global public that this war does not stop” he said.And Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador to the UN, said the Israelis using the “most despicable means to achieve its colonial aims” in the Gaza Strip. “Israel has unleashed a full-fledged war against the Palestinian people. Israel is seeking to impose a military solution to the conflict by disappearing a nation. There is no denying these facts. From genocide to apartheid, Israel is showing the world its willingness and readiness to use the most despicable means to achieve its colonial aims,” Mansour told the meeting in New York.

“We need a ceasefire, a ceasefire now. Everybody is saying that – not only the Palestinians, but the millions of Israelis who are in the streets, who care about their hostages. And they’re saying to their leadership, which is not listening to them, ceasefire now. Close the deal.

Accept, you know, the project or the proposal on the table so that we can stop the killing and save everyone, the Israelis who are hostages and the Palestinians who are prisoners”.