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The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain

Stop the War in Gaza too!

by our Arab Affairs correspondent

The guns have fallen silent in south Lebanon. A truce based on the 2006 agreement that ended the last war began this week following over a year of fighting between the Israeli aggressors and Hezbollah, the Lebanese resistance movement drawn from the Shia Muslim community in southern Lebanon. The truce, brokered by the Americans with French assistance, calls for the withdrawal of all Israeli troops and resistance fighters from southern Lebanon. Some 5,000 more regular Lebanese army troops will bolster the existing UN peace-keeping force, and the Americans will join the cease-fire monitoring process. And as thousands of Lebanese civilians pack the roads south to return to what’s left of their homes shattered by the fighting Hezbollah says it’s their victory not Israel’s. The Israelis have failed to crush the Lebanese resistance or set up a new Zionist “buffer-zone” in southern Lebanon.

Now the genocidal war in Gaza must end. The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas that runs the Gaza Strip says it’s “committed to co-operating with any effort to reach a ceasefire in Gaza”. Hamas says an agreement must end the war, pull Israeli forces out of Gaza, return displaced Palestinians to their homes, and achieve a deal that would see the Israeli prisoners held in the beleaguered Palestinian enclave exchanged for Palestinian prisoners languishing in Israeli jails.

Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said the movement “appreciates” Hezbollah’s right to strike a deal protecting its people, adding that it is ready to reach a ceasefire with Israel to stop the fighting in Gaza. Abu Zuhri blamed the failure to reach a ceasefire in Gaza on Netanyahu, who has repeatedly accused Hamas of foiling the alleged efforts of the Zionists to end the fighting. “Hamas showed high flexibility to reach an agreement and it is still committed to that position and is interested in reaching an agreement that ends the war in Gaza,” he said.

The ceasefire has certainly shattered Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s illusion of reshaping the Middle East by force. And the deal has been greeted with relief in Lebanon, where thousands of people are making their way home to the south, defying a warning from the Israeli military to stay away from previously evacuated areas. Residents returning to the Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh hailed Hezbollah’s victory as they returned to their homes. Some headed straight to the place where Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli air-raid in September.

“The enemy’s acceptance of the agreement with Lebanon without fulfilling the conditions it set is an important milestone in shattering Netanyahu’s illusions of changing the map of the Middle East by force,” Hamas said. Netanyahu’s “illusions of defeating the Resistance forces or disarming them” have been sent to oblivion.

This was also the view in Tehran. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ismail Baqaei welcomed the news of the end of Israeli aggression in Lebanon while stressing the firm support of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the Lebanese government, nation and resistance forces.

“The ceasefire agreement which went into effect today is good news. However, the real question that is at the root of all of Israel’s conflicts in the region, is the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories,” was how they put it in this week’s Zo Hederech (This is the Way). Now, the war in Gaza must come to an end quickly, and an agreement must be reached in which all the hostages are released, and Israel leaves the Gaza Strip permanently. The Israeli occupation over the Palestinian people must come to an end and the two-states solution needs to be negotiated and implemented. Israel needs to become a state where all citizens enjoy full equality.