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The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain


Gaza prevails against Genocide!

by our Arab Affairs correspondent

The Gaza truce is holding as Palestinian prisoners are freed and Israeli captives go home. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians return to scenes of death and destruction in the north of the Gaza Strip. Israel bans the UN relief agency that has provided vital humanitarian aid to the Palestinian refugees since 1949. Donald Trump repeats his call for the forced relocation of Palestinians from the war-torn Gaza Strip to Egypt and Jordan. And Zionist settlers who fled attacks by the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah during the war refuse to return to their settlements in northern Israel amid fears of another round of fighting following continued Israeli violations of the agreement that ended the conflict.

Israel officially cut ties with the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) last week, a move which will jeopardise the delivery of critical services after 15 months of the war on Gaza. Under the ban, UNRWA will no longer be permitted to operate on occupied Palestinian soil, and all contact between the agency and Israeli officials will be prohibited.

UNRWA was created in 1949 to provide relief, health and education services for the Palestinian Arabs who lost their homes and livelihoods during the Arab-Israeli wars following the establishment of the Zionist entity in 1948. UNRWA supports around six million Palestinian refugees within and outside Palestine, providing services such as schools, primary health centres and other social services.

The Zionists repeatedly accused it of undermining Israel’s security and claim UNRWA employees were involved in the devastating resistance attack of 7th October 2023. A UN report on the agency’s activities refuted these claims however, indicating that the Israeli occupation was yet to provide any evidence linking UNRWA employees to “terrorist activities”.

Meanwhile Trump doubles down on his desire to ethnically cleanse the beleaguered Palestinian enclave. He told reporters on Monday that: “When you look at the Gaza Strip, it’s been hell for so many years… There have been various civilisations on that strip. It didn’t start here. It started thousands of years before, and there’s always been violence associated with it. You could get people living in areas that are a lot safer and maybe a lot better and maybe a lot more comfortable.” Asked if this means he no longer believes in a two-state solution, Trump avoided answering directly, saying he’d discuss the issue with Benjamin Netanyahu when the Israeli leader comes to meet him in Washington.

Egypt, Jordan and the Palestine government that runs the “autonomous” zones in the occupied West Bank have all come out strongly against Trump’s displacement idea, saying that Palestinians should be allowed to remain in Gaza, where members of Israel’s far-right government have been calling to re-establish Zionist settlements and calling for the “voluntary migration” of Palestinians from the enclave. It has also been denounced by the Israeli communists and the communist-led Democratic Front for Peace and Equality (Hadash).

“The return home in northern Gaza of tens of thousands of Palestinians is the real answer to Trump’s forced displacement wishes,” says Aida Touma-Sliman, a Hadash MP in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. “By proposing the mass expulsion of Gazans, Trump is realising the settlers’ vision of ethnic cleansing. This is a catastrophic proposal and a war crime. It must be resisted by the entire international community – especially by the Arab regimes that are floated as destinations for transfer. Trump doesn’t understand that a people that survived 470 days of destruction on their land will not surrender to transfer. Gaza is Palestinian, and it must be reconstructed by and for its people.”