The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 31st July 2026
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 31st July 2026
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Iran hits US bases throughout the Middle East. The Ameri cans and Saudis rocket Iran and Shia Muslim militia bases in Iraq. The double blockade of the Persian Gulf and the new one in the Red Sea send spot oil prices up to global-warming levels amid industry fears that Donald Trump has lost the plot. On social media Trump rants and raves against Iran. “We’re going to beat the fucking shit out of them. We’ll be hitting them hard. They’re going to get a beating” he says. And in Gaza and the West Bank the Israelis continue their terror attacks on Palestinian civilians.
Whether Trump is clinically insane is something only psychiatrists can tell. But there’s a method in his madness on the diplomatic front. There the Americans have gone on the offensive to try and get the Saudis to seal the knot and join their NATO-style ‘Abraham Accords’ in the Middle East.
Last week Trump told the world that his negotiators had reached a “historic agreement” with Hamas for the complete disarmament of all the resistance units in the Gaza Strip in return for a total Israeli withdrawal from the “security zone” it has carved out of the Strip as well as the establishment of an independent Palestinian administration in Gaza and the start of serious and substantive efforts to rebuild the economy of the devastated Palestinian enclave.
This, Trump says, is a “monumental step towards lasting peace and security” and a major milestone in his 20-point plan for the enclave. “Today, agreement has been reached on the decommissioning of weapons and civilian transition in Gaza. It took months of very difficult negotiations to get here” Trump said, adding that there were times when he “did not believe we would make it” and insisting the Israeli withdrawal “must move in lockstep” with Hamas decommissioning.
The Israelis will be replaced by Trump’s peace-keeping force, the so-called “International Stabilisation Force” that will eventually be responsible for security throughout the entire Palestinian enclave – in tandem with a Palestinian police force that has yet to be established.
Ghazi Hamad, a member of the Hamas negotiating team, has confirmed the agreement.
“These negotiations were difficult and hard, and we tried to reach the best possible formula that was achievable” Hamad told Al-Jazeera TV. But none of it will happen if the Israelis don’t fulfil their obligations, particularly withdrawing from Gaza and advancing reconstruction in the Palestinian territory.
There are big ifs. The Saudis have no principled objections to signing up to the American-sponsored surrender peace with Israel in return for American know-how to set up their own nuclear energy programme. But they also want the face-saving establishment of an ‘independent’ Palestinian state on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Some believe that Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood which runs the Palestinian enclave, simply wants to go along with the Saudis – whose hand lies behind all of this Gaza talk – to force the Zionists to openly reject Trump’s initiative. A Palestinian state – even if it is little more than the “Palestinian Authority” which runs the autonomous Palestinian zones in the West Bank – is anathema to Netanyahu and the rest of the Zionist establishment in Tel Aviv. America’s ruling circles, however, want a way-out of the Iran conflict. And not one that leaves the Islamic Republic in control of the Persian Gulf. The Americans need the House of Saud to strengthen their grip on the oil-rich region. Whether they’ll pay the Saudi price is another matter. We’ll soon see…