Internationalist and revolutionary organizations from around the world are calling for a new coordinated round of demonstrations on November 29 to relaunch the movement of solidarity with the Palestinian people. The initiative began in Italy, where there is also an effort to organize a strike on November 28. The call emphasizes the need to restart and strengthen the struggles of recent months, aiming for the maximum participation of the organized working class and for a broader and more sustained blockade of the war-supply machinery that supports Israel.
The International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People on November 29 — although it was proclaimed by an institution such as the UN, which lies at the root of this people’s tragic history, through its legitimization of the State of Israel and the initial ethnic cleansing by which it was created — could serve as an opportunity for this relaunch.
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There is no “peace plan”. To stop the genocide in Palestine, we must demolish the Zionist-Western death machine!
Let’s relaunch the international movement to support the resistance of the Palestinian people!
Let’s stop the race to war, the war economy, and the police state!
On September 2nd, in Sharm el-Sheikh, Trump sold his “plan” to the world as a peace plan long-awaited for three millennia. Three weeks were enough to realize that there is not even a shadow of peace, not even a real ceasefire, much less a just peace. It is merely a truce, wrested by the extraordinary strength of the Palestinian people and their armed resistance and by the pressure of the growth and extension of a huge global solidarity movement — a fragile truce repeatedly violated by the Zionist state, resulting in hundreds of deaths and injuries among Palestinians in Gaza. Moreover, the Israeli army has returned to bombing Lebanon and Yemen, while settlers have intensified physical attacks and the demolition of olive trees in the West Bank. Meanwhile, the Knesset has declared the West Bank part of Israeli territory.
The executioner Netanyahu, in control thanks to the support of the United States and the EU, has absolutely not given up on “greater Israel” or on “finishing the job in Gaza”: that is, exterminating the armed resistance forces, annexing a large part of the Strip, and provoking, with new massacres and a blockade of food aid, a mass exodus from Gaza. Trump’s plan, which does not disavow the claims of “greater Israel,” expresses an even more ambitious project: involving Arab regimes in total pacification with an enlarged and “secured” Israel, so as to erase the “Palestinian question” forever by turning Gaza into his luxury resort (as in the obscene AI video last year) and promoting regime changes in several states towards a general pro-US imperialist redesign in the Middle East.
The two projects — a “greater Israel” and a “new Middle East” under US domination and integrating the machinery of NATO — may have points of friction, but they have the same colonialist and slave-ridden essence, both towards the Palestinian people and towards the exploited and oppressed masses throughout the Middle East. And it certainly won’t be the reactionary Arab bourgeoisies that will truly stand in the way of these projects. Nor will it be Putin’s Russia, which congratulated Trump on his “plan”; or India, a great friend of Israel; or Brazil, which continues to supply it with the enormous quantities of oil needed to carry out its occupation and genocide; or China, a major exporter of oceans of goods and capital to Israel. Τhe cynicism of bourgeois geostrategic politics is common in East and West, as evidenced by Russia’s efforts to maintain its influence and bases in Syria, cooperating with the new Jolani regime or by China’s diplomatic efforts to restore Iran-Saudi Arabia relations that will facilitate its own plan for the new economic and trade Silk Road. Despite their antagonism, everyone ultimately agrees on the disarmament of the Palestinian resistance and the false “two-state solution”.
Aware of the absolute necessity of a truce, both for the ravaged and starving masses of Gaza’s population and to reorganize their ranks, Palestinian resistance forces have agreed to operate, at least formally, within the “Trump plan”, in the context of the isolation and extortion being exercised by Arab leaders and neighboring countries in the region. But they have already had to reckon with the fact that Trump will be anything but an honest mediator between them and the genocidal gang in power in Israel. The road to stabilizing the truce is full of pitfalls; the road to freedom from the Zionist oppressor and true self-determination is still a very long one, and it requires the demolition of the “Trump plan.” It will certainly not be made easier by foreign hands called upon to “provisionally” administer Gaza, interested only in participating in the division of wealth stolen from the Palestinians, and which will try to blackmail and subjugate the Palestinians of Gaza through the “reconstruction” maneuvers.
More than ever, the cause of the national and social liberation of the Palestinian people lies in the hands of the oppressed and exploited masses of Palestine and the entire Arab-Islamic world, and of the global movement of solidarity and support for a free Palestine from the river to the sea. This, and this alone, is the true axis of resistance to Israel’s machine of destruction and death, to Western imperialism that supports it with every material, military, diplomatic, and cultural means, and to its accomplices, Arab and non-Arab.
With the exceptions of resistance organizations in Yemen and Lebanon, support for the legendary resistance of the Palestinian people in the Arab-Islamic world has been less than necessary, especially in a key country like Egypt. The case of Erdogan’s Turkey is revealing. There, two types of demonstrations existed: genuine Palestinian solidarity protests, exposing the AKP government’s continued trade with Israel, which were subsequently repressed by the state; and official rallies, organized by the AKP government to distract its Islamist base. Now, Erdogan was quick to welcome the Trump plan as its principles are common to his regime and serve both the aspirations of the Turkish bourgeoisie to strengthen its influence as a regional power, crushing the struggles of the Turkish working class and youth. The brutally repressive nature of Arab military regimes and monarchies acts as an anvil against the action of the masses. The crushing of the Arab Spring uprisings with the collaboration of local bourgeois classes and imperialist powers aborted a revolutionary outcome. But an extremely convulsive scenario remains where there have been rebellions and uprisings as in Lebanon, Iran, Algeria and Sudan has led to a wave of passivity among oppressed workers and youth. The deep social causes of the uprisings remain and are becoming more acute. This is demonstrated by the recent wave of protests in Morocco against poverty and exploitation. The Palestinian cause may once again be the fuse that will set fire to the slums of the Arab world.
Conversely, thanks in part to the Global Sumud Flotilla, the pro-Palestine movement in some European countries has recently grown, reaching a significant leap in both quality and scale in recent weeks, with general strikes in Italy, Greece, and Spain, and massive street demonstrations, especially in Italy. Until now, even where this movement has been widespread (such as in the United Kingdom), the organized working class has been marginally involved. The latest strikes have begun to make up for this gap, especially in some ports and in some areas of land logistics (warehouses, railways, local transport), where strike participation has been significant. Those who have taken to the streets en masse have been primarily a young, indigenous proletariat and those from second or third generation immigrants who, in addition to condemning the genocide and Israel, have expressed their unconditional solidarity with the Palestinian resistance in numerous ways. Equally strong and broad-based throughout Europe has been the condemnation of national governments and the European Union as complicit in genocide, ethnic cleansing, and support for Trump’s “plan.”
The real risk now is that this movement will feel somewhat satisfied with the ongoing, shaky truce. Instead, it is more necessary than ever to relaunch and strengthen the struggles of recent months, aiming for the maximum involvement of the organized working class and the broadest and most lasting blockade possible of the war logistics that support Israel. Israel depends heavily on the massive supplies of weapons and goods passing through European ports and territories, or even Arab ones (think Morocco). Its machinery of destruction and death would be severely weakened, even to the point of crippling, by an active, organized, and internationally coordinated boycott of the supplies of weapons and goods.
The International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People on November 29th — although proclaimed by an institution, such as the UN, which is at the origin of this people’s tragic story, with its legitimacy of the State of Israel and the original ethnic cleansing through which it was created —could be the opportunity for this relaunch. In Italy, it will be preceded by a new general strike called by all grassroots unions for Friday, October 28th. And this could be a useful indication for many other countries.
It is up to internationalist forces, attentive to everything happening beyond their own national borders, to harness this momentum and try to broaden it. It is up to internationalist militants in Italy to ensure that the November 28th strike transcends the narrow confines of grassroots unionism and involves, as happened on October 3rd, hundreds of thousands of workers, both CGIL members and non-union members.
Equally important is that the revitalization of the Palestine movement be aligned with the fight against the arms race, the war economy, and the war now raging in a growing number of countries around the world, while the massacre between NATO and Russia in Ukraine and the military gangs in Sudan incited by foreign powers continue without end. Other hotbeds of war are poised to erupt in Latin America, Africa, and the Balkans. Capitalist governments, starting with those of the great powers, are equipping themselves with increasingly repressive legislation, acting as veritable police states, in preparation for imposing new, enormous sacrifices on the working classes and even a segment of the middle class. The “exceptional” measures taken everywhere, from the United States to the United Kingdom, Germany, and Italy, against militants in solidarity with the Palestinian resistance are a foretaste of the draconian measures with which bourgeois governments of all stripes, whether fascist-like or Labour, will seek to nip in the bud the class conflict that will inevitably reignite.
As early as February 24th of last year, internationalist forces coordinated to bring a single platform of struggle to the streets of some twenty countries. We renew this commitment with the aim of making further progress towards the creation of a proletarian internationalist camp independent of all capitalist states, aimed at improving the salary, working and living conditions of the workers, at halting the race to war economy (with its heavy sacrifices) and to war,and transforming inter-imperialist war into social revolution. We wage this struggle promoting the constitution of independent revolutionary workers parties and of a revolutionary Workers International.
More than ever, alongside the Palestinian people and resistance against Western-Zionist colonialism!
End the bombing, siege, and famine inflicted on Gaza; freedom for all Palestinian prisoners!
Immediate and unconditional withdrawal of the Zionist army from Gaza and of settlers from the West Bank!
Let’s block the supply of weapons and goods to Israel; let’s boycott Israeli businesses! Break all relations with the Zionist State!
Free Palestine from the river to the sea!
For the revolutionary unity of the peoples of the Middle East, free from capitalist and imperialist domination!
For an international and internationalist class front against the capitalist governments and the wars of capital!
Workers and oppressed of the world, let us unite!
KA –Communist Liberation- Κομμουνιστική Απελευθέρωση (Greece)
PO – Workers Party (Argentina)
SEP – Socialist Workers Party (Turkey)
SWP – Socialist Workers Party (Great Britain)
TIR – Revolutionary Internationalist Tendency (Italy)
Anticapitalistas (Peru)
Comunistas (Cuba)
DSIP – Devrimci Sosyalist İşçi Partisi – Revolutionary Socialist Workers Party (Turkey)
Fuerza 18 de octubre (Chile)
GAR – Grupo Acción Revolucionaria (Mexico)
International Socialists (Botswana)
International Socialists (Canada)
Internationale Socialister (Denmark)
Linkswende (Austria)
Marx21 (Spanish State)
Pracownicza Demokracja – Workers Democracy (Poland)
Revolutionary Left Current (Syria)
Solidarity (Australia)
Σοσιαλιστικό Εργατικό Κόμμα (Greece)
Socialist Workers League (SWL, Nigeria)
Socialistická Solidarita – Socialist Solidarity (Czech Republic)
Tribuna Classista (Brazil)
UFCLP- United Front Committee for a Labor Party (US)
Workers Solidarity (South Korea)
