Workers around the world should take a stand against the Israeli government's brutal crackdown against Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza. We should reject the attempts by Tel Aviv and big-business officials and media internationally to paint the Palestinian people, especially supporters of Hamas, as terrorists and peace-breakers.
The reason there is no peace in the Middle East lies squarely with the Zionist state in Israel. There won't be peace as long as Tel Aviv continues to deny the Palestinian people their right to national self-determination - to a democratic, secular Palestine.
Israel was founded as a colonial settler state, based on the uprooting of the Arab population. The big majority of Palestinians were forced to leave the country or live in the West Bank and Gaza, areas militarily occupied by Tel Aviv since 1967.
Palestinian farmers have been driven off the land in massive numbers, and into the status of cheap laborers for Israeli capitalists. Between 1967 and 1981 alone, one-third of Palestinian-held land in the West Bank was seized by the Israeli military administration. This process still continues today, even after the signing of the Israeli-PLO accord last year, which granted some measure of Palestinian autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza.
Under the accord, Tel Aviv's forces withdrew from most of the Palestinian areas in the occupied territories, and 90 percent of the Arab population came under the control of the Palestinian Authority. But 70 percent of the land area remains under Israeli control, as does most of the water supply and other resources needed for any meaningful development. Israeli authorities retained the "right" to enter any Palestinian village for "security" reasons.
The scope of Tel Aviv's acts of collective punishment in response to four recent bombings in Israel is staggering. Not only did the Israeli government decide to confine 1.2 million Arabs to their villages, Israeli soldiers welded shut and prepared to bulldoze the homes of families of alleged Hamas fighters. Tens of thousands of Palestinians are being cut off from their jobs inside the Israeli border - often the only jobs available.
Working people in Palestine have a proud history of resistance to their dispossession and the abuses by the Israeli regime, including the several-year-long intifada (uprising) in the late 1980s, where thousands of youth and workers took to the streets, often armed only with rocks, against the Israeli military occupation. The turnout of 100,000 Palestinians at the funeral of a Hamas leader assassinated by the Israeli police in January was a reminder that this resistance has not been broken.
The Palestinian struggle for self-determination deserves the support of workers and fighters for democratic rights around the world. Ending the colonial oppression of the Arab population is the only basis on which working people in the region, including workers in Israel of all nationalities and religions, can forge unity and advance their common interests.
We should demand that Tel Aviv immediately withdraw its troops from the entire West Bank and Gaza, release all Palestinian political prisoners, end the detentions of Palestinian activists, and open the borders. And we should oppose every move by Washington or any other imperialist power to give military aid or other backing to the Zionist regime in Tel Aviv.