In face of the escalating assaults unleashed by the Israeli regime, the Palestinian people remain undefeated and determined to stand up to the occupying forces in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. On September 28, for example, thousands of youth and other Palestinians poured into the streets to celebrate the second anniversary of the latest wave of Palestinian resistance. This courageous stance has won them the respect and solidarity of millions of working people and youth around the world.

Today the Israeli rulers are emboldened in their brutality and arrogance by Washington’s moves toward war in the region. Under the cover of a massive U.S.-led imperialist assault on Iraq, Israeli cabinet ministers speak of breaking the stalemate and imposing a "new order" on the occupied territories. One option that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has vocally supported is to force a new Palestinian exodus into Jordan, where the population is already majority Palestinian.

The colonial-settler state of Israel, established five decades ago under British and U.S. imperialist sponsorship, remains Washington’s strongest bulwark in the Middle East. Despite tactical differences, the U.S. rulers support and finance Tel Aviv’s war on the Palestinians. Both oppose the Palestinian struggle for a homeland because it represents an obstacle to their own interests. In the case of the Israeli rulers, those interests lie in maintaining a state that is based on the dispossession of an entire people, while depending on superexploited Palestinian labor power to keep much of its economy running. Washington’s overriding interest is to expand its dominance over the entire Mideast and its oil, and the Palestinian struggle for national self-determination remains the focal point of resistance to imperialist domination throughout the region.

A U.S. invasion and military occupation of Iraq will be a deadly threat to the Palestinian struggle. In that sense, the Palestinians face a two-sided offensive against them--from an emboldened Israeli assault and from a U.S. military force in Iraq and neighboring countries.

While hostile to the Palestinians’ aspirations, the Israeli and U.S. rulers’ interests are not the same, and in fact conflict. For example, while Tel Aviv may be willing to take part in a military assault on Iraq--or on other countries in the area if it deems them a threat--Washington knows that Israel’s full and open involvement would inflame and deepen opposition to the imperialist war among millions of working people throughout the area, placing immense pressure on the governments of their countries to take their distance from Tel Aviv.

That is why Washington has called on the Sharon government to exercise "restraint" in the coming war--pledging, in its turn, to send special forces to take out Iraq’s Scud missiles that might be fired at Israel. While the Israeli armed forces have themselves stationed commando units inside Iraq, Tel Aviv has said it will not retaliate against Scud firings--unless they hit population centers.

Because of the political costs that accompany Washington’s open association with Israel, the U.S. government has increasingly relied on the collaboration of other regimes in the region, from Turkey to Kuwait and other Gulf states. It has used these countries to carry out a steady construction of bases and other military facilities, and today plans on using several of them as staging grounds for the assault on Iraq.

The assistance that governments such as Saudi Arabia provide to the U.S.-British war effort, however, does not make their future more secure. The drive to war on Iraq sets the stage for broader assaults by Washington to grab oil and natural resources throughout the Arabian Peninsula and Gulf.

The struggle of the Palestinians remains in the forefront of the fight against the imperialist war moves. Because of the increasingly bourgeois outlook of the current Palestinian leadership, however, it will take time--as well as revolutionary advances elsewhere in the world--for a revolutionary leadership to emerge, one that can lead a successful fight for a democratic, secular Palestine.

Despite these obstacles, generation after generation of Palestinian liberation fighters continues to show it is possible to stand up to the oppressors. For working people in the United States, joining with the Palestinian struggle against Israeli brutality and for self-determination is part of carrying out a working-class campaign against imperialism and its wars.
 
 
Related article:
U.S., UK warplanes step up bombing in Iraq’s south
Pittsburgh rally condemns assault on Palestinians  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home