As Syria burns the Israeli regime intensifies its repressions of the Palestinians

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THE Palestinian Minister of Finance, Shukri Bishara, has just addressed members of the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee (AHLC) in New York, telling it that five years after the World Bank and the IMF said the Palestinian Authority (PA) was fully ready for statehood, Palestinians were ‘still waiting’.

The AHLC is chaired by Norway and co-sponsored by the EU and US. In addition, the United Nations participates together with the World Bank (Secretariat) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The AHLC seeks to promote dialogue between donors, the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Government of Israel (GoI).

Bishara told it: ‘Today, five years later, we Palestinians are waiting – and still waiting for that elusive statehood.’ He added: ‘What more would it take for those countries that have not yet officially recognised us to come to terms with the self-evident truth that Palestinian statehood has become long overdue?’

He listed a number of ‘economic success stories’ by the PA over the years, despite enduring the financial challenges of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territory and ‘two horrible wars on Gaza during the last five years’. However, the AHLC has been used to fool the Palestinian leadership into thinking that something was going to be done, or about to be done for Palestine, when the truth is that the strategic interests of the major imperialist powers, among them the US and the UK, require the constant strengthening of its Israeli policeman in the Middle East, and consequently the continual strengthening of its brutal occupation over the Palestinians.

The UK arms Israel while the US has just decided to give the Israeli regime a free gift of $3.8bn dollars every year for 10 years from 2019 to be spent on armaments. Israel now feels that it is indeed indispensable, and therefore there are no limits to what it can do to the Palestinians.

No wonder the Israeli occupation of the Palestinians is becoming ever more murderous with every day that passes, as it openly seeks to put an end to the Palestinian question by colonising permanently the whole of Palestine. Yesterday, Israeli forces detained at least 23 Palestinians – including two children – with a raid in the Shufat refugee camp, sparking hours-long clashes, while the Israeli army said they also uncovered home-made weapons and ammunition in the southern district of Hebron.

Seven Palestinians from Hebron have been killed by Israeli forces since last Thursday, amid an upsurge in the resistance. Yesterday, Israeli forces shot and injured a 13-year-old Palestinian girl at the Eliyahu checkpoint in eastern Qalqilya near the illegal Israeli settlement of Alfei Manashe in the northern occupied West Bank, after she was ordered to stop by border guards and continued walking.

The incident was reported by the Israeli media as an ‘attempted stabbing attack’ and a ‘thwarted terror attack’, though an Israeli Defence Ministry statement reportedly said that Israeli forces found no traces of explosives or weapons after searching the teenager’s bag. No Israeli injuries were reported.

Since a wave of resistance began nearly a year ago across the occupied Palestinian territory, including Israel, there have been 230 Palestinians killed by Israeli police, the army and settlers. In the wake of this week’s surge in violence, the Israeli army decided to deploy an additional battalion to the Hebron district.

It is becoming clearer and clearer that the Palestinian state will never be given to the Palestinians, it will have to be established and defended by revolutionary means. The struggle for the Palestinian state is part of the struggle to free the Middle East from imperialist domination. The Palestinian, Lebanese and Syrian revolutions are therefore linked.

The defeat of the US and UK imperialists in Syria along with their foreign agents will be a major victory for the Syrian, Palestinian and Lebanese peoples and create the conditions for the overthrow of the Israeli regime and the restoration of Palestine as an independent state in which Muslims, Christians and Jews will live side by side. This is the way forward.