A ONE-day strike was called yesterday by Palestinians in the city of Jenin following the murder of two Palestinians by Israeli troops in a raid on the city and a refugee camp.
The two victims were killed by Israeli gunfire and at least four Palestinians were arrested in a confrontation between residents of the city and the Israeli occupation forces.
This latest figures bring the number of Palestinians killed by the Israeli military since the beginning of the year to 210, with 158 killed in the West Bank and 52 in the besieged Gaza Strip during Israel’s three-day assault in August.
This latest raid follows almost nightly raids and killings in the northern occupied West Bank, mainly concentrated on the cities of Jenin and Nablus.
While the Israeli military were raiding and killing in Jenin, heavily armed troops escorted a bulldozer to Qalandiya to the north west of Jerusalem.
The heavy machinery tore down two Palestinian business structures in a continuation of the demolition of Palestinian homes and structures carried out on nearly a daily basis in the drive by the apartheid Israeli regime to achieve ‘demographic control’ of the occupied territories.
Palestinians are denied planning permission to build on their own land or to extend existing houses to accommodate growing families, forcing them to build without authorisation from the Israeli military in the guise of a Civil Administration body that administers the military occupation of the West Bank.
Any building to provide shelter for Palestinians without the occupiers ‘permission’ is bulldozed into the ground. While Palestinian homes are destroyed almost daily, Israeli settlers are granted unlimited rights to extend their settlements to accommodate their ‘natural growth’, expand their homes and arbitrarily build on any land they choose.
The occupiers determine where Palestinians may live, where and when they travel, as well as if they can build.
On 19th November, around 32,000 Israeli settlers, protected by soldiers, attacked Palestinians in Hebron, just weeks after the latest Israeli elections that saw ultra right-wing Zionist parties surge in support.
The settlers were headed by Itimar Ben-Gvir, leader of the Jewish Power party, who has been appointed by Binyamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, which won the majority of seats, as national security minister with expanded powers over the military forces occupying the West Bank.
Ben-Gvir and his fellow right-wing extremists in the political Zionist alliance stand for driving every Palestinian out of occupied East Jerusalem and establishing an Israeli state free from any Arab influence across the West Bank.
The Zionists ramping up the attacks on Palestinians to drive them from their land is meeting massive opposition from the Palestinian masses and the time has now arrived for the world’s trade unions, who have overwhelmingly passed resolutions in support of the Palestinian struggle, to put that support into practice.
British trade union leaders to their shame have remained silent on the murderous attacks on the Palestinians.
Calls by trade union leaders at a massive 250,000 strong demonstration in May 2021 for a general strike in Britain to support the Palestinian struggle have been ditched with not a word spoken since.
Fine speeches of support and motions of condemnation of the apartheid Zionist regime are nothing more than a betrayal – the time has come for action.
With the working class in Britain rising up and demanding the unions call a general strike to defeat a Tory government determined to dump the capitalist crisis on their backs there has never been a better time for the working class to link its struggle with that of the Palestinians – in fact, it is one struggle!
Workers must demand the unions call a general strike to bring down the Tories and bring in a workers’ government that will expropriate the ruling capitalist class going forward to a socialist state.
A workers’ government will immediately recognise the independent state of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital and provide it with all the resources both military and economic to ensure its survival growth and prosperity. Forward to Palestine!
