CLASHES have broken out between the Israeli police and anti-regime protesters in Tel Aviv and across the occupied territories, with demonstrators demanding new elections and a prisoner exchange deal with the Palestinian resistance group Hamas.
Tens of thousands of Israelis in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem joined in a massive wave of protests against the regime on Saturday night.
They railed against prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet’s refusal to negotiate with the Palestinian resistance group to enable the release of the Israeli captives held in Gaza. After the main rally ended, a group of protesters remained on site, blocking the road by setting tyres ablaze.
Former Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin slammed Netanyahu during his speech at the protest in Tel Aviv, denouncing him as ‘the worst and most failed prime minister’ in the history of the regime. He called for elections at the earliest possible opportunity.
In Jerusalem, thousands demonstrated outside the prime minister’s residence, voicing their support for a captive-prisoner exchange agreement and denouncing the war on Gaza. The protests have been held every week since October 7th when Israel launched its genocidal war against Gaza with settlers voicing their dissatisfaction with the regime’s war management.
The family members of Israeli captives, in a statement during a press conference on Saturday, said that no prisoner swap deal with Palestinian factions in Gaza could be made unless Netanyahu is removed from the regime’s leadership.
Also in Jerusalem, protesters led by the families of Israeli captives spearheaded a protest demanding swift action, early elections, and slamming Netanyahu’s administration for neglecting towns located north of the occupied territories amid Hezbollah’s counter-attacks.
The White House is now reportedly worried that Israeli premier Netanyahu could use his upcoming speech to the US Congress to publicly criticise President Joe Biden and his administration’s response to Israel’s war on Gaza, just months ahead of the US election.
The digital newspaper Politico cited an unnamed US official as saying on Saturday that Netanyahu is set to address a joint session of Congress next month and ‘no one knows what he’s going to say.’
The report came after the Israeli premier last week posted a video taking Washington to task for allegedly ‘withholding weapons and ammunition to Israel’ for several months amid the Gaza war, calling it ‘inconceivable’. Another senior official was quoted by Politico as saying that the latest criticism ‘was not helpful at all’, and Netanyahu ‘could make it far worse up there in front of Congress.’
The report added that Netanyahu’s speech, due on July 24, could create a ‘diplomatically complicated and politically dicey spectacle for a president running for re-election.’
The American news website Axios also said while US officials have publicly stated that they ‘do not know what (Netanyahu) is talking about,’ privately, Biden’s team is reportedly ‘angry and shocked’ at Netanyahu’s ‘ingratitude,’ with some officials describing him as ‘unhinged’.
US Senator Bernie Sanders says Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu is a ‘war criminal’ who should not be given an invitation to address the lawmakers from both main parties at the US Congress.
Washington has provided Tel Aviv with untrammelled support in military logistics, intelligence, and finance since the occupying regime launched its barbaric aggression on Gaza in October last year.
The Biden administration paused the delivery of 3,500 bombs to Israel in early May amid widespread calls for it to scale back its onslaught on the densely populated city of Rafah in southern Gaza. However, despite Biden’s public warnings that he would halt arms shipments, the US kept the majority of other weapons and ammunition flowing.
The Israeli regime has killed at least 37,551 people in Gaza since it launched its US-backed genocidal war on the territory on October 7th, 2023, the Palestinian Health Ministry said on Saturday. The ministry added that 85,911 people had also been wounded in Gaza since then.
Both the Biden regime and its Netanyahu offshoot are in a desperate and worsening crisis, while the UK is set for regime change in a few weeks – as is France.
Currently, the Israeli occupying entity has imposed a ‘complete siege’ on the territory, cutting off fuel, electricity, food and water to the more than two million Palestinians living there.
It is now high time for the US, EU and UK trade unions to call general strike actions to bring down the Biden and Macron governments and to clear the way to bring in workers’ governments and socialism, depositing capitalism where it belongs, into the dustbin of history.
