TWO MORE Palestinians were killed yesterday morning in an Israeli air strike on the Gaza Strip, said medical officials, bringing the number of Palestinians who were killed since early yesterday to eight, and bringing the total number of Palestinians killed to 18, since the start of the Israeli airstrikes on Gaza on Tuesday.
A WAFA correspondent reported medics confirming that three Palestinians were killed and three others injured in a new Israeli bombardment on al-Tuffah neighbourhood, east of Gaza City.
He added that another Israeli raid targeted a man riding his motorcycle in Zaytoun neighbourhood, south of Gaza City, killing him.
Israel has launched multiple airstrikes on the besieged coastal enclave following their targeted assassination of Islamic Jihad leader and Palestinian hero, Bahaa Abu al-Atta and his wife, Asmaa, on Tuesday morning.
Fourteen years after the alleged Israeli ‘disengagement’ from Gaza, Israel has not actually disengaged from Gaza at all; it still maintains control of its land borders, access to the sea and airspace.
Two million Palestinians live in the Gaza Strip, which has been subjected to a punishing and crippling Israeli blockade for 12 years and repeated onslaughts that have heavily damaged much of the enclave’s infrastructure.
Gaza’s two million population remains under ‘remote control’ occupation and a strict siege, which has destroyed the local economy, strangled Palestinian livelihoods, plunged them into unprecedented rates of unemployment and poverty, and cut them off from the rest of the occupied Palestinian territories and the wider world.
Gaza remains occupied territory, having no control over its borders, territorial waters or airspace. Meanwhile, Israel upholds very few of its responsibilities as the occupying power, failing to provide for the basic needs of Palestinian civilians living in the territory.
Every two in three Palestinians in Gaza is a refugee from lands inside what is now Israel. That government forbids them from exercising their right to return, as enshrined in international law, because they are not Jews.
The whole world, especially the working class of the world, must rise up against the Israeli terrorist state and its imperialist sponsors in Washington and London. The UK’s General Council of the TUC must be made to meet immediately to give its full support to the Palestinian people that are now being killed by the murderous Israeli state.
In fact, the UK trade unions must immediately impose a boycott on Israel and on all Israeli goods and must demand that the UK government ceases to arm Israel with the equipment that is being used to kill Palestinians.
The Israeli terrorists are no doubt acting with the most extreme brutality out of fear. They have seen their terrorist friends that are still being treated in hospitals in the occupied Golan Heights being defeated in Syria, and also seen Iran getting stronger in the region while its Arab allies such as Saudi Arabia are getting weaker.
This is why they are desperately trying to establish new facts on the ground through these terrorist measures, after the total collapse of Trump’s ‘deal of the century’ plot, which planned to hand over the whole of Palestine to Israel, while the Palestinians were to be made citizens of the various Arab states.
All supporters of freedom must now insist that the Labour Party must recognise the state of Palestine, with Jerusalem as its capital, in its election manifesto and when it becomes the government.
It must also pledge to mount an emergency campaign to to assist in the building of the Palestinian state, its infrastructure and government and must break off all relations with the state of Israel, including arming it, which the UK is still doing. This is the only way forward for the working class of the UK and the world.
Many Labour leaders have been turning a blind eye to the oppression of the Palestinian people and have actually helped those who have been trying to say that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.
All this must end. Stop arming Israel! Forward to the state of Palestine!