THE Hamas movement has strongly denounced the Israeli military hijacking of the Handala aid ship in international waters and the abduction of its passengers, calling the incident ‘a crime of terrorism and piracy’.
In a statement released early Sunday Hamas said that the incident was a blatant challenge to the will of humanity, accusing the Israeli occupation forces of committing another act of piracy by preventing the humanitarian ship from reaching the besieged Gaza Strip. ‘whose people are facing a genocidal war and systematic starvation’.
Early yesterday morning, the Israeli military announced it would begin a ‘tactical pause’ in military operations in three areas of Gaza.
Occupation Forces troops would halt fighting in Mawasi, Deir al-Balah and Gaza City from10am to 8pm local time every day until further notice, starting on Sunday. In fact, IOF forces are not operating in these areas apart from sporadic fighting and air strikes in recent weeks,as Palestinian forces continued their resistance against Zionist occupation.
The BBC reported that a map published by the IOF of the area showed these tactical pauses are in areas already designated as ‘safe zones’ where Palestinians have been ordered to move.
Along with these tactical pauses, the Israeli military announced that it would also designate secure routes for aid agencies to deliver food across Gaza.
The IOF claimed that these ‘designated humanitarian corridors’ are being set up for UN food convoys to ‘refute the false claim of intentional starvation of over 2 million Palestinians in Gaza’.
These lying claims by the Israeli government that starvation doesn’t exist in Gaza or, as its spokesman David Mercer claimed last week, that Hamas are ‘engineering’ a famine by stealing food aid in the Gaza Strip have not just been exposed, they have been denounced by workers, youth and the masses across the world.
Even former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert has denounced these new announcements as proving ‘that we do not do enough until now’.
Olmert told the BBC that these tactical pauses are too late ‘because the whole world is pissed of with us, and I think they have good reasons for it’.
Workers, youth and the masses are not just ‘pissed off’ with the Israeli genocide, they are rallying to the Palestinians and demanding action to end the deliberate starvation and the mass murder of Palestinian women and children by a regime only able to commit crimes against humanity through the unstinting support of the US and its imperialist allies in the UK and Europe.
The international pressure from the workers and people of the world has built up to the point where Israelis and their backers are forced to take limited action.
Jordan and Egypt, which border Gaza and whose governments stand accused by its people as being in full cooperation with Israel in preventing food from entering the Strip, announced yesterday that aid lorries are now moving towards the crossing points.
In the UK, Keir Starmer was forced to announce last week that Britain was working with Jordan on plans to drop aid by air.
This came after over a third of MPs signed a letter calling on the Labour government to recognise the Palestinian state.
Israel and its backers may be ‘adjusting’ their policies in reaction to the overwhelming outrage and anger erupting across the world to the starvation and mass murder of Palestinians, but the fundamental strategy of Zionism and it regime remains that to ethnically cleanse Gaza and turn it into Israel’s Mediterranean Riviera.
Now is the time for the working class internationally to turn this anger into action by forcing trade union leaders to stop sitting on the sidelines and to call mass general strike actions to bring down capitalist governments and replace them with workers governments that will end all arming of the the Israeli state immediately and recognise the independent State of Palestine and provide it with all of the forces to ensure its victory.
Union leaders who refuse to organise in support of Palestine must be sacked and replaced with a leadership that will organise the victory of the world socialist revolution and consign capitalism to the dustbin of history.