PALESTINIAN youth and workers marched very bravely all over the occupied territories last Friday on Land Day, and they were met as usual by the bullets of the occupiers, the Zionist regime of Israel.
Thousands will be marching again on Naqba Day, May 15, the 64th anniversary of the ‘Catastrophe’ in 1948, when the state of Israel was established by driving hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes and turning them into refugees.
It is in this situation where Palestinians are mobilising that the Israeli prison service has decided to put Fatah leader Marwan al Barghouthi into solitary confinement for three weeks because of his statements to the press.
On March 26, Barghouthi issued a call from his cell for a new wave of popular resistance and to end ‘all forms of security and economic coordination (with Israel) in all areas immediately.’
He added that negotiations with Israel had ‘failed miserably’ to end the occupation and achieve a state and urged for ‘a renewal of efforts’ to seek statehood at the United Nations.
The message, which was read to crowds of supporters in Ramallah, marked the anniversary of his 10th year in Israeli detention.
Barghouthi has been put into solitary confinement 21 times during his decade in jail and spent four consecutive years in isolation. He is viewed as the real successor to Yasser Arafat, and it is hoped that he will be the first President of Palestine, with its capital being Jerusalem.
At the same time as the Israeli leadership has been punishing Barghouthi, every imperialist organisation on the planet is coming to Israel’s aid.
Amongst these is the International Criminal Court at the Hague. This organisation has been jumping over itself to try the enemies of imperialism, such as Slobodan Milosevic and others, while refusing to entertain taking any kind of measures against the butchers of Iraq, Palestine and Libya, the imperialist powers and the UK Blair-Brown and Cameron-Osborne governments.
The International Criminal Court has refused to investigate Israel’s conduct during its December 2008 offensive on Gaza, which murdered and wounded thousands of Palestinians, because Palestine is not a state, the world prosecutor said on Tuesday.
In a statement, the ICC prosecutor however acknowledged that over 130 countries and some UN bodies recognise Palestine as a state.
We repeat, the ICC had no such problems over leaping to the defence of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and indicting Milosevic for war crimes in Kosovo which was a province of Serbia.
It had no problems about putting out arrest warrants for Colonel Gadaffi, whose legal Libyan government was removed in a Nato bloodbath which ended with Gadaffi being dragged through the streets and murdered, much to the amusement of the likes of Hillary Clinton.
The ICC wanted to try Gadaffi, an enemy of imperialism, but does not want to try his killers, the leaders of the states that led the NATO onslaught.
The ICC said it could in the future consider allegations of crimes committed in Palestine if the Security Council determines that Palestine is a state. It knows that a US-UK veto will never permit that to happen.
The Israeli ruling class can now get on with the job, putting more Palestinian leaders into solitary confinement and murdering Palestinians with the support of the ICC.
However it will not be able to halt the Palestinian, and Arab revolutions. As Baroness Tonge recently said ‘Israel will not last for ever.’
The workers of the world must see to it that this is the case, and that a Palestinian state is established where Jews, Arabs and Christians can live side by side. They must also see to it that the US and UK ruling classes who have joint responsibility for all of Israel’s crimes, are removed as well.
