ISRAEL has rejected the UN security council resolution calling for a ceasefire and a withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, and is determined to carry on with its murderous terrorist campaign and kill as many Gazans as it can. The crude theory behind this practice is that the more Palestinians are killed, the more Hamas members will be killed.
Olmert and Livni have been encouraged to take this line by the United States, whose secretary of State, Rice, abstained and refused to vote for the ceasefire resolution.
Israel and the United States are now thumbing their noses at the world.
Yesterday Israeli troops were ignoring the daily three-hour ceasefire that Olmert had agreed to earlier in the week, so that supplies could be brought into the area and Palestinians could leave their homes to receive them.
For Israel, it is starve and kill as far as the Palestinians are concerned.
Israel is now preparing to move to the next stage of its campaign, which is to mobilise the 30,000 reservists that it has called up for a tank-led invasion of the built up areas of Gaza City, and the refugee camps, preceded by artillery bombardments, in which thousands of Palestinians, men, women, and children will be slaughtered.
This, its leadership believes, is the final solution to the Hamas ‘problem’.
The people of the world are already in a fury and disgusted by the Israeli massacres in Gaza, where it has been open season on children.
Now even bigger massacres are on the agenda.
The UN resolution was drawn up by Britain, which has been forced to trim its position somewhat before the enormous gale of public anger in the UK over the Israeli massacres in Gaza.
Nevertheless, this resolution did not even mention Hamas by name, and Hamas has said that it was not consulted in any way about what was happening in its territory to the people that it represents, and what it, and they, want to see done to bring peace to the region.
This is the usual sorry imperialist tale. The Israeli butcher is consulted at every stage of the developments, the victim and its representative Hamas is not consulted at all.
It is clear that the Zionists will have to be forced out of Gaza, and the imperialists forced to talk to the Palestinian masses and Hamas.
In this struggle the trade unions have got an enormous role to play.
They must demand that Premier Brown shuts down the Israeli embassy and sends the ambassador and his staff back to Tel Aviv.
The British government must stop all military supplies being sent to Israel, and move within the EU to terminate all trade deals with Israel.
The unions must tell Brown that they will take industrial and political action against it, if it does not stand up for Gaza.
The trade unions themselves must organise a 100 per cent cultural and trade boycott of Israel.
They must refuse to service Israeli ships and planes and refuse to load and unload cargos to and from Israel.
The British TUC must see to it that the trade unions throughout the world adopt and carry out the same policy.
This policy must be maintained until Israel withdraws its troops from Gaza and from the West Bank, until the siege of Gaza is ended and a state of Palestine established, with Jerusalem as its capital and with all Palestinians having the right to return.
In the face of the continuing Israeli massacres of men, women and children in Gaza, the UK trade unions must take action, and not just stand idly by contemplating the carrying out of mass murder by Israel.
