THE resignation yesterday of the Israeli defence minister, Moshe Yaalon, signals a sharp turn to the right by the government of Binyamin Netanyahu.
Yaalon announced his resignation on Twitter saying: ‘I informed the PM (Netanyahu) that after his conduct and recent developments, and given the lack of faith in him, I am resigning from the government and parliament and taking a break from political life.’
Yaalon’s decision to quit follows a very public row with Netanyahu over a speech made by the Israeli deputy chief of staff, Major-General Yair Golan, at the recent Holocaust memorial day. Golan, a top Israeli Defence Force officer who played a leading role in the invasion of Gaza and in protecting the illegal settlement programmes, is no liberal but apparently even he is worried that Israeli society is in danger of going down the path of Nazi Germany in their treatment of the Palestinian people.
Golan admitted that Israeli soldiers had been ‘heavy handed’ with Palestinians, warning: ‘If there is one thing that is scary in remembering the Holocaust, it is noticing horrific processes which developed in Europe – particularly in Germany – 70, 80 and 90 years ago, and finding remnants of that here among us in the year 2016.’
His remarks brought down a torrent of protest from the Israeli right-wing and Netanyahu while Yaalon defended his deputy chief of staff saying that he had his ‘full confidence’. For this support, Yaalon has clearly paid the price of being forced out of his job to be replaced by the leader of the extreme right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu party, Avigdor Lieberman.
Lieberman is an advocate of invading Gaza once again and overthrowing the leadership of Hamas by force and for the execution of Palestinian members of the Israeli parliament who allegedly met with Hamas members.
Inviting Lieberman’s party into his coalition government means that Netanyahu has assembled one of the most right-wing governments in Israel’s history, one that rejects any notion of ending the illegal occupation of Palestinian land and will not countenance a Palestinian state in any form.
This government will not only intensify its murderous campaigns against the Palestinian people but will work with Saudi Arabia to further intervene in Syria and to prepare for war against Iran.
Saudi Arabia, which on paper is committed to the Palestinian cause, has much in common with Israel. Both exist as armed encampments of imperialism within the region dedicated to suppressing the Arab revolution, and to overthrowing the Iranian revolution.
While US imperialism guarantees Saudi security, it is to pour $50 billion of arms into the Israeli state to supplement its nuclear weaponry. Both imperialism and its client states see the main enemy as Iran and its supporters in Syria and Hezbollah. It is an open secret that both Saudi Arabia and Israel are up to their necks in supporting and financing the Islamist ‘rebels’ including IS and the al-Nusra faction, the Syrian offshoot of al-Qaeda.
Wounded al-Nusra members are allowed across the border into Israel for medical treatment and then shipped back to Syria to carry on fighting, a fact revealed by the Wall Street Journal last year.
What is creating a crisis for world imperialism and its client states in the Middle East is the complete failure of their proxy allies amongst the Islamist groups to overthrow Assad, and the heroic resistance to the Zionist occupation by the Palestinian people now fighting the Third Intifada.
At the same time, Saudi Arabia’s dirty war in Yemen has failed to overcome the resistance of the Yemeni people and has exacerbated the economic crisis that is gripping the Saudi economy and threatening its ruling feudal monarchy with revolution.
In this desperate situation, Israel is lurching further rightwards, getting ready for military action against the Palestinian, Syrian and Iranian people. The only way that peace in the region can be achieved is through the working class of the world taking revolutionary action against the imperialist powers at home, and the workers of Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Iran joining hands to overthrow the Saudi and Israeli regimes.
This revolution will create a modern democratic Saudi Arabia and a secular socialist State of Palestine in which Arabs, Jews, Christians and Muslims will live side by side in harmony.
