ISRAEL is gearing up for another major attack on the Gaza Strip to try and drive back the revolutionary forces in the area.
At the same time, the Israeli leadership has been accused of plotting to replace President Abbas, who has raised the need for Palestinian recognition in the UN, in the same way that they replaced President Arafat, who was poisoned.
An Israeli airstrike in Gaza killed a Palestinian and wounded another on Sunday, hospital officials have confirmed. Palestinian medics confirmed that Yasser al-Atakal, 24, was killed in the strike on his motorbike east of Khan Younis, and another person was seriously wounded.
The airstrike came hours after Israel killed two other militants in a similar attack in the northern town of Jabalia late on Saturday. Also on Saturday Israeli warplanes attacked multiple targets in the Gaza Strip among them the Bureij refugee camp.
The Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahhar on Saturday praised Hezbollah for sending a drone aircraft into Israel last weekend. Zahhar described the operation as a ‘strategic achievement’ for the Lebanese liberation movement.
The Gaza official made the comments during a media workshop in Gaza City, adding that Hamas has a balanced and good relationship with Iran.
On Thursday, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah acknowledged that the group had sent the drone aircraft that was shot down last weekend after flying some 55 kilometres into Israel.
He said the aircraft had flown over sensitive locations, including Israel’s nuclear facilities in Dimona, before it was shot down by Israeli forces.
‘The downing of the drone was natural and expected,’ the Hezbollah secretary-general said. He advised Israel that the flight was a warning: ‘This capability is only part of the surprises of any future confrontation.’
Yesterday, the former adviser to President Yasser Arafat, Bassam Abu Sharif, said Israeli officials were making overtures to Palestinian figures in Israeli jails as well as to people close to the president to remove Abbas. He said it reminded him of the time of Arafat.
However, history is not repeating itself. The working class is now on the move all over the Middle East including the working class, the poor and the youth of Palestine, while the Syrian people are valiantly fighting to prevent their country falling into the hands of the same kind of imperialist agents that the US, UK and France organised to overthrow Gadaffi in Libya.
Driving the workers, the poor and the youth forward is not just the need for their state, but also the massive increases in food prices. This is bringing them into conflict with the traditional nationalist leadership and the Palestinian bourgeoisie as a whole, who have a separate class interest.
The Palestinian trade unions have already rejected the Palestine Authority decision to raise the minimum monthly wage to $375, as being far too late and far too low, and have begun to organise widespread strike action. The youth and the poor are demanding revolutionary action to halt rapidly rising prices, end the occupation and achieve the Palestinian socialist state.
The latest data released by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics on Sunday showed that the price of fresh vegetables rose in the month of September by 15.49 per cent, eggs by 13.36 per cent and sugar by 8.25 per cent. Gas prices rose by 4.41 per cent and fuel for transport by 2.52 per cent.
The working class, the youth and the poor are now beginning to organise politically, that is independently of the Palestinian bourgeoisie. They must march separately, but strike together where possible alongside the Palestinian bourgeoisie against the occupation, in the struggle for a Palestinian socialist state with Jerusalem as its capital, as part of a Middle Eastern Federation of Socialist states where Arabs, Jews and Christians can live side by side.
The Palestinian struggle is a crucial part of the world revolution. That is why the Palestinian workers need to build a section of the Fourth International.
