ISRAEL has greeted the exercise by the Palestinians of their democratic right to elect Hamas as their governing party, with the most concentrated attacks on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip for years.
The US administration has just collected back $50 million in ‘aid’ that it was determined should not fall into the hands of Hamas ministers, while the Israeli Acting Prime Minister, Olmert, on Thursday threatened the Palestinians with ‘far reaching measures’ and the ‘Iron Fist’.
Olmert told a press conference on Thursday: ‘There are no longer any restrictions on the security establishment regarding counter-terrorism actions anywhere’. He is now advocating pre-emptive strikes, that is, for the Israeli army and airforce not to wait until rockets are fired from Gaza into Israel before launching their drones and missiles, but to fire them at the places most likely to be the launching sites for Palestinian mortars or rockets. The military have a free hand to attack when, where and what they want.
Olmert boasted at the same press conference: ‘Not a few times, terrorists who were about to fire rockets were liquidated before they could fire them, and it was based on my orders, sometimes my personal orders.’
It is truly open season on the Palestinian masses, including women and very young children, because they are all guilty of electing a party into government that the US and Israel oppose.
In another extremely vindictive move, the Israeli Defence Minister, Mofaz, has instructed his troops to close the Karni crossing between Gaza and Israel, halting the import and export of all goods into and out of Gaza, ruining Palestinian merchants and farmers, and threatening the masses with starvation.
The Israeli Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, pledged, after Hamas swept the board in the recent elections, that the Palestinian people would have to pay a price for their votes. She continued to say that they would soon know what the price was.
The Palestinian masses are now beginning to pay that price.
The issue for the Zionists is that Hamas must recognise Israel, agree to Jerusalem being Israel’s capital and drop all talk of the right of Palestinian refugees to return, i.e. make the deal that Arafat refused to make – or else the whole Palestinian people will be treated by Israel and the US in the same way that they treated Arafat, who was imprisoned in Ramallah until he was poisoned.
In fact, if Hamas does not come to heel, the Zionists’ aim is to unilaterally impose their final solution through bombings, assassinations and closures, leading to the unilateral seizure of the main West Bank settlements and annexing these to Israel, along with the Jordan Valley and the whole of Jerusalem, leaving a mockery of a Palestinian state made up of the Gaza Strip and a number of disconnected ‘city states’ on the West Bank, including Nablus, part of Hebron, Ramallah, Jenin and Jericho.
Palestine is now part of a single front that stretches through Lebanon and Syria into Iraq. This has been emphasised by the growing attacks on Palestinians in Iraq by the death squads of the puppet government, the US-fuelled move to remove Lahud as President of Lebanon and to remove Assad as the President of Syria, and now the determination of Israel to treat the democratically elected Hamas government as ‘terrorist’.
It is clear that the state of Palestine will be established as part of the victory of the Arab revolution over Zionism and imperialism throughout the region. This will create a Middle Eastern Federation of Socialist States where Arabs, Jews and Christians will live side by side.
