DEEP splits within the Israeli government erupted in public on Wednesday night with Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant demanding that prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu declare publicly that Israel had no plans to take over civilian and military rule in Gaza.
Gallant told the press: ‘Since October, I have been raising the issue consistently in the Cabinet and have received no response.’
Gallant made it clear that he would never agree to any ‘solution’ to the genocidal war being waged in Gaza that involved the Israeli military or any Israeli civil government controlling the Gaza Strip indefinitely.
He told the press conference: ‘A military-civilian regime in Gaza is a bad and dangerous alternative for the state of Israel. I will not agree to the establishment of a military government in Gaza.’
He added: ‘A civilian-military regime in Gaza will become the main area in there at the expense of other arenas. We will pay for it in blood and victims – and it will come at a heavy economic cost.’
The Zionists are already paying a cost in blood. Despite all their mass bombings and systematic starving of Palestinians, that has killed more than 35,000 people, with some 10,000 missing, presumed dead under the rubble, they have failed completely to destroy Hamas.
In fact, far from winning the war against Palestinian resistance, the Israeli military is now openly admitting that victory is unattainable.
This week, Israeli forces were forced to return to northern Gaza where intense fighting broke out in the Jabalia area.
This was the area that the Israeli’s withdrew their troops from back in December claiming it had wiped out Hamas resistance and the region was now under Israeli control.
IDF chief of staff Herzi Halevi said on Sunday: ‘As long as there’s no diplomatic process to develop a governing body in the strip that isn’t Hamas, we’ll have to launch campaigns again and again in other places to dismantle Hamas’ infrastructure.’ He added: ‘It will be a Sisyphean task.’
Sisyphus in Greek mythology was a tyrant king who angered the gods by his habit of killing visitors to his realm to demonstrate his power.
For this the gods doomed him for all eternity to push a giant boulder up a mountain only to have it roll back down again every time it neared the top.
This adequately describes the crisis that is tearing the Zionist regime apart and causing leading members of Netanyahu’s war Cabinet to fight each other in public.
At the same time, thousands of Israelis joined protests last weekend calling for a ceasefire deal and for elections and the removal of Netanyahu.
In the city of Tel Aviv, police used water cannon to disperse anti-government protesters.
Netanyahu has responded to the attack by Gallant by arrogantly proclaiming: ‘I ordered the destruction of Hamas’ and that ‘no other actor will run Gaza’ except the Zionist regime.
The military chiefs are not impressed with all this talk of wiping out Hamas, instead they know that military victory and destruction of Palestinian resistance is impossible even with all the billions of dollars being handed out by the US to keep the genocidal war going.
With the Zionist regime at its weakest and facing splits and in-fighting in its war Cabinet and on the streets of its cities, the time is ripe for the powerful working class in the US, UK and Europe to take decisive action.
In the UK, this Saturday’s National Demonstration in London must demand that the TUC end its silence over Gaza and immediately call a general strike to bring down Tories, and stop all support for genocidal war, by bringing in a workers government and socialism.
This is the way forward for the working class in the US and Europe to demand that their trade unions take the same action by calling international general strikes to bring down their own capitalist governments and put an end to imperialist supported genocide with the victory of the world socialist revolution.
