SATURDAY saw a vast crowd of 250,000 workers, including very large numbers of enthusiastic and determined youth, take to the streets of London for a second giant march to condemn Israel’s murder of Gaza’s children, and demand the establishment of the Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.
The 250,000 and the millions that they represented, have been inspired by the heroic response of Palestinian men, women and children to the Israeli gas, bomb and missile attacks, using weapons supplied by the US and the UK, on Gaza and other areas of Palestine. Hospitals, schools, newspaper offices and all Palestinians from the very young to the very old have been assaulted, and a large number have been killed and wounded in the most vicious gun, bomb and gas attacks.
The worldwide response of workers and youth, to support the Palestinians’ defiance of the US and UK armed Israeli murder machine, has now caused a major crisis for the US and the imperialist powers.
President Trump had declared that Jerusalem was the capital of Israel and gave Israel the green light to do its worst in colonising Jerusalem and the West Bank, which Israel was only too ready to do.
The Palestinians have hit back, and the worldwide movement that has now emerged to condemn and take action against the imperialist powers, and their Israeli bully, is now shaking the Biden presidency to its core.
For the first time, there have been mass demonstrations against Israel in the USA, and the role of the Democrats in arming and rearming Israel has been questioned and confronted by leading Democrats.
As a result, Biden has been turned inside out. He has been forced to resurrect the two-state solution buried by Trump and Netanyahu in the face of the developing Palestinian Intifada. Faced with a massive fight back by Palestinians, Biden insisted: ‘There is no shift in my commitment to the security of Israel. Period. No shift, not at all. But I’ll tell you where the shift is. We still need a two-state solution. It is the only answer,’ said Biden.
Biden also said he is committed to helping rebuild the devastated infrastructure of Gaza. He says he will do it in a way that does not provide Hamas the opportunity to rebuild its weapons systems. Back in the USA some Democrats have vowed to step up the action and have sought to block a $735 million weapons deal with Israel to retool the Israeli murder machine.
The cynical ‘two-state solution’ envisaged a peaceful co-existence between the Israeli tiger and the Palestinian lamb, while Israel got on with devouring the lamb. The Palestinians however have proven to be very difficult to swallow and digest.
Biden on Wednesday was forced to call Jordan’s King Abdullah II, a longstanding US ally, and ‘affirmed that the United States supports a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict’, a White House statement said. His talk with the king came after his clearest break yet with Trump’s Middle East agenda, restoring US funding for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees that his predecessor had severed.
The State Department said the United States would contribute $150 million to the UN agency and offer $75 million in economic and development assistance for the West Bank and Gaza as well as $10 million for peacebuilding efforts.
Palestinian defiance has begun to win the battle.
Saturday saw the UK youth take the fight forward with a massive demonstration, while for the first time some of the TUC leaders attended the mass rally in support.
National Education Union General Secretary Kevin Courtney told the vast crowd: ‘I am standing here in front of the Trade Unionists for Palestine banner, bearing the names of 15 major unions, the four largest unions in the country – Unite, Unison, GMB, NEU, along with ASLEF, RMT, TSSA, PCS, CWU, UCU, FBU, POA, Equity, the Bakers Union and the United World Transport Union. Trade unionists are here today in solidarity with the general strike in Palestine last week and we need to take similar action for Palestine here.’
He was speaking for millions of UK trade unionists, when speaking about the general strike in Palestine he said ‘we need to take similar action for Palestine here’.
There must now be a huge push inside the multi-million-strong UK trade union movement for a general strike to support Palestine and to force the UK government to recognise the Palestinian government in Ramallah as the government of Palestine, and so undo the dirty work of the Balfour Declaration by recognising the state of Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital.
This state will be both secular and socialist and it will be a state where Muslims, Jews and Christians will work and live side by side once big business and its Zionist agency is driven out of the area. Saturday’s demonstration showed that the working class is ready for action. The TUC must now call the general strike!
