PALESTINIANS have warned Britain and other Western countries backing the US, against deploying troops on the ground in the besieged Gaza Strip under the pretext of supporting aid deliveries.
In a statement released on Sunday, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) said that British troops on the ground would be ‘treated as occupation forces and will be legitimate targets for the resistance.’ The PFLP statement came in response to reports on the BBC that British troops may be tasked with delivering aid to Gaza from the offshore pier being constructed by the US military.
A US military official said last Thursday that there would be no American ‘boots on the ground’ in Gaza, a pledge that president Joe Biden made when he first announced building a pier with the claim it would open the way for aid into Gaza.
Instead, the official announced that the US was actively seeking another nation to provide the military personnel to drive delivery trucks in the Strip.
The official declined to identify which nation had been approached, but the UK is US imperialism’s most faithful lapdog so suspicion automatically falls on the Tory government as co-conspirator in a plot that is seen by Palestinians and workers across the world as a means to open the way not for aid but for direct military involvement by the US and its allies in the genocidal war to destroy Gaza.
The PFLP statement also denounced the 1917 Balfour Declaration by the then UK government, which led to the creation of Israel and the continuing support for the Zionist state, saying:
‘Our people will not forget the major crime committed by Britain against the Palestinian people, with its major contribution to the establishment of the Zionist entity, after issuing the ill-fated Balfour Declaration, and its continuation to this day in supporting the occupation and its crimes.’
The PFLP said the justification of troops being deployed to assist aid deliveries via the pier was ‘a lie that does not deceive anyone. It is a justification for the permanent presence of military forces on the ground for malicious colonial goals and to protect the security of the Zionist entity.’
Evidence of this lie is clear.
For months, Palestinians have been requesting heavy equipment to remove the debris and retrieve the bodies buried beneath the thousands of homes destroyed in Gaza – requests that have been ignored.
But in recent weeks, with US support, numerous bulldozers and trucks sent by Israel to the Gaza border have been transporting thousands of tons of rubble from demolished homes in Gaza, along with the body parts they still contain, to be used in the construction of the new pier.
Palestinian political analyst Usame Adbulhadi, speaking to Turkish news agency Anadolu Ajansi, said the US and Israel are not being honest about the project, saying: ‘If they were honest, the trucks and massive bulldozers entering Gaza to build the port would have stepped up to rescue thousands of wounded who continue to bleed to death under the rubble of homes destroyed by the occupying state.’
Abdulhadi added: ‘This is an occupation port, allowing the US military entry into the borders of Gaza.’
The Tories are insisting that no decision has been made and that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak hasn’t even seen the proposals for British troops on the ground in the occupation port.
But the working class and youth who stand with Palestine will be under no illusions about the willingness of the Tories to join with their US imperialist masters in militarily shoring up a Zionist regime that has failed to crush Palestinian resistance – despite six months of continual bombardment that has cost the lives of at least 34,454 in Gaza, mostly women and children.
The working class have the power to end the complicity of the Tories in the genocidal war being waged in Gaza by forcing the TUC to call an immediate general strike to bring down the Tories and bring in a workers’ government and socialism.
Socialist revolution is the only way to defeat imperialist war preparations.
Only the WRP and Young Socialists fight for this revolutionary programme – join today.
