ISRAEL, after 50 days of slaughter in which over 2,000 Palestinians were killed, many of them children, tens of thousands wounded and hundreds of thousands made homeless, has agreed to an unconditional ceasefire, dropping its demand that Hamas disarm, while it remains armed to the teeth.
It also has had to bin its demand that the Palestinian national unity government should be dissolved. It had said that it was not prepared to accept it at any cost.
Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzouq said Tuesday that Israel has agreed to open the Gaza crossings to allow the flow of humanitarian aid and construction material.
He added that three more Gaza crossings will be operated in addition to the Kerem Shalom and Erez crossings, which are already operating.
On the fishing zone, he said that Gaza fishermen would be allowed to reach as far as 6 nautical miles and the zone would be increased gradually until it is 12 nautical miles by the end of 2014.
Another round of negotiations will start a month from now to discuss unresolved issues, Abu Marzouq said. Furthermore, Israeli, European and American restrictions and opposition to money transfers to Gaza for salaries for employees of the former Hamas-led government in Gaza have been cancelled. The national unity government is working on proceedings to arrange payment of salaries.
Abu Marzouq pointed out that Israel agreed to stop targeted assassinations of resistance activists. The Gaza buffer zone has also been removed, he added.
The might of US imperialism, reflected in the vast Israeli armament of all types of murderous weaponry, has been unable to defeat the courage and historical determination of the Palestinian masses to achieve their state with Jerusalem as its capital, while the massive support that has been given to Palestine by the working people of the world has given it great cause for concern.
It can be said that one of the major casualties of the 50-day war was the British Foreign Office. This saw its Foreign Secretary Hague quit, followed by Baroness Warsi and then another minister Simmonds, with more to come. The Cameron government in fact wobbled in the storm.
Now, in all parts of the world the masses are pushing forward, spurred on by the enormous and continually deepening crisis of the capitalist system.
The workers of the East of Ukraine have also demonstrated a massive capacity for struggle, showing their absolute contempt for the coupist regime in Kiev and the arrogant EU and US leaderships that placed the coupists into power, financing the fascist bands that organised it, in the expectation that Ukraine would just fall onto their laps.
The opposite has happened.
Revolutionary forces are emerging all over the EU and in the USA itself, as the St Louis, Ferguson, uprising against capitalist state murder has shown.
It is this world movement that must now press forward, as it continues to erupt, to build the revolutionary parties able to organise the working people of the world to put an end to capitalism and imperialism and replace it with world wide socialism, by way of the world socialist revolution.
Immediately, every trade union organisation on the planet must now press forward alongside the Palestinian masses to secure their state.
Already the Israeli ruling class is engaging in mass arrests and detentions in the West Bank to try and prevent the foundation of the Palestinian state.
The TUC at its September Congress, and also the world’s trade unions, must immediately impose a worldwide trade union boycott of Israel, and demand that the 47-year-old occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip be ended, that the national unity government be recognised as the government of Palestine, with its capital being Jerusalem, that all arms sales to Israel be halted at once, and that the EU and the US fund the rebuilding of Gaza.
A national and worldwide campaign must be launched on this basis. This is the way forward for the Palestinian people and the working people of the world.