TENS of thousands marched through central London on Saturday reiterating their calls for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, for the UK to stop arming the Israeli regime, and for a general strike to bring down the Tories and prepare the way for a state of Palestine. At the same time there were demonstrations in every city worldwide with big strikes and meetings.
At the destination of the march in Hyde Park, speaker after speaker including Northern Ireland’s First Minister Sinn Fein’s Michelle O’Neill condemned the American, European and British governments complicity in the Israeli regime’s crimes.
The London march was part of a rapidly growing international mobilisation, with US students playing a leading role in demanding and pledging to defeat the US bosses and secure a State of Palestine.
Thousands of Jewish workers and students are now marching for Palestine – while the riot police are being turned on US students and in London a counter-extremism commissioner falsely claims that London is becoming a no-go zone for Jews.
However, the situation is due to be further exploded as Netanyahu and the Israeli armed forces are getting ready to declare the whole of Gaza to be a no-go area for Palestinians. Even US officials have expressed doubts to Secretary of State Antony Blinken regarding Israel’s claims of adhering to international humanitarian law, using US-supplied weapons to slaughter thousands, according to a revealed memo.
According to an internal State Department memo reviewed by Reuters and reported by the news agency on Saturday, already four State Department bureaus, including Democracy Human Rights & Labour, Global Criminal Justice, Population, Refugees and Migration, and International Organisation Affairs, have expressed deep concerns about Israel’s non-compliance with international humanitarian law during the Gaza war. The joint submission highlighted eight instances of Israeli military actions that officials deemed questionable in terms of international law.
These actions included repeatedly striking protected sites and civilian infrastructure, causing ‘unconscionably high levels of civilian harm to military advantage’, taking little action to investigate violations or to hold to account those responsible for significant civilian harm, and ‘killing humanitarian workers and journalists at an unprecedented rate’.
Furthermore, the report identified 11 instances where Israeli military actions have arbitrarily restricted humanitarian aid, such as rejecting entire aid trucks due to a single ‘dual-use’ item. The assessment also highlighted artificial limitations on inspections and repeated attacks on humanitarian sites that should be off-limits.
Meanwhile, Palestinian factions have justly praised resistance fighters for their ‘heroic’ battle against the Israeli aggression, saying they framed a new model of resilience against the enemy.
In a statement released on Saturday, the Palestinian resistance group of Hamas said that the head of its political bureau Ismail Haniyeh, the Islamic Jihad’s deputy chief Mohammad al-Hindi, and Jamil Mazhar, deputy secretary general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), had held a meeting.
‘The attendees praised the courageous, heroic performance of all the resistance brigades and their field unity … that have given and continue to give the enemy a lesson it will never forget,’ the statement read.
‘They presented the world with a new model in conflict management’, and confronting the aggression.
They also hailed the ‘legendary steadfastness’ and ‘solid will’ of the Palestinian people amid Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip. They further discussed efforts towards putting an end to the Gaza onslaught and an Israeli withdrawal of forces from the besieged territory, as well as the release of Palestinian abductees held in the occupying regime’s jails.
There is only one way to do this. The trade unions must mobilise the workers of the world for indefinite general strikes that will bring the world capitalist economy to a halt while the workers of the world take revolutionary action to bring down their governments, smash the capitalist state repressive forces and bring in workers governments and socialism.
Now is the time for workers and youth to join the WRP and the Young Socialists and build the International Committee of the Fourth International! The task in hand is the organisation of the victory of the British and World Socialist Revolutions!