AT THE same time as the Nusra Front and the remnants of IS were shelling Damascus, and the Turkish imperialists were killing Kurds in northern Syria, the UN Security Council decided to impose a 30-day ceasefire on Syria. The US is now threatening military action against Syria if it hits back in defence of the citizens of Damascus who are under under daily attack from terrorists in East Ghouta.
The terrorists position themselves around hospitals and schools and are using the occupants as human shields. While the death of a single innocent civilian is a tragedy, those who are threatening the Syrian people with massive retribution if they hit back against terrorists, the governments of the US and the UK, themselves slaughtered tens of thousands of men, women, and children with massive air and artillery attacks on Mosul and Raqqa.
The western governments and military insisted that this slaughter was inevitable and could not be halted, just because there were thousands of corpses. Now they are planning war against Syria in defence of the terrorists based in Eastern Ghouta!
After the 15-0 vote for 30 days of ceasefire in Syria, which is being completely ignored by the Turkish and US occupiers of northern Syria, the Syrian UN delegate Bashar Ja’afari stressed that the people in Damascus are ‘deeply suffering due to the actions of the terrorists positioned in Eastern Ghouta. ‘The appeals of eight million Syrians do not reach the General Secretariat or the mailboxes of Britain’s and France’s representatives, but the appeals of terrorists do reach them,’ he added.
He continued: ‘We practice a sovereign right of self-defence and we will continue to fight terrorism wherever it is found on Syrian soil.’ He stressed that the Syrian government reserves the full right to retaliate against armed terrorist groups if they attack innocent civilians.
Millions of workers all over the world will give their full support to their Syrian comrades. The Russian UN rep, Vladimir Nebenzya said that the ceasefire resolution must not be used as a pretext for military action. Addressing his remarks to the US he said: ‘We insist on the immediate cessation of the occupation attitude of the so-called coalition. He added: ‘I would like to express my deep concern over the public statements of certain US officials who are threatening aggression against sovereign Syria.
‘We immediately warn that we will not allow an arbitrary interpretation of the newly adopted resolution,’ Nebenzya said after the adoption of the document. The US-led anti-terrorist coalition is acting in Syria without UN approval or coordination with the Syrian government.’
The scenario is that Syria will have no alternative but to attack the Eastern Ghouta terrorists in defence of the citizens of Damascus and that the western powers will then intervene militarily to destroy Syria’s military capacity. Those who think that the US-UK imperialists are incapable of doing this in the face of Russian opposition, completely misunderstand the determination of the ruling capitalists to defend their rule over their social order.
In fact the Middle East is building up to, or being built up to a massive blood-letting for the benefit of the imperialist powers. There is no other way to interpret the decision of US President Trump to bring forward the moving of the US embassy to Jerusalem to May 14th this year!
This is not just a slap in the face for the Palestinian masses. It is now being spelt out to them that they had either accept Israel’s total domination or had best quit the region. The Palestinian masses will reject this and take the road of open revolution! Trump is making Israel’s debt to the US completely unrepayable in any other way than a massive bloodletting of the Arab people of Palestine, Lebanon and Syria, on the way to an assault on Iran.
The only way to stop this race to a new imperialist war and bloodbath is for the working people to disarm the imperialist powers in the same way that the Russian workers disarmed the Tsarist ruling class with the two great Russian Revolutions in February and October 1917. For the UK working class this means taking action to bring down the UK Tory government, Israel’s best friend next to the USA, and replacing it with a workers government.
This will recognise the Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, arm the Palestinians instead of arming Israel, Kuwait and the Saudis, and allow the people of the Middle East to decide their own destiny without imperialist interference.
