THE JORDANIAN Prime Minister Bisher Khasawneh has just warned against vicious attempts by the Israeli regime to displace Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank, saying any such move will be a ‘declaration of war.’
Khasawneh said in a statement on Tuesday that any attempt by Israel to displace Palestinians would be considered a ‘red line’ and could be deemed a declaration of war.
He said: ‘The immunity and protection that gives Israel a licence to kill Palestinian civilians must be stopped. International humanitarian law prohibits and criminalises targeting and killing civilians, without exception.’
Elsewhere in his remarks, Khasawneh said the Israeli aggression would not succeed in violating legitimate Palestinian rights and establishing an independent, sovereign Palestinian state on the lines of 4 June 1967, in accordance with the two-state solution, with East al-Quds as its capital.
The Norwegian Refugee Council chief, Egeland, has pointed to recent comments by far-right Israeli minister Bezalel Smotrich, who has urged that so-called ‘security zones’ be established around illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and along major roads.
He also said that in Gaza, the past month has seen ‘the transfer, en masse, of Palestinians without any guarantees of their safety, survival, and eventual return to their homes’.
‘Israel must not further perpetrate forcible transfer, and should allow the safe return and compensate for damages caused to displaced Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza according to international law,’ Egeland said.
The United Nations human rights office last month said Israel’s brutal blockade of the Palestinian enclave of Gaza, combined with the evacuation order and forcible transfer of civilians, could amount to a crime against humanity and is punishable by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Israel’s order for 1.1 million people in northern Gaza to move south is a forcible transfer of civilians, the UN says. However this class struggle is being waged internationally and world wide.
Following the Tories announcing on Monday that they had completed their ‘consultation period’ over the minimum service levels rules for railway, ambulance and border security staff, the UK TUC has been forced to respond to this attack by calling an emergency one-day Special TUC Congress on Saturday 9th December.
The Tories have brought in legislation to smash the UK workers’ right to strike, making strikes illegal. The penalty for any worker refusing to obey management demands that they cross picket lines is instant dismissal.
The Tories have not been silent over their intention to extend these laws to cover many millions of workers.
The aim of the Tories’ new rules is to abolish the hard-won right of workers to withdraw their labour, leaving trade unions powerless to fight the employers for wages, conditions and jobs, and leave them only with the role of enforcing the Tory laws on their members.
The Strikes (Minimum Service Level) Act was passed in July followed by a six-week consultation period to produce a statutory ‘Code of Practice’, laying out all the legal measures to force trade union members to comply with the strike breaking laws.
The code also sets out all the legal requirements on trade unions to either comply with the demands of the employers or face being taken to court and fined up to one million pounds.
The TUC is outraged by the legislation, with the TUC general secretary Paul Nowak saying these laws won’t work and will only ‘inflame industrial tensions’.
However Mick Lynch, general secretary of the RMT union, has issued a warning that ‘Any employer that seeks to issue a work notice will find themselves in a further dispute with my union’.
The timid TUC has now been forced to announce that it will be holding a special TUC Congress to ‘discuss the next stage of campaigning against the Tory anti-strike laws.’ This special Congress on December 9th is to defend their right to strike.
TUC leader Nowak now says: ‘Unions will keep fighting this spiteful legislation. We won’t stop until it is repealed.’ It is clear that this Special Congress must make two vital decisions.
One: it must send a message to the workers and youth of Palestine that it stands with them and will take action with them. Two: it must call a general strike to smash the Tories and bring in a workers government and socialism in the UK. This is the only way forward!
