August 5, 2024 editorial of the New Anticapitalist Party-Revolutionaries (NPA-R) in France, translated from French
Israel’s assassination in Beirut on Tuesday, July 30 of a Lebanese Hezbollah leader, followed by the assassination in Tehran of one of the political leaders of the Palestinian Hamas, who had been invited to the Iranian capital for the inauguration of the country’s new president, show the extent to which the Israeli government is prepared for any escalation, including the risk of a regional conflagration. The conflict continues to spread to southern Lebanon: on the Golan Heights, annexed by Israel, Hezbollah was also guilty of a strike which killed twelve young people; at the end of the week, it retaliated to the assassination of its leader by sending several rockets, most of which were intercepted, and on Sunday night Israel carried out a new strike in Lebanon, killing two people.
With the complicity of the major powers
Israel can all the more easily provoke an escalation, particularly towards Lebanon, which it has already invaded several times, as it is assured of the support of the major Western powers in the event of retaliation and the spread of conflict in the region: [French President] Macron, who has supported its war in Gaza from the outset and, above all, the United States, for whom Israel acts as regional policeman. The previous week, Netanyahu had been in Washington to ask the U.S. Congress for new funding for his war.
That day, thousands of demonstrators gathered in the American capital, despite the tear gas, to protest against the war in Gaza and the support of the United States. For the new sound of boots in the region, this new escalation that Netanyahu brandishes as a threat, does not overshadow the war of extermination and expulsion that has been underway for ten months against the Palestinian people.
In ruined Gaza
To date, 40,000 people have died in Gaza, a strip barely 40 kilometers long and 6 to 12 kilometers wide. This veritable ghetto of misery has been home to two million Palestinians since the 1993 Oslo Accords, which were supposed to give them, through Gaza and the West Bank, two bits of territory of their own. Today, most of the houses have been demolished, hospitals and schools destroyed, and the population reduced to starvation. The Gazan population, the vast majority of whom have taken refuge in the south of the strip, must move from day to day as the Israeli army bombards them. A nameless hell for Palestinian men, women and children, most of whom already belong to families expelled from their homes during previous wars of Israeli expansion. And where can they take refuge, given that the only border to Egypt remains hermetically sealed? For the Egyptian regime doesn’t want to see two million more poor people flooding into its territory, two million who could only have the sympathy of their brothers, the millions of poor people in Egypt, against whom Marshal Sissi came to power to put an end to the Arab Spring uprising of 2011.
And Netanyahu’s war has already spread to the West Bank, where right-wing Israeli settlers have had carte blanche to occupy new land since the start of the war in Gaza, and are driving Palestinians out of their homes, destroying them: more than 500 people have already died, including around a hundred children.
This massacre is taking place in the Middle East, where an armada of U.S. and French warships is guarding the free passage of the Suez Canal to keep trade rolling. Here, all we hear about is the “Olympic truce” and medals…
This war concerns us
Because it’s a war waged by the rulers of rich countries, a class war against a population of poor and exploited people. Our governments are directly complicit in and responsible for it, and our arms dealers are making their profits from it. It is the face, the most criminal face, of this society of injustice that we must fight.
