The Palestinian death toll currently stands at 28,858. We should expect that number to increase sharply in the near future. First, fighting in over-crowded Rafah will lead to a large number of civilian casualties. Secondly, deaths from non-combat causes such as hunger, disease, and exposure will begin to mount as people are forced to stay in subhuman living conditions for increasing periods of time.
The far right is making serious gains across Europe. This is a threat that should not be taken lightly.
At the time of writing, the Hamas leadership is considering the latest set of proposals. It’s very hard to read what’s really going on. There is any amount of political posturing coupled with diplomatic intrigue taking place. The significant role of espionage organizations in the negotiations only muddies the waters further.
The WEF aims to discuss the challenges facing humanity in 2024 and onwards. These challenges, however, are primarily seen from the point of view of global capital and any proposed policy solutions are driven by the aim to sustain the world capitalist order.
The Israeli War Cabinet has a very clear objective for 2024, to evict as many Palestinians as possible from Gaza. In so doing, it will hope to take a major step towards its long term objective of creating a land free of Palestinians, “from the river to the sea”.
Hezbollah’s limited intervention in the wake of “Al-Aqsa Flood” has thus backfired, as the party missed the opportunity to force Israel to engage in an intensive war on two fronts whereas Israel is today threatening to launch an intensive bombardment of Lebanon, singling it out after completing its intensive bombardment of Gaza.
To get a step-change in the profitability of global capital would require a major cleansing (slump) to remove the weak (zombies) and raise unemployment in low-value sectors. So far, such a ‘liquidation’ or ‘creative destruction’ policy has not gained support in the mainstream or in official policy circles. ‘Muddling through’ is better.
The current wave of Palestinian solidarity demonstrations is the biggest opportunity for rebuilding the revolutionary left in years. It’s no secret that the past decades have been cruel ones for the revolutionary left. Our organizations have divided and shrunk. The dissolution of the International Socialist Organization in this country and the bitter split of the New Anticapitalist Party in France are only the best known examples of our retreat.
Israel is now turning its attentions to the southern part of Gaza. Of course, this is the part of Gaza that the Israeli government urged Palestinians to flee to as a “safe zone”. Now the “safe zone” itself is under heavy attack. This fact alone decisively dashes any illusion that Israel has any concern whatsoever for “civilian casualties”.
The truth is that the current aggression against Gaza constitutes, in the clearest possible form, a genocidal war that includes mass murder and “ethnic cleansing”, two crimes against humanity in the classification of international law. These crimes exceed qualitatively everything committed by the Zionist armed forces since 1949 until today and are comparable to what happened during the Nakba.
That the right-wing won the recent Dutch elections was no surprise. What was surprising was how decisive the share of the far-right was in the overall right-wing victory. For Geert Wilders, the leader of the far-right Freedom Party (PVV), years of patience paid off while the incumbent right-wing party gambled and lost.
The Israeli state wishes to use the current military campaign to make real progress in its long term project to remove all Palestinians from Gaza. It may well not succeed in immediately expelling every single current resident from Gaza; however, Tel Aviv could certainly make important strides towards that end.
There’s no point in trying to prettify the picture. The situation in Gaza is dire. There is, however, one thing we can do. We can show the Palestinians that they are not alone, that there are hundreds of thousands across the world in solidarity with them. Taking to the streets in defense of the people of Gaza is the task of the hour.
The ISP has collated a list of sources that readers seeking to understand what is happening in Palestine—and why—can consult.
The massive destruction inflicted on Gaza is not limited to military considerations this time. It serves an additional goal, which is the displacement of the Strip’s population.
