Gaza: The descent into barbarism

January 30 marked the 115^th day of the Israeli offensive in Gaza. The purpose of this article is to chart where the Israeli destruction of Gaza stands today and then to look at the rapidly changing international context of the war.

Gaza today

Normally, readers just skim over statistics in articles. However, the hard facts of the current situation in Gaza should be looked at carefully.

The Palestinian death toll stands at 26,637 as of January 29. This number would go up drastically if thousands buried under rubble are included.
The death toll for children stands at 13,022.
Forty-five percent of residential buildings have been destroyed.
Ninety percent of the population are now refugees.
The IPC, the scientific organization that monitors famine and starvation, estimates that 2.2 million Gazans face acute food insecurity or worse. This is the highest proportion of the population facing acute food insecurity that the IPC has ever found.

These five statistics more than justify the contention that what we are seeing in Gaza is a descent into barbarism, that it is a collapse of society and a plummet into extraordinary suffering. This catastrophe is the result, in fact the desired result, of the Israeli attack.

There is a new element in the Israeli effort to make life in Gaza so impossible that a new wave of Palestinian migration takes place. This is the attempt to destroy UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. For years, UNRWA has been a mainstay of daily life in Gaza. In a situation where Israel has blocked normal economic activity, supplies and resources offered by UNRWA have become a crucial part of everyday existence. Days after the International Court of Justice held its preliminary hearings on the South African genocide charges against Israel, the Israeli government produced a dossier claiming that twelve UNRWA employees had participated in October 7. (UNRWA has about 13,000 workers, so we are talking about less than one in a thousand.) This has led to a major international campaign to stop UNRWA’s funding. Shutting down UNRWA would close one of the few institutions attempting to stop the suffering in Gaza. The campaign against UNRWA is an important new element in the Israeli offensive.

Political division inside Israel continues

Division continues inside the Israeli ruling class. Hostage families, for the most part, are continuing a vigorous campaign to prioritize hostage release over the military campaign against Hamas. (The IDF has only actually liberated one hostage so far.) A minority of hostage families have swung behind the far right. This grouping has attempted to physically block some of the few trucks actually bringing aid into Gaza at the Kerem Shalom crossing with Egypt.

The far right organization, Nahala, organized a major conference on Sunday, January 28. This “Victory of Israel Conference: Settlement Brings Security” was attended by a third of the current cabinet. The conference called for the removal of the Palestinians from Gaza and a program of Jewish settlement there. Prominent political figures such as Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir spoke at the meeting which gave a true picture of the objectives of the Israeli right.

Simultaneously, Netanyahu’s leadership has been challenged by central politicians such as Gail Eisenkot and Yair Lapid. All in all, there are no signs of the political strife in Israel abating.

A region in turmoil

World news has focused on the January 28 drone attack which killed three American soldiers at the US base Tower 22 in Jordan. Kataib Hezbollah, an Iranian linked Iraqi organization has been suspected to be behind the attack. However, this is by no means the only recent fighting in the broader Middle East.

Houthi forces have attacked ships in the Red Sea thirty times.
There have been 160 attacks on US troops in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan.
Low intensity conflict continues between Israel and Hezbollah on Israel’s northern border.
Israel has killed a Hamas leader in Lebanon.
Iran has attacked selected targets in Iraq.
The US and Israel have attacked Iranian linked forces in Syria.
Iran has bombed ISIS forces in Syria.
Iran and Pakistan have both fired missiles into one another’s territory as part of the dispute over Baluchistan.
ISIS conducted a major bombing at a memorial event for Iranian General Qasem Soleimani.

There’s a purpose to listing all of these actions. It’s to underscore how fragile the situation in the entire region is today. While the ISIS attacks and Baluchistan fighting are not caused by events in Gaza, the rest of the conflicts are. They show the profound regional impact of Israel’s war in Gaza.

Peace talks?

There has been a lot of speculation in the international press about the recent negotiations, most recently held in Paris. The participants are Egypt, Israel, the United States, and Qatar. Qatar then discusses with Hamas. 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.

Most reports believe that the main elements of a potential settlement would include release of the remaining hostages, release of some of the Palestinian prisoners currently being held by Israel, a two month ceasefire, and Israel ending its blockade of Gaza. Apparently, there may be more ambitious ideas around, such as Israel eventually agreeing to some type of Palestinian state in exchange for Saudi recognition.

It’s not inconceivable that Israel might agree to some watered down version of the settlement. Achieving the return of the hostages would be a feather in Netanyahu’s cap and remove a major source of domestic discontent. A military ceasefire would allow the IDF to rest and re-equip its troops, redeploy forces to the West Bank and northern border, and generally take stock of the situation. On the other hand, the Israeli high command might worry about the effects on troop morale and domestic and international political support of a renewed launch of hostilities following two months of peace. A longer term two state solution seems pretty far-fetched at the moment.

Socialism or Barbarism?

Rosa Luxemburg famously spoke of “socialism or barbarism?” being the two great alternatives of our time. Marxists generally saw this as society coming to a Y junction in the road with two different roads that could be followed leading to vastly different destinations. In recent years, important parts of the revolutionary left have raised the idea that we are seeing barbarism in the here and now, not just as a long term possibility. They raise the climate catastrophe, the world wide racist campaign against immigrants, the growth of the populist right, and the possibility of war stemming from inter-imperialist competition as examples of this barbarism. In my opinion, the comrades somewhat overestimate the depth of the economic crisis, misestimate the strength of the bourgeois democratic state apparatus, and telescope the tempo of events. But when it comes to Gaza, the comrades have a powerful point. What we are seeing today in Gaza is definitely barbarism. How else can the statistics quoted at the beginning of this article be described?

But we are seeing something else as well. The international solidarity movement has become a real element in the overall political situation. For the revolutionary left, it can be a game changer. It is the largest international solidarity movement since the Vietnam war. In the United States, it is the most sustained and most left wing movement since the radicalization of the late 1960s and early 1970s. It shows that we are not necessarily on the one-way road to barbarism.