It doesn’t matter if they shoot me or not. Death or life—it’s the same thing.
—Saber al-Gerim, 22, protester at Gaza border, New York Times, April 30.

For the two million working-class people in the occupied Gaza Strip, the world’s largest concentration camp, life is indeed the same as death. Since the latest Palestinian rebellion began on March 30, the apartheid state of Israel has murdered at least 45 people and wounded over five thousand more. A United States in decline can no longer control Israel, its regional watchdog. Amid intensifying inter-imperialist competition with Russia and China, the resulting turbulence in the Middle East is further destabilizing the old U.S.-dominated liberal world order.
Nakba Day
The Palestinian protests are expected to peak on May 15, Nakba (“Catastrophe”) Day, the 70th anniversary of the creation of the officially racist nation of Israel, when over 700,000 Arab workers and their families were displaced and exiled. The day before, a new U.S. embassy is set to open in the divided city of Jerusalem—a move by Donald Trump to pander to his racist base and underline the fact that the “two-state solution,” conceived to give the Palestinian nationalist bosses an independent state, is dead. The future is a one-state solution, with the Zionist bosses continuing to exploit, oppress, and brutalize an Arab majority from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
As Nakba Day draws near, Iran-aligned Hamas is organizing tens of thousands of protesters to storm the Israeli border. But Hamas, the Islamic nationalists who have administered occupied Gaza since 2007, has nothing to offer workers there except futile terrorism and misguided martyrdom. Given the imbalance of forces—Palestinian rocks against Israeli assault rifles and hand grenades—May 15 looks likely to be a bloodbath.
Meanwhile, the world’s capitalist bosses—including those in the Arab world—have turned their backs on Palestinian workers and their suffering. For the first time, a Saudi boss, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, reportedly backed Israel’s “right” to an apartheid regime (Ma’an News Agency, 5/1). The U.S.-aligned bosses’ silence on the Gaza rebellion reflects their real priority—keeping regional rival Iran in check.
Gaza, a concentration camp
The Middle East is a victim of unvarnished imperialism, with ceaseless competition and wars for resources (oil) and profits (ExxonMobil). The smaller bosses, from Hamas to Al Fatah (the group that runs the West Bank under Israeli rule), protect their petty fiefdoms but do nothing for Palestinian workers. All of these capitalists, big and small, share a total disregard for working-class lives. Gaza contains 1.3 million refugees. Among workers under 30, 65 percent are unemployed. Living conditions are unspeakable:  
“United Nations officials warn that Gaza is nearing total collapse, with medical supplies dwindling, clinics closing and 12-hour power failures threatening hospitals. The water is almost entirely undrinkable, and raw sewage is befouling beaches and fishing grounds. Israeli officials and aid workers are bracing for a cholera outbreak any day” (NYT, 2/11).
The Palestinian workers truly have nothing to lose.
Israel, U.S. watchdog
With the world’s largest reserves of cheaply extractable oil, the Middle East is a powder keg for world war, with U.S.-backed Saudi Arabia and Russia- and China-backed Iran at each other’s throats. Israel enjoys advanced weaponry, military research, and funding in collaboration with the U.S. Why? Because Israel serves to check Russian imperialist aggression.  
While fighting wars against Arab states, the Israeli bosses have also waged a vicious campaign to subjugate the Palestinians. They have brutally suppressed two intifadas (rebellions), built electronic fences, bulldozed Palestinian villages. Their jet fighters bomb the homes of supposed terrorists (children who threw rocks were imprionsed for years)—when they’re not bombing schools and hospitals. Now they are using snipers and hand grenades against unarmed protesters in Gaza. And while conditions in Gaza get ever more desperate, the Israeli government has allocated a billion dollars to build an underground concrete fence to further blockade and isolate the workers there.
Complications for U.S. bosses
Yet as we have seen throughout the world, the working class keeps fighting back—and now the workers of Gaza are leading the way. Against insurmountable odds, they are risking their lives to break out of their prison. They are once again exposing the Israeli rulers as racist war criminals.
The new U.S. Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, a former Tea Party congressman, is unmoved by the atrocities committed by the Zionists’ Nazi regime: “We do believe the Israelis have the right to defend themselves, and we’re fully supportive of that” (Wall Street Journal, 4/30). But while Pompeo’s racist analysis reflects the interests of the U.S. profit system, the bosses are divided. The main-wing, finance capitalists would prefer to rule with a cover of liberal “democracy.” As Roger Cohen, an arch-imperialist who represents the stance of these main-wing bosses, wrote in the April 20 New York Times: “As usual Israel overreaches, an eye for an eyelash.”
With a weakened U.S. unable to rein in their vicious dog, a virulent Israel gives Iran and Iran’s Russian backers more runway to build their own axis of power—a scenario that can only hasten World War III.
Workers have no borders
The job of Progressive Labor Party is to lead the workers everywhere to turn imperialist war into a revolutionary war for communism. The working class has no borders. With communist revolution, we will tear down every fence and wall—real and imaginary—that divides us. We are one international Party and one international working class. We have nothing to lose but our chains.