The world is witnessing yet again a brutal and murderous act of aggression by Israel’s Zionist government against the Palestinian people in Gaza. In the mobilized media of Israel and the pro-Zionist press abroad it’s presented as an operation driven by “The concern for peace and the well-being of the population in South Israel.” But is it really?
After the first Zionist expansion, beyond the borders of the partition plan (November 1947), which included the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians and the destruction of 540 Palestinian villages, known as the Nakba, the Zionist leadership of the newly born state of Israel embarked on a project which they termed as “development settlements.” They built Jewish-only settlements such as Shderot, Netivot, Kiryat Gat, Kiryat Malachy and Yerucham along the borders with Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. The main aim was to erect a human shield (cannon fodder) which would protect Israel from an invasion by a “foreign” army.
In the early 1950s, Israel’s ruling class used the wave of Jewish immigration from Iraq, Yemen and the Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia) to populate these settlements. Additionally, wealthy Jews — local and foreign, with the aid and funding of the Israeli government — built factories in these settlements, using the local population as cheap labor, thus extracting huge profits. These profit-thirsty tycoons were presented to the public as “[p]hilanthropists who supply jobs to the people in the development settlements.” As world capitalism progressed and reached the level of globalization, profits declined and the “philanthropists” closed the factories, leaving behind huge unemployment. They then moved the factories to the Far East — India, China and Taiwan where labor costs are the cheapest.
There’s no doubt that the inhabitants of these “development settlements” are not responsible for the present grave situation (mass unemployment and daily rocket attacks). They themselves, like the people of Gaza, are direct victims and paying the price for Zionist aggression and expansion.
Ever since the creation of Israel, all Israeli Zionist governments, “left” and right, followed the policy of conquest of Palestinian lands and expulsion of Palestinians (the indigenous population) to make the entire territory a Jewish state. This principle was set by Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion, who used the term “The right time” — sitting on the fence, strengthening the IDF (Israeli armed forces), waiting for the right time, using a provocation to strike at the Palestinians, expand and at the same time get the world’s imperialist powers to support the acts of aggression.
This method of expansion was first used in the 1956 Suez operation during which Israel collaborated with the British and French colonialists to conquer all of Sinai while the colonialists occupied the strategic Suez Canal. Unfortunately for the Zionists, they did not consider the interests of the then rising U.S. imperialism. They put their money on the decaying British and French colonialists. Thus the Zionist ruling class was forced to give up the gains of this futile campaign due to massive U.S. pressure.
The Zionists had to wait 11 years before once again applying “the right-time” method. In 1967, Egypt, led by the nationalist Gamal Abdul Nasser, held military drills, moving troops into the Sinai. Israel used the opportunity to attack on three fronts, demolishing the armies of Egypt, Syria and Jordan in six days. In the process they conquered all of Historic Palestine, including Gaza from Egypt, the West Bank from Jordan (Judea and Sumaria in Zionist terminology) and the Golan Heights from Syria.
In 1982, the Israeli ruling class repeated “the right-time” method, using an assassination attempt on the Israeli ambassador to the UK in London, and invaded Lebanon, reaching and occupying Beirut. Israel, led by fascist Prime Minister Begin and fascist Minister of Defense Ariel Sharon, tried to install a “friendly” collaborating government in Lebanon headed by the pro-imperialist Bashir Jumail. Once again they gambled on the wrong horse. The murder of Jumail two days into office plus Israel’s part in the massacre of Palestinians in Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, led to Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon in 1983 due to pressure applied by the imperialist powers.
The current Operation “Protective Edge” is the latest act of aggression where “the right-time” policy is being used (see front page). The Israeli Zionist ruling class could not “swallow” the Palestinian unity government that included Hamas. To Jerusalem’s dismay, this government was recognized and endorsed by the European Union. U.S. imperialism, stuck in the Iraq-Afghanistan quagmire, received it with silence.
From day one, the kidnapping of the three young settlers gave the Zionists the opportunity to act against Hamas. The Israeli government declared Hamas to be responsible for the kidnapping, before it had any evidence as to who the kidnappers were or to the whereabouts of the victims. It has continued this rhetoric while police officials admit Hamas was not involved.
Thus they created an atmosphere that would justify attacks on Hamas activists in the West Bank, completely unrelated to the kidnapping itself. Israeli rulers also arrested 53 ex-Hamas prisoners released in the Shalit deal (in which Israel released Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the freeing of an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, held by Hamas in 2011). In so doing, it violated the deal.
Consequently, the Palestinians in the West Bank organized mass demonstrations which escalated into a revenge kidnapping when young Jewish settlers set afire a 15-year-old Palestinian boy. As a token of solidarity, Palestinian organizations in Gaza, not associated with Hamas, started firing rockets on Israeli “development settlements” such as Shderot. Hamas did not want this escalation and tried to stop it. When they failed, they were forced into firing rockets in order to save face among the Palestinians as the leading organization of the struggle against Israeli occupation and siege.
For the bloodthirsty Zionist government in Jerusalem, this was “the right time” for another onslaught on the Palestinian people. The IDF air force conducted close to 2,000 missions over the 360-square kilometers of Gaza, killing over 1,300 Palestinians (and counting), including hundreds of children, demolishing nearly 1,000 houses and forcing over 100,000 people to evacuate their homes mainly, in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza strip. Meanwhile, the Israelis had two civilian victims.
The present racist Zionist leadership is worried about the demographic balance in Historic Palestine.  Racist Benjamin Netanyahu & Co. do not want to see a Palestinian state based on the “two-state solution.” They foil every attempt in this direction through what is termed “The Peace Process.” Yet meanwhile they don’t want one state (a Jewish state) where 50% of the population is Arab (the present demographic situation in Historic Palestine). So they do their best to “dilute” the Palestinian population.
The Zionists know they cannot use direct expulsion (“transfer”) as they did in 1948, a step that may lead to the isolation of Israel internationally. So they use other means: massive bombardment, siege and blockade of the densely populated Gaza strip (1.8 million people in 360-square kilometers, 5,000 people per 1 square kilometer), trying to impel Palestinians to “desert” and later claim “they left of their own free will,” the claim they used after expelling 750,000 in 1947-48. Israel’s message to the Palestinians: “If you stay here we will make your life miserable and if necessary we will kill you.”
Like every regime with fascist characteristics, the Israeli bosses do not have a long-term strategy. Until 1987, Israel faced conventional armies of corrupt capitalist regimes in Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. Since then (the first Intifada), Israel is facing popular Palestinian resistance forces and cannot defeat them. In operation “Protective Edge” despite the massive strikes on Gaza, the Palestinians still fire around 60 home-made amateur rockets into Israel every day .
Without revolutionary communist leadership, Hebrew and Arab workers are the main victims of the murderous Zionist bosses’ aggression and the adventurous acts of the corrupt Hamas leadership.
The “one-state” vs. “two-state” dispute is a phony capitalist concoction. The working class needs only one state — a workers’ state. Arab and Hebrew workers should build their revolutionary internationalist communist party — the Progressive Labor Party —  which will provide the leadership in the struggle to smash the capitalist Zionist government and the reactionary Arab regimes in the region, destroy capitalism and establish a communist society which will create a bright future for all workers in the region, one with no exploitation and imperialist wars.