Right now in Palestine, in the Gaza Strip, yet another imperialist crime is being committed. The State of Israel and the far-right Netanyahu government in the form of a "national unity" government is carrying on the massacres of previous years, striking the people with its massive military machine, civilians, children, killing thousands.  It has imposed a total blockade, depriving the inhabitants of water, food, medicine, medical supplies and electricity, readying a land invasion and genocide.

Now! The barbarity of the occupation forces must be condemned and mass popular solidarity with the suffering people of Palestine must be expressed. 

The working class, the popular strata, young women and men, with the vanguard action of the communists, can open the path to truth through the myriad of lies and ahistorical falsehoods that are deliberately used to back up the Israeli occupation.

A despicable propaganda mechanism with the participation of the US, the EU, bourgeois governments and states of the “civilized West” as they call it, exerts great efforts to exonerate the barbarity of the Israeli state, to incriminate the resistance of the Palestinian people and the popular solidarity expressed in their struggle. In these circumstances, we resolutely struggle to break through the veil of misinformation, to disseminate the positions of the KKE and to bring more popular forces into the struggle. The KKE irrefutably, with responsibility and the criterion the common struggle of the peoples, stands resolutely at the side of the Palestinians and fights for the end to the Israeli occupation, for an independent, united and viable Palestinian state, next to Israel, on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital, for the return of refugees and the release of political prisoners from Israeli prisons.    

We will succeed !

Combatively exposing the unsubstantiated claims and pretexts, against the Euro-Atlantic mechanisms, the government of ND, SYRIZA and PASOK and the far-right, fascist formations that from the beginning of this new phase of the war and the Palestinian operation in southern Israel, aligned themselves with the directives of the US, NATO and the EU, fanatically siding with the occupying forces. All the more so when the Greek ND government, with the support of the other parties, embroiling the country and joining in US-NATO planning, making the Souda Base available and sending an escort warship to the US aircraft carrier that is coming to support the Israeli state's attack on the Palestinians and the US aggressive plans in the region.  

All the governments are responsible for strengthening the economic, political and military relations with the State of Israel, promoting Euro-Atlantic energy plans, supporting it as a strategic partner in the rivalries in the region. While, implementing the directives of the Israeli and American embassies, the SYRIZA and ND governments ignored the unanimous resolution of the Greek parliament in 2015 concerning the recognition of the Palestinian state and for this they have been irreparably exposed.

The bourgeois parties, together with the Mass Media and the well-known "experts" who make a daily parade through the studios of misinformation, attempting to erase history and delete the word "occupation" from the vocabulary, provocatively attempting to identify the resistance of the Palestinian people with terrorism.

All sorts of "hypocrites and Pharisees", subordinated to imperialist law, the law of the mightiest and the interests of the bourgeoisie they serve, have not once said these days that the Palestinian territories are occupied by the State of Israel, attempting to legitimize the outcomes of the long-lasting Israeli interventions and the 1967 Six-Day War, which the UN has also characterized as illegal. 

THE OCCUPYING STATE MURDERS, UPROOTS, IMPRISONS      

The occupation was imposed in 1947-1948 when the Palestinian land was divided up and the State of Israel was established and has perpetuated to this day, with the support of the USA, NATO and the EU, in the continual and intensifying imperialist competition for control of the region.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled from their lands. Actual uprooting, planned land seizures and population displacement. Israel took control of 774 Palestinian towns and villages, of which 531 were completely destroyed and the rest passed to the occupying state.

This is what the occupation apologists are hiding! 

THEY HIDE that more than one hundred thousand (100,000)! Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military and paramilitary forces.

The brutality of the Israeli occupation has led to large waves of refugees. The UN's own figures prove that the number of registered Palestinian refugees in January 2020 was about 6.3 million, 30% of whom live in 58 official refugee camps linked to the "International Relief Agency", distributed in 10 camps in Jordan and 9 in Syria, 12 in Lebanon, 19 in the West Bank and 8 in the Gaza Strip. And this number does not include the thousands of unregistered refugees. Thousands of refugees every year seek a better fate. In 2023 alone, of the 8,820 refugees and asylum seekers arriving in Greece, the majority, 22%, are from Palestine, followed by other countries affected by imperialist wars and interventions, such as Afghanistan, Syria, etc.  

THEY HIDE that the number of political prisoners in Israeli prisons is estimated at over 5,000, including children, women, the elderly, the chronically ill and an additional 1,200 "administrative detainees" who are being imprisoned without trial.  

Since the beginning of 2023, Israeli occupation forces have arrested more than 5,000 Palestinians, including women and children.

The apologists of the Israeli occupation HIDE that year after year the Palestinian territories are shrinking, that the West Bank of which 60% is controlled by the occupation forces, is encircled by the "wall of shame" and every town, neighborhood and village, is controlled by "security zones" and hundreds of outposts ("checkpoints") where Israeli soldiers with their weapons extended make the life of the Palestinians unlivable, arresting, beating, killing, according to their mood, as they have killed dozens of children who stood up against their armed occupiers with slingshots.

THEY HIDE that settlements were and are being built in the Palestinian territories, (racist apartheid regime), tools of occupation and oppression of the people.  About 40% of the West Bank is in the hands of the settlers who have multiplied seven times since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993 to the present day, from 115,000 to 750,000.

THEY HIDE that the Gaza Strip has been blockaded since 2007 and the people are suffering and in the period 2008-2022 alone, it underwent 93 days of deadly Israeli bombardment with tragic results, 4,240 dead and 22,902 wounded, according to official figures.  

THE RESISTANCE OF THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE                             

The title "The Middle East is on fire" has been used countless times. The war did not start now, it has been going on for decades, it has gone through various phases and as long as the occupation remains in force, the peaceful coexistence of the peoples will be torpedoed, the conditions will be created for the escalation and expansion of military conflicts within the framework of the intense imperialist rivalries and the US-Israeli plans to promote their interests in the region, with the Palestinian, Israeli and other peoples as victims.  

As long as the occupation remains in force, the Palestinian resistance will continue, which is ongoing and multi-faceted in both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, with many emblematic periods when daily resistance to the occupier escalated, turning into uprising. This was the case in the first Intifada in 1987, which was met by the Israeli army with mass murders, mass imprisonment and persecution, demolitions of people’s homes, and lasted until the eve of the 'peace talks' for the signing of the 'Oslo Accord' in 1993. This was also the case in the second Intifada, in 2000, which lasted five years. 

The heroic struggle of the Palestinian people is an answer to its underminers. The propaganda machine of the USA, NATO, the EU and Israel, and right next to them, the bourgeois parties, regurgitates that the Israeli state has the right to "self-defence" and to use every barbaric means to maintain the occupation. But, they also say that Ukraine has a right to "self-defence», which they support in NATO's war with Russia. However, the Palestinian people, who are suffering, bleeding and imprisoned by the occupying state, do not have the right to "self-defence".

This obscene propaganda does not get through to our people and that is why they are raging at every minute, with staged broadcasts and targeted publications in the Mass Media, completely excluding the Palestinian position, organizing an orgy of lies, fake news of war propaganda presented as facts and the next day refuted, withdrawn.

The Palestinian people have the inalienable right and historical duty to lay claim to their rights and to fight to live in a free homeland, without occupation and occupying troops, to be the master in their own land, shaping the conditions for their total liberation from capitalist exploitation, like every people.

SYRIZA leaders drowning in the waters of social-democratic degeneration are looking for pretexts to mitigate the massive popular outcry caused by the despicable support of the occupying forces and have resorted to flimsy arguments. They claim that the struggle in the Gaza Strip is the struggle of Hamas, not of the Palestinian people, and that the operation that took place on the border with Israel is a 'terrorist' one. One can have any opinion on the character and positions of Hamas, but behind this deliberate targeting an attempt is being made to slander the Palestinian struggle. It is well known that the violent means, the terrorism used by the occupying forces provoke retaliation. Hamas as a political-religious, Islamic, organization came to the fore after 2000 and especially after 2007, when it emerged as the leading force in the Gaza Strip elections amidst intra-Palestinian conflicts, and those who today try to hide behind it to support the Israeli occupation cannot justify the long-standing Israeli crimes. They are avoiding like the plague to take a position on the State of Palestinian’s statement that stresses that it is the right of the Palestinian people to defend themselves from the terrorism of the settlers and the occupying forces.  

AGREEMENTS WITH A GUN HELD TO THEIR HEAD

Over the past decades, many resolutions have been passed in the UN which the Israeli state, with the backing of the Americans and the EU, has violated and has defiantly stated that "the two-state solution is a sham", in order to justify its goal of an Israeli state "from the Euphrates to the Nile".  Many moves have been made at the initiative of the US in the name of peace with a gun held to the Palestinian people's head. Hopes and false expectations have been cultivated, which have been exposed by the KKE, which criticized, for example, the "Oslo Accord" of 1993, which fragmented the Palestinian territories beyond all limits and was exploited by Israel for the occupation of new territories and the creation of settlements.

The same applies to the talks e.g. at Camp David in 2000 and Annapolis in 2007, after which the American plan for the "Greater Middle East" followed in order for the USA to advance its plans. While the "Deal of the Century" under the Trump presidency attempted to put an end to any internationally recognized rights of the Palestinian people and to promote the cooperation of the Israeli bourgeoisie with the bourgeoisie of Arab states, paving the way for the "Abraham Accords" between the Israeli state, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, etc., with the aim of integrating Saudi Arabia.

These agreements are aimed at strengthening Israel's position as a traditional supporter of the US in the region and are linked to broader plans in the confrontation with China, in the battle for market shares in the Middle East and Europe, such as, for example, the "Indian Road (IMEEC)" in competition with the Chinese "Belt and Road Initiative".

At the same time, this process has provoked the justified reaction of the Arab peoples who consider that in the process, the interests of the Palestinian people are being sacrificed and it seems that Israel's attack on the Gaza Strip suspends the Arab-Israeli rapprochement.

The developments in the Palestinian issue, as in the Cyprus issue, teach the peoples not to give credence to all kinds of imperialist "guarantors" and "protectors", to believe in their own strengths and to develop an independent struggle based on their own interests.

The situation is critical. At any moment military operations may be expanded. Already, Israeli forces are exchanging fire with the Hezbollah, which is based in Lebanon. The tension in Iranian and Syrian relations with Israel is escalating; the Israeli army, which carried out a targeted bombing of the Syrian city of Homs just a few days ago, killing 100 cadets, has just again struck the Damascus and Aleppo airports; Turkey has its own plan. The American fleet is patrolling the Middle East with war-ready forces, in conditions where the web of antagonisms is becoming more and more complicated and the imperialist war in Ukraine is escalating.

Israel's offensive and the developments that place the Palestinian issue in the millstones of intensifying geopolitical antagonisms underline the need to strengthen the struggle to end the occupation. In confrontation with the forces that call on the people to align themselves with the occupying Israeli state and to involve the country even more deeply in designs that reek of gunpowder, in the face of the various advocates of "equal distances" between victim and perpetrator, what is now urgent is to strengthen solidarity with the Palestinian people, to support their struggle for a free homeland, to stop the Israeli massacre and to support the anti-war struggle throughout the region.     

Giorgos Marinos

Member of the PB of the CC of the KKE

20.10.2023