More than seven hundred days into Israel’s genocide of Palestinian families in Gaza, U.S. Terrorist-in-Chief Donald Trump’s “peace deal” is in truth a green light for Israel to finish its campaign of mass murder and displacement. The 20-point proposal rewards racist slaughter and spells out the terms of victory for Zionist apartheid. Hamas is to surrender weapons and hostages while Israeli troops indefinitely occupy the “perimeter.”
There’s a vague nod to a possible Palestinian state “someday.”
Trump’s move is a desperate stab at crisis management. A weakened and isolated U.S. empire has lost all credibility as it prepares for world war with its imperialist competition, China and Russia. Working-class rage across scores of countries has pressured bosses worldwide to take the once-unimaginable step of condemning Israel’s “conduct.” But even if Trump is able to force his deal down the Palestinians’ throats, it won’t undo the damage to U.S. power in the oil-rich Middle East. Nor will it solve the international crisis of capitalism, or stop the capitalist bosses’ drive toward open fascism and world war.
As the bloodsoaked rulers wheel and deal, the working class remains the wild card. We have a genocidal profit system to destroy–and a new society to build. Communists, antiracists, and all workers who believe we deserve a better world have a long road ahead. Take the first step by joining the fightback with Progressive Labor Party!
Horrors for our class
For the international working class, the systematic genocide and famine orchestrated by the diabolical Israeli regime is one of the great catastrophes of our time. The Israeli regime has decimated every aspect of life in Gaza:
-Two million people were traumatized and displaced.
-66,055 confirmed murdered, including 440 killed to date by famine.
-168,346 confirmed wounded.
-Untold thousands still buried under the rubble.
-Basic infrastructure—hospitals, schools, water, sanitation—demolished, making Gaza uninhabitable for generations to come.
-Amid environmental degradation, farmlands, orchards, and greenhouses–workers’ means of subsistence–destroyed.
-Virtually every square meter of Gaza is polluted with toxic dust and debris, and contaminated soil and water.
Too little too late?
The Middle East is the great chessboard where the most powerful capitalist rulers—the United States, Russia, and now China—fight for power and future profits. Trump’s inability to rein in the merciless Zionists in Gaza has exposed U.S. weakness. It undermines the U.S. bosses’ legitimacy, both within and outside its borders. At the recent meeting of the UN General Assembly, several important U.S. allies–including Britain, France, Canada, and Australia–defied the U.S. by formally recognizing a Palestinian state. Japan has announced plans to do the same.
Trump’s proposed deal could give pariah Israel a lifeline to win back these estranged U.S. allies and rebuild ties with surrounding Arab nations. The United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Indonesia, and Pakistan all have roles in the proposal. Notably, China and Russia do not.
As the leading U.S. liberal mouthpiece admits, “The war needs to end for the sake of Israel and its security” (New York Times, 9/30). Translation: Israel’s perilous position is what drives the U.S. bosses’ erratic position on the genocide. The U.S. bosses face an existential crisis. They worry that allowing Israel to keep on killing will cost “ties with key regional partners and [a loss of] influence over the emerging regional order…[It] will also fuel a new wave of radicalism that will threaten U.S. interests, regional stability, and global security” (Foreign Affairs, 10/1).
Who will rule Gaza?
As bosses make empty vows to recognize a ruined country that has yet to exist, it means little to the children, families, and workers displaced, discarded, and dehumanized in Gaza. The question remains as to who will rule there. Will Gaza be absorbed into the Israeli apartheid regime like the West Bank? The Palestinian territory to the west of the Jordan River has been occupied and ruled by Israel since the Six-Day War in 1967.
Raw terror is the order of the day there: mass killings, incarceration, and torture of Palestinians in concentration camps; rampant sexual violence; destruction of homes and farms to expel people from their lands; and a maze of barriers that block access to water, land, education, health, and jobs (The Tri Continental, 5/8).
Will “international stabilization” troops occupy Gaza, much as the brutal MINUSTAH occupied the state of Haiti for 13 years? That UN “peacekeeping” force left a wretched legacy of 10,000 deaths from cholera, along with killings, rape, sexual abuse, and hundreds of children born to impoverished girls and young women (Al Jazeera, 10/6/2017).
What’s clear is that Gaza has never seen working-class power, and never will–until the working class seizes state power and builds a workers’ state.
International solidarity
The real opposition to genocide in Gaza won’t be found among the bosses’ figureheads now making their “principled” proclamations. The real anti-genocide movement has been born inside the international working class. In Italy, tens of thousands of protesters have blocked city streets in solidarity. Striking dockworkers shut down the port of Genoa to stop an Israeli-bound arms shipment. Defying Israel’s naval blockade, an international civilian fleet of 40 boats and 500 people are on their way to deliver food and medicine (The Times of Israel, 9/29).
Across the U.S., in the first year of Israel’s assault alone, 12,400 pro-Palestine protests erupted (Harvard Kennedy School). Beginning in April 2024, amid police raids and deportations, the student intifada has given mass leadership on what it means to fight back in the face of fascism. Consequently, support for Israel has “undergone a seismic reversal” (New York Times, 9/29). The majority of the U.S. population now opposes sending more weapons and money to Israel, a first since polling on this issue began in 1998.
The potential for revolution can be seen in these glimmers of fightback. Now we must build a mass communist movement committed to ripping out the roots of genocide: the profit system. For that, we will need a revolutionary international party. Progressive Labor Party strives to build this movement. The time to join the fight of a lifetime is now.
