By Alex Walker
Israel in the last weeks has been stepping up the scale of its massacres and war crimes in Gaza even more than previously – carrying out intense bombings of Gaza City with the heaviest attacks since the genocide began, massacring over 90 Palestinians in a humanitarian safe zone, launching intense bombing attacks on civilians with F-16 jet fighters to name only a few of its atrocities. This new intensification of Israel’s crimes is directly related to events in the U.S..
The Biden administration, of course, has done, precisely nothing practical to stop Israel’s crimes since the attack on Gaza began – the U.S. can stop Israel by one single phone call saying it will cut off the weapons if Israel does not halt. It is the U.S. organ grinder that controls the Israeli puppet not the other way round. Instead, Biden’s administration has simply been making hypocritical verbal efforts to camouflage its real role. The sole reason that Biden has periodically issued even cautionary statements in words, entirely contradicted by U.S. actions, about Israel is because of the damage being done to the U.S. international position by the overwhelming international condemnation of Israel.
The U.S. representative directing Britain’s foreign affairs, who is officially known as Foreign Secretary David Lammy, has as usual carried out exactly the same policy, as he made clear during his recent visit to Israel – Lammy/Starmer in words calling for a ceasefire while in actions continuing to supply Israel with arms to pursue the war.
But the now publicly Trump/Vance team, who will almost certainly become the next President and Vice President of the U.S., have made clear they are not in favour of even Biden’s hypocritical words regarding Israel. Trump said that Israel should be allowed to “finish the job” in Gaza. This, of course, came from the U.S. President who moved the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem – something even the closest U.S. allies hesitated to do. Vance has been an equally unequivocal supporter of Israel.
Netanyahu, who can read U.S. opinion polls, has decided that with Trump becoming the next president of the United States he does not even have to pay even lip service to “restraint”. Netanyahu therefore calculates that he no longer has any obstacles to his attempted purely military solution of the situation in Gaza. Hence the further stepping up of Israeli atrocities.
Of course, given the horrors which will unfold, Israel and the U.S. will suffer further damage to their international image. But the Trump/Vance team clearly calculate that they do not care – you don’t have to respect the U.S. you just have to fear it. They calculate that most of the Arab ruling classes in the region will realign to good relations with Israel if only the Palestinian people can be crushed. Trump/Vance’s policy, even more directly than Biden, therefore relies purely on U.S. military strength – which remains the greatest in the world despite U.S. economic decline. Gaza is one of the first applications of a policy which they will apply internationally.
What conclusion follows? That Israel never had, and now has even less, intention of any meaningful ceasefire let alone the absurdity of believing that it had any intention of a settlement even remotely respecting the rights of the Palestinian people. That Israel will continue to attempt to find a purely military solution in Gaza – through military terror and atrocities. And that the Palestinian people are continuing to resist.
The international solidarity movement therefore has to redouble its efforts and prepare for a prolonged conflict. The core of this situation is continued heroic Palestinian resistance. Only this, as the core of inflicting, unacceptable damage to U.S. international image and interests and to the pro-Israel Arab ruling classes in the region, can force not only Biden but also Trump/Vance to be deflected from their course and the coming further atrocities.
Photo: Ceasefire Now march to US Embassy, London 11th November 2023; Photo from: Steve Eason; Photo cropped. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 Generic license.