21 October Scotland protests

Video | End the siege of Gaza: building solidarity with Palestine

At a meeting in East London on 18 October, Anindya Bhattacharyya discussed the shifting landscape of Palestinian solidarity campaigning during the siege of Gaza, and how the mass movement is affecting the geopolitical strategies of western imperialism and the Arab states.

I’ll try to rattle through the situation as I see it: what’s been going on in Palestine, what’s been going on globally, and most importantly for us, what’s been going on with the massive wave of global solidarity for the people of Palestine that we’ve seen mobilise around the world – despite all the calumnies, despite all the lies that have been thrown at that movement.

I think the role of that global solidarity movement in the last last few days has actually shifted the picture quite a bit – which might sound like quite a tall thing to say, but I hope once I’ve explained what’s going on you’ll see what what I mean by that.

The situation on Sunday 15 October

If we wind back to Sunday night, the situation for the people of Gaza looked incredibly grave, they were threatened with even worse than what they are currently experiencing. Israel had given an order to evacuate the entire north of the Gaza strip, including Gaza City – 1.1 million people out of 2.0 million – into the south. They gave a 24-hour deadline, which was impossible. Politicians were refusing to say even call for humanitarian aid. Journalists were asking: isn’t this a war crime? And the politicians were refusing to answer.

Leaks from the US military said – and Israel still may do this if they can get away with it – the plans were to level the entirety of Gaza City and the north of Gaza, and to drive the Palestinians out, at least into refugee camps in the south, but ideally out into Egypt and thus achieve a second nakba.

That is Israel’s ideal goal in this situation and they came very close to it. America was busy bribing the Sisi dictatorship in Egypt: ‘We’ll write off your foreign aid if you open up the Rafah crossing into Gaza and accept these refugees.’ However that didn’t work out, or hasn’t worked out so far at any rate, and I’ll come to why in a bit.

The situation on Monday until now: Egypt and Britain

So: a very grave situation on Sunday night; by Monday however something flipped. You might have noticed that imperialism and the Great Powers have been kinda on the defensive and stepping back from that brinkmanship and that position they were taking on Sunday.

And I think that’s because they saw the massive protests across the Arab world on Friday and relatively huge protests in the West as well uh the Saturday, and that made them blink and think twice.

You have to remember about protests in the Arab world that the Arab Spring was only 10 years ago. People remember what happened, they are very clued up about this, and they have learned from their mistakes. There were protests in Egypt today where people denounced the Camp David Accords. The last time people dared to chant protests in Egypt against the Camp David Accords was the Arab Spring.

Sisi is absolutely bricking himself and has actually gone on to TV and said: ‘No way will I collaborate with this second nakba, I will declare war on Israel if they ever try to do that!’ – it’s probably bullshit coming from Sisi but it’s still very unusual that the regime would make that kind of claim on TV.

As for the situation in Britain, the mass demonstrations here have certainly put Starmer and Sunak and all of those people on the defensive. Starmer has set fire to whole sections of the Labour Party and and is scrambling to keep control. He’s now saying: ‘Oh yes, humanitarian things are okay! Actually, war crimes are bad!’ – and none it is making any sense, and people are screaming in anger at him and – serves him right.

The reason for that shift isn’t of course because Starmer had a major change of heart. It was two reasons: he was scared by what we saw he saw on the streets here on Saturday, but also America is also pulling back and eventually Starmer gets the memo. When Biden starts going on about humanitarian stuff, about a day later Starmer will start talking about humanitarian stuff. That’s what’s going on there.

The geopolitical picture

Today Biden was meant to go on a glad-handing tour around the Arab states, starting in Jordan – there was no Arab Spring in Jordan, it was the placid pet of the American regime – so Jordan was going to show him round, but then Jordan called it off last night right after the Al-Ahli hospital bombing, which has turned everything around.

In Lebanon: there is fighting back and forth on the border, shells going back and forth – this happens quite a bit but there is always a chance that might blow up into a second front, as happened in 2006. But Iran doesn’t want that, and Israel doesn’t want that, so I suspect that’s just going to be a bit of a phony war, and that Egypt is the point to look at.

The other major development today is  Palestinians in the West Bank are demonstrating are demonstrating in front of Palestinian Authority in Ramallah and using the classic chant from the Arab Spring ‘the people demand the fall of the regime’ – directed at Abbas and his cronies and his collaborators.

So that’s a sense of what is happening in the Arab world and how electric this all is. And you have to see the demonstrations in London, Paris, America, wherever, as all part of that global solidarity movement for the Palestinians that is sending a message to their respective ruling classes that you can’t just get away with this like you got away with slaughtering people in Syria. This time round we are paying attention. And that that is putting the fear of God up all of them. And that’s important for us to remember.

Zionism in crisis within Israel

So it seems that this plan to level Gaza – what has happened so far has put a spanner in those works. But that creates a dangerous stalemate, and this is why I think elements of the Israeli military bombed that hospital.

One of the things to understand here is that Israel is also in complete and utter crisis. You might remember those big demonstrations that were were happening in Tel Aviv. Zionism is beset by contradictions and all the different factions are fighting each other in the wake of this massive blow that Palestinians inflicted on them a week ago. In particular the political apparatus in Israel is completely paralyzed and discredited, and the military is more or less doing its own thing.

I suspect sections in the military spotted that American backing is getting a little bit cooler and they’re going for a strategy of tension, an atrocity to get people to decide which way to jump.

That’s a very dangerous strategy for them and I think it’s a strategy that’s backfired. Because what we’ve seen now is the core states of America, Britain, France and Germany backing Israel but absolutely everyone else is moving away. For the past few years we’ve had propaganda about how the Arab states are all going to recognise Israel and Israel is going to normalise its relationship with them. Now every single damn one of them – Saudi, Jordan, the lot – are jumping away and going: ‘Rather than hang out with these psychos, we’re going to take our chances with China, Iran, Russia for that matter.’

The opposite of what America wants

Now that is the very opposite of what America wants to happen, because America’s fundamental war is with China, and what it’s happening now is it’s ratcheting up the tension but losing all its international allies, and it would be very very stupid to go any further.

But do not rule out the possibility that our imperial ruling classes can do very very stupid things. The global mass mobilisation on Saturday has turned this into a complete crisis for them. They are screaming at each other saying – let’s bomb this – no don’t do that, that’s stupid – all that is happening right now.

And if we keep up the pressure and keep up building this new movement that we’ve seen arise on the streets in the last the last few weeks – and it’s been absolutely miraculous, extraordinary in terms of its sophistication and its resilience – but if we can keep that pressure up, and build that movement further – and connect it with a wider hatred of politicians that’s out there out there in spades – then we have a chance to take this further and not only secure some kind of justice for the Palestinians, but also cause a serious splintering and weakening in the imperial murder machine that has been their oppressor for so many years.

Protests in solidarity with Palestine will again be held across Britain on Saturday 19 October. The national demonstration March for Palestine – Stop the War on Gaza will assemble at 12 noon at Marble Arch in Central London. There are also protests in Manchester, Leeds and Coventry and other cities in England – see below for Scotland.