Operation “Pillar of Cloud”

“And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud, to lead them the way" – Exodus 13:21

Gaza is facing another invasion. The Israeli military have called up thousands of reservists and massed troops and tanks along the border with Gaza, signaling a ground invasion of the densely populated seaside strip could be imminent.

You will probably won't recall, considering all the media emphasis on Israel "retaliating" in response to Palestinian rocket attacks, that this latest escalation in the conflict began when a non-Hamas paramilitary group took a revenge attack on an armored jeep on the Israeli side of the border fence after the killing of a 12-year old boy playing football some days earlier. Israeli tanks responded with  cannon shells into the Gaza Strip. Hamas launched rockets at Israeli towns and villages. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis rushed to their shelters. The car bearing the Hamas military commander, Ahmad Ja’abariwas, blown up by a missile from the air.

Palestinians live with the lies Israel can do no wrong. Israel lives and dies by security. Israeli aggression is called self-defense. Legitimate defense is called terrorism.  The real victim here is peace and truth. 45 years of attempts by Israel to tame or intimidate the Palestinians have instead led to their radicalisation, isn't it time for Israel to change course? In such a small territory, Israelis will never be secure if the Palestinians are utterly insecure. Hamas, like Hezbollah, is mostly a by-product of an oppressive occupation. Israel will most likely again achieve many of its short-term tactical goals, assassinating a handful of Hamas leaders, leveling militant safe houses, and eliminating scores of Hamas military installations or weapon depots. Yet, in the end, Israel will be no safer.


The Israeli military has long planned a major operation to destroy as many of them as possible from the air. Intelligence has patiently gathered information about their location. Like Cast Lead, it takes place on the eve of Israeli elections. Netanyahu and Barak appear on the news looking responsible, sober, determined, experienced. Real he-men, commanding troops, shaping events, saving the nation, routing the enemies of Israel and the entire Jewish people. Israeli Interior Minister and head of the ultra-orthodox Shas party Eli Yishai stated that “The goal of the operation is to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages. Only then will Israel be calm for forty years.”
The Israeli "moderate" opposition parrot the official line, approving everything done. Lapid asserted “Hamas is an anti-Semitic terrorist organization and must be crushed.”  Social and economic issues have disappeared from the agenda. Israel is characterized by some of the highest levels of inequality in the developed world, with 75 percent of workers earning $1,700 or less a month and barely 20 families controlling the bulk of the economy. Conditions have substantially worsened under the impact of the global economic crisis. Of concern was an eruption of class struggle and social protest from below.

Will this whole exercise change the basic situation? Ja’abari will be replaced. Israel killed Hizbollah leader Abbas al-Moussawi, and got the vastly more intelligent Hassan Nasrallah instead. They killed Hamas founder Sheik Ahmad Yassin, and he was replaced by abler men. Ja’abari's successor may be less or more able. It will make no great difference. Will it damage Hamas?  In the battle for Palestinian opinion, Hamas has gained another victory over Mahmoud Abbas, whose security cooperation with Israel will look even more despicable. It discredits the claim of the more extreme organizations in Gaza that Hamas has gone soft and lazy, enjoying the fruits of government. The Israeli attacks compels Arab countries to rally around Hamas (or at least pretend to.)

What's the alternative? For both Palestians and Israelis the immediate remedy is peace. Firing rockets is a useless weapon in the absence of Palestinian unity, a common vision for war or peace, resistance or negotiation.

A hudna can be achieved. In Arab culture, a hudna is a binding truce, sanctified by Allah, which can go on for many years. A hudna cannot be violated. Even the Crusaders concluded hudnas with their Muslim enemies. Hamas has already solemnly declared that it would respect a peace agreement concluded by the PLO – i.e. Mahmoud Abbas – that would establish a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders, provided this agreement were confirmed in a Palestinian referendum. A negotiated end to the occupation is paramount. Otherwise, Israel will only succeed in increasing Hamas's popularity and pushing it back to clandestinity and war.

How will it end? It would be foolish to guess. Wars have their own logic. Stuff happens.

Peace is always better than war. Irrespective of the issues involved, socialists can only welcome the ending of any war in any part of the world. Stop the killing is our permanent policy. Socialists condemn both sides and denounce the senseless killing of our fellow workers.

War depraves all the participants by forcing them to concentrate on the best methods of producing misery and of killing each other. It elevates lying, cheating, disabling and murdering opponents into virtues, confers honours on those who practise these means most successfully. The Socialist Party is opposed to war not on some abstract religious or moral grounds but because it conflicts with the interests of the working class. Wars are fought to protect and further the interests of rival capitalist groups. In these orgies of death and destruction which capitalism periodically and inevitably produces, workers suffer and die not for their own interests but for those of their masters. No matter what form war propaganda may take, it is the socialist contention that the basic cause of conflict in the modern world that leads on to war is the way in which society is organised: The cause of war today is the rivalry inherent in capitalism. Those who endorse capitalism are supporting a social system which gives rise to war.

To Zionist nationalists who for many years struggled to win a country in which they could escape persecution, and to Palestinian nationalists who regarded the creation of a Jewish state as an invasion of their homeland, the continued existence of Israel is the central issue in the recurring hostilities. In terms of Middle-Eastern physical resources there is ample room for Palestinian and Israelis to live in amity but the realities of capitalist rivalries make such a solution impossible even if some sort of Two-State settlement is reached. Unlike some, we don’t single out Jewish nationalism for special condemnation. We condemn all nationalisms equally. The “Palestinian nation” is just as much a myth as the “Jewish nation”, or any other nation.

That’s not to say we shouldn’t try and do anything. But for our efforts to have any success they must be based on a recognition as to the root cause that ultimately connects all these conflicts – a world owned by, and divided up between, the small global minority who live off that monopoly to the exclusion of the vast majority. The global working class is left to do the dirty work for the owning class, the employing class and the officer class - working in their factories and dying in their armies.