La Marx International
April 7, 2024 will remain as a historic day for the Middle East, and the world class struggle. On that day, Israel withdrew most of its troops from Gaza without having achieved any of the publicly proclaimed objectives. This military move is an acknowledgment of the defeat of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) who suffered a beating by Palestinian militias in Gaza, lost thousands of soldiers, and dozens of officers and non-commissioned officers to Palestinian guerrillas. Israel’s defeat merited only a few lines in the capitalist mass media, seeking to conceal the defeat suffered by the counterrevolution.
After the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, an intense and hysterical worldwide campaign by the imperialist governments, the Pentagon, the UN, spread 24 hours a day by all the capitalist communication networks intend to install Israel as a “victim”, speaking of an alleged “aggression of Iran against Israel”. As we are accustomed to, this whole chorus unleashes a tide of “opinionologists and charlatans” who tell us that this would be the beginning of a “3rd World War”. This whole operation seeks to hide the reality of what has really just happened in the Middle East.
The defeat in the Battle of Gaza opens a new moment in the 3rd Intifada. The Palestinian people will be regaining the territory of Gaza, and rebuilding the neighborhoods, the infrastructure, reorganizing their government structures, a return of the people to the areas previously occupied by the Israeli army, which is very feared by the IDF. IDF spokesman Roni Kaplan has announced that the IDF does not allow the return of the Palestinian population to the areas of Gaza, but the reality is that the triumph of the Palestinian militias allows the people of Gaza to begin the slow return to the neighborhoods and towns that had been occupied by Israeli troops. turning a deaf ear to the announcements of the defeated Zionist government.
The triumph of the 3rd Intifada
On April 7, Netahayu’s government withdrew all troops from Gaza, thousands of soldiers, leaving only the Nahal Brigade guarding the road built by the Israeli army, called the Netzarim corridor, which divides the north from the south of the Gaza Strip. But the Israeli government made the decision to withdraw troops well before April 7, and out of frustration at accepting defeat, Israeli authorities carried out an attack on April 1 in Damascus that killed seven Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officers.
This attack is a real provocation against Iran, which also expresses a change in the strategy of the Zionist leadership as they suffered military defeats in Gaza. When they realized that it was impossible to defeat the Palestinian militias, they turned to a strategy of selective killings of the leaders of Palestinian insurgent groups. The leadership of the capitalist oligarchy that governs Iran was supposed to respond to the massacre, but the response was within the framework of the policy of the governments and ruling classes of the Middle East region that seek through peace agreements to put an end to the 3rd Intifada.
Iran’s response, previously announced and “choreographed” as the Washington Post put it, consisted of approximately 170 drones, 30 cruise missiles and 120 ballistic missiles, but only a few missiles penetrated Israeli air defenses and struck near military bases. No missiles or drones hit Israel’s cities and towns. Rather, the religious oligarchs of the Ayatollahs who rule Iran launched the attack to reposition themselves in front of their people, their armed forces and the groups they lead in other countries as part of the Islamic fundamentalist current they lead in the Middle East. Although thousands of activists celebrated the sending of the missiles and drones, the reality is that this Islamic oligarchy has no intention of confronting and defeating Israel, on the contrary, its greatest interest is to put an end to the insurrection of the Palestinian people that infects all the peoples of the Middle East, and can put an end to the regime that they themselves lead
Iran’s attack benefits Netanyahu internally because it deflects the Israeli people’s discontent with their government, which was expressed with almost daily mobilizations against Netanyahu. Now Netanyahu is calling for “National Unity” against Iran, and practically placing a state of siege and restrictions under the guise of security, to prevent these mobilizations against Netanyahu from continuing by presenting him now as the “leader facing Iran’s attack.” But there is no possibility of a “war between Iran and Israel”, nor a “third world war”, all this persistent campaign made by all capitalist media seeks to hide the truth: The world is not heading towards a “war between countries”, but we are going to a new Arab Spring more powerful and important than ever.
Israel’s 3rd defeat in 6 months
Palestinian militias in Gaza
Despite the fact that during the invasion of Gaza the IDF committed all kinds of atrocities with more than 33,000 victims, 70% of whom are women, children, the elderly, and the displacement of 1.5 million people, the Israeli military failed to defeat the Palestinian insurgency. The IDF proved very effective when it came to carrying out genocide on the unarmed and vulnerable civilian population, but when it came to defeating the militias it proved completely ineffective. The Israeli government had to withdraw the troops from Gaza without achieving any of the objectives announced by Netanyahu, which were: 1) Eliminate Hamas, in the words of the Israeli government, the Palestinian militia group in Gaza 2) Recover the Israeli hostages 3) Eliminate the tunnels built by the Palestinian militias under the territory of Gaza. After 6 months of bloody battles in Gaza, none of these objectives could be achieved by the IDF and the Netanyahu government.
Israel’s defeat is the third in 6 months since Palestinian militias won a resounding victory in the battle on October 7, 2023. There the Al-Qassam Brigades of Hamas, the Al-Quds Brigades of Islamic Jihad, the Al-Nasse Salah Brigades of the Popular Resistance Committees, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades of Fatah, the Ali Mustafa Brigades of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Brigades of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Brigades of the Palestinian Mujahideen Movement penetrated the Beit Hanoun border crossing, tore down the walls and fences dividing Palestinian territory from Israeli territory, and began to retake Israeli-occupied territories, taking control of Kfar Aza, Sderot, Sufa, Nahal Oz, Magen, Be’eri, Ashkelon, Ofakim, and the Re’im military base where they captured the Commander of the Israeli occupation army, General Nimrod Aloni and more than 100 prisoners, including military and police officers being held. In the localities, barracks, prisons, property, tanks, bases, equipment, ammunition and weapons depots were expropriated.
This operation involved a heavy defeat for the IDF, forcing the Netanyahu government to launch a retaliatory invasion of Gaza. Two months after the invasion of Gaza began, Netanyahu had claimed that Israel had triumphed in northern Gaza, and had “cleansed” the area of Palestinian guerrillas. However, this narrative fell apart when on January 4, 2024, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced the withdrawal of 35,000 soldiers from Gaza which, added to the destruction of the Golani Brigade, the most important mercenary brigade, meant a new defeat for Israel in northern Gaza. which left the IDF in a military situation of complete disaster.
The lies of Israel’s government crumbled, because no army that “triumphs” withdraws from the battlefield. The same lies that Putin told when he was defeated in the battle of Kiev, and had to withdraw troops announcing that the “special military operation” was entering a “new phase”. All of northern Gaza was once again in Palestinian hands, as The Guardian states: “They are regrouping in northern Gaza… begin to rebuild the system of government in northern Gaza… There is no chaos or emptiness because it is the workers of the Gaza municipality or the civilian defense and rescue forces… those who enforce law and order…” By that time the 3rd Intifada had been articulated as a complex of interlinked revolutions with 7 fronts: 1) The Battle of Gaza 2) The Battle of the West Bank 3) The Battle of South Lebanon 4) The Battle of Syria and the Golan Heights 5) The Battle of the Red Sea 6) The Battle of Iraq 7) The World Mobilization in support of Palestine.
Israeli troops were stationed in Khan Younis in southern Gaza, but they continued to suffer thousands of casualties carefully concealed by the Israeli government so as not to show their failure, which as we have been stating constitutes a veritable “Vietnam” for Israel, at the hands of the urban guerrilla war taking place in Gaza. The action of the Palestinian urban guerrillas gradually degraded and destroyed the conditions of the Israeli army with ambushes and attacks in wich the IDF troops suffer a major blow to the IDF troops, causing thousands of soldiers’ deaths, and hitting hard the command structure of their army.
That is, Israel failed in its plan to destroy the Palestinian militias. On the other hand, the government of Israel announced 4 months ago that it was going to destroy all the tunnels of the militias in Gaza, however they could not enter the tunnels, there is no evidence of battles in the tunnels, and despite the bombings, massacres, and military operations, 80% of the tunnels of the resistance are intact as recognized by Israel’s Haaretz. Otro fracaso de Israel es sobre la cuestión de los rehenes desde que Netanhayu prometió que “todos los rehenes iban a ser liberados” pero no ha logrado este objetivo, y los que ya fallecieron es por responsabilidad de los bombardeos de las FDI que terminaron matando a sus propios ciudadanos detenidos. Éste fracaso absoluto y la paliza militar sufrida es lo que explica la retirada de las tropas israelíes el 7 de abril del 2024.
Towards a new Arab Spring
U.S. imperialism, NATO, Netanyahu and the Arab governments of the Middle East want to impose a peace agreement to dismantle the triumph of the Palestinian militias in the Battle of North Gaza. The agreement seeks to consolidate the “two-state” policy and aims to take away from the Palestinians at the negotiating table what has been achieved through struggle and enormous sacrifice.
Why does imperialism seek the peace agreement? Because the triumph of the Battle of Gaza has consequences for the entire political situation in the world, and in the Middle East. It is not only about the triumph of the militias in Gaza, but also about the advance of Palestinian fighters who are spreading throughout the West Bank organized in militias that are mostly secular and do not respond to Islamic fundamentalism. Among these militias growing throughout the West Bank is the largest called “The Lion’s Den” Born in the city of Nablus, it has spread throughout the occupied West Bank, as Palestinian journalist and analyst Mohamed Daraghmeh tells the Huffington Post. The Lion’s Den, Daraghmeh points out, “is a completely new phenomenon in the Palestinian arena” explaining that these young people have secular education, without embracing Islam.
Alongside the Lion’s Den, a whole complex conglomerate of militias operates with the support of the population of the West Bank that supports these new secular militia formations, as reported by the Palestinian Center for Policy Research and Polling for the newspaper El Español. The West Bank has a tradition of secularism stemming from long decades of Fatah’s influence, butcurrently Fatah, led by the government of Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian National Authority, is a political current that is very discredited and suffers great rejection from the population for its collaborative role with the Israeli occupiers. and its policy of capitulation to imperialism.
It is in the West Bank that the process of political revolution that the world is going through is most clearly expressed. We call political revolution the process by which all the old leaderships that controlled the mass movement for decades, such as Stalinism, social democracy, bourgeois nationalist movements such as the PRI, Chavismo, or Nasserism, Islamic fundamentalism, etc., reformist currents in decline that no longer group the best activists that emerge in revolutions, are collapsing. In this sense, the process of development of militias in the West Bank expresses the new process of rupture with Islamic fundamentalism, developed since the Second Arab Spring.
The First Arab Spring that began in 2011 was a revolutionary process that encompassed more than 30 nations and forever changed the political situation in the region with the fall of decades-old dictatorships such as that of Hosni Mubarak or Muhammar Gaddafi. The Second Arab Spring began in 2019 and constituted a series of revolutions that began to confront Islamic fundamentalist governments such as the dictatorship of the Ayatollahs in Iran, capitalist governments in Iraq, and the Hezbollah government in Lebanon.
Our policy is unconditional support for the Palestinian militias, including the Islamic fundamentalists, but at the same time and simultaneously, support for the process of political revolution in Palestinian activism by supporting the development and emergence of the new secular militias or those linked to Marxism, stimulating the break with the Islamic fundamentalist leaderships that have a reactionary policy and ideology of support for the bourgeoisie and a retrograde theocratic program in favor of dictatorships that oppress the people, such as those of Iran.
It will not be easy for U.S. imperialism, NATO, Netanyahu and the Arab governments of the Middle East to impose a peace agreement. It is not easy for the Palestinian leaderships to sign something with the war criminal Nethayu, just as it is not easy for the fascist leaders of the State of Israel to sign something with Hamas, which they had promised to eliminate, which can further aggravate the prospect of great difficulties for imperialism and Israel in the Middle East.
The Crisis of Israel and Imperialism
The 3rd Intifada has plunged the State of Israel into a serious crisis. More than 80,000 Israelis living near the Lebanon-Israel border they have suffered internal displacement as a result of Hezbollah’s systematic bombardment of Israeli barracks, radars, and critical infrastructure. The evacuation of all moshavim villages, towns and farming communities within a radius of several kilometers of the border with Lebanon is a severe blow to Israel’s economy. The mass call-up of Israeli reservists represents almost 10% of the working population and affects high-tech industries, public services and small businesses, while displacement and the repercussions of the war have paralyzed up to 20% of the working population as a result of mass evacuations from cities with some 175,000 Israelis now living in hotels and temporary accommodations. On the other hand, there is a mass exodus of Israelis returning to their countries of origin.
In Israel, schools have been closed for weeks, forcing parents to seek childcare, and the opening of the new academic year at universities has come to a standstill. Israel’s gas fields in the Mediterranean are shut down whiletourism has all but plummeted, Jerusalem’s Old City has run out of foreigners. The entireconstruction industry, whose workforce is mainly Palestinians in the West Bank, has come to a standstill after Israel suspended the work permits of more than 100,000 Palestinians. The Bank of Israel reports that there has been a 20% increase in mortgage payment delays since the war began, unemployment has increased by 10 percentage points, from 5% to 15%. According to Yedioth Ahronoth, the cost of Israel’s war on Gaza amounts to $272 million per day and will cost at least $60 billion, more than 10% of the country’s GDP.
Any capitalist government that attempts to govern Israel into the future faces the reality that Israel’s economy is running a deficit that will require budget cuts that will be deeply felt in terms of quality of life and reduced services for Israelis in general. This comes as tax revenues have plummeted and Israel’s credit rating has fallen from A1 to A2, Moody’s announced. The 3rd Intifada has dealt blow after blow to Israel, which acts by degrading the conditions of existence of the Zionist state by setting the prospect of its destruction and defeat.
The 3rd Intifada has also been a severe blow to imperialism, and NATO has been forced to exhaust the supply funds of the US Central Command. The U.S. Geological Survey (USCC) is the Pentagon’s fleet that is in charge of the Middle East region. The entire deployment of additional troops and warships to the Middle East over the past few months has cost more than $1.6 billion, and even the Pentagon estimates the cost will be $2.2 billion over the course of the year. It is precisely these supply needs of CENTCOM that is the product of anotherresounding and spectacular triumph of the 3rd Red Sea Intifada, when U.S. and British ships lost the naval battle in the Red Sea against the Houthis, and thus lost control of a key avenue of world trade.
The Houthis are an indigenous and secularly oppressed people living in Yemen who took power during the Arab Spring in the “September 21 Revolution”. TheHouthis have now come to control a key geoeconomic bottleneck such as the Bab el-Mandah Strait in the Red Sea, which is causing a sustained increase in commercial shipping rates, aggravating global inflation and the global crisis of capitalism.
Advancing the revolutionary regroupment around support for the Third Intifada
Along with all this, the 3rd Intifada unleashed a huge and massive global mass mobilization in favor of Palestine that constitutes a fundamental base of support for the actions of the Palestinian militias, which has as its epicenter the main cities and countries of the world such as New York, Paris, London, Mexico City, Baghdad, Madrid, Rome, Tehran, Montreal, Ottawa, Sydney, San Francisco, or Los Angeles, as well as all the major cities in Europe, Japan, and Southeast Asia.
Palestinian militias triumphant in Gaza
This enormous worldwide process of mobilization has the support of a section of theworld’s Jews as part of an anti-Zionist movement, and has deeply struck imperialism, all the capitalist governments of the world and their institutions, provokes ministerial crises, crises in the capitalist and imperialist political parties, crises in the institutions of the regime, and crises of international organizations such as the UN. That is why the triumph of the 3rd Intifada in the Battle of Gaza implies a perspective of deepening the revolutionary process that the Middle East is experiencing towards a sharpening of the Second Arab Spring that we are experiencing, or an even deeper and more important Third Arab Spring.
A huge group of activists, thousands of young people who take up the flag of Palestine are progressively radicalizing, and evolving towards more anti-capitalist positions, close to Marxism and confronting the policy of the capitalist parties, the UN, or the Progressive International of “Ceasefire”, “Against Genocide”, or “For Peace”. Another, more radicalized current is emerging that raises slogans such as “Free Palestine”, “Globalize the Intifada” or the slogan “From the river to the sea” which is a popularization of the slogan “For a secular, democratic and non-racist Palestinian state” from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, which we raise from Marxism, which implies the destruction of the State of Israel as we raise from Marxism.
The existence of a world revolution and thousands of activists raising slogans in support of the 3rd Intifada destroys 99% of the reformist, campist, evasionist, Stalinist left that carries out the “For Peace” policy of the progressive International. Bernie Sanders’ declarations in favor of the state of Israel have introduced a serious crisis in political formations that claim to be on the left, such as the DSA in the United States or Syriza in Greece, which are the basis of the Progressive International, in a crisis that drags down the organizations of the global left that are supporting the “Two States” policy.
There are examples of activists from around the world, such as the Committee for the Liberation of Palestine (CPLP) in Mexico, where activists whose positions confront the Morena government have been grouped together, and the pacifist policy of the UN and the Progressive International, because they have adopted positions of political independence from capitalist parties and governments.
The 3rd Intifada has laid bare Israel as a Nazi state completely in crisis, in a state of decay, and vulnerable. The slogan of the destruction of the State of Israel, which was once used for propaganda, has become a slogan for action to the extent that the mobilizations of the world raise the slogan “From the river to the sea”. The Palestinian revolution is advancing, deepening its permanent character, destroying apparatuses, clay idols, unmasking the false friends and collaborationists of Zionism, as well as the half-measures that seek the preservation of a Nazi state through a crusade “for peace”.
From Marx International we are calling for worldwide support for the 3rd Palestinian Intifada, which on all fronts is repeating the epic of the Vietnamese people when they managed to defeat US imperialism. The triumph of the Battle of Gaza must serve to advance in the global regroupment of activists and leaders who support the 3rd Intifada, are for the destruction of the State of Israel, and promote the struggle for a Free Palestine from the River to the Sea, secular, democratic and non-racist. We must advance in the organization of a world party of revolution in the service of the constitution of the socialist republics of the Middle East, as part of the struggle for Global Socialism.
