War crimes against Gaza

Since the Israeli settler state seized the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967, it has treated the two territories populated by Palestinians in the tradition of a colonial power. It imposes Israeli rules, treats the residents as if they have no rights, reacts with violence against those who resist being a colonized people, arrests thousands indiscriminately and jails without trial other thousands. It murders scores of leaders with “targeted assassinations.”

Tel Aviv has broken all its interim agreements with the Palestinians. It has erected a wall over 430 miles long that runs through the West Bank and divides Palestinian villages; disguised as security, it has been used to seize another 7 percent of that already small piece of territory.

Now it has added further crimes against humanity to its already long list. The Israeli state has imposed a siege on Gaza, allowing into the territory only small amounts of food and water. And it has gone a step further: it has declared Gaza an “enemy entity” which promises even more suffering for the Palestinians there as the Israelis restrict even humanitarian aid.

Israel made this new definition at the same time Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was visiting the Middle East with the alleged objective of organizing an “International Conference of Peace.” It is all part of U.S. plans to reorganize that part of the world to serve the interests of U.S. monopoly capital. Washington and Wall Street rely on Israel as an adjunct military force in the region that has always sided with the imperialists against the efforts of Arab and other Muslim peoples to liberate their national territory and resources, especially the oil, from Western domination.

Rice even echoes the Israeli definition of Gaza as an “enemy entity.” She called Hamas, the party the Palestinians elected to head their government, a “terrorist organization.”

This new U.S.-Israeli criminal action to define 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza as enemies is a form of collective punishment, which was condemned in world forums when the Nazi imperialists did it. It can only increase the suffering of this people, who today are forced to live with daily restrictions on electricity, lack of drinking water, medicines and fuel. The Israeli policy also deprives Palestinian farmers of products essential to the production of food.

This is both a crime against humanity and part of the U.S.-European Union-Israeli strategy to divide the Palestinian people. Now the tactic is to promote Fatah, which not too long ago was itself being assailed by Washington as “terrorist,” against Hamas while trying to break the people’s spirit through starvation.

The Palestinian people need the support of the people of the world now more than ever. U.S. and European Union out of the Middle East. Long live Palestine!