A state guilty of genocide must be dismantled

The ceasefire in Gaza, announced last week, was welcomed by many – understandably so. It provided some hope that daily bombings and the murder of Palestinian civilians would be ended. It meant that nearly 2,000 Palestinian hostages would be returned, many of whom had spent years imprisoned.

Despite all Netanyahu’s talk of ‘dismantling’ Hamas, he had to negotiate with them. Trump should never be portrayed as a ‘peacemaker’, however.

Israel’s genocidal war was undertaken with the support of the US. It provided the bombs and weaponry. It used its veto at the UN to give political cover to Israel. Its tech companies helped it to murder tens of thousands of people. And Trump joined Israel in its attack on Iran.

Gaza has shown the real face of Western imperialism. We should no longer take its liberal pretensions at face value. When you don’t lift a finger as genocide is occurring on our TV screens, you are complicit.

Trump issued his 20-point peace plan because he was worried about the isolation of Israel, even among his own MAGA supporters. On October 8th Trump told Fox News that he had spoken to Netanyahu:

“I said, ‘Israel cannot fight the world, Bibi. They can’t fight the world. And he understands that very well.”

So, the plan has two main aims. 

The first is to normalise Israel and to shed its image as a terrorist state. Trump wants the world to forget genocide. More generally, the Western powers will attempt to ensure that there is no accountability for what happened.

The second is to deprive Palestinians of their right to choose their own representatives. Gaza is to be governed by a “Gaza International Transitional Authority” headed up by the likes of Tony Blair . Yet staff at the Tony Blair Institute took part in a ‘Gaza Riviera’ project with the Boston Consultancy Group. Palestinian “technocrats” are mentioned as a “service delivery arm”, acting as a buffer between the desperate population and the real rulers. 

The Arab regimes, particularly in Egypt and Qatar, put huge pressure on Hamas to accept this deal. Just as they once pressured the PLO to accept the Oslo accords, so too do they try to end resistance to Israel’s occupation. These regimes deploy ferocious repression against anyone who calls for solidarity with the Palestinians. Egypt is ruled almost entirely by force and fear. It protects Israel’s borders and has ensured that Gaza remains an open air prison.

Already, Israel is breaking the terms of the deal. It killed 9 Palestinians in Gaza yesterday, has thus far refused to open the Rafah crossing, and has notified the UN that it would halve the amount of aid trucks allowed to enter Gaza as part of the deal.

Now more than ever, the liberation of Palestine will come through a revolt throughout the Arab world.

Here in Ireland, we need to listen to the voice of Palestinian civil society. They have called on us to continue the protests. 

That’s why we say we must make October 16th a day of workplace action on Palestine:

• Make Israel accountable for its crime. No normalisation or forgetting of genocide. Isolate and expel it from the UN.
• Ireland must impose full economic and diplomatic sanctions on Israel.
• Ireland must stop allowing US war planes through Shannon airport and ammunition through its airspace.

Ultimately, alongside the accountability and the sanctions and the isolation, Israel must go the same way as apartheid South Africa. Israel was founded on ethnic cleansing and apartheid, the genocide is the horrifying but logical conclusion to the Zionist project. Any state guilty of genocide must be dismantled – this must be the case with Israel.