Trump says he convinced Netanyahu to agree to a Gaza ceasefire and the Palestinian Resistance1 had better take it because it’s the best they are going to get. Does the deal include the IOF pulling out of or an end to bombing Gaza? No, neither.
Mass media speculation abounds that the Resistance are under pressure (by starving Gaza residents in the midst of daily massacres) to agree to the ceasefire promoted by Trump and that it will be announced during Netanyahu’s visit to meet his imperialist backers in the USA.
Netanyahu says he won’t agree to ultimate peace nor even to the IOF pulling out of Gaza. His aim, he declares is the total defeat of Hamas (i.e. all the Palestinian resistance and the expulsion of their leaderships). Details of the deal mention a 60-day ceasefire.
Older now but still holding hands: back on 23 May 2017, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, right, and US President Donald Trump shake hands at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. (Photo cred: Sebastian Scheiner/AP)
And Gaza afterwards? All options are open, perhaps even the Israeli seaside resort of which Trump and Netanyahu were speaking earlier.2 But not a Palestinian administration by free and popular elections, because that would mean the election of supporters of the Resistance).3
No doubt in order to increase the pressure on the Resistance, the IOF intensifies its daily bombing of civilian housing and refugee centres and food queue massacres. Starvations deaths begin to appear, first of children then of adults too, emaciated bodies and skull-like faces.
July 2025 cartoon by D.Breatnach
The Palestinian Resistance factions led by Hamas have been adamant all along that they will sign up to an end to the war but not to a temporary ceasefire. The IOF must pull out of Gaza and the gates must be opened to let desperately-needed food, medicine, fuel and water in.
The Resistance will release living Israeli prisoners and dead (bodies) and ‘Israel’ will release Palestinian hostages. This has been their position for a long time and was part of the US envoy’s (Witkoff)-approved agreement of 19 January with ‘Israel’ this year which the latter broke on 18March.4
Smotrich and Ben Gvir threaten to bring down Netanyahu’s coalition if there is a ceasefire agreement, saying the war should continue without pause until the defeat of the Resistance. But Smotrich and Ben Gvir also shadow-box against one another through the Israeli media.
There are elements of pantomime and farce between some pushing for a deal and those against – “Look out, Netanyahu: Ben Gvir’s behind you!” But Trump and Zionists are playing with real lives, primarily those of the Palestinians but also those of their own IOF on the ground.
Funeral of IOF Captain Elkana Vizel in Mount Herzl Military Cemetery Jerusalem 23 January 2024. Vizel was killed with 20 other IOF when the Resistance fired a rocket into a house where the IOF had stored explosives intended for demolishing Palestinian houses. (Photo: Getty)
The armed Resistance, fighting in areas of Gaza cleared of civilians by the IOF have been hitting the latter hard, Israeli media reporting “a security incident” (its shorthand for fatalities of their soldiers by Resistance action) every second day or so (sometimes a number in the same day).
This after 20 months of attack by the strongest and best-supplied military force in the region which has undisputed air cover over Gaza.
Jon Elmer, in his Resistance Report on Electronic Intifada Updates podcast on Thursday evening said that June had been the worst month for the IOF in a year of battle fatalities and injuries. He recorded nearly 200 Resistance operations with IEDs, snipers, RPGs, rocket and mortar attacks.5
The IOF are being hit in areas they have invaded before and claimed to have ‘cleared’ of the Resistance. In approaching two years Netanyahu has failed to achieve his two declared war objectives: to defeat Hamas (Resistance leading faction) and recover the captives.
By any sober assessment Netanyahu and his coalition government have lost the Gaza war so far but he wants to cover that over and knock out the Israeli opposition which demands a deal with the Resistance to free the Israeli prisoners held by the Palestinians.
Netanyahu and his wife face a trial for corruption as soon as he can no longer use the war in Gaza (or with Iran!) as an excuse not to stand trial. So peace is not a good option for him personally. A deal releasing the prisoners of the Resistance followed by renewal of the war might be best for him.
The Resistance is taking heavy toll of the IOF whenever they try to move forward in Gaza. But in the limited area of the Resistance, possibly the IOF can defeat them eventually by massive continuous bombing with ordnance supplied by the USA, the UK and some EU states.
But who knows what other factors might develop in the meantime and whom they might favour?
The resistance of the Palestinian people and the operations of their armed Resistance factions have challenged not only the actions of the Zionist colonial state but its very legitimacy to a degree not seen before, across the world and among the people of the Zionist-supplying heartlands.
The desperation of the ruling classes of the colonial state and of its principal backer was behind their short recent war against Iran, leading to a danger of World War. They were defeated for now but in the logic of imperialist power must try again.
The world is changing but whether that will favour the Palestinians in the short or medium-term is not certain. However that the question can even be asked is the result of the long cultural and political resistance of the Palestinian people and of their armed resistance movement.
End.
FOOTNOTES & SOURCES
1Trump, Netanyahu and the western mass media generally identify the Resistance as Hamas, whether to avoid the legitimising term, as a shorthand or to conceal the fact that the Palestinian resistance is composed of a number of factions, some of them Islamist (e.g. like Hamas and Islamic Jihad and others secular (such as the People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine, perhaps the longest-surviving Resistance organisation.
5The Resistance in Gaza have made June the worst month for the IDF in a year (mostly in just one area, Khan Younis). “180 (resistance infantry) operations in Khan Younis in one month alone plus 60 artillery operations” (discussion at end of Jon Elmer’s Resistance Report @ 3.16 minutes mins.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4nuYJp5RC0&t=11283s)
As Israel and Iran slug it out with some criminal interventions from the USA, the older war continues in Gaza – the one that’s been ongoing since the late 1940s and has intensified sharply since 8th October 2023.
The antagonists in this war are the Israeli Occupation forces, supplied not only by the USA, the UK, and the EU but to practical purposes by the whole western imperialist alliance, against the Palestinian resistance, now reduced to their existing stockpiles and own inventions.
But the IOF is not fighting the armed resistance in Gaza – it is rarely fighting at all. It is killing unarmed civilians in GHF food traps, in bombings of homes and refugee centres and targeting media workers, first responders, security personnel. And arresting hundreds.
The IOF has destroyed huge areas of Gaza by air bombing, demolition charges and bulldozing by machines built in the USA. Areas are declared unsafe where Palestinians may be sniped but nowhere is safe really, whether from random missile or shell strikes or targeted assassinations.
But there IS armed resistance and it IS fighting, even if we are not told of it, unless by some well-connected sources outside the heavily-censored and biased western mass media. There are Resistance operations almost daily – 50 reported the week before last alone.1
Israeli tank in Gaza after hit by the Resistance, presumably with the tandem Yassin. Date unknown. (Cred: Palestine Chronicle)
Several times a week the Zionist military or public media reports “a serious security incident” in Gaza, their usual code for an event in which either a very senior IOF officer has been killed or more usually, one in which two or more IOF have been killed or injured.
Many of these operations are Resistance ambushes or traps by previously-laid IED2 either detonated electronically or by pressure of the heavy tanks or armoured bulldozers. These may be followed up by ambush of rescuing force or attack on survivors, then a fast evacuation from the scene.
And it needs to be fast because the IOF has control of the sky and the ordinance from which to blast whole areas in the hope of killing a couple of fighters.
The IOF also take over Palestinian buildings as sniper and observation posts and sometimes the Resistance has pre-mined the building. The IOF soldiers and dogs check for hidden explosives but rarely find them before they explode around, underneath or above them.3
Or their post may get hit by Resistance rocket with thermobaric warhead. Again, the detonation of the building4 may be followed by ambush of the rescuing IOF forces, such battles sometimes lasting for considerable time, occasionally in close combat, despite the IOF control of the sky.
There are also Palestinian bombardments by light and heavy mortars or missiles from hidden positions targeting IOF infantry and vehicle concentrations, after which the firing positions are concealed and the vicinity quickly abandoned in advance of IOF artillery or missile targeting.
Resistance sniping operations continue and, where possible, commanding officers are targeted. The Palestinians have developed their own Al-Ghoul single-shot sniper rifle, effective up to 2,000 metres.5 Tanks, armoured bulldozers and troop carriers may be hit by shoulder-launched rockets.6
Incredibly, video exists of fighters emerging from a ruined building carrying a bomb, placing the explosive device at an IOF tanks’s most vulnerable spot and racing back to shelter before the explosion.
A Palestinian Resistance fighter (PFLP by headband) firing a medium mortar shell in Gaza. (Photo sourced: Internet)
What are the weapons of the Resistance and where from are they obtained?
The Resistance has many weapons, mostly automatic rifles, which they were supplied by allies in the past but none of those supply routes are probably open now. They have also taken weapons from dead IOF7 and constructed their own.
Aside from the Al-Ghoul, there is also the tandem Al-Yassin8 in which the Resistance has developed a shoulder-launched rocket of limited penetration strenght into a deadly armour-penetrating missile, seen on occasion blowing the entire turret off an IOF tank.
The IEDs employed as mines or carried to place against tanks contain high explosive donated by the IOF in their hundreds of unexploded bombs littering Gaza. With a failure-to-explode rate estimated as high as 20%9 the Resistance looks unlikely to run out of source for years.
Recently too the Resistance filmed themselves removing sacks of high explosive from an IOF stack intended for the demolition of homes. Both missiles and mortars are developed and produced in engineering shops below ground, as are bullets and IEDs and they too are filled with explosives.
The Tandem Yassin, manufactured in Gaza by the Resistance. (Sketchfab)
Where are these operations taking place? In the areas of Gaza which the IOF and Netanyahu boasted of “clearing of Hamas” over a year ago, mostly now devoid of civilians, into which the IOF moves tentatively — and have recently been instructed to move even more cautiously.
Where from are the Resistance fighters coming? Sometimes from still-standing fractured buildings but mostly from the network of tunnels which they have been constructing for years. Here they live frugally, waiting the chance to attack the Occupier of their land,10 the killer of their children.11
Whoare the armed Resistance in Gaza? They vary in history and in ideological basis, religious or secular but all unite in resistance and often take joint actions. The Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades of Hamas, of course are the main force but not the only ones.
Next in size and influence are the Al-Quds Brigades of Islamic Jihad. Other factions include the Al-Nasser Salah Ad-Din Brigades of the Popular Resistance Committees12 and the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades of the marxist-leninist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.13
Representatives of different Palestinian Resistance factions posing for photograph to show their unity against the Zionist Occupation as the ceasefire approached in March 2024, soon after breached and abandoned by ‘Israel’. (Photo cred: Workers World)
The IOF collects their dead and wounded by helicopter, rushing them to some of the World’s most up-to-date war trauma treatment facilities. They drop smoke cannisters to obscure surveillance, not to protect from snipers: the Palestinian resistance never fires on those ‘copters.
Perhaps they should – the IOF — “the most moral army in the world”14 – certainly has no qualms about firing on Palestinian ambulances, paramedics, first responders and they hold the world record for destruction of hospitals and medical facilities. But clearly the Resistance has higher standards.
All military matters in the Zionist Entity are subject to military censorship and this includes numbers of dead and injured IOF, which allows them to conceal the numbers; they have military liaison officers stationed at hospitals to deal with queries.
Analysts have concluded that the IOF masks the numbers of killed and injured15 while wildly expanding the numbers of Palestinian Resistance fighters killed. Of course in war both sides engage in propaganda and it is said that Truth is the first casualty.
However, while there have been a great many videos of the Resistance in action filmed by themselves, there are none of the IOF fighting the Resistance at anything like close quarters. Clearly this is not due to modesty or even less to delicacy – it is due to absence of occasion.
Cartoon comment by D.Breatnach
While the Zionist state continues its daily genocidal actions in Gaza (and in the West Bank) and its aggressive actions in Lebanon, Syria and now in Iran, in 19 months they have failed to defeat the armed Resistance factions in Gaza. And now they have admitted to arming criminal looters.16
The IOF is unfit for standard military combat, even against insurgents and specialises only in assassinations, usually from the air and in genocidal operations against unarmed civilians, from air, sea and on the ground. Oh, and in destruction of homes, hospitals, schools, infrastructure, wells …
According to increasing number of reports, it is becoming unfit even for those.17
13They are the only organisation of the Gaza resistance which is also part of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, which bars Islamic-ideological organisations from membership. The PFLP has called for unity of all Palestinian resistance (as have the Islamic organisations) but the PLO is dominated by the Fatah party and holds only internal functions to formally approve its own manoeuvres. It also controls the undemocratic, repressive, corrupt and Israeli collaborator Palestinian Authority under Fatah nominee Mahmoud Abbas.
The Kurdish group, the PKK announced on Monday that it has disbanded its armed organisation of the last nearly 50 years.1 The change was carried out on instruction or request of their leader Abdullah Ocalan who’s been in a Turkish jail since 1999.
Supporters in Dusseldorf November last year defy German ban to demonstrate and call for release from Turkish jail of Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the PKK (Photo credit: AP)
The marxist-leninist PKK set up its armed organisation in 1978 to resist the Turkish state repression of the Kurdish independence movement. The Kurdish area is of huge strategic importance, encompassing parts of what are now Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Iran and Azerbaijan.
The population of Kurdistan is estimated at between 30 and 45 million, with up to another two million in its diaspora. The PKK waged armed struggle in Turkey until 1999 then again as the YPG and SDF in Syria, against the Assad regime and against ISIS.
PERSONAL CONNECTION
I was for a time in London myself active in solidarity with the Kurdish national liberation struggle and, as a result, part of a trade union delegation to Turkish Kurdistan around 1991/92, organised through a Kurdish community centre in North London.
The trade union activists participating were required to raise the money for the flights from their union organisations and I was successful in obtaining the necessary funds through the Lewisham Nalgo/ Unison local government branch and through the Nalgo/ Unison Irish Workers Group.2
Our delegation flew to Istanbul and from there to Batman province where the driver, supplied by the Petro-Is trade union took the three of us and our interpreter and photographer to many parts in the region, including to the border with Syria and seeing the oil being smuggled across the Iraq border.
Evidence of the ongoing war between the PKK and the Turkish State was plentiful, including Turkish gendarmerie checkpoints, bullet-riddled walls in towns and a shell hole in the wall of my bedroom in one hotel in which we stayed.
Much worse was the visit to an outlying village house burned by German flame-throwing tank of the Turkish Army and viewing the photos of the children immolated inside.
Turkish secret police visited our driver’s house while he was away, commented to staff of one hotel that we were not tourists (declaring ourselves a trade union delegation would have been asking for trouble) and on our last day kept driving past us and even followed us on to the plane.
Even then I was very concerned at what seemed to me like near deification of Ocalan. Years later, in Bilbao as part of a panel of speakers on national liberation struggles, off the platform the speakers on the Irish, Palestinian and Kurdish resistance discussed issues in the liberation movements.
The Palestinian and I became concerned by the almost violent agreement of the Kurd with everything that Ocalan did or said. We had to abandon all attempts to discuss and debate with him.
PACIFICATION PROCESSES
Pacification processes of various types have been around for centuries but a particular wave of them began to be deployed in the early 1990s, starting with South Africa and Palestine,3 then spreading to Ireland, the Basque Country and Colombia, each affected subject infecting in turn the next.
Typically the subject was told they had to disarm and disband their armed organisation, after which they would be accepted into the system and could organise politically for admission to the ruling political circles through the standard electoral process.
Portraits of eight martyrs of the YPG announced fallen in battle in Afrin against ISIS (note two are female) December 2019 (Source: YPG media)
Of course each subject would have to renounce even the idea of armed struggle or revolution. And would be required to control their own fighters and denounce their dissidents.
It is somewhat surprising that it has taken this long for imperialism to land the PKK fish since Ocalan swallowed the baited hook back in the late 1990s. The war in Syria I suppose extended their armed organisation’s life for a while beyond that which it would have had if confined to Turkey alone.
But their role in Syria in the YPG, whether it began as an independent Kurdish national liberation struggle or not, soon degenerated into leading a US/NATO proxy force, the SDF.4
This March the SDF agreed to integrate into the imperialist proxies’ army of ISIS types led by Ahmad al Shaara (i.e the ‘former’ ISIS leader Jolani), currently being embraced by imperialist leaders while his forces continue to carry out sectarian murders of Syrian Alawites and Druzes.
More recent reports have them, while agreeing to disarmament in Turkey, refusing it in Syria, which makes sense from a self-preservation stance alone, given the nature of the new state’s forces.
We can imagine the imperialist-driven virtual “Pacification Express” in the late 1990s and early 2000s, as it left South Africa and Oslo-Palestine, calling on Ireland and from there to the Basque Country and outward bound to Colombia. Turkish Kurdistan was one of the planned stops.
In not one of the areas of national liberation struggle passed through by the Pacification Express did the liberation organisation win that for which they had declared they were fighting, or indeed anything apart from in some cases the freeing of political prisoners.5
In S. Africa they did at least get ‘majority rule’, so that the leadership of the liberation organisations could form a corrupt imperialist-serving government.6 The Irish travelling on that Express got their prisoners freed but the Kurds and Basques on board did not receive even that.
Supporters YPG and other militias and parties protest threats from Turkey in Afrin, Aleppo province, north Syria 18 Jan 2018 (Source: YPG Press Office/AP)
Whoever the leaders of the Kurds are now, they claim that they continue on the track to democracy and Kurdish national liberation.
Of course they do. The passengers on the Pacification Express always declare that sovereignty and self-determination are the train’s destinations, even if it shows no sign of heading there. And that some of the stations passed on the way are quite clearly on another line completely.
2This was one of the self-organised groups of NALGO (National Association of Local Government Officers), now subsumed into UNISON but which the union’s leadership refused to recognise and worked to undermine. I had been a founding member. The union leadership tried to get us to change our founding principle of self-determination for the whole of Ireland and when we refused, they worked against us.
3The ‘Oslo process’ which set up the Palestine Authority and the popular rejection of which led to the Second Intifada.
4Even though some anarchist groupings and at least one Irish socialist Republican group refused to see this and focused instead exclusively on the YPG’s anti-ISIS fighting and their federal administration of ‘liberated’ Rojava.
5But not in Turkey or in the Basque Country, nor of the ELN in Colombia.
6As Bishop Tutu, who supported the Process said of Mandela’s ANC: “They stopped the gravy train long enough to get on it.”
(Article originally written for the Political Prisoners Collective Asociación Arrakala)
Gearóid Ó Loingsigh January 19 2025 (Reading time: 6 mins.)
NB: Edited by RB from original article for formatting purposes
Who and what is a political prisoner is controversial, though it shouldn’t be. Once upon a time we all knew or recognised a political prisoner. It was obvious, evident.
But two centuries of legislative changes, the work of the press and more than one NGO seeking to please its master i.e. those who finance it, has disfigured the political prisoner and its corollary outside, the rebel, the dissident, the activist.
Before trying to vindicate the figure of the political prisoner we should be clear that the prison itself has not been a constant in history.
There have always been places of reclusion, but they were transitory, provisional, where the prisoner was held whilst they awaited their sentence, be it execution, or exile, the confiscation of assets or in the case to debtors’ prison, the payment of the debt or the taxes owed.
The idea of a prison as somewhere you serve a term of a number of years as a prisoner according to the gravity of the crime is novel. It is about 250 years old.
The seriousness of the crime and the proportionality of the sentence are not obvious. In many jurisdictions a bank robbery is more serious than the rape of a woman.
Historically, crimes against property were more severely punished than crimes against the person. There are exceptions to that but in general, in all judicial systems crimes against property are more severely punished.
Of course, murder usually carries a stiff sentence, but countries with long sentences or even life sentences usually consider such sentences for crimes against property and other crimes. In the USA that possibility exists in various states.
In a number of countries the crimes punishable by death include, blasphemy, adultery, prostitution, spying, bribery, corruption, drug trafficking, homosexuality.
Political crimes are also severely punished with harsh sentences and the death penalty, depending on the country. Such punishment for political crimes only disappeared where it was abolished for all crimes.
Political crimes
Margaret Thatcher the British prime minister (1979-1990) once declared that there was no political crime, only criminal offences. She said in relation to IRA and INLA militants in prison in Ireland that political murder, political attacks nor any political violence existed.
With this she aimed to ignore not just the long history of such crimes in national laws in many countries but also International Humanitarian Law.
The preamble to the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes rebellion as the last legitimate resort in the face of human rights abuses.
“Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind… if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law.”[1]
The Geneva Conventions, the basis of IHL in common article 3 to the four conventions reads “In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each Party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following provisions…”[2]
And goes on to explain the provisions that apply. With this the Geneva Conventions acknowledge the existence of organised and armed rebellion against a state as something more than criminality. Otherwise, it wouldn’t attempt to govern the behaviour of the parties to the conflict.
Though it is worth pointing out that the IHL never clearly defined what was an internal armed conflict nor a war of national liberation. However, it is clear that it can’t be reduced to mere violence.
There are those that raise high the figure of Prisoner of Conscience, not just as the highest expression of a political prisoner but as the only one. According to Amnesty International such a prisoner is in jail for their ideas without having used or advocated violence.
It is an absurd definition. For years they praised Mandela as a prisoner of conscience, but Nelson Mandela led an organisation with an armed wing and ended up in jail for conspiracy to overthrow the state. He was no pacifist.
The definition Amnesty uses can be summarised as They who opine but do not act are political prisoners, those who think but do not apply their thinking are political prisoners.
This excludes great figures from Colombian history such as Policarpa or José Antonio Galán who were executed following their capture. According to this definition José Martí was a political prisoner when he wrote, but a criminal when he returned to Cuba to free it.
But this is not correct, a political prisoner may be a person who never even raised a rock, not to mention a rifle. They may even be pacifists. It is not necessarily a person linked to armed groups, though neither does it exclude them.
There are various types of political prisoners in Colombia.
· There are the militants of guerrilla groups, the majority of them in prison for armed actions, though there are those who played a political role in such groups, what the courts refer to as ideologues.
· There are also those who are victims of frame ups, the majority of them militants of one or other unarmed Left group, social organisation, trade union etc. The state imprisons them through frame-ups in order to limit their political work.
· Then there are those who are prisoners for things related to their political activity i.e. people who in the midst of protests, strikes, occupations of buildings break some law and are arrested, such as those who carry out pickets that are not permitted.
Amongst this group there are also the youths of the Frontline of the National Strike. Yes, throwing a stone is a crime in and of itself but these youths threw stones in response to state violence during the protests.
But, what distinguishes political prisoner from a common prisoner? Brandishing weapons or throwing stones is done by lots of people from narcos to drunks on a Saturday night. Pablo Escobar attacked the state with weapons and car bombs, but he was never a political prisoner.
He was always a criminal.
The first point is the political prisoner is captured in the struggle for a better world.
They seek changes in society that benefit a broad section of the population when their struggle is national in character or large group when the struggle is local or in the neighbourhood with specific demands.
So, a right-wing paramilitary could never be a political prisoner because they seek the status quo, or even a worsening of the conditions of the people.
A political prisoner acts altruistically, seeking no personal benefit though they may end up benefiting from the changes they seek for peasants, youths or neighbours because they are from that community.
But they never seek personal benefit for themselves but rather for society or a particular group in society. Once again neither the paramilitaries, nor the narcos or the Uribistas could ever be political prisoners because what they seek is always for their own personal benefit or small powerful group.
So a guerrilla may be a political prisoner, as may be the youths from the National Strike and similar protests. The environmentalist that blocks the entry of a mining company’s machinery is also one, even if they commit a crime such as damaging or destroying the company’s installations.
In 1976 eighty intellectuals and figures from the world of culture met in Algiers and proclaimed the Algiers Declaration – Universal Declaration of the Rights of Peoples. The document is entirely political and does not have the force of law but was and continues to be a moral reference point.
In Article 28 it states:
Any people whose fundamental rights are seriously disregarded has the right to enforce them, specially by political or trade union struggle and even, in the last resort by the use the force.[3]
Political prisoners are those who comply with this article.
Though the methods used, whether they are violent or pacific may have some influence, they do not determine who are political prisoners.
Of course, in the case of guerrillas, a war crime may wrest credibility from their status as a political prisoner, but in general the use or not of violence is not what determines who is a political prisoner.
It is the demands and the selfless commitment of the militant to the cause that defines whether they are political prisoners or not. Those who deny this are the ones who benefit from the capitalist system.
Their denial is nothing more than publicity and public relations for Julio Mario Santodomingo, Juan Manuel Santos, Gustavo Petro and the large NGOs. Colombia is full of political prisoners and those who deny this also deny the reality of capitalism in the country.
Yahya Sinwar, head of the Palestinian resistance organisation Hamas, was killed in action by an Israeli Occupation Force in what was for them a routine operation in Gaza on 16th October, his last moments captured on video and broadcast widely.
From that event alone there is much for us to learn about Hamas and the Palestinian Resistance in general as well as about Sinwar himself — but also about the IOF, the way it fights and the extent of its self-discipline.
For the bare details as publicly shared, Sinwar was in military outfit, in tac vest, armed with a pistol and automatic rifle and accompanied by two local Hamas commanders in the Tal as-Sultan, Rafah area of Gaza patrolled by the IOF, very close to the semi-permanent IOF front lines.1
One may assume Sinwar was on a reconnaissance operation.
Sinwar with Hamas comrades in 2021 (photo cred: John Michillo)
Something gave away their position to a passing patrol in an area where, as far as the IOF were concerned, nothing should be alive except themselves. Pursued, they split up, local commanders in one building and Sinwar into another so the patrol called a tank to fire into each.
The patrol attempted to enter the building into which the individual fighter had gone but two grenades beat them back, injuring one soldier,2 so they retreated and called for a tank to put another shell in the building.
Still wary in the aftermath, they sent a surveillance drone into the building and the image it captured was what was seen in the widely-circulated video: a Palestinian fighter, apparently unarmed, right hand mangled. As they watched, he threw a stick at the drone with his left hand but missed.
So the IOF patrol had another tank round fired into the building and they went on their way.3
The last image of Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar alive. Right arm mangled he stares at the IOF drone videoing him in house ruined by IOF bombing in Tal Al-Sultan, Rafah, before throwing a stick at it. Moments later the IOF call a tank to put a shell in the building, collapsing it on top of him.
But unusually,4 they came back. Perhaps someone thought they recognised Sinwar in the camera video? It was then they discovered that one of the three fighters they had killed was Yaha Sinwar, confirmed by test results matching his DNA records they had from his years in captivity.
According to ‘Israeli’ postmortem, although he’d been hit by shrapnel and his right hand was mangled, what killed Sinwar was a bullet to the brain – which raises other questions.5
Whatever he was doing at that time, it was clear that he was there as a commander and Resistance fighter, armed and dressed for combat in a highly dangerous area, regularly patrolled by the IOF and only a short distance from their secured front lines.
That alone spoke of courage but also his and his comrades’ resistance in the face of superior numbers declared their courage and determination. But Sinwar’s continuing to resist while badly wounded and his comrades dead, spoke of heroism.
Although only weeks from his 62nd birthday and after 22 years in a Zionist jail, Sinwar seems to have been quite fit. However, according to the results of a postmortem examination carried out by the IOF, Yahya Sinwar had not eaten in 72 hours prior to his death – a period of three days.6
The event was revealing in outlining how the IOF infantry is accustomed to fighting. They are fine with killing civilians but when confronted with armed resistance fighters, they hold for a short while if at all before retreating and calling up artillery or air strikes.
Their dead and wounded are picked up by helicopter and rushed to undamaged ‘Israeli’ hospitals, well equipped and staffed less than an hour away, a journey that is never fired upon by the Palestinian Resistance.
The contrast could not be starker, as the IOF fire on Palestinian paramedics and their vehicles, blockade Palestinian hospitals from receiving fuel and other essential supplies, even bombing and occupying them, kidnapping and killing medical personnel.
What people saw in the video of Sinwar’s last moments exposed Israeli lying propaganda about Sinwar, accusing him of living safe and well inside the tunnels and never emerging or, if he does, going about in a burka, disguised as a woman, also of intending to flee to Egypt with ‘hostages’.7
Iconic photo of Yahya Sinwar in May 2021, sitting in an armchair outside his home in Gaza, ruined by IOF bombardment. He went there directly after concluding an interview with words to the effect that he did not fear assassination by the IOF, that they knew who he was and the route he would take and if they wanted to kill him “Be my guest … I won’t bat an eyelid.”
The quick circulation of the video by the IOF exposed also the renowned indiscipline of their military and their total lack of comprehension of the mental and emotional processes of the people they have been occupying and oppressing for seven decades.
Their indiscipline is attested to by the thousands of videos on social media posted by the IOF during their genocidal operations as, contrary to orders, they film themselves blowing up buildings including a university, humiliating and brutalising prisoners, even on occasion raping them.
The IOF are renowned too for leaving graffiti inside occupied houses and for prancing around houses they have destroyed, often wearing the intimate underclothing of Palestinian women, whom they have at least turned into refugees and may have killed.
In those circumstances their release of the video before discussing it with their intelligence and propaganda department is not surprising but doing so underlines their failure to understand their enemy. They thought that killing Sinwar would undermine Palestinian morale.
They, colonialists and other oppressors in general fail to take account of the human will to resist and the potency of the memory and example of martyrs. This is an aspect we understand well in Ireland.
The Zionist intelligence services would surely have preferred not to have Sinwar’s last moments shared publicly and possibly would have liked the opportunity to lie about them.
Yahya Sinwar gives the victory sign with both hands while speaking from a rally in Gaza.
Sinwar was clearly a remarkable individual, Palestinian Resistance fighter, thinker and leader but the IOF made him a martyr and in their arrogance showed his heroism not just to the Palestinians — nor to Arabs alone — but to the world.
Yahya Ibrahim Hassan Sinwar (Arabic: يحيى إبراهيم حسن السنوار, romanized: Yaḥyá Ibrāhīm Ḥasan al-Sinwār; 29 October 1962 – 16 October 2024) was a Palestinian resistance fighter, former political prisoner and subsequently politician who was killed in action.
Sinwar served as chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau from August 2024 and as the leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip from February 2017, until his death in October 2024, succeeding Ismail Haniyeh (assassinated by Israeli strike while on a fraternal visit to Iran) in both roles.
He was born in the Khan Yunis refugee camp in Egypt-ruled Gaza in 1962 to a family who were refugees from Majdal (Hebrew: Ashkelon) during the 1948 Palestine War. He gained a bachelor’s degree in Arabic studies at the Islamic University of Gaza.8
Sinwar’s first arrest was in 1982 for ‘subversive activities’, serving several months in the Far’a prison where he met other Palestinian activists and dedicated himself to the Palestinian cause. Though arrested again in 1985, upon his release he continued his organising trajectory.
Israeli propaganda has claimed that during this period his work in internal security against Zionist agents and informers earned him the nickname “Butcher of Khan Younis” but no-one who knew him or seriously studied him even heard of that alleged nickname until after his death.9
Ismail Haniyeh, leader of the Hamas politburo, welcomes Sinwar with a kiss after the latter’s release from jail in the prisoner exchange of 21 October 2021 (Photo cred: Abed Rahim Khatib/ Flash 90)
Sentenced to four life sentences in 1989, Sinwar spent 22 years in prison until his release among 1,026 others in a 2011 prisoner exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. According to John Elmer10 Sinwar wanted others released before him but the prisoners insisted he be one of those leaving.
The prisoners had elected Sinwar as their leader in the prison11 and he was known for encouraging prisoners to use their time productively and to study – in particular to study the enemy. He certainly practised what he preached, becoming fluent in Hebrew and studying IOF tactics.
And also, incredibly, in writing a political novel, The Thorn and the Carnation.12
Sinwar (centre photo) photographed carrying the son of Mazen Faqha, a Hamas leader who was shot dead by unidentified gunmen in Gaza at martyrs’ memorial 27 March 2017. Another photo of Sinwar shows him carrying the child and an automatic rifle; yet another, carrying an automatic rifle and a child who might be a girl, perhaps the child of another martyred fighter. The child and the gun may be seen as symbolising the future through resistance.
On 21 November 2011, a month after his release, Sinwar married Samar Muhammad Abu Zamar and the couple had three children. Sinwar’s wife received a master’s degree in theology from the Islamic University of Gaza. His brother Mohamed remains active in the resistance and is being sought by the IOF.
Re-elected as Hamas leader in 2021, Sinwar survived an ‘Israeli’ assassination attempt that same year.
3All of this is according to the Israeli Occupation Force.
4 According to Jon Elmer, blogger and weekly podcast military analyst for the Electronic Intifada, also in discussion with Justin Podur https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dj43mbQ3AiE (at 1.23.3), that was so unusual because the IOF don’t usually go back to carry out battle analyses for intelligence.
11This seems not unusual among political prisoners:Irish Republican prisoners also elected their OC in the British Occupation jails: Mairead Farrell had been O/C in Armagh Jail and, before he entered his fatal hunger strike, Bobby Sands had been O/Cof the H-Blocks.
Thousands marched recently in two cities of the Basque Country, Bilbo and Iruña/ Pamplona,1 respectively the capitals of the Bizkaia and Nafarroa2 provinces, in solidarity with the Palestinian people and with their Resistance.
And almost immediately posters could be seen calling for the same on the 11th November, but in four Basque cities, including a city in one of the provinces on the French state’s side.3
“Well that’s great but sure we do that here every second week or so,” some might say. But they’d be wrong. The marches organised by the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, while calling for solidarity with the Palestinians and BDS4 of the ‘Israeli’ state and businesses, do not support the Resistance.
The rally stage at the end of the march in Bilbao, on the east bank of the Nervion river. Banner exalting the Resistance in the centre facing the crowd, banner to the left calling for solidarity with the Resistance and another to the right calling for struggle against ‘Israel’. (Photo cred: Resumen Latinamericano)
Nor do the marches organised by the main Palestine solidarity organisations in England or in Scotland. It might be pleaded that in the UK at least, people could be arrested for declaring support for a number of Palestinian resistance organisations that are on the EU “terrorist” list.5
The leadership of the Basque Patriotic Left6 does not support the resistance either, preferring to draw the Palestinians and Basques together as victims under a Gernika-Gaza initiative and even criticising the resistance along with the Zionists in a “both sides” kind of analysis.
But no law exists in these countries forbidding expression of “solidarity with the Palestinian Resistance.” The organisers of those campaign organisations don’t declare for the Resistance because a) they don’t support it or b) wish to remain tolerated by the upholders of the status quo.
View of section of the crowd, giving an idea of its size, the largest Palestine solidarity demonstration in the Basque Country since the present phase of Zionist genocide began on 8th October last year. (Photo cred: Resumen Latinamericano).
IT MATTERS
Well, ok, but does it really matter? Yes, it does and it matters a lot, for the Palestinians, for others struggling against imperialism elsewhere around the world – and for us. Not supporting the Resistance leaves open the question of, for example, the Palestinian Authority.
This Vichy-like organisation headed by a corrupt Quisling sends its security force to intimidate and beat up critics and demonstrators, to arrest them and also Resistance fighters (including invading hospitals to chase down the wounded) and removes defences against IOF invasion.
The PA, despite its widely-acknowledge corruption and the contempt in which it is held by broad Palestinian society, is formally recognised as the ‘representative of the Palestinian people’ by the western imperialists and by many social-democratic parties in Europe.
It is an offence against the Palestinian people and internationalist solidarity to accept the PA as any kind of representation of the heroic Palestinian people – or even to leave the question open. Furthermore, such a stance leaves the door open to all kinds of traitors and confusion.
In our own struggles, we need to be clear who are our enemies and friends. To accept treasonous agencies as representatives of struggling people contaminates our own attitudes in struggle, confuses and undermines our thinking, clouding our vision.
A woman holds high a placard calling to “Free Palestine” and to “Boycott Israel.” (Photo sourced: Internet)
BEING CLEAR AND MAKING IT CLEAR
We need to be clear – and to make it clear – that we support the Palestinian resistance in all its forms: popular, armed, trade unionist, cultural, artistic … and that we abhor collaboration and collusion with the enemy.
We can do that – and it has been done on occasion – by mobilising all who agree on a demo behind a banner celebrating the Palestinian Resistance. But how much better, if like the Basques today in Bilbao and in Iruña/ Pamplona, the whole demonstration marched behind that kind of slogan!
It might be thought that the demonstrations on 5th October would gather less than the safer Gernika-Gaza group of the official leadership of the Left Basque Patriotic movement (Otegi & co.) and other liberals but this was not the case in Bilbo anyway, on the biggest solidarity demonstration since October last year.
Advance posters for the solidarity march. (Photo sourced: Internet)
Two Palestinian Resistance factions, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine sent messages of thanks to the organisers and the demonstrators.
The demonstration and its theme were covered widely in Basque, Spanish, European and Latin American media, usually with photos.
Addressing the rally after the march in Bilbo on 5th October, a speaker listed the many crimes of the Zionist State and was loudly cheered when she said that only the abolition of that state could bring that career of genocidal crimes to an end.
The cheers grew louder still as she called for solidarity with the Palestinian resistance and all others fighting against imperialism and Zionism. And continued as she went on to call for a break with all states and political parties that support the Zionist State.7
The cheers might even have reached EH Bildu’s office and the leadership of the Gernika-Gaza group.
The march on its way to the rally across the river pauses on the way for photos.The long banner calls for “Support for the Palestinian Resistance” but also ” Oppose Israel and its accomplices.”(Photo cred: Boltxe)
End.
FOOTNOTES
1A number of places with Basque toponymics, under Spanish colonialism, were given Spanish names.
3There are seven provinces in the Basque Country, three on the French side of the Border (Iparralde, ‘the North Country’) and four on the Spanish side (Hegoalde, ‘the South Country’).
6That was the broad movement of legal and banned organisations of revolutionary Left and independentist outlook, the movement now reformist, much reduced and fragmented under the leadership of Arnaldo Otegi and the EH Bildu party.
7That clearly includes the conservative Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) and the social-democratic Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) currently in coalition government in the Basque Autonomous Regional Government.
In the Basque Country the Day of the Patriot Soldier is commemorated on two different dates: by the Basque Nationalist Party on October 28th and by the Patriotic Left on September 27th. Each date marks different events but each is anti-fascist in character.
On October 28th one of the many atrocities of the Spanish Civil War/ Anti-Fascist War was enacted by the Spanish fascist military when they executed 42 captured Basque soldiers of the Eusko Gudarastea, a Basque antifascist militia opposing the military-fascist coup of Franco and another three generals.
Section of the crowd at the Gudari Eguna commemoration in Arrigorriaga, Bizkaia province, southern Basque Country. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
This atrocity occurred in 1937, when that war had another two years to run. The Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) was then the main political party in that part of the Basque Country1 and many of its politicians and administrative officials were executed by the Franco regime too.
Commemoration of the PNV´s Day of the Patriotic Soldier (Gudari Eguna) was carried out clandestinely during the four decades of the fascist Franco regime but was permitted in the post-Franco arrangement in the Spanish State, when the PNV were legalised.
The PNV became the dominant force politically in the two provinces that had declared for the Spanish Republic, which was the largest part of the Basque Autonomous Region. Nafarroa however was given a separate autonomous government which split the nation administratively in at least four.2
A DIFFERENT DATE TO COMMEMORATE
However in the 1960s a large part of the PNV´s youth wing had become disenchanted with the party and, entering into alliance with a Basque socialist movement, formed ETA, a mainly political organisation but, existing under a fascist-military regime, inclined also towards armed resistance.
The platform at the Gudari Eguna commemoration organised by Jarki with the event’s speaker/ chairperson addressing the participants. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
ETA grew in support and in actions, military but not only, the Left Patriotic movement (Izquierda Abertzale) widening to fight on a number of fronts, linguistic, social, trade unionist and political with the armed section carrying out many actions.
The last political executions of the Franco regime were in 1975 of two members of ETA and three of FRAP3; the two Basques were Juan “Txiki” Paredes4 and Angel Otaegui. All five, despite huge international solidarity mobilisations and appeals for clemency, were shot by firing squads.
Today, the Patriotic Left´s Gudari Eguna is commemorated by different groups and not all together. As has occurred in Ireland, the accommodation of the leadership of the Basque Patriotic Left to the Spanish electoral system and abandonment of armed struggle has resulted in fragmentation.
A protest in Arrigorriaga I passed by on my way to the Gudari Eguna commemoration. I did not stop to enquire as to the purpose; I had made an error on the journey, was late and in a hurry. From the arrows design I understand these to be the Sare group doing their last Friday of the month picket in solidarity with the prisoners. ‘Giltzak’ means ‘keys’ as the graphic banner design shows and so the aim is probably to have them all leave jail. That is also the aim of the ‘dissident’ group Amnestia but they seek complete amnesty for the political prisoners whereas Etxerat, Sare and EH Bildu normally refrain from even calling them ‘political prisoners’since, according to the Spanish State, that amounts to ‘supporting terrorism.’ (Photo: D.Breatnach)
The political party EH Bildu commemorated the executions but so did the dissenting Jarki and Tinko/Amnistia and the historical memory organisation, Ahaztuak. They did not do so together nor, naturally with the PNV on the different date.
In Arrigorriaga Jarki organised their event in the birthplace and home of Argala, nom-de-guerre of José Miguel Beñaran Ordeñana, a theoretician and activist of great importance in the development of ETA and assassinated by the state-sponsored GAL terrorists.
The attendance at the event listened to the event’s MC addressing them, after which a group of youth carrying flaming torches came on stage. The MC ended her talk with calls for a free and socialist Basque Country, after each which the audience chanted “Gora!” (‘Up!’).
She then led them in singing the Eusko Gudariak with clenched fist in the air, followed by introducing the Internationale in Basque, the revolutionary socialist song that emerged from the Paris Commune of 1871, the audience joining in (though not everyone as well-versed as with the previous song).
I sang the chorus in French, the only language other than English in which I know the chorus, sadly.
HISTORICAL MEMORY & THE MARTYRS
The martyrs of the people´s struggles around the world are remembered organically and kept close to their hearts by the people from which they came, at least for a few generations. Initiatives of conserving and transmitting historical memory keep those commemorations going further.
Section of the crowd at the commemoration of Gudari Eguna, organised by the Jarki organisation. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
In Ireland we know that commemorating the risings of the United Irishmen (1798 and 1803) fed into the struggles of the Young Irelanders a half-century later, their memory in turn contributing to the Fenians which again became part of the history of future generations and of several armed struggles.
Counter-movements, recognising the potency of historical memory, try to appropriate it and adapt it to their political program or to diminish its importance and even deny it. Both those counter-currents can be seen in many parts of the world, including in Ireland and in the Basque Country
However, the ongoing revolutionary streams and their commemorations will always be closest to the real meaning of those events in the historical memory of the people, in the real social and political meaning of martyrdom.
Patrick Pearse remarked on this process in his famous oration over the grave of O´Donovan Rosa: Life springs from death and from the graves of patriot men and women spring living nations.
Footnotes:
1The Basque Country is composed of seven provinces, four on the Spanish state´s side of its northern border and three on the French state´s side. The Anti-Fascist War split the southern Basque Country with principally two provinces, Gipuzkoa and Bizkaia, taking the side of the Spanish Republic, which at the last minute granted them national autonomy. Nafarroa (Navarre) mostly took the fascist-military side and murdered around 3,000 antifascists and Alava province took that side too.
2Two separate autonomous regions in the Spanish state and the provinces on the French side in different French regional administrative areas.
3Frente Revolucionario Antifascista y Patriota (Revolutionary Anti-Fascist & Patriotic Front); the three were: José Luis Sánchez-Bravo Sollas, José Humberto Baena Alonso and Ramón García Sanz.
4According to his brother who, despite being misdirected arrived as Paredes was being shot by the Guardia Civil, who were shooting at different parts of his body, Txiki Paredes continued to sing Eusko Gudariak (‘Soldiers of the Basque Country’) until he finally died.
Scores of people participated in a symbolic ‘funeral of Zionism’ on Monday evening (7th October) in Dublin’s city centre. In front of the James Connolly monument1 and near a mock coffin of ‘Zionism’, they listened to a song and short speeches.
This was followed by a march carrying the ‘coffin’ through city centre streets to O’Connell Bridge, where it was dumped in the Liffey river.
The ethnic composition of the mostly young mixed-gender crowd, by appearance and accent, seemed to be a mixture of Irish and Middle Eastern origin.
The chairperson of the event recalled that a year had passed since the heroic action from Gaza of October 7th and the events that followed, all being gathered there at the James Connolly memorial to hold a funeral for Zionism, the ideology of settler colonialism and genocide.
The first contribution was from a man introduced as Seán Óg with a song of his own composition, three verses rendered acapella in fine voice to the air of two well-known Irish patriotic ballads, Men of the West/ Fir an Iarthair and The Boys of Killmichael.2
The audience began to pick up and join in the chorus lines:
So here’s to the boys of Gaza, Jenin, Nablus and Hebron, Who fought ‘neath the brave flag of Palestine and sent the Settlers on.
Section of crowd at event listening to speeches, viewed facing north-eastwards. (Photo: R. Breeze)
Two speakers followed, pointing out the unanimity of imperialism nowadays in supporting Zionism as distinct from the 1950s and the importance of struggles such as that in Palestine to our own in Ireland, of internationalist solidarity and the need for that solidarity to be for the Resistance.
One speaker interspersed his words in English with some phrases in Irish and recalled the protest against the 1897 visit of the British Queen Victoria which saw James Connolly and Constance Markievicz leading a funeral cortège through the streets bearing a coffin for British Imperialism.
Though a ‘funeral’ for British Imperialism might’ve seemed only aspirational in 1897, the speaker said, signs of its decline were there to be seen for the educated, the intelligent and those who wished to see them — and before two decades elapsed it had received a major challenge.
(Photo: R. Breeze)
It survived that challenge of the First World War victorious but weakened and the embers of revolt were burning around its Empire. Before two decades after that funeral march, the torch of freedom had been lit in Dublin,3 the first uprising against world war of that century anywhere in the world.
The speaker went on to recall the subsequent War of Independence in Ireland three years later and remarked that had it not been for some Irish failures in unity and resolution that British Imperialism might have been given its mortal blow then in Ireland.
Subsequently British Imperialism survived by serving as a subject ally to US Imperialism. “Zionism is a rotten tree”, he said, “planted in Palestine by British Imperialism and nurtured by US Imperialism. Even so, Zionism is damaging its very fosterers and we welcome that.”
“Rotten trees don’t fall on their own,” the speaker continued. Trees that are rotten inside may seem healthy on the outside but when a strong storm comes along, they are knocked down. It is then we can easily see the rot inside them that we may not have noticed before.
Storms are now breaking out around the world, he said. We can and need to play our own part in those storms, “to knock down the rotten tree of Zionism and go on to demolish the whole rotten evil forest of imperialism.”
Section of crowd listening to speeches at the event, photo taken facing south-eastwards. (Photo: R. Breeze)
After applause some chants were led, among them: From Ireland to Palestine – Occupation is a crime! Saoirse don-Phalaistín! There is only one solution – Intifada revolution! From the river to the sea – Palestine will be free! Resistance is an obligation – in the face of Occupation!
The attendance then took to the street, carrying the coffin and flying Irish and national flags of Palestine along with those of factions of the Resistance, also Hezbollah’s and Lebanon’s, continuing the chants as they marched up lower Abbey Street,4 then turning left along O’Connell Street.
Along the way, some bystanders cheered and a man leaned out of a delivery van to shout encouragement with clenched fist in the air.
On O’Connell Bridge, after a few words, the ‘coffin’ containing ‘Zionism’ was pushed over the parapet into the river Liffey, to cheers, which then changed to cycling through the accustomed solidarity chants.
The ‘coffin’ is on the Bridge parapet (left of photo) and about to be dumped into the river Liffey. (Photo: R. Breeze)
There were three external interventions.
A known Irish Zionist who regularly tries to harass Palestinian solidarity participants appeared at the outset in attempted intimidation of an activist but was quickly discouraged from doing so. At the Bridge, a person under the influence of alcohol and shouting confusedly was calmed by activists.
Break the Chains of Zionism banner next to James Connolly Monument (Photo: R. Breeze)
A Garda patrol car crew whose political undercover colleagues had clearly overlooked keeping informed drew up at the Bridge bemusedly during the chanting and, after attempting to gain some information as to events, left again – as did the participants soon afterwards.
The event was organised by Anti-Imperialist Action Ireland and Saoirse Don Phalaistín, the former’s Facebook page having been taken down by Meta while the event was being organised but the groups may be followed on Instagram and Twitter.
End.
Footnotes
1The location of this fine monument is in Beresford Place, across from the site of the original Liberty Hall, home of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union which Connolly led after Jim Larkin departed for the USA at the end of the 1913 Dublin Lockout. The site is now occupied a multi-storey building of SIPTU.
2The first is about the last major engagements of the 1798 Republican uprising, when a relatively small French force landed in Co. Mayo and was joined by Irish Republican insurgents; the second celebrates the IRA ambush of a column of the Auxiliary Regiment in West Cork, wiping it out almost to the last British terrorist.
4Until they reached O’Connell Street they were following in the footsteps of the GPO Garrison on Easter Monday, 1916 and passed by a number of historical political and artistic locations of 1848 and of the early 20th Century.
It is reported that at some point in the near future a representative of the Palestine Authority will be officially received in Leinster House as part of the recognition of the Palestinian State by the Irish Government (and presumably by the Irish State).
This will be an important occasion and all who support the Palestinian people should get ready to give this representative of the Palestine Authority an appropriate welcome.
The PA is an unelected, unrepresentative, corrupt, repressive and occasionally murderous organisation colluding with the ‘Israeli’ occupation, feeding its Occupation master (and their master’s masters) with information on the activities and persons of the Palestinian Resistance.
In the course of the current genocidal offensive of the Occupation, operatives of the PA have seized weapons of the Resistance, dismantled explosives1 and for years have arrested and jailed activists. They also arrest Resistance activists to hand over to the Occupation.
In carrying out this dirty ‘duty’ for their masters, the PA encounter natural resistance and in overcoming that resistance the PA has executed and killed under interrogation dissidents and members of the Resistance, including since October last year.2
Palestinians objecting to repression face the security force of the Palestinian Authority. (Image sourced: Internet)
Elected once, then widely rejected
Since it was created in 1994 arising out of the Palestine Pacification (wrongly named ‘Peace’) Process,3 elections were held by the PA just twice. The Fatah political (and military) party under Yasser Arafat won the first ones in 1996 but Hamas overwhelmingly won the next, in 2006.
The largely secular-voting Palestinian society rejected Fatah in favour of an Islamist party largely because of Fatah’s corruption and nepotism in the PA and also due to its collusion with the Israeli state, formally and informally in fact.4
The Hamas electoral victory of 2006 was not accepted by the Western powers, nor by Fatah, who refused to vacate their administrative control. Eventually, after a short, sharp struggle in June 2007 Hamas evicted them from the positions in Gaza to which the electorate had voted Hamas.
However, Hamas refrained from doing the same in the West Bank, presumably to avoid all-out civil war and so Fatah remains in control of that section of Palestinian governance, which is the one universally known as “the Palestinian Authority” (and, since 2013, as “The State of Palestine”).
Since 2006, the PA has held no elections though it was supposed to do so every four years.5 The reason is clear: Hamas would win again and the Fatah leadership want to hold on to their corruption opportunities and are decidedly opposed to having their funding streams6 cut.
Currently Hamas runs the government of Gaza and is the leading element in the Palestine armed Resistance, a coalition of Islamist and secular organisations that are united in fighting the Israeli occupation and in the negotiation position of the Resistance.
Fatah had been invited to participate in talks in Beijing in April to present a united Palestinian front but at the last minute declined to attend. Nevertheless, in recent days they have been invited again; it is not known at present whether their representatives will attend or not.7
Hamas and others have called for a unified position on Palestinian self-determination and for participation in a broad united Palestinian government.
Netanyahu, with the support of his internal allies and with the US and Western powers externally, refuses to accept the verdict of the Palestinian electoral process and wants a pro-Israeli administration there which, for the Western powers, means a “revitalised”8 Palestine Authority.
US Middle East would-be ‘fixer’ Blinken, already mooted that9 and Mahmoud Abbas, sitting grossly at the head of the PA in the West Bank, indicated his willingness for the job.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas reads a statement as he meets French President Emmanuel Macron, in Ramallah, West Bank, October 24, 2023. Christophe Ena/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo. Note: The key on his jacket lapel is a symbol of the right of return of Palestinian refugees for which the PA has done nothing at all and which Fatah agreed to exclude from the Oslo Accords under which the PA was founded.
The USA also proposed a coalition of their Arab regime clients for that job but the Resistance has made it quite clear that managing Palestinian society and resources is for Palestinians elected democratically only and anyone else will be a usurper for the Occupation and treated accordingly.
The real purpose of Palestinian State ‘recognition’ by the Three
Sadly, it is in this context that we should see the Irish, Spanish and Norwegian recognition of the Palestinian State. It does not represent a break from the EU’s imperialist position of support for Israel in principle but rather only in tactical approach.
These states are giving the imperialists “good advice”. What they are saying in effect is this: “You have to make the Palestinians thing that they are gaining something and use Palestinians to control Palestinians. Otherwise they’ll continue resisting and you could lose the whole thing.”
Coat of arms of the Palestinian Authority (Image sourced: Internet)
They know of what they speak. This was what the British colonialists imposed on Ireland in 1922 and what the Spanish ruling class imposed on the southern Basque Country, Catalonia and Galicia after the Franco Dictatorship, granting them limited autonomy under Spanish control.
And cultivating “independent” locals to run these for them.
The program these states desire for the Palestinian people is one in which they will have their local autonomy in a Palestinian state on approximately 20% of their nation, with worst land and least water and under the guns and watchtowers of their expansionist and dominating neighbours.
The reality of Israeli genocidal colonisation and the “two-state solution” beloved of imperialists and liberals. (Image sourced: Internet)
The decision on what the Palestinian people accept or reject is ultimately theirs, of course. Equally, how we decide to receive representatives of this undemocratic, corrupt, treasonous and violent PA is ours.
Let us not fail to make it a hot welcome, both in solidarity with the Palestinian people and in apology for the neo-colonial proposals of this Gombeen state.
Let those Irish political parties that support the PA answer for their position. Ours should be clear, from which too our actions should flow.
End.
FOOTNOTES
142 times in the West Bank since October 7th and most recently this week as I was writing this piece, blowing some up at 3am on the morning of the 17thJuly.
4e.g. in concluding a deal that excluded the Palestinians still in “Israel” and any right of return for the millions of Palestinian refugees around the world.
The fundamental thing to grasp here is that there can be no peace deal as such. Although there can – and needs to be – an end to Israeli massacres of Palestinians, no arrangement that leaves the zionist settler state in situ can possibly deliver peace.
Even if the zionists could go against their settler nature and therefore abandoned expansion, the Palestinians will never reconcile themselves to their dispossession of most of their country, including their best land and water.
TALK OF A CEASEFIRE DEAL
Very recently Biden put forward a ceasefire plan which he claimed to be an ‘Israeli’ one; Netanyahu seemed to reject it but one of his ministers accepted it was their position.
News footage of Biden’s announcement of the ceasefire proposal “by Israel”. The Palestinian resistance states that the offer received from ‘Israel’ does not at all match the content or process laid out by Biden. (Source video clip: Internet)
Since it contains the main items in the deal brokered by the Arab state intermediaries and approved by the CIA’s man some weeks ago, naturally the Palestinian Resistance1 has welcomed the proposals.
But with caution – they have seen Netanyahu torpedo ceasefire deals before, including the earlier one. And Netanyahu has said repeatedly that eliminating Hamas (by which he means Palestinian Resistance capability) and recovery of the detained Israelis2 is a necessity for any ceasefire.
Of course, the actions of the IOF under his orders don’t suggest that he is serious about recovering the detainees – not alive, anyway. On the other hand, he dearly would like to eliminate the Resistance capability and was happy to wipe out more than the 36,000+ civilians he has already.
But it may be that he has come to believe – or has been pressured into believing – that that project may have to be put off for awhile. The settler society is deeply divided over the question of the Israeli detainees and in a recent poll only 10% believed that the IOF was winning the war.3
Netanyahu’s position is rational from the settler perspective which is that the Indigenous have to be dispossessed and, because they naturally resist, have to be also heavily repressed. But he would like to keep the war going for another reason, which is that he is due to face trial for corruption.
However, he doesn’t get to be where he is or do what he does as an individual but rather with the backing of, in the first place the Israeli ruling class and secondly, of course, of the US Government, which really means by the rulers of the US financial-industrial-military complex.
Supporting ‘Israel’ has been basic US imperialist policy since 1948, when the zionist lobby in the US was not anywhere near as strong as it is today. Biden now, Trump before (and possibly again), Obama, Clinton, Bush, Bush, Reagan – all of them have supported the zionist colony.
Contrary to what many people think, the main reason for the US supporting ‘Israel’ is that it is the only state in the Middle East totally safe from national liberation revolution (because it’s a settler state fighting the Indigenous) or Islamic fundamentalist revolution (because it’s zionist).
In other words, it’s the only safe long-term USA foothold in the Middle East. Or at least it was.
Current map of the Middle East states. The US has overthrown the Iraq ruling regime and made clients of the regimes of all the others with the exception of Yemen and Iran, both of which overthrew their western-aligned ruling elites. (Source map: Internet)
So if Biden is really pressuring Netanyahu– which is not clear yet, given that money and weapons are still being supplied and massacres of Palestinians continue daily — that means that the US ruling class (or at least its dominant section) is pressuring the Israeli ruling class.
Perhaps that’s why John Kirby, Biden’s Middle East envoy is now heading back to the Middle East, in the first place to the zionist state then possibly to Egypt afterwards, where some Resistance leaders have gone already (at least of Islamic Jihad and of the PFLP, according to Arab media).
But every passing day, the IOF massacres between 50-100 Palestinians on average, the population of Gaza suffers from malnutrition, their housing and shelters are bombed, rescue workers are targeted and the only functioning hospital4 is low on fuel and out of many medicines and drugs.
Since the talk of a deal began, the known death toll in Gaza (not to mention the West Bank) passed 5,000 and is now half way through its sixth thousand.
The cold hard fact is that if the US shut off finance and munitions delivery to Israel, the massacres would stop within a day or two and, because the IOF can’t fight without air cover, it would have to withdraw from its blockade of the Rafah crossing, instantly allowing in food, fuel and medicine.
But also as the Medical Director of GLIA5 Tarek Loubani stated in a recent very informative interview,6 the Palestinian bordering states of Egypt and of Jordan, which also have gates, could break the siege tomorrow. Of course these are ruled by elites that are clients of the imperialists.
“THE TWO-STATE” OPTION
But what’s the long-term plan for Palestine?
For some Zionists, including a couple of members of Netanyahu’s war cabinet, it’s the expulsion (sorry, “voluntary resettlement”) of Palestinians from Gaza to be run by ‘Israel’ and resettled by zionists. Not many outside the state would openly espouse that objective.
Although liberal ‘Israeli’ journalist Gideon Lev, who no longer supports the “2-State solution” (sic) commented that Biden dropped that objective from his outline of the alleged deal,7 it has been for decades the only long-term plan of the US, UK and EU and of their main political parties.
This plan is to get some kind of collaborator management to run less than 20% of historic Palestine next to the robbers of most and the best of its land and most of its water, in a “state” dominated by the robbers and under their constant eyes, genocidal guns and air force.
Who gets the Quisling management job? The USA suggested months ago a “revamped Palestinian Authority” which is despised by most Palestinians, corrupt and authoritarian (hence to be “revamped”). Others have suggested some kind of Arab state partnership to manage at least Gaza.
The most recent map of the imagined two-state “solution”, drawn up during Trump’s earlier presidency – areas in green allocated to Palestine, beige to the zionist state. (Source: Wikipedia)
But Netanyahu says the PA will not run Gaza. Of course, if he’s on the way out, he may be ignored but the Resistance is on record saying that what they have, whether part of 2-State setup or not, must be run by Palestinians and that they will not accept any other states doing so.
And that for Palestinian unity, the PLO8 must be opened to Islamist organisations such as Hamas.9
If legislative elections (overdue by almost two decades) are run now, the likelihood is that Hamas will win again10as it did in Gaza and the West Bank in 2006.11
MEANWHILE, THE DEAL …
“The first stage proposes to involve a six-week ceasefire during which the Israeli army will withdraw from the populated areas of Gaza. Hostages, including the elderly and women, would be exchanged for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.
“Civilians would also return to all of Gaza, with 600 trucks carrying humanitarian aid flooding the enclave daily, Biden said.
“The second phase would see Hamas and Israel negotiate terms for a permanent end to hostilities. “The ceasefire will still continue as long as negotiations continue,” the president said.
“In the third phase, a permanent ceasefire would follow, facilitating the reconstruction of the enclave, including 60 percent of clinics, schools, universities and religious buildings damaged or destroyed by Israeli forces.”12
The Resistance leadership, while welcoming what Biden said, declare they want to see all the provisions spelled out – and quite rightly so – before they commit to the pacification plan. They also want to see that Netanyahu himself commits to it, which is far from what he’s currently saying.
They want to stop the genocidal murder of their people through bombing, starvation and destruction of medical care facilities. No doubt they also welcome the opportunity for a respite for their surviving veterans and for training new recruits, perhaps also stocking up on war materiel.
But what game are the USA and the Zionists playing? Could this just be electioneering for Biden? Is there a serious split in the Zionist war-cabinet? Or could it be a playing for time and divide-and-rule game by the US, the Zionists and allies?
A statement given by “a senior leader in the Palestine resistance” to Al-Akhbar and published in Resistance News Network suggests that the latter might be the imperialist game.13
The latest attempts will occur in the coming days, following an invitation issued in the name of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi through his intelligence chief Major General Abbas Kamel to senior leaders of the Popular Front and Islamic Jihad
to visit Cairo for consultations on the situation and the possibility of “creating a breakthrough which would lead to a deal the United States wants to happen now.”
The factions will visit Egypt, and there will be separate or joint meetings.
It is expected that a Hamas leadership delegation will also arrive in Egypt, where representatives from the United States and Qatar will be present, while the “israelis” will be sitting in a private hotel waiting for the results of the meetings.
However, it is clear and decided by the resistance factions that the message that will be conveyed to the Egyptians or any other party present will be much higher than the position announced by Hamas.14
However all this pans out, despite the huge toll of its genocidal campaign, the Zionist state gained nothing militarily, while it has lost hugely on the international political stage. Which means its primary sponsor, the US has lost influence too.
The world is not the same place it was up to the first week in October last year. Nor is it likely to be ever so again. Not just in the Middle East but also in the global South and even in the global West, especially in the latter for thousands of young people.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1Spokesmen of a number of different Palestinian resistance organisations have made it clear that the negotiators of Hamas represent them in the talks and that they are kept informed.
2I use this term to describe what are normally called “hostages”, given that the hostages of the zionists are usually called “prisoners”.
3Quoted by Jon Elmer in last week’s Intifada Update. This is in a society with military censorship of the press and, as Jon Elmer remarked on an Electronic Intifada update, “10% is an error margin for zero.” Elmer also quoted the result of 40% who believed “Hamas” was winning.
4For a million people, according to a recent of the almost daily appeals from the Health Authority.
7Interview today on line (can’t recall which agency).
8The Palestine Liberation Organisation, dominated by Fatah, which has largely been sidelined in the Resistance struggle, in particular since October last year.
9And Islamic Jihad – and there are others. Secular organisations like the PFLP are in the minority. The latter have been in the Fatah-dominated PLO, which excluded Islamist resistance organisations and which has been seen as betraying Palestinian objectives and colluding with the zionist occupation while indulging in substantial corruption until the Palestinian electorate voted them out and Hamas in in 2006.
10Probably with gains too for any Resistance group standing and even less votes than before for Fatah, from which the PA leadership comes.
11In Gaza Fatah refused to accept the electoral verdict and to give up their control; in a short battle they were removed by Hamas which chose not to do the same in the West Bank, where civil war would have been much more intense. From the moment Gaza came under Hamas management it was blockaded physically by the zionist state with Egyptian and Lebanese regimes collusion and politically and financially with full backing of the US and the imperialist states of the EU and the UK (and again, collusion of the Palestinian Authority). The intention was to make life in Gaza so unbearable that it would be abandoned or otherwise ripe for ‘Israeli’ control.
13The context about attempts to split the Resistance: “They attempted to open communication channels with local leaders in Gaza but were met with the shocking response to go to Hamas. They then tried to open side channels with the Popular Front [for the Liberation of Palestine] and factions of the Palestine Liberation Organization that have military wings in the Strip, and they led an initiative they believed would be tempting to the leadership of [Palestinian] Islamic Jihad, only to hear the same response. Nevertheless, the enemy continues to try to break the unity behind Hamas.”
14I interpret that as meaning that the factions will exceed the demands of Hamas, forcing the negotiators to abandon their splitting plans and deal with the actual issue of a ceasefire deal and present the detailed written terms as presented by Biden (and previously agreed by the Resistance but refused by Netanyahu) with the ‘Israeli’ Government’s acceptance, which the Resistance will accept.
rebelbreeze 