By Socialist Party Ireland reporters, 6 February 2025
The Gaza genocide is continuing. Trump has announced an outrageous plan for the wholesale ethnic cleansing of its two million Palestinians, even hinting that US troops may be used to enforce this. As if talking about one of his corrupt land deals, he announced the US would now own this small Strip of land and turn it into the “Riviera” of the Middle East. His comments have provoked outrage and shock among ordinary people globally.
This statement was made with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu by his side, with a stomach-turning look of satisfaction on his face. Despite the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) charges of war crimes against him, Netanyahu was given the prestigious prize of being the foreign leader to be invited to Washington under the Trump presidency. This was a clear signal to the Israeli Government that it could continue to act with impunity in its murderous rampage against the people of Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, etc. It comes after Trump appointed Elise Stefanic as the US ambassador to the United Nations. Stefanic has argued that Israel has a biblical right to the lands of the West Bank. Moreover, the new US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, has stated that “there really is no such thing as a Palestinian.”
All of this is an attempt to further normalise and legitimise the genocidal terror the Israeli State has unleashed on Gaza and the Occupied West Bank since October 2023. It means Netanyahu will feel little compulsion to stick to the ceasefire deal. It further demonstrates why the Palestine solidarity movement must remain an active and mobilised force globally, including significant escalations of industrial action by workers, particularly against the export of weapons to Israel.
Normalising genocide
It is shameful that in light of this, the Irish Government remains committed to ditching the Occupied Territories Bill, which would ban the import of goods and services from the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights – prostrating itself in front of Trump and US multinationals who are deemed more essential than the rights and lives of Palestinians. It goes without saying that they plan to rock up to Washington DC on St. Patrick’s Day to present the bowl of Shamrock to this fascistic President Trump, as they did last year with Genocide Joe. Again, we need mass pressure to demand the OTB is implemented and that there is no green-washing of Trump in March.
Trump’s comments illustrate that his administration is abandoning even verbal support a ‘two-state solution,’ much to the delight of Netanyahu’s government. They want to smash the national aspirations of Palestinians in their entirety, not even allowing them a state on a small slice of their historic homeland.
For decades now, support for a two-state settlement has been the stated position of imperialist and capitalist states internationally, while previous administrations under Biden, Obama and Bush have given nominal, vacuous nods to it. This section of the US ruling class will be annoyed that Trump has abandoned giving lip service to Palestinian rights, as it will further undermine its standing in the Middle East and the Global South, given that it has already been undermined massively for its support for the genocide.
Of course, Western imperialist support for a Palestinian State has been daily contradicted by facts on the ground. These same administrations and many European States have backed the continued occupation, the expansion of settlements and the genocide of Gaza, which have rendered any meaningful form of statehood for Palestinians null and void.
At most, Palestinians could expect a truncated, non-contiguous entity modelled on the Bantustans of Apartheid South Africa, where dictatorial puppet regimes administered small pockets of lands at the behest of its white ruling class. The Zionist rulers and their imperialist backers would never entertain the existence of a state based on the June 1967 borders (encompassing the West Bank and Gaza) with East Jerusalem as its capital. This is not to mention the right of return for Palestinian refugees and the rights of Palestinians within the Green Line.
Therefore, as utterly despicable as Trump’s announcement is, it’s sickening to see Democrats in the US and representatives of other imperialist powers, such as Britain and Germany, proclaiming their shock and horror. These world leaders have directly armed and politically backed the indiscriminate mass murder, starvation and psychological torture of the entire population of Gaza.
Totally unworkable
Whether or not Trump will seriously act on his rhetoric of whether or not it constitutes just hot air remains to be seen. Notably, in the context of further pushing for normalisation agreements, where the Arab States recognise the Israeli State and have diplomatic and economic ties with it, pushing for the expulsion of Gaza’s population will be difficult.
These states and their ruling classes – corrupt and despotic billionaires whose lives are far removed from the poor and oppressed masses of this region – are no friends of the Palestinian people. However, they are conscious of how the genocide has radicalised the working class, poor and young people in their respective societies, consequently, “normalising” the existence of the Israeli State will not be accepted. Indeed, Trump’s comments will make it much more difficult for Saudi Arabia to do so, given that they have made the creation of a Palestinian State contingent on any such agreement, something the new President has stated his unambiguous opposition to.
Likewise, the Egyptian and Jordanian regimes will be unwilling to facilitate Trump’s ethnic cleansing by accepting refugees from Gaza despite the pressure he will put them under. There is already a large population of Palestinian refugees in the latter and being seen to be complicit in the further destruction of Palestine will be met with mass anger and potentially revolutionary upheavals.
Furthermore, the deployment of US troops to enforce this plan will be met with opposition at home; Trump has cynically and disingenuously built his base on being an ‘anti-war’ President.
Crucially, any such move will be met with unwavering opposition from the Palestinian masses themselves. They have courageously resisted the genocidal onslaught of the Israeli State – they are determined not to be forced out of their homeland.
Freedom for Palestine
The horrors facing Gaza’s population and Trump’s genocidal comments about its future bring into sharp focus the oppression of the Palestinian people. It is a self-evident fact that they will remain trapped in a hellscape as long as the Zionist state, backed by imperialism, remains in existence – it will deny Palestinians their right to freedom, statehood and the return of refugees with murderous determination.
It must be overthrown and smashed, as must the capitalist dictatorships throughout the Middle East and North Africa. There can be no hope of justice and freedom for Palestine otherwise. It must be replaced by a socialist Middle East where the region’s wealth and resources are publicly owned and democratically controlled by governments of the working class, the poor and the oppressed.
Within this framework, through democracy and solidarity in the interests of all working-class and oppressed people, Palestinians and Israelis could live in complete equality from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea, including the equal rights of both people to national self-determination.
The force and agency to win this change will begin with the Palestinian masses. They could connect their struggle for national and social liberation with their natural allies, the working class in this region and globally – a truly powerful force if organised. There is an urgent necessity to defeat a common enemy of capitalism and imperialism that is built on exploitation, oppression and genocide.