
Palestine: a year of brutal genocide and war in the Middle East

Interview with Claudia Cinatti about the situation in the Middle East one year after the beginning of the genocide.
This week marks a year since Israel’s brutal genocide in the Gaza Strip began, after the events of October 7 changed the entire panorama of the Middle East. The Gaza Strip is devastated, more than 43,000 Palestinians have been murdered, millions have been displaced, the population has been decimated by disease and hunger, hospitals and schools have been reduced to rubble. This year, Israel has continued its attacks on the West Bank and the firing of rockets into southern Lebanon. In recent weeks, Netanyahu expanded his offensive against Hezbollah and assassinated its leaders, then invaded Lebanon with a ground invasion and heavily bombed Beirut for the first time since 2006.
The massacres committed by Israel, with the open support of the United States and the complicity of the European Union, have triggered an enormous movement of solidarity with the Palestinian people worldwide, especially in the imperialist states, the likes of which have not been seen for decades.
What is the current situation? Is an escalation towards a “total war” in the Middle East inevitable? What role does the US play in the middle of the election campaign for the White House? What role do Iran and the so-called “axis of resistance” play in the region? What are the strategic strengths and weaknesses of the Zionist state? We talked about all these questions with Claudia Cinatti, editor of the international section of La Izquierda Diario and leader of the PTS in Argentina.
Are we already in the scenario of a large-scale regional war in the Middle East? What are the open fronts?
In a way, the war in Gaza, and more generally the Palestinian cause and Israeli colonial oppression, have always had a regional dimension. Since Israel began bombing and invading Gaza, Hezbollah has fired rockets at northern Israel in solidarity with the Palestinian population, making the end of these attacks conditional on the Netanyahu government signing a ceasefire in Gaza. What has changed in recent weeks is both the scale of the attacks and the possibility that the escalation of the State of Israel against Iran’s allies – especially the elimination of the Hezbollah leadership – could become a war between states. That is, to a direct military confrontation between Israel and Iran, in which the US is already involved, as it has increased its military presence in the region in defense of the State of Israel.
As Netanyahu said in his speech to the UN General Assembly, Israel has seven open fronts: the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Hezbollah and Lebanon in general, the Houthis in Yemen, pro-Iranian militias in Syria and Iraq, and now Iran.
Militarily, Israel has achieved a number of tactical successes. It has decimated Hezbollah’s leadership, weakened Hamas and restored the badly battered image of its intelligence service. But as we know, tactical successes do not always lead to a strategic victory, and that is the big question, because these advances do not solve Israel’s strategic problem, which is not just military in nature.
Currently, Israel continues its offensive against Lebanon, both from the air and on the ground in the south, where it is facing resistance from Hezbollah, which can be seen to remain capable of fighting. And Israel’s imperialist allies, primarily the US and the UK, have bombed Houthi positions in Yemen.
Since Iran fired some 180 to 200 ballistic missiles into Israeli territory in response to the assassination of Nasrallah and Haniyeh, there has been a kind of waiting period to prepare for the retaliatory strike that is sure to come from Israel and its allies, the US, Britain, France and other powers.
It turns out that the Netanyahu government is debating whether to bomb nuclear facilities, energy infrastructure – oil refineries, gas refineries, etc. – or military facilities. Meanwhile, the Biden administration, which is consulting with the Zionist state on the measures to be taken, is trying to dissuade the Netanyahu government from the more extreme options. Above all, it wants to avoid major damage to the oil industry, as the price of oil is already rising, which could revive inflationary tendencies and have implications for the global economy and the US presidential election.
There is no doubt that Netanyahu’s policy is aimed at drawing the US into a direct war against Iran, which is not in the interests of US imperialism and which the White House has so far tried to avoid. This is a possible dynamic, but if Netanyahu does not achieve this goal, neither with the Democrats nor with an eventual Trump administration, he could, at least for this time, limit his goals to making as much progress as possible in isolating the Iranian regime and weakening the “axis of resistance” as much as possible.
A recent Washington Post article said Biden had lost control of his strategic ally Israel because Netanyahu was crossing all the red lines the White House had tried to draw. How do you see that? Is this another consequence of the crisis of US hegemony?
The crisis of US hegemony is driving what some analysts call a “fragmentation of the international order”, that is, the rise not only of rival powers – such as China – but also of regional middle powers or allies playing their own game. The loss of leadership is evident in the fact that even if Biden is now a lame duck, the US as a whole is no longer able to impose its policies and achieve automatic alignment with its interests, with the possible exception of complete sycophants like Milei in Argentina. However, the norm is multiple alliances and alliances, depending on national interests. This has been shown, for example, in the Ukraine war and in the dissenting voices in the case of Gaza.
Unlike other historical moments, such as the Six-Day War, the State of Israel today is absolutely dependent on its alliance with the United States, which provides it with weapons, funding and diplomatic protection, even to carry out the genocide in Gaza. It is paradoxical that this dependence goes hand in hand with Netanyahu’s ability to stick to his warmongering and genocidal line against the Palestinian population, despite the White House’s insistence on the need for a ceasefire. Not only did Secretary of State Blinken systematically fail in the negotiations; on top of that, Netanyahu has authorized the assassination of Hezbollah leader Nasrallah from New York, while the US and France have reportedly agreed with the Israeli prime minister on a ceasefire in Lebanon.
What determines the policy of US imperialism in the Middle East—regardless of which party is in government—is the strategic and unconditional alliance with the State of Israel. This gives Netanyahu the impunity to extend colonial policy to the extreme, in line with his far-right partners, be they religious parties or settler parties. And it makes the U.S. support everything Israel does. This is Biden’s policy, even if he has differences and friction with Netanyahu, who is openly working towards a victory for Donald Trump in November, which he believes is closer to his interests. This policy continues despite the fact that it has plunged the Democratic Party into a serious crisis, questioned from the right by Trump and part of the Zionist lobby, and from the left by parts of its electorate who oppose the genocide in Gaza, and which could even cost Kamala Harris the presidency.
Israeli historian Ilan Pappé said at a conference a few days ago that Netanyahu needs a scenario with more war and more chaos to push through an “extreme solution” in Palestine and the region. What would that mean?
The Netanyahu government and the far right make no secret of the fact that their plan is to expel the Palestinian population from the Gaza Strip to Egypt and the West Bank, where colonization is qualitatively advanced. The destruction of the Gaza Strip goes in this direction. Life is practically impossible, there are no hospitals, no schools, no apartments, no food and no water. Its ministers are making openly fascist public statements advocating the liquidation of civilians by military means and famine. This plan to annex the Palestinian territories to the State of Israel and extend colonization to southern Lebanon is what Netanyahu presented to the United Nations. There he showed his famous maps of the “curse” and the “blessing”, the “Greater Israel”, in which the Palestinian territories do not exist – in a Middle East that is to some extent in line with the Abraham Accords, which were promoted during Trump’s presidency.
In the case of Lebanon, Israel has had significant tactical successes against Hezbollah in recent weeks, but: Can Israel defeat Hezbollah through a combination of bombing and a “limited” ground attack, as the Israeli military says it is aiming for?
That seems difficult. Even in the Gaza Strip, after 11 months of destruction, Israeli military chiefs consider a “total victory,” that is, the “annihilation of Hamas,” to be an unrealistic goal. Israel had already invaded Lebanon in 1982 and remained there for 18 years. And in the 2006 war, Israel suffered a political defeat that ultimately strengthened Hezbollah.
As you said, everything changes with the more direct confrontation with Iran. What is the internal situation in Iran and to what extent does this affect the possibility of the country taking a more belligerent course?
The Iranian regime’s strategy is to avoid a direct military confrontation with Israel and thus also with the United States. It has therefore built a so-called “axis of resistance”: a defensive alliance with tactical and strategic allies, of which Hezbollah is the most important, not only because of its firepower, but also to make clear the regional ambitions of the Islamic Republic. Massoud Peseshkian, the current Iranian president who belongs to the regime’s reform wing, even gave a conciliatory speech at the United Nations with the aim of easing the sanctions that are crushing the country and resuming dialogue with the US and other powers on the nuclear program. The domestic political situation is complicated for the theocratic regime, which has lost its legitimacy and, in view of the difficult economic situation, is repeatedly confronted with protests, which it tries to suppress with brutal repression. For years, the regime has been divided into a more conservative wing and a more Western-oriented sector. The Israeli escalation has apparently strengthened hardliners, especially the Revolutionary Guards, which argue that the lack of response to Haniyeh’s assassination on the day of the new president’s inauguration has weakened Iran. This time, then, the decision has been made to respond and strengthen Khamenei’s discourse in order to turn resistance to Israel into a cause for the entire Arab and Muslim world.
In this context, there is also the question of whether there are sectors that believe that Russia or Iran (or even China) could play a progressive role in setting limits on US imperialism.
The bloc between China and Russia, which also includes North Korea and Iran, undoubtedly calls into question the order led by the United States, at least at the level of military cooperation (not troops, but armaments, technology, etc.). This has caused a certain “campism” (“camp thinking”) among parts of the left that ally themselves with this bloc. However, the fact that they have interests that are opposed to those of the US does not make them progressive per se. It is a bloc of capitalist countries that have their own reactionary aims. Examples of this are Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or China’s aggressive policy in African and Asian countries, of which it is the main creditor, in accordance with the IMF.
The forces leading the resistance against Israel in the region are Hamas and Hezbollah, whose strategy is to establish theocratic states in alliance with sections of the Arab bourgeoisie such as Qatar or Iran. To what extent does this limit the struggle for a free Palestine and the expulsion of imperialism from the region?
In the case of the Palestinian national liberation struggle, Hamas benefited from the surrender of the Palestinian Authority, which has turned into an internal police force in the service of Israel. Although organizations such as Hamas are part of the Palestinian resistance or part of national liberation movements, they pursue a reactionary, civic-confessional strategy. Its policy of social control, which hinders the democratic organization of the resistance, and its military methods are in line with these goals.
Several analysts point out that a new generation is radicalizing against Israel and imperialism in the Middle East. At the same time, solidarity with the Palestinian people has been heard in Western countries over the past year in a way that has not been the case for decades. There have been massive mobilizations and a student vanguard that has occupied university campuses and denounced the complicity of the imperialist governments. How important is this movement for the Palestinian resistance and the struggle against imperialism?
The movement in the central countries is very important for the victory of the Palestinian masses. Despite the brutal police repression and persecution by the university rectorates, which has set back the struggle or the most active aspect in the short term, it is a profound process: there is a change in consciousness among very broad sections of the new generations, including the rise of Jewish anti-Zionist organizations (such as Jewish Voice for Peace in the USA), which not only reject the crimes of the State of Israel, but also the crimes of the State of Israel. but also denounce its colonial character. In the event of an intensification of the war in the Middle East, leading to a war between Israel/USA and Iran, this movement will not only be reactivated, but will probably reach greater massiveness and further develop its tendencies towards political radicalism and its anti-imperialist elements.
Anti-Zionist Jewish intellectuals such as Ilan Pappé and others have pointed out that the idea of “two states” living together harmoniously is a chimera as long as the foundation of a colonial occupation and apartheid state is maintained. To what extent do the events confirm this view and what position do revolutionary socialists take for a fundamental solution in Palestine?
The genocide in Gaza, the expansion of the war, the annexation and colonization plans of the State of Israel (and not only of the Netanyahu government) absolutely confirm this clear diagnosis of Ilan Pappé. As a way out, he proposes a “de-Zionized Palestine” in the historical area, where the refugees can return and where there is no ethnic, cultural or religious discrimination. In addition to intellectuals and academics like Pappé, there are organizations such as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, which has been exposing the racist and segregationist character of the Israeli state for years using various methods. Or the so-called One Democratic State Campaign, which brings together people of Jewish and Palestinian origin with the same goal of ending the colonial regime supported by imperialism.
Revolutionary socialists share with them the need to end the colonial occupation and apartheid regime, which was only further legitimized by the so-called “two-state solution.” We also share the international dimension of the Palestinian struggle. However, we believe that in order to end the apartheid regime and the oppression of the Palestinian people, it is necessary to eliminate their material foundations. That is why we believe that the only truly progressive way out is to fight for a socialist workers’ Palestine. Because only a state that aims to put an end to all oppression and exploitation can guarantee a democratic and peaceful coexistence between Arabs and Jews, as a first step towards a socialist federation in the Middle East.
This interview first appeared on Ideas de Izquierda on October 6, 2024.
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