La Marx International

And if someone hurts you, I want to fight

But my hands have been broken, too many times

So I'll use my voice, I'll be so rude

Words, they always win, but I know I'll lose

And I'd sing a song, and the beat would start

And I send you all to another heart

And I want to cry, I want to learn to love

But all my tears have run out

(Song sung by young people in the marches in support of Palestine in the United States based on the song "Another Love" by Tom Odell)

The leadership of Hezbollah has signed a precarious ceasefire agreement that is a real betrayal of the 3rd Palestinian Intifada. These leaders, who belong to the political current of Islamic fundamentalism that responds to the dictatorship of the religious oligarchy that governs Iran, have signed a truce by which they withdraw their units to the north of the country for 60 days, leaving the area in charge of the Lebanese State Army, in conjunction with the United Nations peacekeeping force (UNIFIL). In exchange, Israeli forces will gradually vacate southern Lebanon, and pledge to stop carrying out any military operation against Lebanese territory. The agreement was promoted by the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu, the government of Joe Biden in the United States, and that of French President Emanuel Macron.

More than a million people from southern Lebanon have returned to their areas, a return that has deserved important celebrations and means a heavy defeat for Israel, which withdraws its army without having achieved anything. But the ceasefire agreement is deeply reactionary because it seeks to isolate Gaza, and leave Gaza's Palestinian militias alone in the fight against Israel. Until now, Hezbollah had been actively part of the struggle of the Palestinian people by bombing Israeli army positions all the time, and distracting Zionist forces from being sent to Gaza. But if it ceases its bombing, Hezbollah abandons active support for the 3rd Intifada, allowing Israel to devote its entire forces to repressing the Palestinian people.

Israel has already begun to renege on the agreements and violate the truce with dozens of attacks. In turn, Hezbollah gives a "break" to Israel, which has been suffering a political-military beating both in Gaza, where it could not dominate any neighborhood or city, and in southern Lebanon, where Israel could practically not advance anything, or take any city or town. On the other hand, a monitoring mission of the United States and France is constituted to supervise the fulfillment of the commitments, with which Hezbollah hands over the sovereignty of southern Lebanon to the imperialist troops of the UN, and to the control of the imperialist countries over the agreements.

For this same reason Hezbollah is inconsistent in the struggle against Israel, because to the extent that the 3rd Intifada can hurt the interests of the Arab bourgeoisies, Hezbollah or other Islamic currents such as Hamas, as well as the fundamentalist Buddhist currents in Asia sooner or later betray the struggle. Our message to honest Arab activists is: No truce or respite must be given to the Nazi-Zionist beast which, even cornered, is even more dangerous, aggressive and criminal than ever! Nothing good will come from the agreement with the murderous Nazi Zionists! Marxists reject the truce signed by Hezbollah, France, the United States, and the United States! U.S. and Netanyahu! No agreement with imperialism and Zionism that leaves our brothers in Gaza and the West Bank defenseless! We call on honest Palestinian, Lebanese, Yemeni, Syrian activists to break with Islamic leaderships that betray the struggle and are inconsistent, recognize Israel and give it life with agreements with murderers like Netanyahu.

Israel: A State in Crisis, and Decaying

The reactionary ceasefire agreement is an expression of the military defeat of Israel, a state that is desperately clinging to the truce because it is facing the most serious crisis in its history. His hated, repudiated, and globally isolated government has officials declared war criminals by the International Criminal Court such as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. The pillar of the Zionist state, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), is going through a serious crisis, beaten, with thousands of soldiers, officers and non-commissioned officers killed. Israel is a decaying state as Shir Hever, an Israeli analyst, explains in the Mondoweiss article that you can read here: "Economic indicators speak of nothing less than an economic catastrophe. More than 46,000 businesses have gone bankrupt, tourism has stopped, Israel's credit rating has been downgraded, Israeli bonds are being sold at almost "junk bond" prices, and foreign investments have already fallen by 60% in the first quarter of 2023... show no prospect of recovery... the Israelis do not want their own pension and insurance funds, nor their own savings, to be tied to the fate of the State of Israel and invest abroad thereby fleeing their capital that goes out of Israel ... Intel scuttled a $25 billion investment plan in Israel."

Israel is sinking into the biggest crisis in history as Hever explains: "Israel's power grid, which has largely shifted to natural gas, is still dependent on coal... The largest supplier of coal to Israel is Colombia, which announced that it would suspend coal shipments to Israel as long as the genocide continued. After Colombia, the next two largest suppliers are South Africa and Russia. Without reliable and continuous electricity, Israel will no longer be able to claim to be a developed economy. Server farms don't run without power 24 hours a day, and no one knows how many blackouts the Israeli high-tech sector might survive. International tech companies have already started closing their branches... 46 thousand companies closed and it is estimated that by the end of the year there will be 60 thousand"

Israel has half a million displaced people sleeping in Tel Aviv hotels. Two million go to underground shelters at night because missiles and drones fall on cities, as the "Steel Shield" that protected Israel no longer works. Israel's entire higher education system collapsed as collaboration with universities around the world is suspended by blockades of student takeovers in the United States and Europe. And the most serious problem is that Israelis are fleeing en masse, millions of Israelis are leaving Israel, for example, Hever comments that his friends are not getting medical consultations because of the number of doctors who have left. Between October and December 2023 alone, half a million Israelis had already left and it is estimated that departures from there already exceed one million, although the authorities no longer have a way of recording official data because many officials from the Central Bureau of Statistics have already left the country.

This is how Hever explains: "Professor Dan Ben David, a famous economist, argued that the Israeli economy is held together by 300,000 people (the senior staff of universities, technology companies and hospitals). Once a significant portion of these people leave, he says, "we won't become a third-world country, we just won't be one anymore." In May 2024, two Israeli government officials, Eugene Kandel and Ron Tzur, published a study in Hareetz that you can read here where they state that there is a high probability that Israel will disappear and will not reach its centenary as a country.

That is, the Intifada era has cornered the Zionist Nazi state, and placed it before the prospect of destruction. While Palestine suffers 45,000 dead, 10,000 disappeared and another 125,000 inhabitants on the verge of death due to malnutrition or disease, it is still an entity that is not even close to disappearing, that is recognized as never before worldwide, and that its militias have managed to ensure that the armies of Israel do not dominate any town or city in Gaza. or the West Bank. The 5 million Palestinians continue to fight, while millions around the world are mobilizing in their support. Israel, with infinitely superior resources, with the support of the United States, NATO, is unable to defeat a group of militias that plants an urban guerrilla war against them. To read more about the 3rd Intifada click here.

Israel's accelerating prospect of crisis has led Netanyahu's government to the paroxysm of despair when, after having failed in all its military objectives in July 2024, it adopted the so-called "Generals' Plan". Just as we saw Putin's war criminal, or Assad's either launching intercontinental missiles, drones, or ballistic missiles against the civilian population in Ukraine, or Syria, we now see Israel's terrorists launching missiles and airstrikes on the civilian population of Palestine, and Lebanon. From that point of view, the activists of the world and the revolutionaries must not be mistaken. The air strikes, increasingly sinister and genocidal, are not an expression of the strength of Israel, or of Putin, on the contrary, they are the expression of the desperation of these oligarchies and dictatorships cornered by the revolutionary upsurge. This shows why Hezbollah's "ceasefire" offers relief to Israel, because the blows suffered by the 3rd Intifada offers a respite to governments that in their slap of the eye of a drowning man become more criminal and murderous than ever.

Revolution and Counterrevolution in Occupied Palestine

The 3rd Palestinian Intifada began on May 6, 2021 after the eviction of 6 Palestinian families in Jerusalem. The epicenter of this whole process of struggle was the West Bank, where most of the population lives with around 2,500,000 Palestinians. There, Israeli settlers applied a fascist policy of expulsion with methods of civil war to the population from their lands and homes, which led to the development of self-organized militias of a secular nature such as the Lions' Den or the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. The West Bank has a tradition of secular Palestinian activism and is the vanguard of the Second Arab Spring that puts forward a perspective of secularism. The Palestinian uprising inside Israel provoked the reaction of the Netanyahu government by promoting a Judicial Reform with the aim of reforming the political regime to be able to perpetrate massacres with total impunity, but the reform collided head-on with the uprising of the Israeli people against Netanyahu.

In March 2023, more than 100,000 people in Habima Square gathered in Jerusalem in front of the prime minister's residence as well as in Haifa, Rosh Pina, and Tel Aviv with mass mobilizations in protest against Netanyahu's reform. The political crisis opened by the Israeli people against their government was exploited by Palestinian militias in Gaza to launch a successful attack on October 7, 2023, when Palestinian militias invaded and defeated the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). From there, the 3rd Intifada entered the phase of open and declared Civil War began to combine coups and counter-coups between revolution and counterrevolution to articulate itself as a complex of revolutions linked to each other with 7 fronts such as the Battle of Gaza, the Battle of the West Bank, the Battle of Lebanon, the battle of Syria and the Golan Heights, the battle of the Red Sea, the battle of Iraq, and the worldwide mobilization in support of Palestine.

While Palestinian casualties are almost 50,000, almost all civilians, on the Israeli side it is estimated that between 8,000 and 10,000 are killed, most of them soldiers killed and wounded. In addition, there are still 60 hostages, 1,500 civilians killed, and millions of displaced and exiled people who have fled the country. Israeli casualties are an estimate based on analysts because the official figures are completely false, no credence should be given to the figures presented to the Netanyahu government. Variousobservers estimate that the official figures should be multiplied by at least fourfold, while Israeli analyst Chris Josh suggests that they should be multiplied by six, although regardless of the methods of calculation, Israeli soldier casualties are already the largest in history.

The Israeli government's response to the October 7 defeat in Gaza was the invasion of Gaza on October 28, 2024. This invasion lasted for 3 weeks until November 23, 2023, when a 6-day ceasefire was agreed. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) faced a group of Palestinian militias, including Al-Qassam answering to Hamas, Al-Quds Brigades of Islamic Jihad, Al-Nasse Salah Brigades of the Popular Resistance Committees, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades of Fatah, Ali Mustafa Brigades of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Brigades of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Brigades of the Palestinian Mujahideen Movement. These militias presented an urban guerrilla war to the IDF, in a reality in which the imperialist-linked media speak only of Hamas, to hide the fact that there is a much larger and more widespread coalition of Palestinian guerrilla and partisan groups of which Hamas is the largest group.

Hezbollah, the militia that controls southern Lebanon, began to attack northern Israel with mortar fire in solidarity with Palestinian militants. Eventually Israel's invasion was defeated. Palestinian militias won a resounding victory in the battle for northern Gaza in early January 2024, forcing IDF forces to withdraw from northern Gaza, which you can read by clicking here. Israel sent troops into central Gaza who again clashed with Palestinian forces who waged an urban guerrilla war that culminated in a new defeat for Israel that could not take over any neighborhood or city in central Gaza. During this moment of the fighting, attacks on Israel by the Yemeni Houthis who won the war with Saudi Arabia began, which opened a new front in the 3rd Intifada. The Houthis began attacking NATO ships in defense of Palestine, which allowed them to begin controlling the Red Sea's maritime traffic.

Israel's defeats were the product of the urban guerrilla warfare presented by the Palestinian militias, following the method of the Iraqi militias against NATO in the Iraq War, as well as the Kurdish militias in Rojava, the Syrian rebel militias against the Al Assad dictatorship, the Houthi militias against Saudi Arabia, and the Houthi militias against Saudi Arabia. or of Ukrainian militias against Putin's army. The ambushes and permanent assaults are causing enormous numbers of casualties in soldiers and officers, as well as enormous material losses, while the weapons seized by the Palestinian militias in the ambushes serve to feed more and better weapons to the Palestinian militias. Israeli authorities carried out an attack on April 1 in Damascus that killed seven officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

The IDF's defeats forced Netanyahu to withdraw thousands of soldiers on April 7, 2024 All the troops in Gaza leaving only the Nahal Brigade in custody of the road built by the Israeli army called the Netzarim corridor. To read more about Israel's defeat in April click here. A month later, Israel launched an attack on the southern area of Rafah, the most populous area of Gaza in Gaza on the border with Egypt, on May 7, 2024, where the IDF continued to perpetrate massacres against civilians. Israel built the Philadelphia corridor, mimicking the structure of the Metzarim corridor, but it is the only thing it can control, as heavy fighting between the IDF and Palestinian militias prevented the IDF from taking control of any towns or cities in southern Gaza.

The fighting in Rafah triggered a new migration of the Palestinian population to the city of Deir al-Balah and the makeshift camp of al-Mawasi, but defeats caused by Palestinian militias caused Israeli troops to withdraw from Rafah on 12 July 2024. From then on, Israel no longer had ground advances in Gaza, and fighting became more sporadic, allowing Palestinian militias to take political, social and economic control of Gaza's towns and cities. Israel changed the strategy of ground advances to daily remote attacks and bombardments against schools, hospitals, critical infrastructure, including UN aid posts, doctors, journalists, and non-Palestinian officials.

The failure of the invasion of Rafah, as well as the defeats in northern and central Gaza, led to the dismissal of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, amid the crisis of the Zionist government over months of public disagreement between Gallant and Netanyahu. The failure of Gallant's strategy of ground invasion caused the Netanyahu government to veer to a different strategy and launched the "Plan of the Generals" plan, a strategy that combines targeted terrorist assassinations of leaders of Palestinian militias and movements with bombings Newspapers have been remotely targeting schools, hospitals, critical infrastructure, including UN aid posts, doctors, journalists, and non-Palestinian officials.

Netanyahu's fascist strategy proposes that anyone who was labeled a Hamas activist could be killed with the aim of emptying northern Gaza by 2024 and establishing a "closed military zone" there, where supplies of electricity, gas, and water are cut off, leading to the death of the entire population of the region. the same strategy of the Nazis in the Warsaw ghetto. But as we stated at the beginning of the article, far from being a show of force, Netanyahu's strategy is the expression of the defeat suffered in the face of the 3rd Intifada, in the midst of the deterioration and collapse of the state of Israel, a whole strategy that means more of a slap in the face, than a consistent strategy that allows us to glimpse some prospect of victory.

For a Palestine free from the river to the sea

Carrying out the strategy of the "Generals' Plan", Israel carried out the assassination on September 28, 2024 of Hasan Nasrallah, the top leader of Hezbollah, and the assassination of the top leader of Hamas Yahya Sinwar on October 16, 2024. The former leader of Hezbollah is Hashem Safieddine, but Israel has killed at least seven Hezbollah commanders and high-ranking officials during September and October 2024. However, the "Generals' Plan" ran into serious trouble in November when at least 90 Hezbollah rockets were fired at the main port city of Haifa. Iran had already carried out a massive bombing of Israel in retaliation for the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah. On November 13, 2024, Hezbollah carried out for the first time an air strike with a drone squadron on the Kirya base which is the headquarters of the Israeli Ministry of War and General Staff, the War Management Room and the Air Force Military Control and Supervision Authority. in the city of Tel Aviv.

The 3rd Palestinian Intifada is one of the most important revolutionary processes of our time. After the defeat of October 7, Israel had the following objectives: 1) To eliminate Hamas, in the words of the Israeli government, the Palestinian militias in Gaza, 2) To recover Israeli hostages, 3) To eliminate the tunnels built by Palestinian militias under the territory of Gaza. After more than a year of bloody battles in Gaza, noneof these targets could be achieved by the IDF and the Netanyahu government. According to Haaretz, Israel only managed to control the Netzarim corridor, which is currently between five and six kilometers wide and about nine kilometers long, as well as the Philadelphia corridor, which is of the same dimensions. The triumph of the Battle of Gaza has consequences for the entire political situation in the world, and in the Middle East, we are already seeing it in the resurgence of the Syrian revolution.

Today the 3rd Intifada is undoubtedly the vanguard of the Second Arab Spring. The First Arab Spring, which began in 2011, was a revolutionary process that encompassed more than 30 nations and forever changed the political situation in the region with the fall of dictatorships that had been in place for decades, such as that of Hosni Mubarak or Muhammar Gaddafi. But the Second Arab Spring that began in 2019 incorporated into the revolutions the struggle against Islamic fundamentalist governments, the dictatorship of the Ayatollahs in Iran, the capitalist governments in Iraq, against the Hezbollah government in Lebanon, against ISIS or against dictatorships such as that of Bashar Al Assad. That is, it began to incorporate the global process of political revolution by assigning a whole series of new Palestinian activists.

Ourpolicy is unconditional support for Palestinian militias, including Islamic fundamentalists, but at the same time and simultaneously, support for the process of political revolution in Palestinian activism by supporting the development and emergence of new secular militias or militias linked to Marxism, stimulating the break with Islamic fundamentalist leaderships that have a reactionary policy and ideology of support for the Arab bourgeoisies. and a retrograde theocratic program in favor of the oppressive dictatorships of the people, such as those in Iran.

From La Marx International we are calling for worldwide support for the 3rd Palestinian Intifada, which on all fronts is repeating the epic of the Vietnamese people when they managed to defeat US imperialism. The triumph of the Battle of Gaza should serve to advance in the global regroupment of activists and leaders who support the 3rd Intifada, are for the destruction of the State of Israel, and promote the struggle for a Free Palestine from the River to the Sea, secular, democratic and non-racist. We must advance in the organization of a world party of revolution in the service of the constitution of the socialist republics of the Middle East, as part of the struggle for Global Socialism.

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