Statement from BAMN’s sister organization in the UK, the Movement for Justice (MFJ):

Support and Defend the Gaza Ceasefire – A Victory for the Palestinian Resistance in Gaza and All of its Supporters in the International Movement for the full Realization of Palestinian Rights

Absolutely No Annexation of the West Bank or East Jerusalem by the Israeli State

• The Movement must extend and defend its victory.
• The Gaza Ceasefire is a victory achieved by the courageous Palestinian Resistance in Gaza and the massive international movement in support of Palestinian rights.
• Israel, the United States and all the other imperialist powers have suffered a defeat.
• Israel and the US declared the Israeli invasion to be a war to defeat and destroy Hamas. In reality the Israeli invasion was a war of ethnic cleansing directed against the civilian population of Gaza. Despite terrible destruction, that Israeli war against the Palestinian people has achieved none of its ostensible military objectives. In particular it has not achieved the defeat and destruction of Hamas. Nor has it achieved ethnic-cleansing objective of driving the Palestinian people of Gaza to give up their country.
• The international movement in defense of Palestine must continue to mobilize to get Israel out of Gaza now.
• The international movement to defend Palestine must keep mobilizing to support all the ongoing Palestinian resistance to the threat of the annexation by the Israeli state of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
• Self-Determination for Gaza – victory to the Palestinian struggle

The Truth about the Gaza Ceasefire

The news media and politicians, with their blinkered view of the world, have lost the point when they distribute credit for the Gaza ceasefire to this or that prominent politician. They were only important in secondary roles. The Palestinian People won this victory for themselves. The growing strength of the international Pro-Palestinian, anti- imperialist movement defeated the efforts of the United States to keep the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Gaza going on indefinitely.

First and foremost this is a victory for the resilience and resistance of the Palestinian people of the Gaza Strip, who are so much more than a casualty list! Throughout the most horrific and depraved genocide since the Holocaust, they made sure that the whole world knew what was happening. They have exposed Israel’s failed effort to ethnically cleanse Gaza of the Palestinian people. They have shown the world that a small oppressed nation of defiant, determined, brave and united fighters can defeat the largest military force in the world, the United States and the deranged war criminals of Israel.

The Palestinian refusal to accept defeat inspired mass actions of the oppressed across the globe, including in Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and the rest of the Arab world and Muslim majority nations. The leaders of these nations are wrong if they think this ceasefire will quiet the poor and oppressed masses they repress everyday. But the taste of victory is sweet. And anyone who has experienced it wants to continue.

The news media talk pityingly about a ‘social breakdown,’ but the people of Gaza have organised, they have dealt creatively with the inevitable problems, they have produced weapons from unexploded bombs, they are nurses, doctors, journalists, engineers, cooks, teachers, farmers, child-minders – and fighters.

And they have never stopped fighting. US Secretary of State Blinken admitted this week that Hamas had been able to replace all its lost fighters with new recruits. Whether or not those recruits share the Hamas ideology, they are clearly prepared to fight until victory. Like the soldiers who fought under Oliver Cromwell in the 17th century English revolution against the monarchy, they can proudly declare that “We are no mere mercenary army.” Just over a century later, the people of thirteen little colonies in North America sent a similar message to another English king: Our fight for our human rights can defeat your elite military, can defeat the most powerful empire in the world.

The Movement for Justice (MFJ/Britain) and BAMN/US congratulate the people of Gaza on this hard-earned victory. The ceasefire victory reflects Israel’s growing isolation and weakness – in the state of its army, the state of its economy, the departure of a large part of its population – and in the relatively small but growing number of anti-Zionist Israelis, of all ages, who support the Palestinian cause and are now speaking out publicly, encouraged by the resilience of the people in Gaza.

Even if the Israeli government pulls out or undermines the agreement, it will be weaker, and Gaza will have won a victory and know it can achieve more. The next critical stage of the struggle lies ahead. The Palestinians in Gaza must be given the full rights afforded to every nation including to guard its own borders, and the right to elect a government of their choice.

Beyond Gaza, the Palestinian resistance in the occupied West Bank is fighting a parallel war against the campaign of destruction and ethnic cleansing by Israel’s fascist settler movement. The ceasefire does not apply there or in East Jerusalem.

Israel is being assisted there by the unelected puppets of the Palestinian Authority and the traitor Mahmoud Abbas, whose limited but heavily armed forces are truly a “Mere mercenary army.” Nevertheless, the West Bank resistance will rejoice at the victory in Gaza and see it for what it is: a sign of Israel’s waning power. The pro-Palestine movement must organize to prevent Israel, with the backing of the fascist president of the United States, Donald Trump from annexing the West Bank and East Jerusalem into Israel.

The International Movement

Secondly, this ceasefire is a victory for the huge international anti-war movement that sprung into action as soon as Israeli forces started bombing Gaza and Israeli politicians and generals announced their genocidal aims. It is especially a victory for all the people in the Palestinian and Arab diaspora who have played a leading role in the mass movement from its inception – and for the large numbers of anti-Zionist Jews who have played a prominent role in the movement, most of all in Britain, America and Germany.

In each of those countries, and in other western imperialist countries, the mass movements in support of Palestine have become the central progressive, anti-racist opposition to their politically bankrupt governments, the governments that have empowered the Israeli genocide. Once it became clear that our movement’s demand to end arms shipments including from the U.S., Germany and Britain was winning, Israel was forced to capitulate and accept defeat. One of the most important lessons our anti-imperialist pro-Palestine movement must learn is that the toothless misguided appeals of our movement’s leaders to the Democrats in the United States and the Labour Party government in the United Kingdom achieved nothing. The tactics that won were independent militant mass actions organized by workers, students, immigrant communities and the oppressed that won the ceasefire. To extend our momentous victory we must make the demand: not a bullet, bomb or fighter plane for the IDF (which is using the time between the announcement and the beginning of the ceasefire to go on a killing spree); not a penny for the Israeli government!

No to Imperialist Plans for Palestine! Yes to Palestinian self-determination!

In the 1950s, discussion about the future of British colonies routinely raised the question ‘yes, but are they ready for it?’ – Often asked about societies that had run their own affairs for centuries before the United Kingdom or the United States existed.

Something very similar is happening now. Even the most liberal news media are asking ‘Who will run Gaza?’ It is reminiscent of the notorious lines written by the racist, imperialist poet Rudyard Kipling, “Take up the white man’s burden” and “Your new-caught, sullen peoples, half devil and half child.”

Today, whenever imperialist politicians discuss the “Two-State Solution,” there are always certain conditions: Israel always has a veto on decisions; the Palestinian state will be ‘demilitarised;’ and no organisation the western imperialists or Israel call ‘Terrorist’ can have any role in the administration of the state.

That is not a State, but more like a ‘native reserve.’ It seems they regard Palestinians as ‘half devil and half child’ – 126 years after those lines were written.

The anti-war movement must state clearly that the only acceptable, democratic solution is self-determination. The Palestinian people will declare their own independence, decide how their state is to be organised, elect whoever they want, and have the right to defend themselves. They will also have the same right to make mistakes that the imperialists insist on for themselves.

It is quite possible that the Israeli occupation will end in Gaza before it ends in the much larger area of the West Bank. There will be a mammoth task of reconstruction and Gazans will need a great deal of help, but every point made in the previous paragraph must still apply.

The people who resisted the Israeli genocide are certainly capable of controlling their own post-occupation destiny.

1-17-25

Movement for Justice (MFJ/Britain)

The Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration & Immigrant Rights, and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary (BAMN/US)