Will the Palestinian Groups Create a New Palestinian Political Project?

IN Cairo, representatives from Hamas held indirect negotiations with Israel for a ceasefire. The sticking point for several of the rounds was the order of events. Israel wanted the hostages to be released before it would stop the bombing, while Hamas said that the bombing must stop first. Israel has called for the disarming and dismantling of Hamas, which is a maximalist demand unlikely to be met. Hamas meanwhile would like not only a ceasefire but an end to the war.

Elites in the Global North Are Scared to Talk About Palestine

ISRAELI bombs continue to fall on Gaza, killing Palestinian civilians with abandon. Al Jazeera published a story about the destruction of 24 hospitals in Gaza, each of them bombed mercilessly by the Israeli military. Half of the 35,000 Palestinians killed by Israel were children, their bodies littering the overwhelmed morgues and mosques of Gaza.

They Can Blow Up Bridges, But They Don’t Have the Will to Build Them

THE countries of the global north are awash with weapons systems that have the capacity to blow up the world many times over. Not only do the countries in the global north have armies that are lethal and dangerous, but they are the largest exporters of weapons to the rest of the world, fuelling conflicts that could be settled by diplomacy. The larger the arsenal of weapons, the greater the confidence that they will be the arbiter of disputes – and so, even petty problems that can be resolved by negotiations escalate rapidly into war.

Europe Sleepwalks Through Its Own Dilemmas

ON March 19, 2024, the head of France’s ground forces, General Pierre Schill, published an article in the newspaper, Le Monde, with a blunt title: ‘The Army Stands Ready’. Schill cut his teeth in France’s overseas adventures in the Central African Republic, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, and Somalia. In this article, General Schill wrote that his troops are ‘ready’ for any confrontation and that he could mobilise 60,000 of France’s 121,000 soldiers within a month for any conflict.

Starvation is a War Crime: Note from Israeli Genocide against Palestinians

SPEAKING in Rome, Italy, the head of the United Nations World Food Programme Cindy McCain said, ‘If we do not exponentially increase the size of aid going into the northern areas’ of Gaza, ‘famine is imminent. It’s imminent’. Over 30,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza by the genocidal Israeli war, and the Palestinians in Gaza are on the verge of famine. Palestine’s Permanent Observer at the United Nations Riyad Mansour said that over half a million people are ‘one step away from famine’.

Red Books Day 2024

RED Books Day 2024 started in Indonesia, and it ended in Chile. Across the world, over one million people joined in a range of activities to celebrate a day that is increasingly becoming a fixture on the calendar of the international Left. In 2019, the Indian Society of Left Publishers began to investigate the viability of holding a celebration on February 21, the date of the publication of the Communist Manifesto in 1848.

Two Years of War in Ukraine

THE war in Ukraine has entered into the third year. It is now established beyond doubt that the war is waged by the US-led NATO, with Ukraine only as the theatre. The purpose of the war is also by now clear – to contain an assertive Russia and reinforce the hegemony of imperialist US. The vested interests of imperialist forces, which are funding and financing Ukraine are the reason for the failure of attempts to find a diplomatic solution.

There Is No Place for the Palestinians of Gaza to Go

ON February 9, 2024, Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that his army would advance into Rafah, the last remaining city in Gaza not occupied by the Israelis. Most of the 2.3 million Palestinians who live in Gaza had fled to its southern border with Egypt after being told by the Israelis on October 13, 2023, that the north had to be abandoned and that the south would be a “safe zone.” As the Palestinians from the north, particularly from Gaza City, began their march south – often on foot – they were attacked by Israeli forces, who gave them no safe passage.

JCP Elects First Woman Leader – Tomoko Tamura

THE Japanese Communist Party (JCP) made history recently by electing its first woman party leader. Tomoko Tamura was appointed as the new Chair of the JCP Executive Committee by delegates to the party’s 29th Congress in January.

The International Court of Justice Censures Israel for Its Genocidal War

ON January 26, 2024, the judges at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) released their twenty-nine-page order that found ‘plausible’ (paragraph 54) evidence that Israel was conducting a genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza. The court intervened in that war due to South Africa’s application that Israel had violated its obligations to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948). South Africa came to the ICJ two months and three weeks into Israel’s brutal military bombardment against the Palestinians.

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