From the fragile truce that began on Sunday, January 19th in Gaza, all the contenders claim to be winners.

Israel

Since the day after the massacre of October 7, 2023, carried out by Hamas and Islamic Jihad militias, the Israeli bourgeois regime has fought on several fronts, officially declared seven: in the South in Gaza, in the North with Hezbollah in Lebanon, in Syria against the pro-Iranian militias linked to the Assad regime, in Iraq against other pro-Iranian militias, against the Houthis in Yemen, against the Iranian regime and finally against the armed groups of Hamas and the PIJ in the West Bank. Seen in this broader context, the war fought in these 15 months has been a success for Israel. Hezbollah, militarily far more powerful than Hamas, has been severely weakened, with a considerable part of its leadership physically eliminated, with the military logistic structures in Southern Lebanon largely destroyed, with heavy blows inflicted along the Beqa’ valley and in the Shiite neighborhoods of Beirut.

This led to the truce on November 27th that Hezbollah was forced to accept, which granted Israel the right to strike Hezbollah forces wherever it deemed they were not complying with the planned withdrawal to the north of the Litani river and their replacement with the forces of the regular Lebanese army, which is militarily weaker than Hezbollah. Israel has not hesitated to exercise this right, with more localized but almost daily bombings against positions, men, warehouses and vehicles of the pro-Iranian Shiite armed group. Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon, scheduled for January 27, has been postponed. Less than seven days after the signing of this truce, the advance of the Sunni militias organized in Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which, moving from the enclave of Idlib, where they held power, conquered Aleppo on December 2, and in a few days descended south until they took Damascus on December 8, deposing the Assads who had been in power since 1970. This led to the breaking of the so-called “Shiite corridor”, which from Iran passed through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon, supplying Hezbollah with weapons, and to the flight from Syria of pro-Iranian militias, which fell back into Iraq. This was a second blow to the Iranian regime and its imperialist ambitions in the region.

Hezbollah was thus weakened both by Israel’s direct military action, which led to the truce, and by the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, which had been strengthening it from behind. In Lebanon, after two and a half years of paralysis, on January 8th the parliament managed to elect a new president, Joseph Aoun, and a few days later, on January 13th, a new prime minister, Nawaf Salam. This change of gear in Lebanese bourgeois politics has sanctioned the weakening of the so-called “Shiite tandem” – formed by Hezbollah and the Amal party – in the country. This change in the balance of power between the bourgeois parties in Lebanon led to a visit to the country by the President of the French Republic, Macron, on January 17. France, which is witnessing an inexorable decline of its imperialism, starting with Africa, and which had Lebanon and Syria as two strongholds of its colonial empire, can take comfort in this turn of events in its favor. On a regional level, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Qatar are reaching out to gain influence and economic advantages from the renewed inter-bourgeois power struggle in the land of the cedars. On January 23rd the Saudi Foreign Minister landed in Beirut for the first time in 15 years.

However, the strength of the Shiite bourgeois parties in Lebanon has been reduced but not annihilated. On February 8th a new government was formed that entrusted 5 ministries to Amal and Hezbollah, including those of finance, health and labor, but none to Hezbollah. On the military front, since February 6 there have been clashes on the border between Lebanon and Syria between Lebanese Shiite militias and Syrian Sunni forces of the HTS.

The new Lebanese government formed on February 8 reflects the change in the balance of power both regionally and within the country. Five ministries have been entrusted to the Shiite party Amal – including those of finance, health and labor – but none to Hezbollah, which generally had two and thus loses the power of veto it had enjoyed until now, given that the most important decisions, such as approval of the state budget, going to war or implementing economic reforms, require the approval of at least two thirds of the Lebanese cabinet.

On the military front, since February 6 there have been clashes on the border between Lebanon and Syria between Lebanese Shiite militias and Syrian Sunni forces of the HTS.

The truce imposed on Hezbollah and the fall of Assad in Syria have had another consequence favorable to Israel, namely a more marked isolation of Hamas in Gaza. In fact, since October 8, 2023, Hezbollah had been launching missiles on Northern Israel, while keeping its action at a level that would not lead to an open war. Although there was partial support from the Shiite party to Hamas, it stopped on November 27. Furthermore, after Assad’s fall on December 8th, Israel launched a wave of massive bombings against the military structures of the Syrian Arab Armed Forces (SAAF), almost completely destroying the air, anti-air and naval forces of the deposed regime, preventing them from taking possession of the new Sunni bourgeois faction that had come to power. This means that for the next few years Israel will have less to worry about military threats from Syria and will have even more freedom in Syrian airspace, allowing it to get closer to Iraqi airspace and from there to Iranian airspace, which it flew over as recently as October 25th, bombing some military targets. Israel could also benefit from what happened in Syria. The fall of the Assad family has favored Turkish imperialism which, with the Syrian National Army (SNA) – financed, supplied and trained by Ankara – is active in northwestern Syria fighting the Kurdish forces of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the Syrian branch of the PKK, who lead the Syrian Democratic Forces, an Arab-Sunni minority.

The Kurds control a vast territory, about a third of the whole of Syria, in the part to the east of the Euphrates, in the North-East of the country, except for a strip on the border with Turkey, which is controlled by Turkey through the SNA. The territory controlled by the Kurds is the richest part of the country in terms of oil and agricultural products and goes well beyond the real Kurdish presence on Syrian territory. The Syrian Kurds enjoy the military support of the United States, present there with two thousand soldiers, and had a non-hostile relationship with the Assad regime, which granted them substantial autonomy.

The strengthening of Turkish imperialism threatens the Kurdish forces led by the PYD, which have also been weakened by the loss of control over the Arab-Sunni minorities who look to the new Sunni masters of the HTS. As a result, the Kurdish nationalists of the PYD are taking steps towards an alliance with the Israeli regime. Tel Aviv’s Foreign Minister, Gideon Sa’ar, recently declared: “The Kurdish people are a great nation, one of the great nations without political independence ... they are our natural ally ... [Israel] must extend a hand and strengthen [our] ties with them”. What is perhaps most worth noting at this juncture is how much the much-vaunted issues of principle are worth to bourgeois regimes and parties, used to justify wars that are instead for the sole purpose of profit.

In fact, we have an Israeli minister who pretends to feel sorry for the Kurdish national oppression while perpetuating the Palestinian one in a sea of blood. And at the same time, Kurdish nationalist parties that ally themselves with the two imperialisms – USA and Israel – primarily responsible for a national oppression identical to the one they suffered. It can be said that there is no solidarity between oppressed national minorities, even if they are so close geographically. From the moment that national struggles no longer have a social, revolutionary or progressive content, unlike in the past, in a capitalism that has now reached its imperialist phase all over the world, nationalist parties and movements are only puppets of the clash between imperialisms.

Another element that highlights the value of bourgeois political-ideological principles is the fact that the United States considers the PKK a terrorist organization, but not the PYD, its Syrian branch, which they instead support militarily. On the other hand, the HTS was also defined as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union, but through Ukrainian military aid they were supported by the United States, and after they took power, all the political-diplomatic leaders of Western countries went on a pilgrimage to recognize the new holders of power.

Ukraine’s support through the supply of drones – of which Kiev has become a first-rate producer thanks to substantial investments from the United States – and training in their use contributed to the victory of the HTS and led to the weakening of Russian imperialism, which had to evacuate a large part of its military forces – land, air and naval forces – and may have to abandon both the Tartus naval base, where Moscow’s naval forces have been present since 1971, and the Khmeimim air base, built in 2015 and where Putin had been on a visit as recently as 2017. For Moscow, the loss of these bases in Syria would mean not having a military logistic-operational center in the Eastern Mediterranean that was used for Russian imperialistic expansion towards Africa. Moscow paid part of the lease on the port of Tartus by sending wheat supplies; these were interrupted with the collapse of the Assad regime and have been replaced by Ukrainian supplies.

The reaction to the setbacks suffered by Iran and Russia was the signing of a “global strategic partnership treaty” between the two countries on January 17 in Moscow. The relationship between Iran and Russia had been so non-linear as to be a “partnership” that in Syria the Israeli air force was allowed free rein by the Russian air force to strike pro-Iranian militias, which served as support for Hezbollah in Lebanon and for Assad’s regime itself. According to the January 15th edition of Haaretz: “Israel enjoyed almost unlimited access [to Syrian airspace] coordinated with the Russian command at the Khmeimim airbase”.

The partnership between the two imperialisms has been completed after being postponed for a long time. The contrasting interests of Russian and Persian capitalism are different, but the common difficulty has evidently made them overcome them, always partially. A situation similar to the so-called “Russian-Chinese friendship”, strengthened by the war in Ukraine.

Alliances between bourgeois states are only for profit and as such are always fragile and reversible.

Hamas

So far the reasons why it is Israel that can be said to have emerged victorious from the conflict that began on October 7, 2000, on the border with the Gaza Strip and then spread. But it is precisely in Gaza that the result cannot be said to be equally favorable to Israel.

Although around 20 thousand Hamas militants and other allied Palestinian nationalist parties in Gaza died in the 15 months of fighting and their military strength was greatly reduced, the Israeli government’s declared objective of destroying Hamas and preventing it from remaining in power in the Gaza Strip was not achieved.

Hamas, together with the Iranian regime, have therefore claimed victory. A victory celebrated over 50 thousand corpses! Hamas was able and willing to show that it was still present in force by displaying, in the days following the truce signed on January 17, its police and militia men armed and fully dressed, with uniforms neat and perfectly clean. He has organized the delivery of Israeli hostages – five to date – through regime demonstrations to show his strength and his alleged popularity among the masses of Gaza. Certainly this support is not as unanimous and strong as they would have us believe and the majority of the people present at the delivery of the hostages were selected from among the supporters of the Islamist party.

In the days following the truce, Hamas declared that the deployment of militiamen and police was aimed at “preventing a power vacuum and chaos, ensuring public order despite the devastation” and “having succeeded in putting all the police stations in the Gaza Strip back into operation”. On Thursday, January 23rd, the Hamas Ministry of the Interior announced that its men were “exchanging gunfire in the eastern part of Rafah with ’truck thieves appointed by the Israeli occupation”.

For months, the few humanitarian aid trucks allowed to enter Gaza had been subjected to assaults by so-called “criminal gangs”. With the truce the number of trucks entering the Strip immediately increased. According to Al Jazeera, the media giant financed mainly by Qatar, as of January 31st 7,926 trucks had entered the Strip, of which 197 were oil tankers, 208 were transporting tents and two thirds were carrying food. Aid control is one of Hamas’ sources of funding. It is likely that the trucks were attacked by criminal groups who then resold basic necessities on the black market at high prices, but it is also possible that they were attacked by the hungry civilian population. This jeopardizes Hamas’ earnings and its control over the population. When they were subjected to daily Israeli bombardments, the population’s main concern was to survive. Now that, at least temporarily, the Israeli bombs have stopped falling, it won’t be easy for Hamas to maintain control over 2,300,000 people, in the conditions to which the war has reduced them.

The reports that Hamas continues to recruit many young and very young people, full of hatred and anger for the massacres and destruction carried out by Israel, are to be considered true. But there is no doubt that discontent among the population also plays a part against those who ruined the Gazans into the war. Furthermore, it should be considered that being a militiaman provides a source of income in a situation where the economy has been destroyed.

Hamas’s show of force is therefore not only directed against Israel and the other enemy powers, but also has an internal purpose, aimed at the proletariat and the dispossessed of Gaza, to warn them that every uprising will be met with the bullets of those policemen and militiamen who are so well dressed and armed.

Indeed, for the Israeli bourgeois state, if on the one hand having signed a truce with Hamas means admitting that they haven’t achieved the proclaimed objective of the war, on the other hand it allows them to maintain a permanent state of emergency, of perpetually looming war, useful for the purpose of controlling the working class. Also because every extra day of truce allows Hamas to reorganize and replenish its depleted forces. On February 9th the Israeli army also withdrew from the Netzarim corridor, which crosses the Strip horizontally just south of Gaza City, allowing the complete movement of people and vehicles, including military vehicles, from south to north.

The crowds brought together by Hamas at the places where the hostages are handed over serve to support the lie that all Palestinians support Hamas, just as, on the other side, the bourgeois Palestinian parties inculcate in the proletariat the idea that all Israelis support the government and that solidarity with the workers who oppose it cannot be built.

The objective of destroying Hamas is certainly difficult to achieve, but in fact not even desirable for the Israeli bourgeoisie.

Hamas is financed by the regional and world imperialist powers that support it – Iran, Turkey, Qatar – and the Palestinian underclass and dispossessed that it feeds to fill the ranks of its militias. Despite the immense destruction, the objective of the complete defeat of Hamas has not been reached, which leads us to believe that a greater military effort would be required. Bombing is not enough and more men would be needed on the ground. This is not easy even for an army armed to the teeth, thanks to funding from US imperialism, to sustain. Israel has already shown the first signs of crisis in the face of the longest war which it has been engaged in since its foundation in 1948 with the daily drip of victims, which is a lot for a population of only 8 million Israeli Jewish citizens. But even if this objective were to be achieved militarily, the sources of Hamas’s life would generate a similar party in its place.

The underlying problem is social control of the proletariat, first and foremost of the Palestinians but also of the Israelis. A “Greater Israel” including the West Bank and Gaza would have a 50% Arab-Palestinian population. Capitalism in its youthful and progressive phase would aim to overcome ethnic divisions through economic growth and reforms. Capitalism in its senile, imperialist phase is increasingly closing in on racism and the oppression of minorities all over the world and in Israel in the “Jewish state”.

The Israeli bourgeois state has no solution to the Palestinian problem. War is useful to weaken the opposing powers in the division of profits and Hamas’s proclamations for the “destruction of Israel” keep Israeli workers terrorized, so that they seek protection in the state of the dominant bourgeoisie that will lead them to the massacre of war. This is why Israel has financed Hamas for years and, more recently, accepted that Qatar could increase its financing. This is why today it rejects any plan to entrust political control to the Palestinian National Authority that holds it in the West Bank: because saying “no” to the PNA in Gaza is equivalent to saying “yes” to Hamas.

The Proletariat

The solution that capitalism has to offer to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is only part of the framework of the third world war that humanity is heading towards. In this war, it will be possible to solve this almost century-old conflict in a capitalistic way, through ethnic cleansing and genocide, perhaps with a Greater Israel, or perhaps with a Palestine “free from the Jordan to the sea”, depending on which imperialist front wins. In any case, the working class would be defeated once again, on both sides of the front, if it is convinced to throw itself into a new proletarian holocaust behind the flags of the homeland, religion, democracy, ethnic hatred, whichever is best suited to help the bourgeoisie of each country achieve this goal.

But this perspective, this objective of the international bourgeoisie, is by no means guaranteed, because standing in its way are the catastrophic economic crisis of world capitalism and the revolt, the struggle, and finally the revolution of the proletarian masses.

The Iranian regime also didn’t miss the opportunity to claim victory for the truce in Gaza, trying to recover morale and internal social control after the heavy blows suffered in a few months. On February 8th, Hamas political leader Khalil Al-Hayya and other party leaders were received in Tehran by Ayatollah Khamenei.

But shortly after Assad’s fall, on December 8, strikes multiplied at the end of the year and then in the first weeks of January. The national currency continues to devalue and inflation to grow. On December 13, 1 US dollar (USD) was exchanged for 740,000 Rials, the Iranian currency. On December 27, the exchange rate for 1 USD was 800 thousand Rials. On January 23, it was 840 thousand Rials. On February 9, it was 890 thousand Rials.

Wherever it starts, the revolt of the proletarian masses serves to undermine the divisions of war that the international bourgeoisie uses to send the workers to the slaughterhouse for its exclusive benefit, that is, for its profits, regardless of the fact that the revolt seems to favor the fortunes of the bourgeois front where it has not yet taken root. If the Ayatollah regime were to fall under the blows of the struggling working class, the Israeli bourgeois regime would certainly claim victory, but the external enemy that props up its internal front would be removed. Both the Palestinian and Israeli warmongering nationalist parties would be weakened.

In this sense it’s true: both sides of this bourgeois war can claim to be winners, because the real loser is the proletariat, in Gaza, in Israel and throughout the Middle East. A truce wanted and decided by the bourgeois forces that wanted the war, not determined by the rebellion of the proletarian masses on one or both sides of the front, is only a pause while waiting for the conflict to resume. In itself it doesn’t mark a step forward towards conditions that would prevent the next world imperialist conflict from developing. But it is also true that all bourgeoisies and their states are intrinsically weak, sick, because they are being attacked by the economic and social crisis of capitalism, which is deepening more and more every day. The next revolt of the proletariat in the region – starting in Iran, Egypt, Turkey ... – will shake to their foundations all the bourgeois regimes in the area, and in the world, more than the “Arab springs” did in 2011, because it will happen in even more critical conditions for that old, great invalid that is world capitalism.

Historically, imperialisms have all already been defeated because they have nothing to offer to save themselves but death and destruction, the devastation of Gaza and of the world.

The proletariat, defeated in every conflict that begins and is fought to the end, is the problem that capitalism cannot solve and that, when for material reasons it inevitably reconnects with its party, overcoming a hundred years of counter-revolution, in a Stalinist and democratic guise, it will be fatal for it and will give back to the workers and to the whole of humanity hope and confidence in the future that today seem lost forever.