The asymmetry in the war between the State of Israel and Hamas in Gaza does not define the nature of the conflict. Two fronts of imperialist powers are fighting for their bourgeois objectives and using the population for these purposes, speculating on their suffering. The victims of the October 7 massacre in the southern kibbutzim at the hands of Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants are useful to the bourgeois regime in Tel Aviv in its attempt to regiment the Israeli working class to the imperialist policies of Israel and the powers that support it.

Not unlike the way the Israeli regime exploits the victims of October 7, the thousands of Palestinian victims of Israeli air force bombs serve Hamas to maintain control over the proletariat and dispossed masses of Gaza, as well as to the regional powers that support it – first and foremost Iran and Turkey – to divert the anger of their respective working classes against the external enemy – the “USA-Israel” binomial – preventing them from directing it against their own national bourgeoisie, to divert the class struggle onto the reactionary terrain of war between states.

The openly bourgeois policy that denies the class struggle and wants the working class in every country to be in solidarity with its own national bourgeoisie, in competition and war with the workers of other countries, is supported and falsified by the opportunist politics of the fake workers’ parties that transform the class struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie into a struggle between nations of the North and South of the world. An anti-communist ideological mystification that was the original work of Fascism, which contrasted the so-called proletarian nations with the demo-plutocracies, and which has been inherited by opportunism in its various shades, from statolatry to anarcho-syndicalism.

The Israeli government’s declared objective in the invasion of Gaza is the destruction of Hamas and, more generally, of “terrorism”. However, assessments of the actual degree of Hamas’ destruction are by no means unanimous. A former Major General of the Israeli army stated that “soon we will no longer be able to carry out these repeated raids, because with each passing day the Israeli Defense Forces are weakening and the number of deaths and injuries among our soldiers is increasing”. On September 17th he reiterated: “The continuous fighting has lost all purpose and the war of attrition is destroying everything that is good in Israel: its economy, its international relations, its social fabric and the motivation of its fighters. Many reservists refuse to be called up again and again... Because the IDF high command has reduced the ground forces by 66% compared to 20 years ago, it doesn’t have enough troops to remain in any conquered territory for a long time, nor does it have troops to relieve those who are fighting. Consequently, the IDF is forced to leave any territory it conquers, as happened in Gaza and as will happen in Lebanon” (Haaretz, September 17).

On a military level there is an obvious difference between air and land actions, and between these if they are outside or inside an urban environment. Social control of the territory also involves different difficulties, requiring vast numbers and resources, which are exhausting for any state. For a small country like Israel these difficulties are greater, given that it has a population of just under 10 million, of which a fifth, about two million, are Arab-Israelis, who are not called up to serve in the army.

For this reason, unless it resorts to a policy of genocide and ethnic cleansing, Israel will have to entrust the social and political control of the masses to local bourgeois parties. This is the reason why, even if it achieves its objective of completely destroying Hamas, it will not be able to prevent the formation of similar political organizations.

Hamas is a party: it cannot be eradicated, at most it can be momentarily limited through the operations in progress and the elimination of its leaders. This doesn’t mean that the world bourgeoisie won’t arrive at the “solution” of the Palestinian question in the future through genocide or ethnic cleansing. But this barbarism, although presented as consistent with the specific Zionist ideology, will be part of the historical course of capitalism, in the context of an imperialist conflict towards which world capitalism is heading, just as it was with the Holocaust, a product of the descent of imperialism into the Second World War.

Therefore it is not at all certain that genocide and ethnic cleansing will not happen tomorrow with the roles reversed, with the Jews once again succumbing. If Gaza is a ghetto for two million and 100 thousand Gazans, the State of Israel is just a bigger ghetto.

The third world imperialist conflict is maturing in the womb of capitalism. Every city will be a proletarian ghetto and the present of Gaza in ruins is the future promised by the capitalist society to most of the world’s metropolises, like and worse than what happened in the Second World War for Europe and Japan.

And even today only the international revolution of the proletariat will be able to prevent the repetition of similar massacres.

The difficulties already encountered by the Israeli army in ground operations in Gaza are already having an effect on the internal control of the population. This reached a peak on September 1st, with hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in the streets of Tel Aviv and other cities, a protest that for months has been calling for a change in government policy and an agreement with Hamas aimed at freeing the hostages. There is growing discontent over the continuing war, the hostages, the death of soldiers, and the economic difficulties that are weighing on companies and affecting their employees.

Although Israeli society and the working class are still chained to the bourgeois politics of the State, as expressed by successive governments, these demonstrations are against the war in Gaza. On the day of the big demonstrations on September 1st, the Histadrut union, the largest trade union confederation in the country, called a general strike in support of a negotiated solution that would bring the hostages home.

The Histadrut has a deeply rooted tradition of class collaboration. The general strike of September 3rd was supported by the country’s industrialists. But for the workers, the motive for the strike was their conditions, crushed by the war. Furthermore, the strike brought Arab-Israeli workers closer to Jewish workers, breaking down the wall erected by the Israeli and Arab bourgeoisie to divide them. Some deputies presented two bills, one to prohibit strikes in essential services and the other to hinder the unionization of workplaces.

With the shift of the center of gravity of military operations from Gaza to the north against Hezbollah, fears of an extension of the conflict to a regional scale have resurfaced.

Only the return of the class struggle of the international proletariat can prevent war, uniting workers above ethnic, religious and national barriers. In Lebanon – but also in Iraq – in recent years there have been signs of protests that cut across ethnic and religious divisions. Strikes have also been taking place in recent weeks in Iran.

The national bourgeoisie in the Middle East can only keep the working class under control through a constant state of war and periodic massacres.