The Many Conflicts in the Region

The carnage carried out on October 7, 2023, by the militias of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad — 1,200 civilians killed, including pacifists and immigrant laborers, and 250 kidnapped — opened the new and, to date, bloodiest conflict between the State of Israel and dominant Arab-Palestinian groups, which has been going on for 24 months, with a brief truce between January and March, and which has spread from Gaza to much of the Middle East.

It is difficult to say what the intentions were of the bourgeois parties that control the Gaza Strip – now reduced to a residual part – and of the capitalist states that support them. But it is clear that this massacre – which expressed a desire for genocide identical to that which the Israeli bourgeois regime is carrying out – has for months united Israeli society behind its government, which has thus enjoyed the most favorable conditions for unleashing war on Gaza.

A war which, according to data provided by the Hamas Ministry of Health and confirmed by the Israeli forces, has so far claimed over 67,000 victims, destroyed much of the Strip’s building stock – including infrastructure, hospitals, schools, and mosques – and caused a famine which, according to the UN food program, affected around 650,000 Gazan proletarians a month ago.

Of the 2.3 million inhabitants, according to the 2023 census, around 200,000 have managed to leave, a minority, most of whom, according to data repeatedly reported by the Haaretz newspaper, paid around $4,000 to organizations operating in the Egyptian Sinai. These are therefore mainly middle-class families or the wealthy strata of the petty bourgeoisie.

Of the 67,000 Palestinian victims, 46% are under the age of 18, including nearly 1,000 infants, and the ratio of militants to civilians killed is 1 to 5 (according to the Israeli government, 1 to 2). This massacre was predictable, given that the area is one of the most densely populated in the world and has an extremely young population, considering the very high birth rate (1.5 million inhabitants in 2001; 2.3 million in 2023; over 50,000 new births in 2023).

After October 7, pro-Iranian forces in Lebanon (Hezbollah), Syria, Iraq, and Yemen (Houthis) did not launch a determined, coordinated, and simultaneous offensive against Israel. Instead, according to the Iranian regime, they were free to decide for themselves the degree and type of response. This resulted only in the launch of missiles to maintain the pretense of solidarity with the Palestinian cause, but not enough to provoke open war with Israel.

However, this did not prevent Israel from launching a powerful offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon in August 2024, 10 months after the start of the conflict in Gaza, decapitating its leadership, considerably weakening its militias, and pushing them back north of the Litani River. Israel launched a powerful offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon, decapitating its leadership, considerably weakening its militias, and pushing them back north of the Litani River. The defeat was sealed by the truce signed on November 27, which opened up a new balance between the Lebanese bourgeois political forces, with the new government attempting to disarm Hezbollah’s militias.

Less than a week after the signing of this truce, Sunni militias belonging to Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) began their advance in Syria, conquering Damascus on December 8, 2024, and deposing the Assads, who had been in power since 1971.

This was a second blow to Iranian imperialism, interrupting the so-called “Shiite corridor,” which allowed for the continuous movement of people, goods, and weapons from Iran to the Mediterranean, passing through Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon.

The fall of the Assads also dealt a blow to Russian imperialism, which now sees its three military bases in Syria at risk: the naval base in Tartus, which it has held since 1971, and the air bases in Hmeimim and Qamishli.

The Russian presence in Syria was in support of the Alawite bourgeoisie—an ethnic minority on which the Assad clan’s power was based and which in March was attacked by Sunni militias protected by the new government, who massacred nearly a thousand people in a few days. Recalling the cynicism and Machiavellianism of the bourgeoisie, Israel now supports the Russian presence in the three Syrian bases, in an anti-Turkish key and to weaken the new Syrian regime, for the same reason it supports the Kurds in the north east of the Euphrates and the Druze south of Damascus.

The key is the balance of power between the states in the area, which compete for markets and territories, with alliances that vary according to circumstances—i.e., convenience—and dependence on the world’s imperial masters, the US, once the USSR—after the counterrevolution in Stalinist guise—and today Russia and China.

After the US’s second war with Iraq in 2003 and the resulting devastation of that country, until then an important capitalist power in the area and a direct rival of Iran, the latter has been able to expand its influence over Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, and Yemen for 20 years. The war in Gaza has detonated many fronts in as many wars, seven in total, with the result of undermining this Iranian imperialist development, in favor of Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Israel. All bourgeois powers interested in limiting Iranian power but all ready to wage war against each other.

Even Chinese imperialism, the main rival of the US, which makes statements in support of the Palestinian cause and imports 90% of Iran’s exported oil, about 15% of its needs, thereby indirectly financing Iran’s imperialist projection, which in Gaza takes the form of support for Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and Hamas – is at the same time Israel’s largest trading partner, with China accounting for 17% of its imports, even more than it buys from the US, which accounts for 11%. Colossal Chinese state-owned companies build and operate highways, power plants, and ports, such as the one in Haifa. Chinese companies specializing in artificial intelligence operate drones to spy on Palestinians in Gaza and provide surveillance, facial recognition, and data collection systems in the West Bank.

The Russian and Iranian response to the setbacks of the first 15 months of the war – from October 2023 to December 2024 – was a “Strategic Cooperation Treaty” between the two countries, signed on January 17 in Moscow.

Meanwhile, Israel continued to take advantage of the conflict that had spread from Gaza to the Middle East, persevering with its strategy of fait accompli: it repeatedly bombed the military structures of what remained of the Syrian Arab Army, Air Force, and Navy to weaken the new regime, and gained ground and villages in the Golan Heights, reaching 40 kilometers from Damascus.

Very few voices of protest were raised by the international diplomatic community regarding the violation of Syria’s territorial sovereignty, compared to the chorus of feigned indignation after the much more limited Israeli bombing of Doha in Qatar on September 9.

Syria is and continues to be a prize contested between imperialist powers, which leverage ethnic rivalries among the local bourgeoisie, defined as clans given their family structure: between Turkey in the north and Israel in the south, with Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia interested in investing huge amounts of capital in the country’s reconstruction after the United States suspended most of its sanctions. The interests of Turkish imperialism are protected by the new Syrian regime, which represents part of the Sunni bourgeoisie, while Israel, as mentioned, relies on the Syrian Kurds in the northeast and the Druze in the south.

The United States is playing with several pawns in the area to protect the interests of its capitalists: the Israeli pawn, Turkey, which is a member of NATO, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates—the so-called petro-monarchies of the Persian Gulf—with which, during Trump’s visit last May, agreements worth $600 billion, $243 billion, and $200 billion, respectively, were concluded.

On May 18, the Israeli government began the new operation “Gideon’s Chariots” in Gaza, preceded by heavy bombing, which on August 20 became “Gideon’s Chariots 2” with the massive entry of troops and ground vehicles; on September 16, they began to penetrate the city of Gaza.

At such an opportune moment, after the significant gains made in those months of war, it was to be expected that the Israeli bourgeois regime would take advantage of the situation to push forward and challenge Iran’s regional power. This happened, in the usual agreement with the United States: from June 13 for 12 days, the Israeli air force struck Iranian military infrastructure, including nuclear facilities, and regime figures in the bourgeois neighborhoods of North Tehran. The brief conflict ended with the US bombing of several uranium enrichment facilities. This was followed by a cautious and pre-announced Iranian missile strike on the US military base in Qatar, the largest of that imperialism in the region. While the extent of the damage to facilities dedicated to military and civilian nuclear development is unknown, the damage to other facilities was certainly extensive.

But the brief war also showed how a small country like Israel, with a population of only 10 million – including 2 million Arab-Israelis who do not serve in the military – has great difficulty sustaining a conflict of greater length and intensity. In several cases, Iranian missiles overcame the sophisticated, powerful, and expensive interception system, causing damage and casualties, including among the Arab population.

This highlights how, in the context of the third imperialist world war, towards which capitalism is marching decisively, the destruction of Israel is by no means impossible, and how it is foolish for the working class of this country to rely on the military successes of its own national bourgeoisie. The only salvation lies in solidarity and international proletarian revolution, rejecting imperialist politics and war, first and foremost in one’s own country, beyond the two pillars of Hercules that open the way to communist revolution: THE ENEMY IS IN OUR COUNTRY and WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE.

The brief war between Israel and Iran also showed the real value of the strategic agreement signed in January between Moscow and Tehran. Russia was unable to do anything to support Iran, confirming the difficulties linked to the war in Ukraine, which absorbs most of its resources.

A further test of this “strategic cooperation” was the agreement signed on August 8 between the United States, Armenia, and Azerbaijan for the 43-kilometer-long Zangezur corridor, which runs along the border between Iran and Armenia, connecting Azerbaijan to its enclave of Nakhchivan, and from there to Turkey. The agreement provides for the transfer of de facto sovereignty over the corridor, in Armenian territory, to the United States. Iran thus remains isolated from Armenia, and therefore from Russia, which again did nothing to oppose it. Iran now shares its northern border west of the Caspian Sea only with Azerbaijan, whose Turkish-speaking minority is a thorn in the side of the bourgeois regime in Tehran. This was a further gain for Turkish and US imperialism, at the expense of Iranian and Russian imperialism.

Prior to this agreement, in July, new inter-ethnic violence erupted in Syria, following that between Alawites and Sunnis in March, this time between Bedouins and Druze in the southern governorate of Suwayda, where the Druze minority is concentrated. This confirmed the fragility of the new Syrian regime and its inability to prevent clashes between the bourgeois clans of different ethnic groups. This had two effects: the Kurds in the northeast slowed down the process of integrating their militias into the new Syrian army, and Israel, under the pretext of protecting the Druze, bombed the Syrian headquarters in Damascus, a target very close to the presidential palace – as a warning to the new regime and to Turkey – and moved closer to Damascus with its troops stationed in the south.

The final element in this picture is the clash between Israel and the Houthis, who are constantly launching missiles at Israel, one of which on Wednesday, September 24, broke through the anti-aircraft shield, hitting Eilat and injuring several civilians. In response, Israel has repeatedly bombed Yemeni infrastructure controlled by the Houthis and institutional and political buildings. On August 30, virtually the entire Houthi government was eliminated in a bombing that killed 12 ministers and senior officials, including the prime minister and the ministers of industry, foreign affairs, and justice.

War and Class Struggle

As necessary as it is to understand the plots and maneuvers of imperialism in the struggle for the division of world markets, Marxism frames this dynamic within historical development, that is, the struggle between classes, on the political and social planes, which, since the opening words of Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto of December 1847, has been “the engine of history.”

All capitalist states attack each other. Alliances are always between brigands, as this report also makes clear. “International law” is a fiction, a cover for the real fact that only the balance of power between the powers counts. “National sovereignty” is another sham, since weak bourgeois states are pawns of the stronger ones. These fictions hold up as long as the capitalist economic structure does not enter into crisis, as is its destiny, accelerating and exacerbating economic, political, and military competition, rising to military confrontation, which has never ceased, often with proxy wars, and, as this process advances, becoming open war between states, up to and including world war.

But all bourgeois states are first attacked at their base, internally, by economic and social crises. The wage-earning class is driven to struggle not by communist propaganda but by the worsening of its living conditions, the result of the advancing crisis of overproduction in world capitalism. If for capitalist states the principle of “national sovereignty” is a farce because the strong dominate the weak, for workers in all countries – both strong and weak – it is a farce because everywhere only Capital dominates and dictates.

The class struggle, which never ceases, is reignited and radicalized by the economic crisis, and in itself—implicitly—tends to endanger this social and political order in every state. A danger for the bourgeoisie; a goal for the proletariat that becomes explicit—declared and consciously pursued—only where the connection between the working class and the International Communist Party is strengthened.

Against this internal threat, the bourgeoisie has a supreme weapon: war. Against revolution: war. For every bourgeois state, it is easier to control the proletarian masses subjected to military discipline, in the army and in society, torn apart by the massacres of soldiers and civilians that imperialist war entails – useful for diverting them against a fake external enemy, to replace the supposed ideological interest of the Fatherland with that of the working class – than it is to control them in peacetime with ordinary police forces.

But a proletariat in revolt cannot be controlled in any way. The working class in Italy went on mass strike in 1943, even under German occupation and fascism. Police forces and repression are useless when society is in turmoil.

In the brief 12-day war between Israel and Iran, the Netanyahu government stated that one of its objectives was to bring down the Ayatollah regime. The result was the opposite: the external threat rallied moderate opposition around the regime and allowed the arrest of its most vocal opponents. Israel thus increased the stability of the Iranian regime. The same mechanism was seen on October 7, 2023: Hamas gave Netanyahu and the other executioners in his government the most welcome gift. Through war, bourgeois regimes help each other: they spill the blood of the proletariat to prevent their revolt.

In Israel, too, the partial military victory over Iran consolidated the internal front, which, after the first few months of unity following the carnage of October 7, had broken down, with increasingly large demonstrations every Saturday in Tel Aviv and other cities.

But the beneficial effect for the Israeli government and regime was short-lived. In July, demonstrations against the war in Gaza grew. The majority of participants were demanding the return of the hostages still held by Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) – both living and dead. A truce was necessary for this return.

But a minority of this movement denounced the ongoing massacre in Gaza. Since July, they have taken to the streets with photos of tortured Palestinian children, in defiance of the police ban and breaking a taboo in Israeli society. These demonstrations have grown stronger.

Then there is the front of reservists, who in growing numbers (25%, they say) are refusing to be called up to fight in the Strip or the West Bank. It appears that around 40% of reservists returning from service encounter difficulties at work and economic hardship, often due to dismissal. The war, which has been going on for 24 months, is affecting the Israeli capitalist economy, worsening conditions for workers. It is an incipient crisis, but one that has been going on for some time, as evidenced by the teachers’ strike against wage cuts imposed to meet the costs of the war, which the regime’s Histadrut union boycotted.

In Israel, the anti-war movement maintains an interclassist and nationalist character in its participation and intentions. For August 17, it called on both workers and companies to “stop everything” for one day. Histadrut did not declare a strike, but only asked employers not to retaliate against strikers. It called for a strike last year, on September 1, 2024, but did not offer the slightest resistance to the court order that, after a few hours, ordered a return to work.

By not calling on workers to strike both against the war and in defense of their living conditions, explaining how these two aspects are two sides of the same coin, the anti-war movement is failing to address the crucial issue, namely the control of the regime’s Histadrut union over the working class in Israel. Until a strong faction is formed within the unions that imposes the merging of the workers’ defensive struggle with the struggle against the war, in solidarity with the exploited in other countries, the anti-war movement will not rise to the level of an effective working-class struggle capable of bringing Israel’s capitalist economy to its knees and hindering the imperialist policy of that bourgeois regime, a vassal of US imperialism.

The Palestinian “Resistance”

Since its foundation, the State of Israel has imposed a hateful and intolerable regime of discrimination against Palestinians, enshrined in the 2018 law that defined it as a “Jewish state.” The Arab-Palestinian proletariat, despite enjoying citizenship and equal civil and political rights—except for the right to serve in the army, unlike the Druze and Bedouins—are the most exploited section of the working class in Israel, excluded for years from the regime’s Histadrut union, and are thus subjected to double oppression, both class and ethnic.

In the West Bank, occupied by the Kingdom of Transjordan since 1948 and then by Israel in 1967, following the Six-Day War, the situation is worse, with outright apartheid under a strict military occupation regime. This fierce persecution has reached the point of extermination in Gaza.

But this “leap” in barbarism did not occur because of the characteristics of Zionist ideology, but because the unresolved Palestinian national question is now part of a world that has everywhere embraced capitalism, which has been in its final imperialist phase for over a century and is now marching towards World War III. In this context, the conflicts between imperialisms, between regional and world powers, are becoming increasingly bitter, and ethnic issues are being used in an increasingly cynical way to protect the interests of bourgeois states.

For decades, Palestine has not been the Algeria or Vietnam of the 1950s and 1960s, backward societies in a world with regions that were just emerging into modernity and the infamies of capitalism. In the decades immediately following the end of the Second Imperialist World War, some national bourgeoisies were still revolutionary, with the possibility of capitalist economic expansion and a relatively stable balance between the imperialist powers.

Today, Gaza and the West Bank are fully capitalist societies, with a bourgeoisie that is now reactionary, anti-proletarian, corrupt, and sold out to the regional and global bourgeoisie, inextricably intertwined with the dense network of capitalist and military interests in the area.

In the West, the prevailing narrative in the peace movement is that what is happening in Gaza is not a war but mere extermination. It is true, however, that extermination, ethnic cleansing, and genocide are instruments of imperialist war. In this interpretation, on the one hand there is a state, special in its ferocity, and on the other a “whole and united people” who “resist,” with or without weapons. This would be a unique case, not a stage in capitalism’s march toward a third imperialist world war. There is almost no mention of the parties that dominated and continue to dominate Gaza, its society, or their ties to the imperialist powers.

As always, opportunism tries to wriggle like an eel, jumping from one justification to another so as not to be pinned down to the real social facts.

In Gaza, the population, especially the proletariat, which—as always in peace and war—suffers more than other social classes, is desperately trying to survive. Is “resistance” “survival”? Of course not, for its supporters! “Resistance” should be some kind of political action by the masses, peaceful or armed. But neither the “people” in general nor the proletariat in particular in Gaza are armed. Hamas has always been careful not to give weapons to the proletarian masses because these masses would use them against that reactionary and anti-proletarian party.

In fact, the only peaceful mass demonstrations in 24 months of war have been against Hamas – “Hamas barra barra!”, meaning “Hamas out, out!”, was shouted between March and April this year – for peace, that is, for surrender. The “resistance” of the proletariat in Gaza has been against Hamas. It has been courageous and healthy class defeatism.

The approximately 20,000 Hamas militiamen are a separate body, better paid and opposed to the proletariat, like any police force in any capitalist regime. On several occasions in the years before this latest war, they repressed protests and persecuted political and trade union opponents. It was Hamas that abolished May Day.

With the advance of the Israeli army and its weakening, armed clashes began between the dominant bourgeois families in the Strip, who for years had endorsed or suffered its rule and who are now beginning to come out into the open in view of the new balance of power that may emerge.

Confirmation of the class division in Gazan society and of how the bourgeoisie profits from the proletariat even in the desperate situation in which it finds itself today is provided by the statement made on October 5 by Sheikh Ihsan Ibrahim Ashour, Mufti of the province of Khan Yunis: "In the name of God... To my dear brothers, the landowners in the displacement areas... To those who govern the country... Some greedy landowners in the displacement areas have taken advantage of the displaced people, renting them plots of land to pitch their tents at exorbitant prices, which have emptied their already empty pockets and tormented their already afflicted souls... This phenomenon has increased in these difficult days... Is their behavior any different from that of exploitative farmers, exaggerated monopolistic traders, usurers, and brigands who sow chaos on earth, criminals, and swindlers? (https://t.me/hamza20300/381465).

The Islamic priest naturally appeals to the bourgeois authorities and the good hearts of wealthy families, but he must give vent to the anger of the proletariat, of course.

A few days earlier, on September 29, part of the Tabarin Bedouin clan organized a demonstration in the center of the Strip with about 50 armed men against the killing by Hamas of one of their members, an official responsible for the security of food convoys entering the Strip through the Kisufim crossing, just north of Khan Yunis (https://t.me/hamza20300/379573).

In Gaza, therefore, it is the militias of the bourgeois parties and clans that exploit and oppress the proletariat that are armed, some of which do not disdain dealing with Israel, as Hamas itself has done for years.

In Gaza, there is no united people fighting against the foreign occupier, but rather a proletariat oppressed by its own bourgeoisie and by the Israeli bourgeoisie, who wage war on behalf of the various regional and global bourgeoisies at the expense of the proletariat, both of whom are interested in and complicit in their massacre and extermination. As is well known, a large part of the bourgeoisie of Gaza lives abroad and from there decides what the local militias should do.

Even in the West Bank, despite witnessing the greatest martyrdom of the Palestinian population since the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, there has been no reaction from the “popular masses” in support of the resistance, nothing reminiscent of either the first or the smaller second Intifada. Western supporters of the phantom “Palestinian resistance” pretend to ignore this historical fact of enormous importance. How can this be explained? Israeli repression? Certainly, but it was also extremely violent in 1987 and 2000! The conflict between Fatah and Hamas? Certainly, but Fatah is deeply discredited in the West Bank.

The decisive factor is that the proletariat in the West Bank, as in Gaza, no longer trusts national liberation to defend them, even though they recognize that they are still an oppressed nationality, because they understand that the oppression they suffer from the Palestinian bourgeoisie is no better than that from the Israeli bourgeoisie. The class question now transcends the national question.

They lack an international communist party that would give them the perspective of social struggle, of class struggle, in alliance with the proletariat of the entire area, including that of Israel, each primarily against its own bourgeoisie. This is the only path to the social emancipation of the Palestinians and the end of national oppression.

Outside of this perspective, the Palestinian proletariat is an increasingly useless overpopulation for capitalism, as its economic crisis advances and the third imperialist world war approaches. No one wants them: not Egypt, which has closed the Gaza Strip since 1980 more than Israel has, which, before October 7, at least allowed 15,000 Gazan proletarians a day to enter to be exploited; not even there do the other Arab countries want them; where they have historically been present as refugees for four generations, in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, they are discriminated against in a similar and even worse way than Arab-Palestinians who are citizens of Israel!

Their condition increasingly resembles, paradoxically, that of the Jews in Central Europe in the 1930s and during World War II: all states knew, but it suited everyone to have the National Socialist Party do the “dirty work” and persecute the Jews, because it was useful for stabilizing German capitalism on a social level, that is, for hindering the world revolution in preparation for war. Once that greatest massacre known to history – so far – was over and the genocide of the Jews had been consummated, the victorious bourgeois states speculated on the tragedy, presenting themselves as saviors and, above all, presenting this holocaust of the world proletariat as a just war, rather than an imperialist one on both sides.

What is happening in Gaza, therefore, is not the extermination of a people who are resisting against a state, but a war between two chains of capitalist powers in which the Gazans are being exterminated. The asymmetry of military forces and victims must not deceive us, and the atrocious barbarity must not blind us. Hamas has been negotiating with Israel for months, along with all the powers in the area. For months, they have been deciding that the war must continue, and with it the extermination.

Now the bourgeois states most known for their support of Hamas, such as Qatar and Turkey, seem to have reached an agreement, at the behest of US imperialism, and are urging Hamas to accept the truce.

Iran remains excluded and is the victim of this agreement. Evidently, the US has promised to give Qatar and Turkey important morsels of profit, starting with Syria, in exchange for abandoning Hamas, or bringing it into line, with a view to a further attack and downsizing of Iranian imperialism in the near future, which is welcomed by all these bourgeois gangs.