Dastardly disinformation and division attempts fail to break spirit

In the middle of June 2007, the military arm of the Palestinian resistance group Hamas, seized the headquarters, training facilities and arms caches of US-financed, Israeli-backed gangs in the Gaza Strip. It dissolved their organization, the so-called Preventive Security Force, and made its head and his cronies flee. This was widely portrayed in the imperialist-controlled media as a “mini civil war” between Palestinian factions. In fact, by decisively acting to stop the hands of those Palestinians, who were acting as the tools of the Zionist Israeli forces, the Palestinian resistance showed once again that it is determined to carry forward the long struggle for securing national rights.

The imperialist-controlled media has painted the attempts of the resistance fighters to rid the Gaza Strip of Israeli -backed gangs as a clash between Hamas and Al Fatah, or a coup d’etat. On the contrary, senior officials Al Fatah have gone on record to welcome the action to get rid of traitors and collaborators from their ranks. Hamas officials made it clear that their fight is not against Fatah, an organisation with a long history in the struggle for Palestinian national rights, but against just one group of Fatah agents who were following the Zionist agenda. While the Israeli government and its imperialist backers were themselves planning to incite a reactionary civil war and emasculation of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), they have accused Palestinians of plotting these crimes!

In January 2006, the Change and Reform slate sponsored by Hamas won the national elections for the Palestine Legislative Council. The US and its allies refused to recognise this government which was elected with a huge majority since it vowed not to compromise with the basic aims of the Palestinian people. The US and Israel mobilized the European Union and others to inflict a massive financial embargo and other sanctions designed to force the Palestinians into submission. However, the majority of the Palestinian people refused to be duped by the conspiratorial US imperialists and their collaborators and agents into revolting against Hamas and killing each other.

The US imperialists also directly funded the setting up of a so-called “Palestinian National Guard” led by Muhammad Dahlan, operating entirely independently of the civilian control of the PNA Ministry of the Interior. This group was planning a bloody campaign against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, involving the murder of hundreds of its leaders and activists. Palestinian resistance fighters decisively moved in to avoid the massacre. After seizing the Palestinian Authority’s Security headquarters in Gaza City, Hamas fighters reported that they had seized tens of thousands of sensitive intelligence documents, including correspondence between the US CIA and the Israeli Zionists regarding security issues, video tapes, surveillance records and more. Concrete proof has thus been obtained of what was common knowledge all along – that the US imperialist subversive agency CIA was actively involved in training, arming and supporting the Zionists and their agents in the attempt to suppress the struggle of Palestinian people.

The state of Israel was created in 1947-48 by occupying Palestine and rendering the Palestinian people homeless and stateless in their own land. Since then, imperialism has consistently backed the fascist Zionist state of Israel, and denied the just claims of the Palestinian people on these occupied territories. However, the Palestinian people have gained a reputation all over the world as never-say-die fighters, braving all the hardships and humiliation heaped on them.

Almost exactly a year ago, Israeli Zionist armed forces, under the pretext of freeing a captured soldier, bombed or destroyed the bulk of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, including schools, colleges, streets, bridges and thousands of homes and the only power station. They also launched a full scale attack against the Lebanese people, dropping more than 1.5 million cluster bombs throughout southern Lebanon, slaughtering more than a thousand innocent civilians and displacing tens of thousands more. Hundreds of thousands of people all over the world including India came onto the streets to denounce the attacks of Israeli government. The determined stand of the Lebanese national resistance to the ferocious US – backed Zionist assault and the fight of the Palestinian people marked a turning point for the oppressed peoples of all the Arab countries in general and for the Lebanese and Palestinian resistance struggle in particular. The Israeli government of Olmert almost collapsed under the impact of this unforeseen resistance and the support it received all over the world.

Peoples Voice calls upon the Indian working class and people to continue to support the valiant Palestinian people in their struggle for their national rights.