"Israel will not stand by and accept attacks on its citizens and soldiers," declared Ehud Barak, prime minister of the Zionist regime, just before launching a helicopter-missile attack on offices of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Two days later six Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces, bringing the total deaths to 163, nearly all Palestinians.

Barak's statement sums up the policy of the Israeli government: to use overwhelming military force without hesitation against real and perceived threats to the Israeli state. His words also reek with hypocrisy, since many of "its citizens" are Palestinians who have come under attack by Tel Aviv's armed forces and rightist thugs over the past weeks. Many of these Palestinians are increasingly joining the struggle against the brutal regime.

This increased offensive by the Israeli rulers requires a worldwide response by working people to stand with the Palestinian people in demanding Tel Aviv stop its repression and get out of the occupied territories.

Even though another cease-fire has been announced--under the Israeli threat of punishing "retaliatory steps" against the Palestinians--there will be no peace. There will continue to be a struggle as long as the Palestinian people are denied their right to national self-determination--a goal that is irreconcilable with the interests of Israel's capitalist ruling class. Efforts by Israel and Washington to "settle" the conflict without meeting these just demands will only lead to war after war, crisis after crisis.

Israel has granted nominal control to the Palestinians of only 20 percent of the West Bank--in polka-dot marks that simply become the targets for Israeli attacks--and 60 percent of the Gaza Strip. The fight for Palestinian national liberation and self-determination means the fight for a state, one that will guarantee that right. A successful struggle to get the Israeli forces to withdraw completely from the occupied territories would be a big step forward toward that goal. It would be a political blow to the Zionist regime and would give the Palestinian people a geographic area in which to organize and extend their fight.

Class-conscious workers worldwide need to get out the facts about the Palestinian struggle, explain its historical roots, and place it in the broader struggle of the Arab peoples for liberation from imperialist domination. This can help build a worldwide movement to join forces with our Palestinian brothers and sisters to demand Tel Aviv pull its troops and settlers out of the West Bank, Gaza, and Jerusalem. This will also be a step in a longer-term fight for a democratic, secular Palestine. Such a perspective undercuts the fundamental precept of Zionist rule that Arab and Jewish people cannot live together in solidarity and cooperation.

The Palestinian people have won broad support for their struggle among workers and farmers throughout the Mideast. This backing continually upsets Washington's goal of establishing closer relations with Arab regimes, who also seek closer collaboration with imperialists.

The Arab peoples, like workers and oppressed peoples in most of the world, face a crisis of leadership. There is a gap between their fighting capacities, selfless contributions to the struggle, and ability to stand up to what appears to be overwhelming odds. But there has been a historical exhaustion of the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois nationalist leaderships in the region, who fear working people in their own countries more than they do U.S. imperialism. They will not lead the kind of mobilizations, build the kind of political organizations, and advance the political consciousness needed in the fight for national liberation, because it entails waging a battle against imperialist rule, one that poses the need for a revolution to overturn capitalism.

The Palestinian people face the need to forge a working-class leadership of their national liberation struggle and to build a communist leadership of workers and farmers. Such a struggle will also find a connection with workers and farmers in Israel, who confront a common enemy--the Israeli capitalist ruling class. This battle will be able to pose the necessity to fight for a democratic, secular Palestine.
 
 
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