Israeli tanks and troops have left southern Gaza, but for how long? (Picture: Dr. Zachi Evenor)
Monday 1 April
The Israeli military launched a missile attack on aid workers for the group World Central Kitchen and killed seven people. The team had just delivered over 100 tonnes of food supplies from a warehouse in Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza.
Israeli fired at a first car on a road that it had agreed the convoy should use. It then systematically targeted another two cars, destroying them all with missiles. The strikes came despite all the vehicles being marked with the aid group’s logo and in full co-ordination with the Israeli state.
Even pro-Israel media in the West are outraged as it becomes clear that the dead include people from Britain, Poland, Australia and a dual US-Canadian citizen, as well as a Palestinian—Saifeddin Issam Ayad Abutaha.
On the same day, Israeli warplanes bombed Iran’s embassy in Syria in a strike that killed seven of its staff, including three senior military commanders. The bombing is a clear escalation of the war. Some commentators suggest that Israel is attempting to provoke Iran and then draw the US into a wider regional war.
Meanwhile, in the Israeli capital, Tel Aviv, protests against president Binyamin Netanyahu’s handling of the war in Gaza are growing.
Tuesday 2 April
A ferocious international backlash has followed the aid convoy attack with even Israel’s biggest supporters under pressure to criticise it. But Netanyahu can only bring himself to make a half-apology.
“Unfortunately, in the last day there was a tragic case of our forces unintentionally hitting innocent people in the Gaza Strip… It happens in war,” he said.
Fearing a backlash, US president Joe Biden said he was “outraged and heartbroken” by the killing.
Yet, the Biden administration continues to press the US Congress to approve a plan to sell $18 billion worth F-15 fighter jets to Israel. The deal, which would be one of the largest ever, would also include munitions. Israel already has enough F-15s to destroy Gaza. But it wants more so it can target Iran, Syria and Lebanon.
So far, the White House has nothing to say about Israel’s bombing of Iran’s embassy in Syria.
Wednesday 3 April
The bodies of the World Food Kitchen’s six international staff are transported out of Gaza but outrage at the murders seems only to grow. All the main food aid agencies have now withdrawn from Gaza until they receive safety assurances from the Israeli government—adding to the numbers starving.
Pressure on the government over British arms sales to Israel is mounting with even some Tories saying they should be stopped. They worry that the “rules-based order” that imperialism depends on may be shattered by the war on Gaza.
The White House has finally responded to Israel’s attack on the Iranian embassy in Syria. “No, we don’t support attacks on diplomatic facilities,” said a spokesperson.
Thursday 4 April
In a tense phone call—the details of which were released to the media—Biden told Netanyahu that there must be an “immediate ceasefire”. He added that US Gaza policy is dependent on “measurable” steps Israel takes to address “civilian harm, humanitarian suffering and the safety of aid workers” in the enclave.
Israel responded by announcing it would reopen the Beit Hanoun crossing with northern Gaza. It also announced it would “temporarily” open the Ashdod port to receive aid. It would allow aid from Jordan to move through the Karem Abu Salem crossing to southern Gaza, it said.
The United Nations secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, said such “scattered measures” were not enough.
The US pressure promoted a new round of speculation about ceasefire talks in Egypt. And the continuing horror is now putting pressure on the British legal establishment. Some 600 legal figures, including three retired Supreme Court judges, called on the government to suspend arms sales to Israel.
Friday 5 April
Stung by its growing international isolation, Israel is trying to draw Lebanon and Iran into a wider war it hopes will galvanise Western support. Israeli bombing killed Lebanese Hezbollah resistance commander Ali Ahmed Hassin in the village of al-Sultaniyah. Israeli politicians demand that the IDF go still further and launch an invasion.
Meanwhile, the Israeli government has released its report into the killing of the international aid workers at the beginning of the week. It admits that it fired the missiles that hit the aid convoy in Deir al-Balah and has dismissed two army officers and disciplined three others.
The army has refused to answer any questions about the nearly 200 other aid workers that it has killed during the six months of war. It knows that it is under far less pressure over those deaths because most were Palestinians.
Scott Paul of Oxfam, said, “Let’s be very clear. This is tragic, but it is not an anomaly… The killing of aid workers in Gaza has been systemic.”
Saturday 6 April
Prime minister Rishi Sunak said that although he was “shocked by the bloodshed” of Israel’s war on Gaza, he continues to stand by “Israel’s right to defend its security”. The Tories are clear that they will keep arming Israel. And that makes the brother of one of the slain aid workers furious.
“I don’t believe our government will hold the correct people to account, but I guarantee that our government will sell weapons to Israel, which may in turn be used to kill our fellow citizens… It’s hard to comprehend that.”
The founder of the World Food Kitchen, Jose Andres, went further saying that Israel is engaged in a “war against humanity itself”.
“It’s been six months of targeting anything that seems—moves. This doesn’t seem a war against terror. This doesn’t seem anymore a war about defending Israel,” he said. “This really, at this point, seems it’s a war against humanity itself.”
Sunday 7 April
Israel has pulled all its ground troops out of southern Gaza for “tactical reasons”, generals said. Two brigades will stay in the northern half of the strip. Why did Israel decide to withdraw?
It’s certainly not because they have achieved their military object of smashing Hamas and releasing all Israeli hostages—those have not been achieved.
There are a number of possible explanations. One is that Biden finally told Israel that if the war didn’t stop, he would restrict the flow of arms to the country. Another is that the Israeli forces are now preparing for a giant offensive against the southern city of Rafah, where more than a million Palestinians have been forced to flee.
It would be a bloodbath on a new scale but there is pressure on Netanyahu to press on with it.
Israel’s national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir warned Netanyahu if he decides to end the war on Gaza without “an extensive attack on Rafah” to defeat the Palestinian group Hamas “he will not have a mandate to continue serving as prime minister”.
Some sources predict that Israel is preparing for war with Iran and its allies in Lebanon, and therefore wants to regroup its forces.
At this stage it is impossible to know the real reasons for Israel’s withdrawal but no one should be fooled into thinking that this war is over. Israel continues to rain down death from the sky as its drones and fighter planes scour Gaza for any possible target.
The week ahead…
The international pressure on Israel was set to mount still further. On Monday this week the UN Security Council was to meet to discuss recognition of a Palestinian state and its admission into the UN. Such a move will be opposed viciously by not only Israel but its chief backers, the US and Britain.
The British government is refusing to stop arming Israel. Oliver Dowden—Tory deputy prime minister—told BBC News last Sunday that Israel is conducting “a legitimate war of self-defence” and that selling arms to Israel is entirely legal.
Dowden defended Britain’s policy, saying, “Can we lawfully sell arms to Israel? Yes, that is the case. On that basis… that position has not changed.”
And so Britain’s arming of Israel’s genocide continues.
Dowden’s comments come despite the government receiving legal advice from its own lawyers stating that Israel has breached international humanitarian law in Gaza. The government has no interest in stopping the flow of arms to Israel because it knows the state is a watchdog for Western interests in the Middle East.
Yet most people do want a ban on arm sales to Israel. A poll last Wednesday showed that 56 percent are in favour of one and only 17 percent are against. That’s because they see what’s happening in Gaza as genocide.
David Lammy—Labour shadow foreign secretary—last week also refused to back banning selling arms to Israel. Instead he called on the government to publish its legal advice. The furthest Lammy went was to express “very real concerns that our obligations according to international humanitarian law might have been breached”.
In other words, Labour is standing by and doing nothing.
Part of the problem is that international law is largely unenforceable—it is resistance from below demanding a ban that will make an impact.
A step in the right direction came from the PCS civil service workers’ union last Friday. It said in a statement that it is “seriously considering” legal action to prevent its members who oversee British arms exports to Israel “from being forced to carry out unlawful acts”. The PCS says its members have requested that “they cease work immediately” on tasks related to export licences to Israel.
And it’s not just civil servants in Britain—around 600 civil servants in Germany have signed a letter calling on the German government to “cease arm deliveries to the Israeli government with immediate effect”.
Workers should refuse to handle—or provide licences for—arms being sold to Israel, and back up that refusal with hard hitting industrial action.
Thomas Foster
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But where there is repression, there is resistance.
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London march on 27 October
