For more than a week, the State of Israel has closed all the crossing
points that connect the Gaza Strip with the rest of the territory and
suspended the supplying of energy, water, fuel, food and medicines,
leaving the Palestinian population of 1.5 million people on the brink
of disaster.

On January 23, around half a million desperate Palestinians, in search
of food and basic goods, knocked down the wall erected by the Mubarak
government, that separates the Gaza Strip from Egypt.

The situation is so extreme that in some countries like Jordan,
mobilizations have taken place to repudiate this crime against the
Palestinian people, by demanding the breaking off of relations with
the State of Israel. This method of collective punishment, worthy of
totalitarian regimes and armies of occupation, that has the approval
of the US, the European Union, the Arab regimes, and the Palestinian
government of Mahmud Abbas, servant of the State of Israel and
imperialism, is used regularly by the Zionist state to subject the
Palestinian resistance and make it yield. Shelling by the Israeli army
against the civilian population and murdering the leaders of Hamas,
Islamic Jihad and other radical organizations are in addition to this.

In June 2007, Palestinian President Abbas tried to put an end to the
Hamas government, elected in January 2006. After a brief
confrontation, forces loyal to Abbas left the Gaza Strip, that
remained under the government of Hamas. Since then, the blockade and
isolation of this small territory has been reinforced, with aim of
forcing the government to fall. In addition, the Egyptian government
of Hosni Mubarak closed the border with Gaza.

Olmert’s government launched this new offensive with impunity, a few
days after the visit of George Bush to the region to renew
conversations between Abbas and Israel for the establishment of a
supposed “Palestinian State.” This shows once more that the Zionist
state and the US, with the complicity of the “international community”
and the Arab governments, and the help of al Fatah, are again
resorting to terror and collective punishment to defeat the resistance
of the Palestinian people and to force them to renounce their basic
right to national self-determination and accept living in ghettos
under the colonial domination of the racist State of Israel.

Solidarity by workers and the oppressed with the Palestinian people,
who are again being subjected to the barbarous attack of the terrorist
State of Israel, is needed more than ever.

Transaltion by Y Mikah