 The first thing is that Israel and Palestine is the center of the contradictions of world capitalism. As the Middle East in general, has been the center of the power struggle between the main imperialist powers historically and especially in the last hundred years. Palestine has become the key to the Middle East. To ne bo za resursi, ker je naredne. To ne bo za dvej svojštene, ne bo za dvej svojštene, ne bo za dvej svojštene. To je za pomembnje, pomembnje in pomembnje, vsečaj, zvori večnimi resursi v počke medelji vseče in vsečaj pa biš vseča. And Palestine is playing a key role in all this balance. And therefore everything that is happening in Israel and Palestine has an impact on the world situation and vice versa. Historically what has happened in the world situation has had a dramatic impact on the lives of people living in Israel, Palestine and in the area there. So it's very complex because of this. We've seen in the history of the conflict, the way you can call it or the crisis, ongoing crisis in Israel, Palestine. We've seen very sharp turns in the situation, and some of these turns are not determined or were not determined by, necessarily by contradictions developing inside of Israel and Palestine, but from contradictions that were developing outside and having an impact on Israel and Palestine, or Palestine before. And going back to the situation today, well we've seen a huge movement developing and a turning point developing in the spring, around April and May. And I'll go back to that in a moment. This has a profound impact on the perspectives for the Palestinian struggle for liberation and has an impact on the world situation and the way U.S. imperialism and Israel, the Israeli state are seen and considered by millions and millions of people, even a Jewish around the world, reconsidering the oppressive role played by the Israeli state in the light of these events, which have kind of thrown a different light on the mechanism of oppression there. But for example today, well now we are in a sort of quiet situation, although quiet is not really applicable to the situation in Israel or in the occupied territories or throughout the region, but relatively quiet compared to other periods, but just to give you an idea of what that means on a daily basis for those living in the occupied territories or subject to Israeli occupation. This is just a report that I receive every two weeks from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. It's just an institution that is dealing with the Palestinian refugees in Gaza and so on and issues a fortnight newsletter, making a count of what's going on and just this count gives you an idea of what is happening, what is the molecular process, what is not visible, what doesn't make the news, the big news, the big headlights, like Gaza bombing or massive demonstrations on the al-Aqsa or in the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and things like that. What is not making the news is the ordinary life of hundreds of thousands and millions of Palestinians and Israeli workers and youths. And for example, between the 5th and 18th of October, in a quiet period, we had the killing by the IDF of a 14-year-old, IDF is the Israeli Defense Force, of a 14-year-old boy shot by snipers, another injured, 159 Palestinians injured by intervention by the Israeli Defense Force. All this is in the West Bank or Gaza, which are supposed to be independent from Israel. Israel shouldn't be intervening constantly in these areas. 159 injured, 115 of those were injured in protests against settlements, Jewish settlements in the West Bank. So you have this process of colonization of the settlers coming in, establishing their presence and resistance around it. And this requires constant intervention, interference by the Israeli Defense Force in defense of these settlers. In East Jerusalem, there have been protests because of the bulldozing of an Islamic cemetery, which was suspended for a few months and now they started it all over again. All these are administrative measures, which the Israeli state is carrying out on a daily basis. 113 search and arrest operations in the West Bank, meaning Israeli police or army entering the West Bank, towns at night going door-to-door and capturing people. 23 warning shots of fire in the Gaza perimeter for people, especially youngsters, getting too close to the Gaza border. And then there were 23 demolitions for lack of permit operated by the Israeli forces with bulldozers and so on. All these in the West Bank. 7 Palestinians were injured by settlers who were throwing stones or shooting at them. And one settler was injured by Palestinians. And this seems a bit trivial, but it's an ongoing war that is happening on a day-to-day basis. 1600 olive tree in the 15 days illegally harvested or destroyed by settlers. And this is the harvest season for the Palestinian peasants. And that was just in two weeks. And this is ongoing. Continuous pressure, continuous harassment, continuous oppression backed up by the mightiest military machine you can imagine that exists in the Middle East, which is the Israeli defense forces in the complex. So that's just an example of what doesn't make the news. And it explains also how exceptional the situation that we faced in, back in April and May, and the outcome of that has been from the point of view of the perspectives. So to go back to that, we need to take a small step back and explain the context and how that came about. How that happened, because conflicts, demonstrations, repression, even Gaza bombings are not such an infrequent event. There have been quite a few over the past decade. And they didn't have the same impact, they didn't have the same effect on the consciousness. Both of the Palestinians within historic Palestine and in the refugee camps and internationally, and also on the consciousness of workers and youth worldwide in the way they regard, they consider this conflict. And I think we must say that once again it's international events that have an impact on the situation. And that was the long-term impact of the victory in a faraway counter, which shouldn't have much to do with Israel, but has a lot to do with Israel and Palestine, which is the United States of America and the victory by Trump at the end of 2016. And so in that period, in these four years of Trump's presidency, there has been quite a big shift in the US policy towards the Middle East and the US policy towards Israel in particular. And this shift produced a number of consequences. For example, for decades US imperialism has been backing up Israel in any way you can imagine, by direct subventions, by supporting militarily and with training and supporting in every possible way in the United Nations Security Council, for example, to neutralize any attempt to take a position against the policies carried out by the Israeli ruling class. Of course, even if that was the case, and that was the case a few times that that happened, and contrary position as expressed by the United Nations never really had an impact on the policies of the Israeli ruling class. But what changed was that Trump threw out of the window even the pretense of US neutrality in the conflict. Part of US policy was always that of pretending to be superpartist, to be above the conflict in some way having a regulating effect between the two sides, the Palestinians and the Israeli state. And obviously this pretense of being neutral was completely thrown out of the window. And that had an impact on the international dynamics and the dynamics inside the Israel-Palestine conflict. For example, by emboldening the Israeli desionist right wing, the government was in the hands of Benjamin Netanyahu who just lost recently the premiership and was the longest serving prime minister, Israeli prime minister for some time. But in general the right wing within Israel society got emboldened, feeling that they had a free pass. They would have complete protection on part of US imperialism and Trump. That gave way to more aggressive policies on part of the government. Netanyahu felt free to pursue this line. And a big rise in the settlers movement in the occupied territories, which were formally independent. It's called Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Gaza. Well, Gaza is excluded by the settlers movement for a precise choice by the Israeli state. But in the West Bank this movement was emboldened. West Bank and Jerusalem. And then a number of very strong provocations that were carried out, changing the context of the conflict. For example, the proclamation of Jerusalem, which is a contended and has always been at the center of the conflict, the status of Jerusalem. Jerusalem was never the capital of Israel because of that, but was recognized as undivided capital of Israel by the United States, which moved even the embassy to Jerusalem. Jerusalem is formally occupied, part of it at least, illegally occupied by Israel, the East part of Jerusalem, according to the United Nations for what it's worth. And then the approval by Netanyahu, forcing through a law, which is called the Jewish nation state law, that was approved forcibly by the Knesset, in spite of the Knesset is the Israeli parliament, in spite of widespread opposition even within Israel, which basically stated that for the first time what the reality of Israel was, but was never really acknowledged in legal terms. And it's that you have not equal rights between citizens according to their nationality or background or religious background and so on. So Israel being a Jewish state means that all the others are not fully, don't have the right to be there, in a way, or could be made redundant and feel like that. And in fact, in this kind of conflict, it's obvious what the outcome of this type of laws will be. This had a huge impact on the Israeli Arabs, Arabs so-called, which are Palestinians, who happen to live in Israel because the process of expulsion of the Palestinians in 1948 and then in 1967 and throughout couldn't be total. It couldn't be a clean slate, let's say. And a part of the Palestinians were left inside of the boundaries of Israel. And a break with, for example, an essential part of the Israeli states had claimed to be multi-ethnic, multi, well, a full democracy, which was the alliance with a minority of the Palestinian population, which are the Druze. The Druze are a particular religious sect. And for some reason, historical reasons, the Druze were always part of the Israeli state, even fighting the wars of Israel, even participating and expressing very high-ranking military positions in the Israeli army. So it's very complex, as you see, the reality of Israel-Palestine. And the approval of the National State Law was a slap in the face of this layer that had been loyal to Israel, to the Israeli state all throughout. And it provoked mass demonstrations of the Druze, led by former IDF generals and all the lot. It was a huge break in their consciousness. And then a process of heightened institutional pressure on the Israeli Palestinians within Israel as a consequence of all this shift in the international political situation, meaning more frequently evictions, a covering for the policies of colonization, disregard, total disregard for the Palestinian authorities, so-called leadership of the Palestinians in any international talks, leading to international agreements sponsored by Trump, like the Abraham Accords, which were basically a no-lout, well, ultimatum against the Palestinians to basically accept quietly their future destiny by reaching an alliance between the Israeli ruling class and the reactionary Arab regimes, so-called friends of the Palestinian cause which never really defended any of the rights of the Palestinians ever, in fact, have more in common with the Israeli ruling class than with the Palestinian people. And that betrayal also was publicly exposed, had publicly exposed something that everyone knew already. The complicity of the Emirates, the complicity, although they were not directly signing the accords by the complicity of Saudi Arabia, somehow stopped a step before signing these agreements because it would be too problematic for them, but we're very favorably supporting this move, and so on. And then we have on top of that the impact of the COVID pandemic, which is also part of the general situation in Israel-Palestine, with Israel becoming a point of reference on the world scale for the vaccination program, and so on. And that highlighted again the different treatment, the different situation within Israeli society and the conditions of the Palestinians, especially in the occupied territories. I'm referring to them as occupied territories because that's effectively what they are. Even the fiction of the Palestinian authority has been completely exposed by these past events. And also within Israel, again the feeling of being pushed to one side, the feeling of being regarded as second-class citizens by the Palestinians living in Israel. And that had a profound effect on the consciousness of this layer that obviously was always suppressed, even in the past, but became more conscious of the nature of this oppression and how that is connected with the general Palestinian liberation struggle outside of the green line, the green border of 1967 Israel, of 1948 Israel. And then there have been two particular processes that have highlighted the movement within Israel and unified this movement and unified a certain level of national feeling and national consciousness of the Palestinians within Israel and these two were the attempts to lock out the access to the al-Aqsa mosque during the lockdown, which provoked massive demonstrations and protests and heavy-handed attacks on the demonstrators by the Israeli repressive forces, which became big news and made the headlines, of course. And then the highlighting of the resistance to evictions in Sheikh Jarrah, a Palestinian neighborhood of East Jerusalem where this process, this long-term process of evictions and expulsions of destroying Palestinian property, destroying Palestinian houses, replacing them by protecting the settlers, and all this is done on a daily basis by administrative measures. You have to understand that. It's all kind of done through the courts. There is a sort of legal process. There is a resistance against it, but in the end, obviously, with very few exceptions, what happens is that Palestinians lose and Israel, the Israeli state, moves forward one step forward. Another small bit has been taken from the Palestinians. So that became the rallying point for a massive movement within Israel of Palestinian youth and workers who were traveling to East Jerusalem to participate in demonstrations. A lot of Jewish as well, although obviously a minority of the Jewish solidarity movement, of the Jewish youth and workers were involved in this solidarity movement, but there was an element of that that had resonance. It resonated also across the national religious divide. And then we have the intervention by Hamas in Gaza with the launching of rockets related to these attacks by Israel. And obviously that in the past would have just closed down the whole thing, because that's what happens. There is a sort of mutual support, in a way, between Hamas in Gaza, which is getting heightening or renewing their credentials of resisting against Israel's oppression and becoming the focal point of Palestinian resistance and so on, just by throwing a few rockets across the border, which obviously these rockets cannot do anything. Most of them are intercepted by the Israeli dome. Sometimes I have the suspicion that they even let some of these rockets pass through in order for these rockets to make some damage, but it doesn't matter. It's not so important, whether it's done on purpose or not. And what happens is that usually what happens on the other side in Israeli society everyone closes ranks around the government because obviously there is this terrorist threat, which is perceived by ordinary Israeli people as a constant threat to their lives. And therefore this game is strengthening both sides, the most reactionary elements of both sides. He played this card many times in his presidency before, his premiership before, and it worked somehow for him by fencing off internal criticism, by showing up support and emboldening his position in the political landscape of Israel, which is particularly prone to infighting and fragmentation and instability historically. But obviously this question of Palestine and the Palestinians is a unifying element around the Israeli state and whoever is in charge benefits from this. So Netanyahu deliberately provoked this conflict, the bombing of Gaza, but that backfired. And that's what sometimes happens when, let's say, there has been a certain preparation, there has been a certain change in consciousness. Because of what happened in the previous period, this time the bombing of Gaza was not just perceived as usual. It really highlighted the asymmetrical, this is not a war. It's not a war between forces that can be compared even. It's a unilateral massacre that is carried out by one of the mightiest and more heavily harmed and the armies in the world, the IDF, against almost harmless population in the sense that they will try to defend themselves, they have these rockets, some armed organizations, there will be a resistance, there will be defiance, but in the end they are receiving these massive bombs on top of their heads and there's nothing they can do about it. Other than showing defiance and that's what most of the Palestinian youth that were demonstrating or resisting did in this type of situation. The Gaza Bomb in this time had a different effect from previous situations and became an eye-opener from the point of view of the Palestinians, obviously, in different parts of the Palestinian diaspora, meaning, obviously, those who were more affected in Gaza, well, they know what the score is, and the West Bank also, the Palestinians, are quite used to Israeli interference and repression, and within Israel, I think that's the most important impact, because of what the Israeli Palestinians had experienced in the previous weeks, this particular attack on Gaza had a very profound impact. And then in the Palestinian diaspora refugee camps throughout the Middle East, in Lebanon, and so on, and across the world. And the role of U.S. imperialism and the role of Israel, the Israeli state was exposed in the eyes of millions of youth in the process of being radicalized by these attacks. That affected also a lot of Jewish youth, by the way, and created quite a shift in the way Jewish youth who are radicalizing now because of the general crisis of capitalism because of the movements that are happening throughout the world and in the United States in particular who have perceived this attack. And therefore also had a huge impact on the solidarity movement across the world with the Palestinians, which in past periods was quite in a crisis because of the mistakes also made by the Palestinian leadership throughout the past decades which affected their position, obviously. So, and we have to understand where this comes from and I don't have much time, I'm sorry if I won't be able to go through all the process, we will write more about it, there will be more material produced on marxist.com, about the history of this conflict. Just to give a general idea about where this is coming from and how important this change is from the point of view of the perspectives. Well, the whole of Israel's history is punctuated by wars, terrorism, occupation, insurrections, resistance, revolutionary attempts. It's very, very tormented history that of Israel, Palestine. And of course this discussion is important from our point of view also in Britain and British imperialism played a key role in creating this festering wound by and directly creating, directly participating in creating the conditions for this to become what it is now, this nightmare. And that goes back to the new world asset created by the First World War. It goes back to the situation that arose from the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Palestine was part of it. And so was most of the Middle East. And the British and French who had nothing to do with the Middle East or the Ottoman Empire, decided that they wanted a slice of it or actually decide between themselves who's gonna get what at the end of the First World War. And that was done by a secret pact. There are conspiracies, not all the conspiracies that a lot of people are talking about, but some conspiracies do exist. And that was a conspiracy by the British and French imperialists to partition the Middle East and decide the different spheres of influence. And that was the Sykes-Picot pact in 1916, which, by the way, was exposed to the world by the First Wiki League, which was the Bolshevik government taking power in Russia and exposing all the secret deals of, well, in public, secret deals by the imperialists. Of course, the Tsarist regime was aware of this document after the revolution. And in this pact they decided different spheres of influence and Israel, and, well, not Israel, sorry, Palestine was to become part of the British spheres of influence. In Lebanon it was the French who would take control, which incidentally that's exactly what happened. And a number of different decisions, like, for example, Iraq and Jordan, all the Middle East was divided between the two powers. Sorry, I lost where is my notes? Ah, yeah. So the Sykes-Picot pact but at the same time the British imperialists were preparing for this scenario because obviously they knew that the Ottoman Empire was in crisis, it would collapse. They were preparing for this and the war would end up with a victory on their part. And therefore they were preparing ground for implementing this expansion of their sphere of influence towards the Middle East. And they had two contrasting interests and they basically pushed both. So they had to deal with the Arab regimes or the future Arab establishment of future Arab regimes. So keeping the Arab elites happy with the perspective of some sort of independence and on the other hand was to use in their favorite tactic which applied throughout the British Empire to use the plans and the Jewish the rise of the Jewish question on a world scale and the Zionist movement as a counterbalance as a counter balancing force to base themselves in exerting their control over Palestine. And that's the time when they issued for example this Balfour declaration that was November 1917 which was promising to the Zionist movement in this way making it a tool of British imperialism. I'll go just in a moment to the Zionist movement promising a homeland for the Jews in historic Palestine under the British protection somehow to promote and help them establish a homeland for the Jews. And at the time obviously the Jews have some connection with Palestine it was not totally arbitrary connection historically and the Jews were subject for decades and centuries to a special oppression in especially in Europe which had different moments but had quite a big harshening of the conditions of the Jews around the end of the 19th century and the crisis that preceded the First World War so in the run up the preparation for the First World War we have an exacerbation of the oppression of the Jews throughout Europe and the rise in antisemitism in particular in Russia with the pogroms of 1881 where the Jews were given the responsibility of the assassination of the Tsar Alexander II and were subject to the Jewish neighborhoods in Russia and the Russian Empire were subject to these pogroms attacks killings and destruction upon them but also in the rest of Europe there was a rise in antisemitism because of the attempt by the ruling classes to use that as a way to cement their control over society in France for example there was there were a spread of antisemitism in Germany as part of the general process especially in the post war but even before there was a rise in antisemitism and therefore we have the first development of this movement which was basically relegated to a few intellectuals for a long period of time but it became a force the movement as a reaction against these attacks against these oppression mounting oppression the Zionist movement became a bigger force and started to develop around those time as a reaction so what the British imperialists did was to use this as a lever for their own purpose and obviously the bourgeois leadership of the Zionist movement saw that as an opportunity to pursue push forward their own ends in a very cynical way by accepting and putting forward these wishes by the British imperialists in Palestine there was a Jewish part of the population but it was very small about I don't think it was more than 5% of the population of historic Palestine before the British mandate and the Zionist movement started the process of encouraging and organizing Jewish immigration in Palestine from throughout Europe and the rest of the world most of the people that were escaping from these pogroms for example they weren't going to Palestine, it wasn't attractive to them there was nothing for them there most of the Jews were attempting to go to America to the United States to Britain and the majority of the Jews escaping from persecution were moving in a different direction than Palestine so we have the beginning of the process of colonization of Palestine under the British mandate which was considered to Britain by the society of nations in and started in 1920 this is the fuel of the conflict in Israel Palestine, the progressive expropriation and basically it shows from the very beginning how this is an explosive contradiction that will generate all sorts of convulsions and grief in the development of the situation in Israel and Palestine by 1929 we have the first bloody clashes although tension was developing already before when Jewish immigration reaches 150,000 Jewish people in Palestine 3 times more than at the beginning of the British mandate this immigration is done organized by the Jewish agency which is recognized by the British authorities by buying properties and land in Palestine but that's not an empty land it's part of occupied by the existing population of Palestine although the property rights were very debatable because there was no such thing as a land registry or sure property rights those were cultivating lands were not necessarily the owners the owners were absentee owners but maybe located totally in different parts of the Ottoman Empire in Baghdad or other important parts of and just getting the rent out of it without the peasants being even aware of of this situation necessarily so the buying off of Arab land was a process that was enforced violently to the number of conflicts and the piling up of contradictions that led to the bloody days of August 1929. That's the real beginning of the whole conflict with the most reactionary side of the Palestinian elite throwing against the Jewish colonies a number of attacks and the killings and hitting also some of the historical presence of the Jewish in Palestine for example in Hebron with the massacre Hebron's massacre that creates a complete break in the relations between the Palestinian and Arab population and the Jewish population historically and the dynamic of this conflict is to fuel the defense call of around the Zionist organizations and snuff out any possibility of unified struggle against the British and the occupation in Israel-Palestine. This culminates in 1936 with the great Arab revolt which is a general strike against British occupation but in the course of this general strike we have the strengthening of the Jewish institution of the Jewish self defense force the British occupying forces rely on the Jewish agency and the Haganah the military forces of the future of the Jewish authority and the future Israeli state information rely increasingly rely on them in order to police and repress the Palestinian population and in this way they create let's say the fuel, the monster that then blows up in their face later on. So in the period of the great Arab revolt between 1936 and 1939 we have the growth of the collaboration between the British forces occupying forces and the Jewish agency and the Haganah against the Palestinians but then and that is enforced also with an increase in immigration, a Jewish immigration by 1936 we have 400,000 Jewish settling in Palestine which is an enormous increase of the amount of which is fueling up this conflict by 1939 the British are preparing for the well they are entering the Second World War they need to find a way to consolidate their alliance with part of the Arab elites and therefore they introduce a cap on Jewish immigration which will provoke an enormous explosive struggle between well they have alienated the Arabs, the Palestinians at the same time they are alienating even the Jewish authorities and organizations and the Zionist movement starts a struggle against the British occupation as well this leads to a situation that is very complicated where part of the Arabs and part of the Jewish established forces are collaborating with the British in the war effort part is fighting against the British occupation and carrying out all sorts of terrorist attacks against the British which will lead to the abandonment by Britain of the British mandate basically the relinquish by the end of the Second World War the British relinquish their mandate over Palestine and throw the ball in the court of the United Nations and that's the situation that leads up to the formation of Israel in 1948 very briefly on the question of the Nakba, the great disaster and the establishment of Israel because I think that throws light on the nature of the Israeli state and an understanding of what is the dynamic that we are facing even today in while the United Nations newly formed United Nations are discussing about the future of Israel Palestine there is a plan for partitioning Israel Palestine this plan was already had been drawn up by the British before but it was put to one side in 1937 but it becomes now mainstream the solution for the conflict in Israel Palestine is a partition in this partition supported by the United Nations in the Resolution 181 of November 1947 is introducing for the first time this idea that as a solution to the conflict you can have as only solution you can have only two state solution a division, a partition of Israel and Palestine into two states and that's the basic idea that has been pursued by imperialism throughout the last decades and was already present in the position taken by the United Nations at the time this led to a situation where the Arabs in Palestine were not organized didn't have any structure didn't have any forces apart from some guerrilla groups that were basically set up in order to defend on a local basis but uncoordinated the Arab neighborhoods and villages but the Israeli the future Israeli state was already present in an embryo in a shell which was the Jewish authority, the armed forces connected to it the Agana these auxiliary groups which will become part of the and become a constituent part of the Israeli state in the future the Irgun Zvaj Leumi and the Stern Band which were terrorist groups attacking the British for example they blew up the British headquarters of the colonial administration in Palestine in 1946 killing 91 people or assassinated the mediator of the United Nations in the process so called peace process so there was this huge opportunity opening up to designers in a situation where there was already a discussion about partition and they took the initiative and launched a wave after wave of attacks against the Palestinian population in the course of 1948 shielding themselves under the umbrella of this resolution of the United Nations which they accepted and the Arabs didn't and provoking massive wave of terror against the Palestinians there are famous incidents like the massacre of the area scene with 250 children, women and people taken house door to door by this Irgun Zvaj Leumi led by one of the future leaders of Israel, Begin who became prime minister later on and killed there were attacks on Palestinian neighborhoods hundreds of people being killed with the aim of pushing them out and achieve what actually was achieved the proclamation of Israel was based on the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians this expulsion of 700 25,000 Palestinians according to official estimates of the United Nations that were pushed out from the territories that were taken under the control of the newborn Israeli state the declaration of independence so called for the Israeli became the Nakba the disaster the defeat for the Palestinians and the establishment of Israel is based on this unprecedented for the scale unprecedented operation of ethnic cleansing Israel consolidated afterwards in many ways and the situation that we are living now is a different situation because part of the outcome of the conflict that we have seen over the past decade in particular is that this idea that you can have two states as a solution for this conflict is has been completely falsified on one hand you have the consolidation and emergence of very powerful and supported by the imperialists throughout the military machine and powerful state within Israel which will never allow the existence of an independent Palestinian state on the other hand you have the development as a consequence of the rise in the Palestinian resistance movement and the revolution movement of the intifada in the at the end of the 1980s that was sort of compromise which allowed imperialism to step in and introduce this idea of again two states solution and the birth of the Palestinian authority this Palestinian authority established as a consequence of a huge movement resistance movement of the Palestinians in the occupied territories within Israel and in the Palestinian diaspora was seen as potentially game changer with huge illusions on part of the international solidarity movement on part of the rising Palestinian struggle and so on but the balance sheet of this as we warned at the time the Marxists warned at the time is that there is no possibility of a two state solution on a capitalist basis for Israel-Palestine what we have is one state that is exerting a complete control over the lives and livelihoods of the so-called independent parts the so-called Palestinian authority by intervening by all means and with the aim of continuing this process of land grabbing and expansion of direct control by this colonization settler's process just to give a few figures about that we have the growth of the population of Israel which has been enormous over the past decades from 650,000 in 1948 now we have more than 9 million people about 20 percent are Palestinians within the green line there is also growth of the Palestinian population in the area obviously in the occupied territories and surrounding and within Israel so overall there is a huge process of population growth but there is also a process of continuous penetration by Israel backed up by this mighty military force and colonization of the Palestinian areas which are the Palestinians are being progressively marginalized and pushed out of in 1979 there was almost no almost no settlers in the west bank about 20,000 Jewish settlers living in the west bank and now we are talking about 500,000, half a million settlers that there are settlements entire towns which are in Palestinian territory in the west bank it means that these are protected and defended by the Israeli police and defense force they have dedicated services they have dedicated roads that can be used only by Jewish settlers and not by the Palestinians not to speak about the wall which is dividing Israel from the west bank but these roads are effectively operating as walls shielding or cutting off Palestinians neighborhood from their own lands for example it's impossible even to cross them because they are built in a way that this is made as a way of harassing the Palestinian population of the west bank there is a maze of these roads that are cutting through the so-called Palestinian authority in East Jerusalem is the same thing and these are the focal point of the present struggle that's where the struggle cannot go away because this pressure is building up and continuing every day in East Jerusalem in 2000 there were about 120,000 Jewish settlers in East Jerusalem and now there are double as many 250,000 and that is part of this process of evictions and resistance that is developing on a day-to-day basis just to conclude because obviously I had to skip a lot and I'm sorry that my management of time hasn't been so so good but there is so much that we can say about this conflict to go back to the general situation that we are facing now and what is the new element in the equation we have seen so many twists and turns in the Palestinian resistance struggle over the past decades and now there is a big opportunity which is opening up from that point of view first of all we have to see this as part of the general process of world transformation world revolutionary crisis we have entered Palestine is not isolated from that point of view Israel is not isolated completely they are part of the same process of capitalist crisis everywhere and this is having an impact in the struggle of the Palestinians it is also having an impact in the sense of wearing down the authority and wearing down the legitimacy of all the institutions of all the leaderships of all the let's say the worked out mechanism of oppression in Israel-Palestine starting from the Israeli state itself and the ability to use the old tricks to mobilize the support of the Jewish population around the oppressive nature of this regime obviously these mechanisms are very strong and can have a bigger impact in the future but overall they have been undermined by being exposed by being more visible by being more understandable and especially on part of the youngest layer within Israeli society and certainly on the part of the Palestinians within Israel it is clear that two states and the Oslo and Madrid agreement which gave birth to the Palestinian Authority are a shield are just a fig leaf which is covering for Israeli occupation the whole of Palestine and it is also clear the role played by the leadership of the so-called Palestinian Authority which is divided in the West Bank there is Fatah and Abu Mazen Abash as president of the Palestinian Authority and in Gaza we have the domination by Hamas but all these events are exposing limitation on one side the corrupt nature of the Palestinian Authority regime in the eyes of the Palestinians themselves who are fighting against the oppressive nature of this regime they are just there to police the Palestinian population on behalf of Israel and making some privileges on top of that for their own purposes but also the limitations of Hamas resistance movement because Hamas doesn't have any perspective other than occasionally building up some sort of formal resistance by shooting these rockets and then reaching some other type of agreement it is exposing the role of all the reactionary Arab regimes in the area in the eyes of their own population in the eyes of the Palestinians and Jewish youth and workers in the area and it is also exposing the mechanism of oppression and the role played by the Israeli state in the eyes of millions and millions of youth and workers on a world scale which is creating the basis for the Palestinian resistance movement to be once again back part integral part of the general revolutionary movement of on a world scale against capitalism imperialist oppression and against all these manifestations like in the case of Israel-Palestine the Israeli state so there is an enormous opportunity in the sense of a unified Palestinian struggle which was revealed by the 18th of May general strike which was the first time it happened since the Intifada of 1987 and even to a certain extent even more than what happened at the time this unified movement of Palestinian youth and workers is key in order to win over the support of the international revolutionary movement in the process of radicalizing of winning over the support of the revolution youth in the rest of the Middle East and also potentially winning over the that layer of Jewish youth and workers that will be moving or will be moving away entering into conflict with Israeli capitalism in the process there is already a very limited solidarity movement within Israel against these policies of oppression in solidarity with the Palestinians it's very we shouldn't overestimate how big this movement is but with a correct policy and a correct approach on part of the Palestinian resistance movement this can be widened and become more stronger and stronger in the sense of taking away and helping creating divide a fracture between the Zionist reactionary machine of the Israeli state and mass of the Israeli population Jewish or Arab without without doing that any solution for the Palestinian liberation struggle is impossible but the precondition for doing that is a unified and bold revolutionary struggle in part of the Palestinians which can challenge their own rulers can challenge the reactionary regimes in the area and can challenge the repressive machine of Israel and throwing the whole movement on a completely different ground that of revolutionary action and as part of the general movement for revolution that we have seen developing throughout the Middle East and in the rest of the world just as an example of the impact that for example the revolution movement against Mubarak in 2011 in Egypt had over the Palestinian and Jewish youth in Israel there was a movement within Israel against the conditions of living against inflation against low wages the shortage of housing which was a unified movement of the Israeli Jews and Israeli Palestinians against the government of Netanyahu at the time that was cut across obviously by these dynamics of the conflict underlying conflict with Israel on national and religious lines but it showed what the potential is of a broader mass movement against capitalism within Israel but that is important to understand it's part of a general process of radicalization and revolution in the whole area and on a world scale