One year after the events of Oct. 7, 2023, the bloodbath Israel has unleashed in the Gaza Strip risks evolving into a region-wide escalation of war. Israel’s organized terrorist attacks in Lebanon; bombings against civilian and military targets in the country, including the one in which Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed; threats about an imminent ground invasion by the IDF; and the Iranian missile attack in response to Israel’s criminal actions show that the Palestinian issue can act as a detonator for a more generalized imperialist conflict in the entire Middle East.
Meanwhile, the slaughter that Israel is carrying out in the Gaza Strip, with the complicity of the US, EU and European governments and NATO, does not stop. As of today, more than 40 thousand Palestinians have been killed, including 16 thousand children. 80 thousand children show signs of malnutrition, tens of thousands are missing, orphaned and maimed. The displaced come to nearly 2 million, or 80 percent of the population of the Gaza Strip, while 2 percent have been exterminated. In the West Bank, the oppressiveness of the occupation and apartheid regime, IDF and settler atrocities against the civilian population, and retaliations against militants and political prisoners are growing, increasingly affecting even the forces opposed to genocide within Israel’s borders.
Israel’s government and bourgeoisie, at the cost of the security of their own people, are carrying out a genocidal and ethnic cleansing plan that has a clear and openly stated goal: to erase forever the possibility of the birth and recognition of a Palestinian state – a scenario that Tel Aviv government officials have called “contrary to Israel’s security” – and to put the world before the accomplished fact of the total military occupation of historic Palestine and the expulsion of Arab peoples from their lands.
It is worth pointing out, in this regard, that even what are hypocritically presented by our media as Israeli “openings” and “proposals” for a cease-fire, demand as a condition from the Palestinian counterpart the recognition of the military occupation of the Gaza Strip. Meanwhile, the media manipulation that justifies Israel’s actions, or downplays their severity, with the rhetoric of “fighting terrorism” continues, just when it is the State of Israel that is carrying out terrorist acts, as evidenced by the attacks carried out in Iran and Lebanon.
We reiterate what we have already stated in the aftermath of October 7: the Palestinian people, living under conditions of military occupation, siege and segregation imposed by an occupying force, have the right to fight by all means for their liberation. It is important to state that under the current conditions in Palestine, the right of the occupied peoples to armed resistance is recognized even by United Nations law. The media narrative that arbitrarily brands not only Hamas but the totality of Palestinian political-military forces as “terrorism” is pure propaganda that serves to obfuscate this truth: that there is armed resistance in Palestine against an illegitimate, unjust and criminal occupation.
The Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip and the bloodbath that has now been underway for a year, are perpetrated as the Middle East continues to be at the center of a bitter imperialist competition between worldwide and regional capitalist powers, and their respective monopolies, for control of energy resources, trade and supply routes, strategic territories, markets and market shares. This competition is the material basis for the much-discussed “widening of the conflict,” from the events in the Red Sea to the involvement of Iran and related forces in Lebanon and Syria.
Italy and the Italian monopolies are an active and relevant part of this scenario of imperialist competition. Proof of this is the Italian military presence in Iraq and the Eastern Mediterranean, or the license to explore and extract gas from fields in the waters of the Gaza Strip that ENI obtained from the Israeli government, as an occupying military force and – as denounced by many – in violation of international law.
This reality underlies the unacceptable complicity with Netanyahu of the Italian government led by Giorgia Meloni, which stands out today for its more blatantly pro-Israel stance, even compared to other EU countries. While Israel has been carrying out a genocidal plan over the past year, Italy has never voted in favor of the call for a ceasefire, nor has it stopped supplying weapons, which in fact doubled in the space of a month between December 2023 and January 2024, reaching two million euros in missiles and bombs supplied to Israel.
In Italy, after the major popular mobilizations in solidarity with the Palestinian people, a major protest movement has developed in recent months in Italian universities to demand an end to cooperation agreements with Israel and with war and military industry companies. We supported these protests with all our energies, while repression by police forces, on the one hand, and squadrist attacks organized by pro-Israel extremists, on the other hand, intensify.
In this context, some Palestinian organizations in Italy launched a national demonstration in Rome for the day of October 5, recalling the anniversary of the October 7 events and calling to express solidarity and support for Palestinian resistance forces. The launching of this demonstration and the positions expressed by the promoters were used as a pretext by the Meloni government to impose a ban on the demonstration, for alleged “public security reasons” that in reality unmask the entirely political nature of this ban, which came after weeks of pressure from pro-Israel sectors.
These developments have produced a division among Palestinian forces in Italy, producing the withdrawal from promoting the October 5 day by some of the Palestinian groups.
The Communist Front and the Communist Youth Front, in confirming their adherence to and participation in the national demonstration day in Rome on Oct. 5 with a communist and class section, with an appointment in Piramide (MB) at 2 p.m., state and reiterate the following:
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- It is necessary to end the ongoing genocide of the Gaza Strip, impose an immediate ceasefire and stop the Israeli army’s plans to invade Lebanon. We support the indictment of Israel for crimes of genocide at the International Court of Justice for violations of the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide.
- We fight to end all forms of Italian involvement in the ongoing massacre in Gaza, all forms of Italian support for Netanyahu’s criminal government, all forms of Italian cooperation and involvement in the preparation of the imperialist war against Lebanon and Iran. We denounce the imperialist plans of the US, EU and NATO and Italian capital in the Middle East.
- The attempt of government forces to use the pretexts of “fighting anti-Semitism and terrorism” to intensify the political repression of solidarity with Palestine is now crystal clear. We think that these attempts at intimidation and political marginalization must be answered, despite all the existing contradictions, with the utmost unity of the Palestinian communities and pro-Palestinian forces of the class movement, with no illusions that unity in the struggle can be replaced by closed-door talks with the political forces of the center-left.
- Any hope for peace in the immediate future for the Palestinian people passes through an end to the occupation of the Palestinian territories and apartheid, the effective recognition of a sovereign and independent Palestinian state, the right of return for Palestinian refugees, and the release of political prisoners held by the Israeli regime.
Communist Front Political Bureau
Communist Youth Front National Secretariat
