In full coordination with the Trump administration, Israel has resumed its genocidal war against the people of Gaza. Over 400 people were murdered by Israeli airstrikes in the opening hours of this new phase, and the attacks are ongoing. A full-scale ground invasion may be coming soon. All of this aggression is being carried out with a U.S.-supplied arsenal funded by our tax dollars.
Trump and Netanyahu are lying when they say that the Palestinian resistance walked away from negotiations. The reality is the opposite – despite repeated efforts to secure a lasting ceasefire, Israel consistently failed to live up to its commitments or negotiate in good faith.
The agreement reached on January 15 established a temporary ceasefire to be followed by three phases of negotiations that each last six weeks. The first phase involved weekly prisoner swaps between Israel and the resistance as the Israeli military gradually withdrew from Gaza and allowed more humanitarian aid to enter. The Palestinian resistance fulfilled its end of the deal, but Israel allowed in only a fraction of the truckloads of food, medicine, fuel and other essential supplies necessary to alleviate the horrible suffering the people of Gaza have been subjected to. It also refused to leave certain strategic positions inside of Gaza.
Phase two of the negotiations were supposed to focus on a political settlement about the future governance of Gaza and lead to a definitive end to the fighting. The Israeli government refused to accept the beginning of phase 2, and the so-called “mediators” from the Trump administration instead focused on coming up with an arrangement for the extension of phase 1. Even though this constituted a clear violation of the January 15 agreement, the resistance still actively engaged in talks that would extend the ceasefire and resume the prisoner swaps. These negotiations were still underway when Israel decided to resume the assault on Gaza.
Trump has openly and repeatedly declared his intent to carry out the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, driving the population from their homes to make room for a luxury real estate development that would be owned by the United States. Netanyahu supports this plan, which is in line with the long-term goal at the foundation of the Israeli regime: remove Palestinians from their homeland to make way for colonial settlers. That’s what the resumption of the war on Gaza is really about: to attempt a new phase of ethnic cleansing required a sabotage of the ceasefire. Netanyahu wants to hold his far-right coalition together in pursuit of a genocidal agenda; he couldn’t care less about hostages.
All across the country today and in the coming days, emergency protests are taking place. Under Trump and Biden before him, tens of billions of dollars of our taxpayer money is being used to murder children and bomb hospitals instead of meeting the needs of working people. Alongside the people of the world, we need to rise up and put an end to this massacre once and for all!
