The guerrilla fighters of the Palestinian Resistance have taken the various doctrines on guerrilla warfare to a whole new level in their two years of fighting the genocidal, Zionist, Israeli army.
After two years, in areas that the Israelis claim to have “pacified” and turned into rubble, the guerrillas are still inflicting major casualties on the Zionist forces. They can still develop their own weapons, even in the midst of the carnage. These weapons, and the recycling of unexploded Zionist bombs against their supposedly invincible Merkava tanks, have created major problems for the Zionist attempts to annihilate the Palestinians.
The Zionist strategy to exterminate and expel the Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank has been one of ‘death by a thousand cuts’ over the last 70 years. But the Palestinian people have always been determined not to be forced from their lands, and clearly, they have been supporting the resistance fighters throughout.
The Zionist genocidal slaughter of civilians, journalists, and doctors, alongside their starvation policy, is designed to turn the people against the guerrillas, whom they cannot defeat militarily. The Zionists knew this long before the recent war started in Gaza. Could it be that the Zionist ‘scorched earth’ policy is designed to show people that contemplating armed resistance is futile? That even if you are not defeated militarily, they have a bigger and better plan? That the ‘military phase’ is only the softening up for the real deal?
It would appear then, that the Zionists are convinced that if they completely destroy the ‘sea of the people’ through slaughter, starvation, and the destruction of hospitals, schools, and other necessary infrastructure, they will force the people to turn against and force the resistance fighters to surrender. The direct military defeat of the resistance fighters is not where they see real victory.
Conversely, ‘military success’ for the resistance fighters could end up not being a victory for the Palestinians either. As we know only too well in Ireland, guerrilla military prowess, endurance, or even victory does not guarantee the defeat of colonialism, imperialism, or capitalism. We know too that the politics of armed resistance—before, during, and after—is central to any revolutionary success.
We can say with confidence that the Palestinian armed resistance has exposed the purveyors of the ‘world order’ and their so-called “democracy” for what it is. They have also exposed the Arab nations, who were clearly bought and sold by the Yankees and their Western partners a long time ago. Profits and power before humanity is surely the order of the day. However, it will be vital that those of us on the Left, socialists and communists, can build on these exposures.
But when the genocide in Palestine ends, and it will, the real war of attrition will then begin. Let us try to visualise what it will take to rebuild Gaza alone. Every house, every school, every hospital, and much more besides, will need planning permission, not to mention billions in financial aid. The materials to rebuild all the infrastructure will have to come via Gaza’s border crossings. And all of this will be, once again, controlled by Zionists, imperialists, and their Arab “friends”. That control could last for another fifty or one hundred years. It could negate any real or perceived victory by the resistance. Will the next generations of Palestinians give up, leave for a better life, or continue to resist? Only time can tell.
The imperialists, colonisers, and their capitalist institutions have hundreds of years of experience of wars, genocides, and ‘day after’ scenarios. They can wait, they can control, and they can wage “tactical genocides” at any time to retain their power. All of us activists need to be under no illusion that ‘death by a thousand cuts’ is very real in Palestine, ongoing in our own country, and present in too many other countries around the world.
