There is something extremely important for us to understand about this ceasefire deal: even if the colonizers break it, that will only accelerate their demise. The Zionist entity and the U.S. empire did not come to this decision from a place of strength; they did this because so-called “Israel” is collapsing, and the only way to manage that collapse is by pivoting away from Gaza. The Palestinian resistance has made the military goals of “Israel” unreachable, as well as driven the entity to military, energy, economic, and demographic crisis. It’s clear at this point that “Israel” will never be able to eliminate Hamas—whose membership has grown since October 7–and won’t manage to ethnically cleanse North Gaza. Which means that if the entity is to have any hope of fulfilling its goals in Syria, it will need to de-prioritize Gaza, and invest its resources in the war front that’s more strategically important.
Syria has become the most important front for “Israel” because “Israel” is a U.S. military base, and right now what Washington needs from it is assistance in pressuring Russia. The U.S. foreign policy establishment cares much more about winning on the geopolitical chessboard than about letting “Israel” set up more settlements; that’s why even though President Trump’s family wants to build real estate in North Gaza, Trump has embraced the effort to shift away from fighting Hamas.
Whether or not the most fanatical Zionists get their wish for a renewed bombing campaign, this won’t change how the resistance has won; how the Palestinian armed forces, and the broader Palestinian people, have made Gaza permanently within indigenous jurisdiction. If a fifteen-month genocide can’t enable the settlements to expand into Gaza, then anything the colonizers do next can only backfire on them further. The Zionist project cannot be sustained, and the imperial state is coming to realize this; so it’s using the entity in the most strategic ways that it can, before Zionism’s unraveling reaches the next stage and Palestine becomes fully free.
This is the crucial context that’s missed when observers simply conclude that the ceasefire is a farce, and can’t be trusted in the slightest. It’s true that the enemy the Palestinians face has no honor or morals, and that it will resume the massacres when it gets the chance to. If the entity takes that path, though, it will face repercussions so severe that the bulk of its leadership doesn’t seem to understand how catastrophic they’ll be. The Zionist project’s true believers do not live in reality; they think they’re immune to history’s laws. The U.S. empire’s strategic thinkers, found within the CIA and other deep state elements, are only using the Zionist fanatics for their larger geopolitical goals; so when they see “Israel” collapsing, they get a desire to pull back.
The resistance has forced the imperialists to retreat, and to pursue a different strategy. Whether this strategy succeeds depends on how successful the hegemon’s next wars will be. Everyone, especially those of us in the empire’s core, have a duty to combat these imperial plans; and as we embark on this revolutionary task, all of us can learn from what the Palestinians just did.
What has Gaza’s resistance coalition done that’s different from how Baathist Syria waged its war before Assad fell? Like Ansarallah, the Palestinian forces have fully committed to the fight against the hegemon. They’ve operated with a true understanding of the strategic situation amid multipolarity’s rise; with the knowledge that in the multipolar era, conflicts are inevitable, and the only way for the anti-imperialist side to triumph is by embracing this reality. Baathist Syria did not fully recognize this, because it believed that it could defend against NATO’s jihadists while seeking to appease the U.S.-aligned Gulf states.
Tempted by the UAE’s proposal to lift the Syria sanctions in exchange for Syria’s distancing itself from Iran, the Baathist government rejected Iran’s offer to help open a war front against “Israel.” Thereby, it negated the possibility of accepting Iranian assistance in fighting Turkey’s jihadist blitz. The government believed that if it befriended certain parts of the imperialist forces, these forces would save it from the other ones. But this could never be the case, because the Gulf monarchies work for the same imperial master that Turkey, “Israel,” and HTS work for. It was all the same enemy. And this enemy can’t be bargained with, no matter how much one may want to believe so.
Certain factions of Iran’s government share this ideology of compromise, and since last May’s assassination of Raisi, they’ve gained enough power to start seriously undermining the resistance. When Iran’s reformist president Pezeshkian replaced Raisi, he uncritically believed a promise from “Israel” that Lebanon would be spared if Iran didn’t retaliate for Haniyeh’s assassination. And because the reformers wanted to keep up this narrative about “Israel” having been successively restrained, they told Nasrallah that it would be safe for him to travel within Beirut.
When this lie allowed “Israel” to assassinate Nasrallah, Iran’s people mobilized in outrage, and the Khamenei faction momentarily gained more political capital; but even though Iran has since undergone a legislative movement to build a nuclear weapon, the reformers continue to block this project’s completion. They also continue to delay Operation True Promise 3, even though “Israel” crossed a clear red line in October by attacking an Iranian nuclear facility. These are the developments that have led to this last year’s partial collapse of the Axis of Resistance: a proliferation of capitulationist ideas, which the enemy has taken full advantage of.
Ansarallah and the Palestinian resistance have kept the Axis going, if in a different form, because they fully grasp the character of the anti-imperialist mission. By their nature, these forces can only exist as consistent fighters of the hegemon; Hamas came to power due to how Fatah failed at combating the occupation, while Ansarallah emerged out of a popular desire to throw off neo-colonial rule. Iran’s revolution obviously also had anti-imperialist origins; the problem is that Iran’s economy became opened up to neoliberal reforms, letting the reformists inject liberalism into the country’s government as well. The structure of the state in which the revolutionaries operated allowed for their enemies to gain a foothold. In Syria, a comparable problem prevented the consistent anti-imperialist forces from sufficiently guiding policy; the Baath regime’s basis was Arab nationalism, not dictatorship of the proletariat. Which made Syria’s defense effort falter during the most crucial moment.
Multipolarity will continue to be the world’s reality; the question is what kind of multipolarity it will be. A West Asia that’s dominated by Turkey is actually compatible with a multipolar paradigm; the neo-Ottomans are trying to take advantage of the new possibilities for geopolitical change. And if unchallenged, they’ll eventually replace the Zionists as the hegemon’s main proxies in the region. The Palestinians and the Yemenis, as well as the many Syrians who hate HTS, will continue bringing Zionism towards its demise; these peoples have been left with no choice but to wage a serious war against the empire. Whether the empire gets defeated depends on if the global class struggle applies the Gaza coalition’s logic, and commits to this fight without any reservations. The lesson from Syria’s fall is that anti-imperialists can only win on the basis of class struggle, and we must apply this lesson.
This isn’t just a matter of being principled as individuals; it’s also about purging our movements of elements that are reformist, and that want to sell us out. The Palestinians in Gaza have gained this victory because they’ve had nothing left to lose, and no reformists have been able to influence their leadership; it’s been a kind of triumph that’s born out of the most extreme and inhumane circumstances, wherein a people have been motivated to fight out of necessity. And though Gaza is not a dictatorship of the proletariat, nor is it a state, the dire nature of the crisis which Gazans face has in itself created the revolutionary spirit behind the resistance. Gaza won’t be able to build socialism until it’s had the opportunity to become a state, which requires an end to the genocidal occupation and blockade. But this horrific situation which the Gaza strip’s people find themselves in has produced a raw kind of class struggle, a class struggle that’s equivalent to the American slave revolts.
Most other peoples aren’t experiencing such an exceptional degree of violence and suffering, so we’re mostly behind the Palestinians in how developed and ready our movements are. We must study the Palestinian resistance, and work to close this gap in seriousness; we owe it to the Palestinians who remain occupied, and we owe it to the entire revolutionary cause.
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