09.01.2025

Redrawing the map

Putting faith in the ‘axis of resistance’ and Netanyahu’s legal troubles was always woefully misplaced. The Zionist state is backed to the hilt by the global hegemon. Moshé Machover spoke to the January 5 CPGB members’ aggregate

I don’t have a message of optimism - at least in the short term. I don’t remember the situation being so dire. In fact, we are now in the very midst of a major transformation in the region. The Middle East is being reconfigured, largely in the interests of the US-Israel alliance.

I will survey the developments so far, in turn going from the focus in Gaza, then through Lebanon, Syria, the Houthis and Iran. And I’ll say a few words about each of these fronts in the region, which must be regarded as an integrated, interlinked series of fronts. You cannot understand any of these fronts in isolation. They are all, in an obvious way, dialectically connected.

So, first of all, Gaza. I think it is becoming clear that the real goal of Israel’s war on Gaza is not the officially declared aims, namely, the eradication of Hamas and the freeing of the abducted Israelis. (Some of them are soldiers, prisoners of war really.) But it is becoming clear - and this much is clear to a big section of the Israeli public itself - that the government is not interested in freeing the hostages. There are continual demonstrations in Israel protesting against the indifference of the Netanyahu government. This indifference includes not only his more extreme right-wing partners, but he himself is not really interested in freeing the hostages or in eradicating Hamas.

The latter is a useful excuse, because it requires an endless war. I mean, how far does ‘eradication’ go? Nor is it the case that the Netanyahu government is continuing the war simply because of Netanyahu’s personal interest, to avoid him being held responsible for the failure of Israel in the attack of October 7, or his ongoing criminal cases in the Israeli courts. These, of course, add a personal interest for Netanyahu, but the real aim of the war is ethnic cleansing, and the means to achieve it is genocidal.

I think this is becoming clear. There are obvious indications. Look what happens to hospitals, for example. The excuse given for each attack on a hospital is that this particular hospital is a site of a Hamas command centre. There has never been any convincing evidence of this, and international agencies such as the Unrwa, the World Health Organisation and Médicines Sans Frontières keep saying: Where is the evidence?

It is certainly the case that, quite probably, there are individual Hamas people present in these hospitals, for the simple reason that Hamas was the government, is still the government, of the Gaza strip. So, for example, to be the director of a hospital, you needed the approval of the government - in this case of the health ministry. This is clear. Okay, so this is an excuse. But what excuse is there for trashing the hospital itself?

Systematically, Israel has been trashing one hospital after another, attacking, evacuating the medical staff and the patients, and then leaving the hospital itself in ruins and its equipment destroyed. What is the reason for this, if not to achieve a situation where there is no possibility of survival of the population in that part of the world. It started with the Al-Ahali hospital. I wonder if comrades remember this episode? It occurred on October 17 2023. A missile fell in the grounds of the hospital and killed many people who were sheltering there. And there was a big hoo-ha. Israeli hasbara (public explanation), seconded by its American ally, alleged that it was hit by a misfired missile from Gaza itself. “We didn’t do it. It’s not the Israelis. It’s a misfired or misdirected missile fired from inside Gaza by Islamic Jihad or somebody else.”

Those lies

This was gaslighting. I remember giving a talk at the time - in this forum, I think, or in a related forum organised by Weekly Worker. I detailed why it is very unlikely that the Israeli public explanation holds water. It is one of those hasbara lies. It reminds me of a similar case relating to another war: the bombing under the Baltic of the Nord stream gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, which was sabotaged. The excuse given by the Americans - repeated, by the way, by our local social imperialists - was that Russia itself may have done it. Which is highly unlikely and completely illogical. But people were told this lie, and a lot of people found it convenient to believe it.

Okay, so what do we have in Gaza? The northern half of the strip is being vacated, ethnically cleansed. Any possibility of human survival is being removed, and the population is pushed south, to the southern part of the Gaza Strip, towards the so-called Philadelphi Corridor. What will happen next?

As it’s New Year, I think I will risk some speculation. We can see in the present situation a huge number of people, perhaps a million, concentrated in the southern part of Gaza in conditions which are dire, worse in many respects than people suffered in concentration camps during World War II, in terms of facilities, in terms of basic needs for survival. What can happen to them? Perhaps a worrying clue is Israel’s, and specifically Benjamin Netanyahu’s, insistence that in any deal with Hamas - which they are endlessly negotiating about - one of the sticking points is that Israel will retain control of the Philadelphi Corridor. Perhaps comrades are not aware what the whole thing is about, where the Philadelphi Corridor is, and why Israel is so insistent on keeping control of it after any ceasefire is arranged between it and Hamas.

Where is the Philadelphi Corridor? Well, it is a narrow strip of land along the border between the Gaza strip and the Sinai desert. It’s on the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing. If you look at the map, it’s at the very southern end of the Gaza strip. The Gaza strip has a sea border, and on two sides it is surrounded by Israeli territory, but on its southern tip it borders the Egyptian Sinai desert.

My speculation is that one of the options for Israel, completing its project of ethnic cleansing, is that - at a certain point, when life in the Gaza strip has become completely unbearable, more unbearable than it is now - it will open the Rafah crossing. For this, it needs to control the land on the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing. It will allow the desperate Palestinians to just flood through it into the Sinai desert. Of course Egypt is not going to like it. But Israel will say: if you want to shoot them, if you want to kill them, go ahead. We don’t mind. Of course, this is guesswork, but I think it is an informed guess. This is one way in which Israel could get rid of a major part, if not the whole, of the Palestinian population of Gaza.

At the same time there are definite plans by the messianic Zionist camp, which is part of the present Israeli government - with the support not only of religious Zionism, the extreme messianic parties in the coalition, but with a lot of support in Likud, the main coalition partner, headed by Netanyahu himself - for colonising, or rather recolonising, the Gaza strip on a much larger scale than it was colonised before 2005, when Israel withdrew its settlements from Gaza. So that is on the cards.

There are definite plans. People are already buying real estate options along the Gaza shore. Let me add that, of all the seacoast of the Mediterranean, Gaza used to be considered one of the most beautiful and most suitable places for a seaside holiday. I mean it. This has been the case since before the Zionist colonisation of Palestine. Gaza was known during the time of the British mandate as having a wonderful seashore - an idyllic part of the Mediterranean. So this is the dream of the settlers, combining material incentives with biblical justification for recolonising the Gaza strip.

Going over to Lebanon, I must admit that Israel has been able to overcome and defeat Hezbollah much more easily than I had imagined. It was always an assumption, not only of mine, but generally accepted, that Hezbollah was a very robust organisation which had a huge number of missiles that it could use in response to any major Israeli attack. But this proved to be no longer the case, due to the very impressive achievements of Israeli intelligence. They managed not only to assassinate the leadership of Hezbollah - which is not as damaging as you might think, because when you assassinate one general, they are replaced by another - that is the lesson of history. But what was more important was the massive killing, murder, of thousands of Hezbollah operatives, which disabled the organisation to an extent that had not been predicted.

Israel is likely to stay in the territory which it now occupies ‘temporarily’, according to its agreement with Hezbollah. This is the land between the Israel-Lebanon border and the Litani River, which runs parallel to the border, from east to west, to the Mediterranean, at a distance of about 30 kilometres from the border. In the past there have been several indications that Israel covets this piece of land, and there are clear calls from sections of the present government for its colonisation.

Again, there is a combination of material motives with biblical messianic ones. The material motive is water. The Litani is a major resource of water, which is very important in that part of the world. In the past Israel has shown great interest in controlling and using its water. This is combined with messianic justification: it is part of the Promised Land. If you look at the borders of the promise that Yahweh made to Abraham, one version of it includes that part of Lebanon and beyond.

Again, this is a prediction that Israel will stay, will keep its presence between its present border and the Litani beyond the time agreed in its accord with Hezbollah. This merely says that as the Lebanese army takes possession of this part of the land then Israel will withdraw. I don’t think Israel is going to withdraw. Then if people internationally will ask: haven’t you agreed to withdraw? They will say: ‘make us!’. All that is needed is backing from the US, which is more or less guaranteed.

Collapse

Okay, going on to Syria. The collapse of the Assad regime happened in a way which is classical of revolutions: things drag on and on, a regime becomes weaker and weaker, is undermined, and then suddenly it collapses. This is an illustration of a dialectical process, where things proceed first of all in a gradual manner. For years the Assad regime was undermined, and then it tumbled down. It collapsed, of course, because it was weakened by what happened on the other fronts which I’ve already referred to. Again, I’m going to make some predictions that are part speculation, but I think there are sufficient grounds to believe them.

The collapse of the Assad regime is the only good thing that results from this change. The Assad regime was so dire in its treatment of any opposition, or any suspected opposition, that it is no wonder the Syrian people rejoice at its end. But don’t rejoice too quickly, because of what is going to happen. I don’t think Syria will replicate what happened in Iraq after the 2003 invasion. It will happen in a completely different way.

First, at the moment there is no massive western invasion. There is an invasion by Israel, once again using the situation to grab a slice of Syrian territory. That goes without saying. Don’t forget that Israel was already in possession of an annexed part of Syrian territory - the part of the Golan heights which Israel took in the 1967 Six Day War, and which has been formally annexed. It was ethnically cleansed so as to make its incorporation viable from a Zionist point of view: that is to say, land with as few Arab inhabitants as possible. Only the Druze population was allowed to remain. Why the Druze? I’ll come to that in a moment. But keep in mind that the Muslim Syrians, which were the majority population of the Golan Heights, were ethnically cleansed, while the Druze were allowed to remain. They are an Arab religious minority which is a distant split from Shia Islam.

What is going to happen now? First of all, who is behind the overthrow of the Assad regime, and who is going to benefit? The answer to these two questions is not necessarily the same. It is at least clear that the force that liberated Damascus from the Assad regime, the HTS, was backed by Turkey. Whether other regional actors were also behind it is a moot question. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were, but at least at the moment the regime in Damascus - and I stress in Damascus because it doesn’t by any means control the whole of Syria - is backed by Turkey.

There are now three major actors occupying parts of Syria. There is the regime in Damascus, which is, at least for the present, backed by Turkey. There is Israel, which jumped on the opportunity to occupy another bit of territory beyond the Golan Heights. And there is, on the eastern bank of the Euphrates River, between the Euphrates and the border of Syria, a big bloc of territory controlled by Kurdish forces which are officially backed by the US. Okay, it is complicated. To simplify the picture, there are three main forces present on Syrian territory which will contend with each other and maybe destroy the whole country. I mean it. It is very unlikely that Syria will return to being an integrated country, mainly because Israel would strive to prevent it.

Strategically, Israel has a traditional policy formulated long ago, when Ben-Gurion was prime minister of Israel, of supporting minorities in the Arab world in order to promote the disintegration of Arab countries, and also to prevent unification of the Arab east. Part of this strategy was to prevent unification by giving support to minority communities on a religious or ethnic basis - for example, some Christian minorities in Lebanon; the Druze, who were allowed to remain in the Golan Heights after annexation; and the Kurds.

Kurdish tragedy

Israeli involvement with the Kurds goes back to the 1960s. The leader of the Iraq-based Kurds, mullah Mustafa Barzani, visited Israel in the 70s several times, and Israel has been giving secret and unadvertised military support to the Kurds, simply because this promoted disintegration of both Syria and Iraq, and prevented unification. In this Israeli strategy there is a potential for friction with Turkey.

Turkish interest is not to promote the Kurds in Syria. It is exactly the opposite, because the Kurdish forces in Syria are allied with the Kurdish minority in Turkey itself. One of the reasons for Turkey’s strategic interest in Syria is precisely in order to undermine the Kurdish minority in Turkey. So there is a potential for friction between Turkey and Israel. But that is only part of it, because it is not only about what is going to happen to the Kurds. It is also about who is going to control Syria.

Things may lead to the partitioning of Syria between Israel and Turkey, but in such an arrangement there are always conflicting interests. The drive to extend one’s control over more parts of Syria would always be there. I’m not trying to say, and I don’t believe, that Turkey is going to replace Iran as the bête noir of Israel in the Middle East, as the competitor for, let us say, regional hegemony. I don’t think it is going to lead to this scale of antagonism; but friction is, I think, almost inevitable.

Before I go on to Iran, I want to mention the Houthis. I think that calling them ‘the Houthis’ is a misnomer. Actually, the Houthis are the government of Yemen. The force that is to some extent allied with Iran and is confronting Israel is not a sort of ragtag rebel army just in control of parts of Yemen. It is actually in control of the capital, Sanaa, and of most of the country itself. It is only Saudi Arabia and its western allies who regard the Houthis not as the government of Yemen. They are, though, the de facto government.

So Israel has a conflict with the government of Yemen. Surprisingly, it is this rival of Israel, this antagonist of Israel, that has kept its cool and has so far maintained its military activity against Israel and its western allies, on about the same level.

Their tactics are quite simple. Apart from what they are doing in the Red Sea, where they are able to harass shipping, they also lob missiles into Israel - not many, and not very successfully, but the psychological effect is far beyond the military importance. Some of the missiles they lob manage to reach parts of Israel. By modern standards of missiles, they cause not huge damage, but some damage. They may kill or injure a few people. A big proportion of the missiles are intercepted, and at worst the fragments come showering down. This cannot be prevented. But what happens every time? It’s not a shower of missiles. It’s perhaps one per night. But every time a missile is lobbed the siren alarms go off in Israel.

The public in a big part of Israel, and especially in the centre, are called to go into shelters. This has a disproportionate psychological effect. Every night, or almost every night, you hear the sirens going off, and you’re advised to seek shelter. So, with very little effort, the de facto government of Yemen manages to do quite a lot to undermine Israeli morale.

Iran weakened

Finally, coming to Iran, I don’t want to enlarge on this. Yassamine Mather knows far more about this than I do, but I will just say a few words. Iran has obviously been dramatically weakened by recent events, especially by the loss of, or the downgrading of, Hezbollah. Of course Hezbollah still exists, but in nothing like the military strength it once had. Syria, which was an ally of the Iranian regime, has been lost.

But, I think, beyond this there are signs of weakening of the Iranian regime from within. Not only its ‘axis of resistance’, which it carefully built up over many years, and which served a sort of outer defence militarily, and is now gone. On the inside the regime is weakening. What is significant is the discontent.

Recent demonstrations are no longer just of women and youth, no longer just of moderate opposition with politically liberal tendencies, but the Bazaaris, in Tehran and other cities. That is a class that was the mainstay of the ayatollahs even before they came to power.

Comrade Mather will correct me if I’m wrong. The fragility of the Iranian regime may well lead to its collapse. A collapse that can happen very quickly. It’s one of those cases, as with Syria, where things superficially appear to be stable for a long time, and then suddenly move within a few days.