PALESTINE
Written by Eduardo Barragán and Matías Martínez
Thursday, 03 July 2014 19:44

Some weeks ago Pope Francis went to Middle East, more precisely to Palestine, to the historic city of Jerusalem.

The picture of the most important monotheistic religions leaders (Catholic, Jewish and Muslim), “hugging in prayer for peace” went around the world generating great expectations. Later Pope Francis himself summoned a meeting with Shimon Peres, president of Israel, and Mahmud Abbas, leader of the Palestine authority, to “overthrow the walls of enmity”.

Therefore, its logic to ask: what for did Pope Francis went to Middle East? Was it to manifest his solidarity with the Palestinian people’s struggle? Was it to demand the return of the land seized by Israel under the command of United States and England, two imperialist powers? Was it to denounce the thousands of murders produced by the Israeli troops and demand the return of refugees to their land? Or to condemn the existence of the Wall of Shame, built by Israel to isolate and ring-fence the Palestinian people?

No, it wasn´t for that at all. Pope Francis went to Palestine to defend the policy of the imperialist countries, enshrined in the Oslo agreement, which consists of encouraging the existence of two states: the Palestinian State and the State of Israel, reassuring the Society of Nations (currently known as United Nations) decision, taken in 1947 and guaranteed with bloodshed and fire by the Israeli army, with the support off all the military and political apparatus of the American imperialism and the rest of powers. It’s the same failed policy held by President Bill Clinton in 2000, or that of Obama some years ago.

This forms part of the new role of the Catholic Church since Pope Francis’ reign. An institution historically bound to the interests of the most reactionary governments, with a new “renovating” discourse in defense of the humble, tries to intervene in the imperialist crisis in a region shaken by the revolutionary processes of Egypt, Libya, and mainly Syria.

Israel is a racist and terrorist State

Israel is a State with a racist legislation that legitimates terrorist methods to establish an ethnic cleansing over the Palestinian people. Regrettably, under the banners of the tragedy suffered by the Jewish people during the Holocaust, Zionism is committing the same Nazi crimes over the Palestinian population. Only the hypocrisy of the imperialist interests can allow this genocide in “name of peace”.

So, Israel is a warmonger State, financed and military equipped by the American imperialism, having the second largest military budget in the world, only behind the U.S. It´s a military enclave, a true “Yankee aircraft carrier”, in service of sustaining domination and exploitation over Middle East, with the objective of extending colonization of the region at the cost of expelling its original settlers.

From Camp David to the Vatican: the new role of Pope Francis

Historically it has been the North American presidents that officiated as mediators in the whole region. This is why a good part of the negotiations have taken place in Camp David, the summer residence or the presidents.

That’s how the peace agreement between Egypt and Israel was signed in September 17th 1978. There the Egyptian president, Anwar al Sadat, committed a historic treason recognizing Israel in exchange of regaining control of Mount Sinai and its rich oil wells.

In 1993, it was the imperialism itself that accomplished the Oslo agreement between the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, and the then Israeli Prime Minister Isaac Rabin. The agreement allowed the Palestinians to create a self-government but betraying the historic Palestinian cause: the non-recognition of the State of Israel in the region, the control of Jerusalem and the return of the expelled refugees to their lands. As a result of this treason of the Palestinian leadership the Palestinian National Authority was created, a decimated territory, without any military forces or sovereignty, currently represented by Mahmoud Abbas.

In 2000, it was Bill Clinton who remounted the meetings of Camp David, in an attempt to dismantle the rise of the Palestinian resistance, known as the Second Intifada. It was Obama himself, after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, who attempted to regain the negotiation course for the coexistence of both States.

The unbreakable Palestinian resistance and the growing support of the international community have led to the systematic failure of all these attempts. The Israeli government has been politically isolating itself.  Due to the political and economic crisis, defeated in the military action in Iraq and in a stalemate in Afghanistan, the U.S. imperialism appeals to this millenary institution that has always supported the interests of power holders.

This is why the negotiations that formerly took place in Camp David in past years now are held in the Vatican. Beyond the respect to any religious belief, politically speaking, this “prayers for peace” are nothing but a new attempt to re-emerge the same reactionary politics.

This is a sample of the new role of the religions with mass influence in the region, to dismantle the revolutionary process that shakes Middle East and the North of Africa. All the churches “hug” each other to suffocate the struggle that faces the region and to maintain the imperialist colonial order.

This is nothing new in the case of the Catholic Church; we have seen it in several occasions, as the Pope John Paul II action during the Malvinas war. Then, the Pope came to Argentina to enshrine a policy of surrender to the British imperialism, incidentally with the same argument: “in name of peace”.

All the propaganda calling Francis the “Pope of the poor”, in tribute of the closer congregation of the poor, is in service of this new role before the capitalist crisis.

The coexistence of two states is impossible

As we mentioned before, the true menace to world peace is the existence itself of the State of Israel. Hence the historic claim of the Palestinian people of fighting for a secular, democratic, anti-racist Palestine, is today more valid than ever before. This is only possible if the true infernal machinery in service of murder and usurpation, the State of Israel, is destroyed.

Those where the banners of the Palestinian people when the struggle started for the defense of their territory and against the creation of the State of Israel, and this is the only possibility for Palestinians, Jews, Christians and Muslims to live in peace, as they did for millennia before the imperialist intervention and the creation of the nazi-fascist State of Israel.

These where the banners that all the organizations that claim to confront Zionism have betrayed, and nevertheless have failed to stop the struggle of the Palestinian masses, or the support of the peoples of the world. Thanks to this heroic struggle, the imperialism hasn’t been able to implement his plans to give the region a definite status. This is the resistance that the Pope Francis prayer for peace wants to burry.

Therefore, we call for the support of the Palestinian people’s struggle, raising high its historic banners:

For a secular, democratic anti-racist Palestine!

For the destructions of the State of Israel!