The trial of strength between Hamas and Israel has ended, at least for now, with a “victory” for all. With elections coming up, Netanyahu has achieved an important result. He has shown that he is a hawk, a worthy successor to Sharon, the man of destiny for the Israeli people. In electoral terms he wanted to forcefully demonstrate that the security of the nation rests in his hands, through his determination to deal ferociously with anyone who dares to question the borders of the State. It is his way of saying that the past ambiguity and readiness for dialogue of the Labour Party and Kadima led nowhere, and the only party which Israelis need to rally around is Likud. Any path which abandons the use of force will only deliver the country of David into the hands of the Palestinian enemy. On an international level the brief war against Hamas, and the acceptance of the truce that followed have reattached the strings which indissolubly tie Israel to the USA, allowing President Obama to unscrupulously and unhesitatingly declare unconditional support for reprisals by air and sea against Gaza City.

For Hamas, despite the 160 civilian deaths and the devastating bombardment which has destroyed entire districts, it has also been a chance to sing of “victory”. This farce doesn’t have elections in Gaza as its main aim because none are on the agenda but to show the Palestinian people that only their armed wing , the Ezzedine al Kassam brigades can take on the Zionist army successfully. More specifically the declaration of “victory” takes on the significance of a challenge to the PLO of Abu Mazen, and his concessions to Israel and the United States, in a sort of implicit denunciation of their betrayal of Palestinian nationalism.

Even for the new Egyptian President, Morsi, the Gaza war has presented unexpected opportunities. The post “Pharaoh” (i.e. Mubarak – translator), post Tantawi figure, who had excited so much fear and confusion after the undisputed victory of his Islamist party, supported by the radical wing of the fundamentalist Salafists, had to win back approval, both within the Arab League and on the international chess board of the devastated Middle East. After the first ambiguous declarations in which Morsi announced his wish to respect all agreements (with Israel and the United States), the Camp David Accords above all, he had added that he reserved the possibility of looking again at some points. In other words, if the United States continued to finance the Army without Tantawi, and considered post-Mubarak Egypt a faithful ally, absolutely nothing would happen, but if on the other hand the new Egyptian regime was pushed into a corner then the old balance of power would be upset. Morsi, caught firmly between two stools, declared that the Egyptian people would never abandon their Palestinian brothers in Hamas, that he would reopen the Rafah crossing to allow refuges to flee whilst at the same time he closed all the tunnels which connect Gaza and Sinai to hamper the passage of arms and jihadist militants, and totally dedicated himself to negotiations to find a peaceful solution to the conflict in order to show the USA how faithful he could be.

In addition, a factor of extraordinary importance should be noted in relations between Egypt and Israel: the pipeline of el-Arish in the Sinai that carries gas into the Israeli city of Ashkelon on the Mediterranean. The Arab Gas Pipeline runs from el-Arish in northern Sinai and is divided into two branches. The main branch runs through the Gulf of Aqaba, in the southern part of the Sinai, then north along the Jordan River and supplies gas to Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. The second branch, that of the el-Arish-Ashkelon pipeline along the Gaza Strip, reached Israel on the basis of a contract signed in 2005 between the Israeli company Israel Electricity Corporation and the Egyptian East Mediterranean Gas Company (EMG). This contract came into force in March 2008. The Egyptian-Israeli agreement provides for the EMG to meet Israel’s energy needs by supplying 1.7 billion cubic metres of natural gas each year for a period of fifteen years. In addition, it provides for the possibility of increasing the supply of gas by 25% and extending the contract for another five years. However, jihadist groups have inflicted serious damage on the pipeline, so much so that it had to be closed for three months, seriously endangering 40% of Israel’s energy supply.

It is thus also the case that the government in Tel Aviv is desperately trying to find an alternative to its traditional lack of energy supplies by exploiting the offshore natural gas fields of Dalit, Tamar and Leviathan in the maritime space off the coast of Haifa. The fields in question have already been explored by a joint venture led by the Israeli company Delek and Noble Energy of Texas. However, this is still a remote possibility, given the conflict with Lebanon and Cyprus (the Turkish side) and the fact that Turkey itself claims the same fields. Thus the el-Arish-Ashkelon pipeline continues to be the main dilemma for Israel.

In this sense, the question of energy was, once again, the central feature of the "little war in Gaza". For Israel it was absolutely necessary to reiterate that the energy supply should continue and be safe from any attack and that the Morsi government would have to guarantee this, even against Hamas as against any other fundamentalist force, something the new "Pharaoh" has shown he wants to do.

That the losers have been civilians, children, workers, peasants, and all manner of dispossessed, is of little importance in the logic of the opposing national interests.

All this only fuels the hatred between Israelis and Palestinians, throwing them even more into the arms of fundamentalists like Hamas or Likud and moving them further away from the internationalist perspective, for the removal of borders and the overthrow of class society.

Once again, therefore, war turns out to be the best weapon of the bourgeoisie to divide the working class, playing them off against each other and fomenting nationalism.

Against Israeli military aggression, against the nationalism of Hamas, the unification of Palestinian and Israeli workers and the dispossessed for a society without classes or borders requires a return to the path of class struggle. This is the only solution to the perpetual devastation of war, to nationalistic self-interest, to a capitalism that is gasping for breath but still sowing terror and death.

FD