Statement concerning the escalation of the conflict in Gaza and the West Bank

8 October 2023

International Comission of the NCPN

With the increasing aggression of the Israeli occupying force against the Palestinian population, the situation has escalated terribly for the oppressed Palestinians in recent times, who have now taken up arms against their occupiers.

The decades-long occupation of Palestine by the Israeli state, supported by the US, EU, and the Dutch government, is accompanied daily by countless crimes against the Palestinian population. Thousands of Palestinian civilians, including many children, have been killed; thousands are political prisoners; the blockade of Gaza, turning it into an open-air prison; the apartheid regime in the occupied territories where the Palestinian population is forcibly evicted from their homes—these are just a few elements of the long-standing oppression by the Israeli state, which simultaneously, along with reactionary measures, also attacks the rights of the Israeli population itself. Just this year, the provocations of the Israeli state in Gaza and the West Bank have cost the lives of more than 200 Palestinians.

Our thoughts are with the Palestinian and Israeli working class in the region, who suffer due to the actions of the criminal Israeli state and other imperialist powers that meddle in the conflict in the interest of capital, perpetuating the bloodshed.

We condemn the Dutch demissionary cabinet as well as the stance of the opposition parties in parliament, particularly those who like to present themselves as ‘left’ and ‘progressive,’ for their support of the Israeli state. They label Palestinian resistance as “random acts of terrorism” –as seen in the statements of Rutte, GroenLinks/PvdA, SP, and other bourgeois parties. They do not recognize it as a response to decades of violent oppression and occupation of the Palestinian population and their land, including the use of weapons from the Netherlands.

The Palestinian population has the right to defend their claim to a dignified life free from oppression. For the Palestinian population, the potential for defending their rights and liberation lies in the secular and anti-imperialist-oriented struggle against the Israeli state’s occupation. Of great importance in this struggle is international solidarity, which they try to undermine by portraying the entire Palestinian population’s fight against the occupation as terrorism.

We continue to advocate for an end to the criminal occupation by the Israeli state, an end to the violence faced daily by the Palestinian population at the hands of the occupying force, and we call for an end to the bloodshed of innocent people in the region.