The Palestinian people of Gaza — who have endured and resisted a 470-day campaign for their extermination, enabled by the bombs and bullets of Israel’s Western backers — have won six weeks’ respite. The hostage swap and ceasefire deal agreed between Hamas and Israel will exchange 33 Israelis held by Hamas for hundreds of Palestinians held by Israel. It begins today.

The agreement, which will see Israeli forces pull back from some parts of the Gaza strip and some Palestinians able to return to what is left of their homes, is similar to one that has been on the table since May and endlessly rejected by the Israeli negotiators. Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has bragged that he had repeatedly blocked ceasefire deals over the last 15 months.

War criminal, international fugitive, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu likewise has scuppered chances for an exchange of hostages, a pause in the fighting and a surge of humanitarian aid for Gaza. However, he was forced to change positions by his friend and incoming US President Donald Trump. The head of the new US administration reportedly wanted a major diplomatic victory secured before taking office on Monday, 20 January.

But Trump’s push for this deal does not signal a shift away from his endorsement of “Greater Israel” and the campaign of extermination it implies. Just hours before the ceasefire was due to come into effect, Netanyahu issued a bellicose warning that Trump should uphold Israel’s “right to return to conflict,” and so he will.

Netanyahu explained that Israeli Occupation Forces and military assets will be kept in Gaza. The Israeli war cabinet is set to use the pause in fighting in Gaza to update its war objectives and shift more resources to its campaign of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.

The war cabinet demanded that the military and security services provide it with an intensified West Bank offensive plan, with troop deployments in the occupied territory returning to pre-7 October 2023 levels.

The relief felt across the world at the temporary ceasefire — and the joy of children in Gaza — must not lead to complacency. The Israeli regime has no intention of seeking peace with the Palestinians, let alone Palestinian national liberation.

The change of administrations in the US does not alter this basic calculus. Trump is likely to reduce Israel’s relative autonomy of action outside US strategic interests where Biden funded and armed Netanyahu and his génocidaire government to do as it pleases.

That blank-cheque approach has not stopped Joe Biden and his administration from celebrating the ceasefire deal as evidence of their diplomatic prowess. “Today, after many months of intensive diplomacy by the United States, Israel and Hamas have reached a ceasefire and hostage deal,” Biden said on Wednesday.

But few are left in the United States — let alone across the international community — to buy Biden’s message. As he leaves office, Biden’s legacy will be marked forever by foreign policy failures that sustained the “forever war” he campaigned to end — whether in Gaza or closer to home, in countries like Cuba.

For four years, Joe Biden has maintained Cuba’s designation as a “State Sponsor of Terrorism,” imposed by Donald Trump in the final week of his presidency in 2021. That designation unleashes the most extreme form of US economic warfare on its adversaries, effectively cutting the island off from the systems of global trade, finance, and tourism.

After promising to restore the diplomatic relations with Cuba set up by his Democratic Party predecessor Barack Obama, President Joe Biden waited until the final days of his presidency to rescind Trump’s designation, announced this week to the joy and relief of millions of Cubans and their families.

The breakthrough represents a triumph of international solidarity. Last year, the Progressive International brought together nearly 600 parliamentarians from 73 countries to demand Cuba's removal from this unjust list, adding to a global campaign at both grassroots and multilateral levels to defend the Cuban people’s fundamental rights to food, health, and development.

But the fight is far from over. Cuba's Ministry of Foreign Affairs notes, "The United States is taking steps in the right direction, but the blockade remains." The broader economic war — initiated in 1960 with the explicit aim of creating "hunger, desperation and overthrow of government" — continues to strangle Cuba's economy and punish its people for daring to chart an independent path.

Trump’s return to the White House brings with him Marco Rubio — the architect of the "maximum pressure" campaign against Cuba — as his Secretary of State. We must prepare for an intensification of aggression against the Cuban people and their revolution.

In both Palestine and Cuba, this moment calls for renewed — and radical — modes of international solidarity. Having won a small window of air to breathe, we must now strengthen our movement to build a new international order — one in which no nation can strangle another through economic warfare, and where sovereignty and self-determination are not just principles, but realities.

Onward.

Latest from the Movement

Global solidarity with Booker Omole of CPMK

The General Secretary of the Communist Party Marxist Kenya, Booker Omole, survived an assassination attempt this week. Omole and CPMK remains unbowed, continuing their efforts to organise for liberation, justice and socialism.

Statements of solidarity and condemnation have poured in from organisations around the world, including fellow PI members Akcja Socjalistyczna, Democratic Socialists of America and Haqooq-e-Khalq Party.

Whole Foods workers seek unionisation

Whole Foods workers in Philadelphia, United States have joined the fight to Make Amazon Pay. The grocery store chain is owned by Amazon and follows similar anti-labour, anti-union practices. Workers in Philadelphia are organising to become the first unionised Whole Foods store in the US.

Art of the Week

Cuba has an enduring solidarity with Palestine. In 1953 a speech by Fidel Castro proclaimed that “history will of course acquit us after all the lies and propaganda campaigns of Zionism and imperialism”. Calling for “Victory for Cuba, victory for Palestine! Down with imperialism!”

Long live the friendship between the Palestinian and Cuban peoples was authored by Marc Rudin, a Swiss-born artist who went by the pseudonym Jihad Mansour while working as a graphic artist for the PLO between 1980 and 1991. Rudin produced nearly 200 posters in solidarity with Palestine. Despite being created over three decades ago, the artwork’s message still resonates as Cuba is finally removed from the SSOT list, again, and Gaza finds hope in ceasefire agreements.