AIL – Palestine: Massacre, Hunger, and Dispossession
We hereby share a statement issued by the Coordinating Committee of the Anti-Imperialist League (AIL) on occasion of the 2nd Anniversary of the Al-Aqsa Flood.
Anti-Imperialists of the World, Unite!
Palestine: Massacre, Hunger, and Dispossession
“We were people driven from our own land. We were the victims of victims, expelled to make room for a Jewish state.” Edward Said’s words about the 1947-48 exile still express the reality the Palestinian people live today. Seventy-seven years have passed; dates and names have changed, but the statelessness, poverty, hunger, exile, and deaths of Palestinians have not. The gravest aspect of what is happening today is that military violence has merged with economic strangulation and humanitarian blockade, turning hunger into a strategic weapon. Hunger is not merely a consequence, but a direct tool of mass displacement and dispossession.
Since October 7, 2023, mosques, hospitals, schools, homes, and refugee camps in Gaza have been targeted, with 17,000 tons of bombs dropped in just two years. Some 65,000 civilians, about 8% of Gaza’s population, have been killed, 160,000 injured, and thousands more remain under the rubble. Before October 7, 39% of Gaza’s 2 million population and 36.7% of the West Bank’s were under the age of 14. According to the UN’s report of September 24, 2024, in just the first three weeks, the number of children killed in Gaza exceeded the total killed in conflicts across more than twenty countries over the past three years. This picture lays bare that Gaza has been turned into Palestine’s Guernica.
Bombardments crippled infrastructure, followed by the cutting off of basic humanitarian supplies. Water, food, medicine, fuel, and electricity were restricted or completely halted; hospitals became inoperative, sometimes directly struck, all of this accompanied by economic strangulation accompanied. Under the Paris Economic Protocol signed at the end of the Oslo process, Israel, authorized to collect taxes on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, blocked transfers worth about $188 million monthly (64% of total revenues in 2021). Therefore the Palestinians were unable to pay the salaries of 150,000 civil and military personnel. According to a January 2022 Kav LaOved report, the wages of Palestinians working in Israel constituted around 40% of Palestine’s income, while ILO data shows that about 20% of GDP depended on this labor flow. After October 7, the revocation of work permits dried up these lifelines, further weakening social fabric. Agriculture too was targeted: access to fields for irrigation or harvest was denied under “security” pretexts, and journalists documented the burning or uprooting of 10,000 olive trees in the West Bank, Gaza, Ramallah, and Jenin. The UN reported that between June 21 and July 21, in 2024 alone, 1,057 Palestinians were killed while waiting in food aid lines. Thus, hunger became not only an outcome, but a means to force people off their land.
Israel has confined the population it could not kill into towns, villages, and camps in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, encircled by walls, checkpoints, iron gates, and concrete blocks, transforming them into open-air prisons. Stripping and humiliation, arbitrary arrests, looting and burning of property, and settler seizures of land and resources, sometimes with army escort, complete the regime of constant violence accompanying hunger and exile.
The pattern repeatedly observed on the ground is this: first come warnings such as “this area is not safe, evacuate”; soon after, those areas are subjected to heavy bombardment and operations. This cycle forces civilians into permanent displacement. The practical result is depopulating certain regions and shifting control over them.
The “depopulation” of the area is followed by reconstruction and restructuring of the land with new economic and demographic arrangements. This model overlaps with historical colonial displacement tactics: make life unlivable, drive people out, then reconfigure the area. This template is seen today in parts of Gaza with case studies unfolding simultaneously: evacuation orders, depopulation, destruction, deprivation of basic humanitarian needs, enforced migration. The cycle repeats again and again.
Historical examples show that this mechanism is familiar: in North America, indigenous peoples were starved and massacred into reservations; in Australia, Aboriginal peoples were subjected to forced displacement, hunger, and cultural annihilation. The template is clear: make life unbearable, then present “voluntary” or “temporary” migration as a “solution.” The real result is land loss and demographic engineering. What is happening in Gaza and the West Bank today is a contemporary version of this template.
This mechanism is revealed not only in practice but also in discourse. In early 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump, declaring Gaza uninhabitable, presented the relocation of Palestinians to Egypt or Jordan as a “voluntary” and “temporary” solution. By suggesting “land can be found in other parts, and people can go to safer places,” he sought to legitimize forced migration. Some Israeli officials likewise argued for resettling Gaza’s population in Sinai and encouraged those who “wished” to leave Gaza. Everyone knows that “choices” made under hunger, bombardment, and economic collapse are not free will; they are the rhetorical disguise of forced exile.
Forced displacement and population transfer are among the gravest violations of international law. The erasure of the right of return means the destruction of property, cultural memory, and social continuity. The solution lies in permanent arrangements that prevent people’s dispossession, uphold the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination, and guarantee civilian safety and humanitarian access.
For this reason, we, as the Anti-Imperialist League, emphasize: What is happening in Palestine is not merely a regional conflict. It is the modern form of colonialism, the ongoing practice of demographic engineering and land seizure. Here, hunger is not an outcome, but a weapon of war used to drive people from their homes, lands, and homeland. The sustainability of this war is made possible by the military, economic, and diplomatic support of imperialist powers. Without the protection of U.S. and European imperialists, this massacre could not continue. Therefore, solidarity with the Palestinian people also requires exposing imperialist war economies, disrupting arms sales and financial flows, guaranteeing humanitarian aid corridors above politics, and expanding internationalist labor solidarity.
Today, the resistance in Gaza against hunger and exile is nurturing the knowledge and courage for barricades to be raised tomorrow in other geographies. Palestine’s resistance is humanity’s common resistance. The struggle in Palestine is not merely the struggle of one people for existence, but the common cause of all the oppressed and working people. We see the resistance against hunger, exile, and massacre in Gaza as part of our own struggle. Our solidarity must not be in words, but built through organized and internationalist practice. Standing side by side with the Palestinian people, exposing imperialist arms dealers, financiers of war, and collaborating regimes, expanding the international solidarity of the working class, and creating new Intifadas and new centers of resistance are today the responsibility of every anti-imperialist.
And we, as the Anti-Imperialist League, declare that we stand by this resistance and see it as part of our own struggle.
The Homeland of the Palestinians Is the Land of Palestine!
Zionist-Occupier Israel Is an Occupying Force on Palestinian Land!
Long Live a Free and Independent Palestine!
A Thousand Salutes to the Palestinian Resistance Fighters Struggling for Independence and Freedom!
Down with Zionism, Imperialism, and All Forms of Reaction!
Long Live the Palestinian Nation’s Right to Self-Determination!
COORDINATING COMMITTEE OF THE ANTI-IMPERIALIST LEAGUE
October 2025
