The latest United Nations’ resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza - to try to get Washington on board - now contains the word “sustainable”.

    But what does “sustainable” mean?  Britain’s Foreign Secretary, David Cameron, along with Germany’s foreign affairs minister Annalena Baerbock, explained this in the Sunday Times this week.

    They wrote that they do not believe that “calling right now for a general and immediate ceasefire, hoping it somehow becomes permanent, is the way forward”.  No, instead, they want a ceasefire which lasts “for days, years, generations”.  Of course, this absurdity - it’s like calling for peace and goodwill to all men - is merely another way of placing the ball in the Netanyahu government’s court.

    Yes, the armed-to-the-teeth imperialist world, which provoked and is already ruthlessly sustaining the war in Ukraine, now, after standing back for over two months while the Israeli army carried out the systematic bombing and laying waste of Gaza, finally says it’s in favour of the “peace” which the poor countries have been demanding all along!

    Yes, Biden and Sunak have waited until the Israeli military offensive has killed more than 18,000 Palestinians (not including all the dead bodies under the rubble) to announce this week, that “too many civilians have been killed”!

    A “sustainable ceasefire” submits itself entirely to the judgement of Israeli generals, who have already said that they will only stop their one-sided war when the elimination of Hamas is complete.

    In the last few days, their indiscriminate killing of civilians has actually intensified.  The generals repeat that the killing of “too many” civilians is vitally necessary since they are the human shields used by Hamas and that “Hamas hides in churches, schools and under hospitals”.  Never mind that the trapped Palestinians, living under fire, with nowhere safe to hide themselves, are now also beginning to starve...

    Indeed, the barbaric and savage nature of those who lead “one of the most modern and well-equipped armies in the world” is exposed for all to see: their primitive revenge even comes before the lives of hostages, let alone the lives of their own “civilian” rookie reserves in the ranks of their hastily-mobilised army.  And yet the British and US governments - and behind them those of the EU - maintain that this is the “high moral ground”!

    It’s true that some, like France’s Macron are now calling for an “immediate and unconditional ceasefire”.  But it’s no less cynical.  They know very well that it’s Washington who decides.  So their peace-posturing is purely for the sake of their image in front of their populations and nothing more.  That’s all that counts for the politicians.

    If any “good” at all is to come out of the horror in Gaza, it will be the conviction of the working classes of all countries that fundamental political change in this world is urgent.  And that it is not a “united nations” which is needed, but an international of equals, under socialism.