It's obvious that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu never intended to observe the cease-fire agreement with Hamas. In the second phase, his army would have had to leave Gaza for good, once the remaining hostages, alive and dead, were all returned. That was never his intention.

    Even before the resumption of heavy bombing in the early hours of Tuesday morning, the Israeli army had broken it. It had already killed 170 Palestinians and placed Gaza under total siege, which means that the hospitals which are meant to treat the latest casualties from the bombing don't even have medical supplies.

    Netanyahu's calculation was that once Trump was inaugurated, he'd have the green light to "finish the job" in Gaza. And that's precisely what he's doing. While US bombers struck Yemen and Trump made clear that this was a message "aimed at Iran", his envoy proposed a new deal for Gaza: Hamas should hand over all the hostages immediately, in exchange for a possible new cease-fire, but there were no guarantees.

    This latest bombardment of Gaza which has already killed over 600 people in the past 2 days (many children, their whole bodies burnt) is, according to Netanyahu, "only the beginning". He says "negotiations" (if any) will now take place "under fire".

    The miserable response from UN officials and aid organisations is to invoke "international law", saying Netanyahu should be arrested as a war criminal. As if such legal niceties were not created precisely to give the illusion that something other than the law of the jungle prevailed in this world!

    Of course, by breaking the cease-fire, Netanyahu is saving himself from jail and his government from falling. He got the far-right Ben-Gvir back into his cabinet - a quasi-fascist who wants the expulsion of all Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank.

    In the meantime the Israeli army is bulldozing and burning homes in Jenin and Nablus in the Occupied West Bank. Tens of thousands have had to evacuate their homes in the last weeks.

    Keir Starmer, along with the Tories and most EU leaders has backed Netanyahu and his systematic slaughter of the Palestinians for the past 17 months. No doubt, like Macron he might hesitate to endorse Netanyahu's latest hellfire. But the working class understands very well where he stands. It's in the camp of our enemies. The time will come when we will deal with all of them.

Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall finally published her "Pathways to Work" Green Paper on Tuesday. It proposes across-the-board cuts in disability and incapacity benefits. She says this will save £5bn per year over the next 5 years. First to come under attack are under-22s. They'll no longer have the right to claim incapacity benefit and will have to pass more stringent tests to qualify for PIP (Personal Independence Payments}, the additional allowance covering the cost of equipment like wheelchairs.

    She says these unprecedented cuts are justified because "the government's number one mission is to grow the economy and drive up living standards right across the country". But how on earth can impoverishing the young {and old!} who have health issues - if not permanent disabilities - achieve anything of the sort? Does she want to drive the vulnerable poor into total destitution? Already mentally ill homeless are sleeping in the streets.

    And where are the jobs which deprived youngsters are supposed to go into? Which employers have agreed to take on workers (and pay them living wages) who suffer with disabilities, especially mental disorders?

    Kendall says sickness benefits cost £65bn last year - a 25% increase since 2019, i.e., since the pandemic, due to PIP claimants increasing by 1.5m. The reason is surely a no-brainer: underfunding, understaffing and under-equipping of every aspect of health and social care needs for decades - which the pandemic aggravated (apparently Kendall hasn't heard of "long Covid"). But investing in the NHS, preventive care, elderly social care and proper centres of excellence to treat the mentally ill is not on the "growth" agenda!

    Kendall had to admit the collapsed NHS is a factor in the increase in those on sickness benefit, but she thinks NHS cuts will fix this! Like the abolition of NHS England! Will its 10,000 redundant staff be redeployed elsewhere in the NHS (where there are 120,000 vacancies), or are they meant to increase the ranks of benefit claimants?

    Kendall's policies have nothing to do with fixing a "broken welfare system". She gave herself away when she claimed that youth on disability benefit were "taking the mickey". Indeed, she's playing to an imaginary gallery of the misinformed to justify her choice: that is, to make the working class - and its most vulnerable members - pay for the mess the government finds itself in. The working class cannot allow her to get away with this.