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.

“Junior” hospital doctors in England are on strike this week - from 7am on Wednesday until 7am on Saturday and again, for six days after the New Year, from 3 January to 9 January.

    NHS officials have conveniently hyped this up, by claiming that it will mean that hospitals will only be fully-functioning for 4 of the weekdays in the coming three weeks.  But of course over the Xmas/New year period the NHS always runs on a skeleton staff, even if these days, “normal staffing” on any day, amounts to a “skeleton”.

    Today the NHS is in ever-deeper trouble, due to the chronic lack of government funding and staff shortages.  There remain over 7 million people on waiting lists.  The doctors themselves make up for the deficit in staffing - and for the appointments cancelled during their strikes, by the way - by working 24/7, including weekends...

    And that is precisely the main problem, not just facing the junior doctors, who are one of the few sections of the workforce still fighting to improve wages and conditions, but facing everyone in the working class - and of course, every worker relies upon the NHS.  In other words, this fight today should not be the doctors’ fight alone, but the fight of all workers.

    The TUC has been producing a lot of hot air over the (Strikes) Minimum Service Act, but stands paralysed in the face of the law against solidarity action, which dates back to the 1980s and was reinforced under the 1992 Trade Union and Labour Relations Act.

    A general strike, involving all workers, could render this law useless.  That’s all it would take.  And “Secondary” action, in solidarity with the doctors would be far more effective in winning their demands, than leaving them to stand on their picket lines in the cold today and in January, while making token sympathetic noises in their support.

    In fact, what the working class really needs to sort out the bosses and their government, is its own “Strikes Maximum Support Act”!