November
28, 2023
A lasting peace can only be achieved when the legitimate rights
and grievances of Palestinians are addressed.
Palestinian children, sitting in a destroyed house, look at ruins during
the temporary ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in the village of
Khuza'a near the border fence between Israel and the southern Gaza Strip
on November 28, 2023.
Like
many Palestinians, I’ve been glued to the news during the past 50 days
following Israel’s senseless, illegal and immoral genocide in Gaza. Our eyes
are filled with painful and horrific images showing massive death and
devastation wrought on innocent civilians who lost loved ones — entire families
in some cases — homes and dreams. I’ve also watched the terror being inflicted
by Israeli soldiers and armed settlers on Palestinians in the West Bank and
East Jerusalem that resulted in the death of 240 Palestinians, 52 of them
children, with more than 2,959 injured since October 7.
UNICEF
recently warned world leaders about the catastrophic impact of the Israeli
bombardment on children and families. “Children are dying at an alarming rate —
more than 5,000 have reportedly been killed and thousands more injured. Well
over 1.7 million people in the Gaza Strip have been displaced — half of them
children,” it reported. “They’re running out of water, food, fuel and medicine.
Their homes have been destroyed; their families torn apart.” Doctors Without
Borders described the humanitarian situation in Gaza as “dire.” The desperately
needed aid trucks that have recently been allowed into Gaza are insufficient
for dealing with a humanitarian catastrophe of this magnitude.
Pope
Francis also spoke about the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza during his
Wednesday general audience in St. Peter’s Square on November 22. He said: “We
have gone beyond wars. This is not war. This is terrorism.” He made his
comments hours after an agreement was reached between Israel and Hamas for a
four-day “humanitarian pause” and a reciprocal exchange of women and child
hostages/prisoners.
The
four-day, Qatar-mediated “humanitarian pause” that allowed for 50 Israeli
hostages and 150 Palestinian captives to be reunited with their families was a
welcome reprieve from the relentless bombardment for the people of Gaza. Now
extended for two additional days, the temporary truce means that 20 more
Israeli captives and 60 Palestinian captives will be released. The United
Nations secretary general called this short respite “a glimpse of hope and
humanity” as he made an appeal to the Israeli government to open extra passage
points for the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza. At the moment, aid trucks
are only allowed to enter Gaza through the Rafah crossing on the border with
Egypt.
This
temporary “pause” — or “pauses,” if they continue to be extended for additional
days — is not a permanent ceasefire. It will not bring safety to the people of
Gaza; nor will it alleviate their suffering or lessen their grief. It is
maddening to think that it took six weeks to arrive at this “pause.” Even
during this brief “pause,” Israeli soldiers killed at least eight Palestinians
in the West Bank towns of Jenin, Al-Bireh and Yatma, south of Nablus. Moreover,
Israel intends to resume its attacks when the pause expires; as Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu stated clearly: “We are at war, and we’ll continue the war
until we achieve all our goals: to destroy Hamas, return all our hostages, and
ensure that nobody in Gaza can threaten Israel.”
Even
if the international community’s mounting pressure prevents such a calamity and
brings about a permanent ceasefire, it will not end the suffocating siege that
caged Palestinians in Gaza for close to 17 years and got us to where we are
now. It will not bring safety, security and lasting peace to Israelis and
Palestinians; it will not end the 56-year Israeli occupation or the Palestinian
resistance to it; and it will not change the apartheid system that privileges
one people over another, uses a brutal form of collective punishment, and
denies the rights of Palestinians to freedom and equality. In short, it will
not change the status quo.
While
Israel’s officially declared objective is the destruction of the Palestinian
resistance movement Hamas, many in the Netanyahu government want to see the
Gaza Strip emptied of all its inhabitants. In a November 19 article in The
Jerusalem Post, Israeli Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel advocated for “the
voluntary resettlement of Palestinians in Gaza, for humanitarian reasons,
outside of the Strip.” Note how Israel wants you to believe that it is only
proposing the transfer of Palestinians out of Gaza to the Sinai desert “for
humanitarian reasons” — because Israeli leaders want you to believe that they
care deeply about Palestinians’ safety and well-being.
Will
Israel Be Allowed to Proceed With a Second Nakba?
The
U.S. and its Western allies fail to see the real plan, which is no longer a
secret: the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the transfer of Palestinians to Sinai.
It was leaked a few weeks ago and later confirmed by Egyptian President Abdel
Fattah El-Sisi when he spoke of the Israeli attempts to pressure Egypt into
accepting the 2.3 million Palestinians into Sinai. Ordering half the population
of Gaza to be evacuated to the south, as Israel wiped out neighborhoods and
flattened buildings, was the first phase of the transfer strategy to depopulate
Gaza. Israel has already announced that displaced Palestinians are not allowed
to return to their homes in northern Gaza, which has become a near-total
wasteland.
Depriving
the Palestinians in Gaza of access to food, water, fuel, electricity and
medical supplies will undoubtedly cause the death toll to rise to a level far
greater than the more than 14,000 deaths caused by Israeli airstrikes since
October 8. The humanitarian disaster has reached terrifying levels with a
near-total collapse of Gaza’s health care system due to the destruction of
Gaza’s medical facilities, forced closure of and evacuation of hospitals, and
the severe shortages of medical supplies in others. Squeezing the 2.3 million
inhabitants of Gaza — already living in one of the most densely populated
places on Earth — into the southern part of the Strip will no doubt expose the
population to an array of diseases.
Palestinians
Are Being Killed by Starvation, Dehydration and Disease
In
a piece published in the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth on November 22, Giora
Eiland, a decorated former head of the Israeli military’s Operations and
Planning Division and former head of the National Security Council, proposed
disease as an effective method of killing the Palestinian people in Gaza. He
wrote: “After all, severe epidemics in the southern Strip will bring victory
closer and reduce fatalities among IDF soldiers.” The day after Eiland wrote
about his proposal, Israeli journalist Gideon Levy published a piece in Haaretz
headlined: “Giora Eiland’s Monstrous Gaza Proposal Is Evil in Plain Sight.”
Whatever
plan is underway, it will surely be conducted with the full support of the U.S.
government and the blessing of President Joe Biden, who said that Israel has
the right to resume its assault on Gaza — although he urged the Israeli prime
minister to try to minimize civilian casualties. In a Washington Post op-ed,
Biden portrayed Israel’s devastating military assault as a war for democracy
and erased the context of 75 years of Palestinian resistance against Israeli
occupation, apartheid and oppression.
Will
Israel Resume Its Imprisonment of Palestinians Soon After the Exchange Has Been
Completed?
The
150 prisoners that Israel agreed to release as part of its deal with Hamas and
the 60 that will be released as a result of the two-day truce extension are
only a small fraction of the 7,200 imprisoned Palestinian hostages languishing
in Israeli jails. Since October 7, Israel has drastically escalated its raids
on Palestinians in the West Bank and arrested more than 3,000, according to the
Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, an advocacy group. But even if you don’t trust
Palestinian sources and only want to believe the figure of 1,850 new arrests
reported by The New York Times, you’ll still be able to see how this number
compares with the number of hostages Hamas took on October 7 or the small
number Israel agreed to release in the hostage/prisoner exchange.
Every
Palestinian family I know has had one or more of its members detained by the
Israeli authorities, many of them teenagers accused of throwing stones at
Israeli soldiers. About 200 boys, most of them teenagers, were in Israeli
detention as of last week, along with about 75 women and five teenage girls,
according to Addameer, a Palestinian prisoners’ rights group. Administrative
detention, a practice of holding detainees indefinitely without a charge or
trial — which Israel claims is an effective counterterrorism measure — is a
tool of repression that has long been used by the Israeli state to instill fear
among Palestinians and stop them from demanding or exercising their rights.
Human rights groups, including Israel’s B’Tselem, and the UN have concluded
that Israel’s use of administrative detention is a blatant violation of
international law.
Israel
is the only developed country in the world that prosecutes minors as young as
12 in military courts. The most common charge is stone-throwing, carrying a
20-year prison sentence. The United Nations estimates that since Israel
occupied the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem in 1967, it has detained
“approximately one million Palestinians in the occupied territory, including
tens of thousands of children.”
There
Is No Military Solution to the Palestine/Israel Crisis
No
matter how superior an army, navy and air force Israel has; no matter how much
destruction, devastation and human suffering it can wreak on Palestinian
civilians; and no matter how many UN vetoes the U.S. uses to shield Israel from
accountability, it will not succeed in suppressing the Palestinian people’s
quest for freedom and equality. It will not be able to crush their
determination to continue their resistance until their freedom is achieved.
In
the absence of justice, there will be protests, riots and intifadas. The tide
is turning and Palestinians today have greater support globally — especially
among the younger generation — than ever before. I am in awe of thousands of
young protesters who are organizing and coming together in this critical moment
in Middle East history. The massive protests in major cities and on university
campuses around the world have shown us “youth power” in numbers we have not
seen before. Palestinians have also received overwhelming support and
recognition of the State of Palestine among members of the UN General Assembly,
and especially among countries of the Global South. It is only the U.S. (and a
handful of allies) that has always used its veto power to prevent any
resolution condemning Israeli actions.
The
current system of apartheid is not sustainable. The sooner the Israeli
government — and its enablers the U.S., U.K. and EU — accept the fact that
Israeli safety and security cannot be achieved by military force, the better
the chances of a negotiated settlement become. A lasting peace can only be
achieved when the legitimate rights and grievances of the Palestinians are
addressed. Palestinians will not give up on their aspiration of living in their
homes, on their land, in dignity, equality, and without fear.
November
29 is the 46th anniversary of the United Nations’ International Day of
Solidarity with the Palestinian people. On this day in 2012, the General
Assembly voted overwhelmingly — 138 in favor to 9 against — to accord Palestine
“Non-Member Observer State” status at the United Nations.
In
his message issued in advance of tomorrow’s International Day of Solidarity
with the Palestinian people, the UN secretary general said, “[T]his is a day
for reaffirming international solidarity with the Palestinian people and their
right to live in peace and dignity.” He added:
It is long past time to move in a
determined, irreversible way towards a two-State solution, on the basis of
United Nations resolutions and international law, with Israel and Palestine
living side-by-side in peace and security with Jerusalem as the capital of both
States.
The United Nations will not waver in its
commitment to the Palestinian people. Today and every day, let us stand in
solidarity with the aspirations of the Palestinian people to achieve their
inalienable rights and build a future of peace, justice, security and dignity
for all.
For
over five decades, the United States has acted as an obstacle to peace —
denying Palestinians their rights. Since October 7, the U.S. has continued to
be a major hurdle to saving lives, refusing to demand an immediate ceasefire.
The U.S. can no longer play the role of honest broker in any future
negotiations to resolve the crisis and achieve a lasting peace in the region.
In order to have a negotiated settlement that would allow Israelis and
Palestinians to live in peace and security — in a homeland free from apartheid
and oppression — this task now needs to be taken up solely by the United
Nations.
The Middle East at an inflection point
November
28, 2023
It
has been a perennial hope and expectation that Israel would abandon the path of
repression, colonisation and apartheid as state policies and instead accept a
negotiated settlement of the Palestine problem under pressure from its patron,
mentor, guide and guardian — the United States. But that proved delusional and the remains of the day
is a chronicle of dashed hopes and hypocrisy. The big question today is whether
a paradigm shift is possible. That is also the dilemma facing US President Joe
Biden at 80.
History
shows that while catastrophic events have myriad negative effects, positive
effects are also possible, especially in the long term. The French-German
reconciliation after two world wars is, perhaps, the finest example in modern
history, and it planted the germane seeds of European integration project. Certainly, the collapse of the Soviet Union
gave impetus to the Sino-Russian rapprochement, which morphed into a “no limit”
partnership.
However,
for such miracles to happen, visionary leadership is needed. Jean Monnet and
Konrad Adenauer were indeed political visionaries — and, in a different sort of
way, the two consummate pragmatists Boris Yeltsin and Jiang Zemin too were.
Does
it look as if Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu belong to that pantheon? When Biden
met with Netanyahu and his war cabinet in Tel Aviv on October 18, he assured
them: “I don’t believe you have to be a Jew to be a Zionist, and I am a
Zionist.” Therein lies the paradox. For, how could you possibly be an Irish
Catholic and a Zionist at the same time? Sinn Féin, which is on course to top
Ireland’s next election, is embracing Palestinians and condemning Israel. Of
course, there are no surprises here.
Biden
is torn between conflicting faiths. Suffice to say, when Biden speaks about a
two-state solution, it becomes hard to believe him. On Netanyahu’s part, at
least, he doesn’t even feel the need to pay lip service to a two-state
solution, after having systematically buried the Oslo Accord and embarked on
the journey towards a Jewish theocracy in what was once the state of Israel.
Make no mistake, Greater Israel is here to stay and the world opinion regards
it as an apartheid state.
There
is a great misconception that Biden is under pressure from the American opinion
on the conflict in Gaza. But the fact of the matter is that support for Israel
has all along been rather thin in America and had it not been for the Israel
Lobby, it would have probably asserted a long time ago. Curiously, something
like one third of American Jews, especially the youth, don’t even care for the
Israel Lobby.
That
said, it is also a fact that Americans have generally a favourable opinion
about Israel. Their problem is really about Israel’s aggressive policies — this
is despite the absence of any open media or academic discussion in the US
regarding the state repression of Palestinians or the colonisation of West
Bank.
A
defining moment came when Netanyahu taunted and humiliated President Barack
Obama on the Iran nuclear deal by consorting with the Congress against the
presidency in an audacious attempt to derail the negotiations with Tehran.
In
the recent years, Israel’s image has been tarnished in the liberal opinion
following the ascendance of right-wing forces and the overtones of racist
attitudes including among Israeli youth. Indeed, Israel has been an
increasingly illiberal country even toward its own citizens. Due to such
factors, Americans no longer take an idealised view of Israel as a morally
upright country battling for existence.
Meanwhile,
there has been a marked erosion of support for Israel within the Democratic
Party. But this needs to be put in perspective, for, there has been a
countervailing rise in support for
Israel among Republicans. Thus, although “bilateral consensus” on Israel is
dissipating, paradoxically, the Israel Lobby still wields influence.
That
is because the Israel Lobby traditionally didn’t much pay attention to rank and
file Americans but instead focused on the power brokers and indeed worked hard
to shore up their support. Therefore, it must be understood that what Biden
cannot but factor in is that the elites in the Democratic Party establishment
remain deeply committed to relations with Israel although the support within
the party for Israeli policies may have waned and the American opinion finds
the bestiality of Israeli conduct in Gaza revolting.
The
elites fear that the Lobby will target them if there are any signs of them
wavering in their support for Israel. Put differently, the political elites do
not place American national interests above their own personal or career
interests. Thus, the Israel Lobby always wins on the Palestinian issue and in
extracting generous financial support for Israel with no strings attached. Make
no mistake that the Lobby will go to any extent to have its way whenever the
crunch time comes, such as today.
Biden
is hardly in a position to displease or annoy the Israel Lobby on a day of reckoning. So, why is he making big
promises to President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi of Egypt that “under no
circumstances will the United States permit the forced relocation of
Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank, or the besiegement of Gaza, or the
redrawing of the borders of Gaza”?
The
answer is simple: these are fait accompli that have been forced upon the US and
Israel by the Arab States in their finest hour of collective security, none of
whom is willing to legitimise Israel’s genocide or its roadmap of ethnic
cleansing. Didn’t even little Jordan say ‘no’ to Biden?
Biden
is making hollow promises. In reality, what matters is that the Israel Lobby
will go to extraordinary length to protect the emerging Greater Israel. Again,
it costs Biden nothing by affirming support for a two-state solution. He knows
it will be aeons before such a vision takes life, if at all, and if South
Africa’s experience is anything to go by, the journey will be fraught with much
bloodshed.
Most
important, Biden knows that Israel will not accept a two-state solution as per
the Arab Initiative crafted by Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, which is a finely balanced matrix
of mutual interests with a historical as well as long term perspective. In a
historic speech addressing the Arab League on the day of its adoption in 2002,
then Crown Prince Abdullah had said with
great prescience: “In spite of all that has happened and what still may happen,
the primary issue in the heart and mind of every person in our Arab Islamic
nation is the restoration of legitimate rights in Palestine, Syria and
Lebanon.”
The
high probability is that Israel will hunker down with the help of its Lobby in
the US and would rather prefer to be a Pariah in the world community, to a
two-state solution that demands abandonment of the Zionist state built around Greater Israel.
The only game changer could be be if Biden is willing to make the US force its
will on Israel — through coercive means, if necessary.
But
that requires the courage of conviction and a rare ingredient in politics —
compassion. Biden’s hugely successful half century in public life was almost
entirely devoted to realpolitik and there are no traces of conviction or
compassion in it. A legacy cannot be built on ephemeral considerations and
expediency.
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