We must say it loud and clear that we will not recognise Israel

The voices of all free people in the Middle East have announced loudly that the most important way to bring an end to the US-Zionist plot of the century is to not recognise the “state of Israel”, but to exercise the legitimate right to resist the occupation using all available means. I share that view.

A quick review of the Palestinian and Arab scene over the past quarter of a century since the Oslo Accords, or even since Camp David, reveals that recognition of the enemy state on 78 per cent of historic Palestine has not stopped Israel’s colonial expansionism. Such recognition has also failed to persuade the occupation state to recognise the national and historical rights of the Palestinian people, especially the right to self-determination and an independent state on its national soil. Instead, such treaties increased the enemy’s appetite, and prompted it to continue its aggression and flood the occupied West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza Strip with Palestinian blood. The ethnic cleansing and massacres needed to complete its racist Judaisation project in occupied Palestine have continued unabated.

From Oslo to today, the number of illegal settlers has increased from 140,000 to around 1 million, and the number of illegal settlements and outposts has doubled. The West Bank is now an isolated island, with 68 per cent of its area confiscated by Israel, which has also taken 86 per cent of Jerusalem. In effect, this has killed the so-called two-state solution and ensured that it is impossible to establish a Palestinian state that is whole and in one piece geographically-speaking.

Ever since the Madrid conference in 1991 with its slogan of “land for peace”, the fascist leanings of Zionism guides Israel, and includes children, students and the elderly among its victims. The rights of “the other” are not recognised by this far-right ideology, which is also behind the Knesset’s adoption of dozens of racist laws and policies, the most recent of which is the “Jewish nation-state law”. This basic law considers all of Palestine as “the land of Israel” from the Mediterranean Sea to the River Jordan. With such racist laws in place, prominent Israelis such as the late Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef were and are emboldened to call Palestinians cockroaches which should be annihilated.

Read: US will not request our recognition of Palestine, Netanyahu says

The irony is that the more that the Arab regimes and the Palestinian leadership concede to the Israelis, the more radical, violent and arrogant the latter become. That is why more than a quarter of a century of talks and the so-called peace process have failed.

Instead of being genuinely honest brokers for peace who persuade their allies in Israel to comply with international law, recognise the rights of the Palestinian people and stop settlement activity, the Americans showed their true colours by proposing the plot of the century to liquidate the Palestinian cause. It has sentenced the Palestinians either to live in exile around the world or accept to live as slaves under Israel’s domination.

This devious conspiracy embodies the Zionist ambitions in full, and is the reward for all of the Arab and Palestinian concessions; the recognition of Israel on Palestinian land; and following US orders.

All of this requires us to go back to square one, and for the Palestinian leadership and the Arab and Muslim countries to join free people around the world in saying no to recognition of the occupation state. We must say it loud and clear: Palestine is the land from the river to the sea, and what goes around comes around.

This article first appeared in arabic in Addustour on 11 February 2020.

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