The OIC is wasting its time calling on the international community to curb Israeli excesses

It was both heartening and disappointing to read the latest statement from the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. Heartening because it focused on the “escalations of violations by Israel, the occupying power, and its attempts to prejudice Al-Aqsa’s legal and historical status”. Israeli incursions at the Noble Sanctuary of Al-Aqsa are not only about imposing the apartheid state’s debatable sovereignty over the mosque; they are also about setting the scene for the destruction of Al-Aqsa as it stands today — the Qibli Mosque, the Dome of the Rock Mosque and all of the other Islamic buildings and facilities — and replace it with a “temple”. It is the focus of the Zionists preparing the way for the False Messiah, known in Arabic as Al-Masih Al-Dajjal. We should all be very concerned about this.

The OIC statement was disappointing because it reiterated the organisation’s support for the moribund “two-state solution” by calling on the “international community” to enable the “establishment of [the Palestinians’] independent state on the borders of 4 June 1967…” This might be considered to be the Muslim world merely being pragmatic and accepting the fait accompli of the Zionist state of Israel founded in occupied Palestine in 1948. However, it ignores the fact that the “peace process” kicked off by the now infamous Oslo Accords in the early 1990s from which the “two-state solution” stems led to Palestinians making every single concession to the occupation state. Israel never makes concessions, and it is supported in this by the same “international community” which the OIC and other appeasers call upon to bring about justice for the people of occupied Palestine. 

READ: OIC rejects Israeli measures to impose sovereignty over Jerusalem

It must be unique in modern history for the victims of aggression, ethnic cleansing and occupation to have to negotiate with the aggressors, ethnic cleansers and occupiers to get a modicum of justice; to be grateful to get some crumbs off the occupation table. Palestinians are told to negotiate with the people stealing their land and killing their families and neighbours, even though the odds are stacked against them and have been since day one of the occupation which started in 1948, not 1967. It was completed in the June 1967 war; that was the endgame and, yet again, it was a war which was started by the aggressive settler-colonial state of Israel.

1967 Occupation, Naksa – Cartoon [Sarwar Ahmed/MiddleEastMonitor]

The OIC also mentions the “borders of 4 June 1967” — the day before Israel attacked and destroyed the Egyptian air force on the ground and started the Six Day War — but there was never an internationally-recognised “border” in place at that time. The de facto border was the so-called “Green Line”, the 1949 Armistice Line separating the nascent occupation state from what was left of the Palestinian West Bank. The latter was administered — a euphemism for occupied, let’s be honest — by Jordan, while Egypt ran the Gaza Strip until the 1967 war. The notion that there was some sort of official border is, therefore, entirely false and is intended to deceive. Indeed, Israel remains the only UN member state never to have declared where its borders are. And it has never fulfilled the requirements of its UN membership, notably to allow the Palestinian refugees to exercise their legitimate right to return to their land.

The elephant in the room of such “calls to the international community” made by the OIC and, repeatedly, the Palestinian Authority, is that support for the “two-state solution” to the “conflict” between Israel and the Palestinians basically condones the ethnic cleansing of 750,000 people in occupied Palestine before and after the “declaration of independence” of the Zionist state of Israel. The state was founded on the “Jewish terrorism” of the Irgun, Stern Gang, Palmach and Haganah terror organisations responsible for attacks on Palestinians and the British Mandate occupation authorities in the run up to 1948, including the 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, which killed 91 people, and the massacre at Deir Yassin, in which at least 107 Palestinians, including women and unborn babies, were slaughtered. 

READ: OIC rejects Israeli measures to impose sovereignty over Jerusalem

These terror gangs went on to form the nucleus of the “Israel Defence Forces”. The IDF has carried on with this terrorist legacy for more than 75 years: the 1953 Qibya massacre is but one example when Israeli troops under Ariel Sharon’s command killed at least 69 Palestinians, two-thirds of them women and children. Today, the IDF stands by and watches while illegal Jewish settlers attack and kill Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, just as it facilitated then stood by and watched as a fascist militia slaughtered up to 3,500 Palestinian men, women and children in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon over three days in September 1982. All of this makes a mockery of the claim to “Purity of Arms” as the “most moral” army in the world, yet another of the many Zionist myths about the rogue state of Israel. 

It’s time for the international community to either admit that it supports Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity — and that international law is meaningless — or grasp the Zionist nettle and enforce the law to end the impunity with which the apartheid state has been allowed to operate for decades. Until that happens — and I am not holding my breath — the OIC and other such statements are a total waste of time.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.