2023 will be known as the year of genocide against the Palestinians

The Israeli war against the Palestinians in Gaza is approaching the three-month mark, during which time Israel has killed more than 22,000 people, most of them children, women and the elderly. It has also injured and wounded tens of thousands, and destroyed civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, public institutions and vital facilities, as well as the headquarters of international humanitarian missions. The Israeli occupation government insists on continuing the destruction and genocide before the eyes of the world, despite growing calls for a ceasefire. Condemnations of Israel and its allies are heard daily.

While 2023 will indeed go down in history as the year of Israel’s genocide against the people of occupied Palestine, the apartheid state’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine has been ongoing since the 1948 Nakba. What’s more, Israel occupied parts of neighbouring states as well as the rest of Palestine in 1967, and Palestinians have been displaced on many occasions over the decades. In other words, Israel’s genocide did not start in 2023; more specifically, it did not start on 7 October, 2023.

What we are witnessing in Gaza is simply a violent expression of the essence of the Zionist state of Israel and the basis on which it was founded in Palestine. It was built on terrorism, massacres and displacement of the Palestinians. It wants as much Palestinian land as possible with as few Palestinian people living on it as possible, while it continues to attract Jews from around the world to live in illegal settlements built on occupied Palestinian land.

READ: Senior Israeli ministers call for ‘voluntary emigration’ of Palestinians, building of Jewish settlements in Gaza

Nevertheless, the war in Gaza represents a different moment, if not a turning point compared with previous catastrophes, especially in terms of the scale of human and material losses, and the world’s lack of action in the face of what Israel is doing.

How are we to assess this latest chapter in Israel’s genocide of the people of occupied Palestine? Can we be objective in looking at the losses and the horizons opened by the war, for both Israel and Palestine?

The war, of course, is entirely asymmetric

This is not two well-armed countries fighting each other; it’s one of the best-equipped armies in the world fighting and killing a largely civilian population numbering 2.3 million people, while trying to eradicate a legitimate resistance movement’s armed wing whose lightly-armed fighters can be numbered in the tens of thousands, at most. Moreover, the occupation state’s armed forces are provided with apparently endless supplies of the latest weapons and munitions by the US and other Western governments. Diplomatic cover is provided by the US veto at the UN Security Council.

The Arab world is characterised by weakness, fragility and a lack of cohesion. It has not gone to the aid of the Palestinians, and will not do so. Only Egypt and Qatar are involved openly in the role of mediators.

Despite the ferocity of the Israeli offensive, and the unprecedented number of civilian casualties, we have to conclude that the goal of the occupation state has not yet been achieved. It clearly wants Gaza to be emptied of its Palestinian population. Until that is achieved, the killing is likely to continue. The aim of Zionism is “Greater Israel”, within which there is no room for non-Jews having the same civil status as Jews. The genocidal intentions of the current Israeli government — the most far-right in its history of far-right governments — have been made clear by several cabinet ministers.

READ: US slams Israel ministers’ call for ‘resettlement’ of Palestinians outside Gaza

The validity of this conclusion is reinforced by the facts on the ground, where there is unyielding — and entirely legitimate, under international law — Palestinian resistance that has prevented the Israeli war machine from achieving its main goal. This has been admitted by Israeli military and civilian officials. The Israeli media is being censored, and is not allowed to publish the actual casualty figures among Israel’s armed forces, or the number of settlements that have been abandoned. Morale is obviously low.

What’s more, despite its advanced surveillance and intelligence-gathering, Israel has been unable to kill or capture the leaders of the resistance in Gaza. Add to this the near-legendary resilience of the Palestinian people, and it is easy to see how difficult it is to expel them completely from their homeland.

Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has exposed the double standards of the Western democracies. They promote the principles and values of international humanitarian law and human rights, justice, equality and the right of people to live in peace and dignity, and have a whole arsenal of laws and conventions to protect vulnerable groups such as children, women, the elderly and the sick. And yet all of this is just words on paper when it is Israel which is engaged in treating such laws and conventions with utter contempt.

It has been pointed out before, but it is worth reminding ourselves of the stark contrast between the West’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — sanctions and arrest warrants appeared almost overnight as logistical and other support was rushed to the Ukrainians — and the “Israel is entitled to self-defence” approach we have seen as the genocide takes place before our eyes.

The Israeli genocide in Gaza is highlighting the hypocrisy of the West and its human rights rhetoric. It is clear, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the Western world which created Israel in the heart of the Middle East to divide and rule the region, will continue to support the Zionist state as a symbol of its own hegemony over the Arab world.

This article first appeared in Arabic in Arabi21 on 2 January 2024

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