Why context is important in Palestine

The genocide in Gaza is ongoing. More than 46,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel from October 2023 to date, 17,000 of whom were children. This is the largest number of children killed in a genocide over a fourteen-month period. Indeed, most of the dead were children and women. Palestinians in the occupied West Bank are also victims. As a consequence of the genocide in Gaza, Lebanese, Yemenis, Iraqis and Syrians among others have also paid the ultimate price.

Apart from being killed by bombs and bullets, an increasing number of Palestinians have starved or frozen to death. They are being deprived of adequate food, medicines and other essentials as a deliberate policy of the Israeli occupation regime. The intention is to eradicate the Palestinians.

Gaza has also been rendered uninhabitable. Most of the hospitals have been destroyed totally or damaged extensively. Over a thousand doctors and nurses have been killed by the Israeli occupation forces. Hundreds of teachers, students and journalists have also been killed. The destruction of schools and universities is part of the larger devastation of the coastal enclave.

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It is clear that Palestinians and Palestine are being ethnically cleansed. Ethnic cleansing is central to Israel’s occupation of Palestine. It has been happening since 1948 when the state of Israel was established on Palestinian land. The Nakba (Catastrophe) saw some 750,000 Palestinians driven out of their homes by armed Zionist groups. The process has continued piecemeal ever since. Without ethnic cleansing, the Zionist project cannot be completed.

It is not just about expulsion and annihilation, though. Many Palestinians have also been jailed and tortured by the Israeli occupation regime.

The aim is to make life so unbearable that Palestinians will leave their land “voluntarily”.

Why is Israel so determined to wipe out the Palestinians? Probably because the Palestinians are an enduring reminder to the Israelis and the rest of the world about who the original inhabitants of Palestine are; that there is, indeed, a country called Palestine. The very presence of the Palestinians exposes the truth about Israel.

Most of the Jews who migrated to Palestine in the 1920s and 1930s went from Eastern Europe. Those Jews who were indigenous to Palestine constituted only 10 per cent of the entire Palestinian population when the British colonial power formulated the 1917 Balfour Declaration. It was in Balfour’s letter to the World Zionist Organisation that Britain — which had no authority over Palestine whatsoever — promised to support the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. The League of Nations Mandate for Palestine was handed to the UK in 1920, and was basically used to implement the Balfour Declaration.

This encouraged European Jews to migrate to Palestine. Zionism was espoused by a small segment of Jews and some Christians who saw the establishment of an exclusive Jewish state in Palestine as the fulfilment of God’s promise to the Jewish people of antiquity. It is ironic that many of the Jewish leaders who eventually subscribed to this notion of God’s promise were themselves atheists. Zionism, a political ideology, used Judaism to achieve its political objectives.

The indigenous Arab population in Palestine, Muslims and Christians alike, opposed Zionist immigration from the beginning. There was a significant protest movement in 1929 and a Palestinian uprising — “the Arab Revolt” — in 1936. What gave mass Jewish migration to Palestine greater impetus was the rise of the Nazis in Germany during the 1930s and the Holocaust during World War Two. Sympathy for the Jews reached unprecedented levels in Europe and North America, and support for an exclusive homeland for the Jews gained currency in the West.

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It is against this background that we should view the move by a nascent United Nations dominated by the West to partition Palestine. Under the 1947 Partition Plan, UN Resolution 181, 60 per cent of the land was allocated to a Jewish state, despite Jews still being a minority in Palestine at just 30 per cent of the population. The remaining 40 per cent of the land was allocated to an Arab state. Jerusalem and Bethlehem were intended by the UN to be an international zone. The Palestinian Arab Muslims and Christians rejected the partition plan, not least because no plebiscite was conducted among the people to determine their wishes, which was contrary to the terms of the UN Charter.

The violence employed by Israel during the Nakba was criticised by some of the leading Jewish thinkers of the day. Among the notable voices opposed to Israeli injustices against the Palestinians were Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt and Martin Buber.

Israeli violence continued and the oppression of the Palestinians was institutionalised in the occupation state. In June 1967, Israel took control of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Having taken 78 per cent of Palestine during the Nakba, the remaining 22 per cent of original Palestine was now in Zionist hands.

Despite the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians grew worse. Gaza has since been described as the world’s “largest open-air prison”. The 2018 Great March of Return protests inside Gaza near the nominal border fence were met with deadly brutality by the Israeli occupation forces.

On 7 October, 2023, the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, led a cross-border incursion during which around 1,200 people were killed, many of them by the Israel Defence Forces. An estimated 250 prisoners were taken back to Gaza, a number of whom are still in captivity. The Hamas action has become the justification — “in self-defence” — for Israel’s ongoing genocide against the Palestinians.

An occupation state has no claim under international law to “self-defence” against the legitimate resistance of the occupied people.

Given the way that Israel has used the Hamas incursion to justify its cruel, inhuman genocide, I wonder if 7 October was, if not a false flag operation, then in some way enabled by the relatively delayed response of the IDF and police forces supposedly guarding the border. This could explain why Israel has been reluctant to order a full, impartial inquiry into events of that day; and why I believe that there has to be an independent international investigation into what really happened.

Whatever the truth about 7 October, the more fundamental question is whether the world can and will stop the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. How can people in the West who speak of democracy and democratic values turn a blind eye when it comes to Israel’s human rights abuses, war crimes and crimes against humanity? Western democracies that support Israel should be ashamed of themselves for their complicity in the genocide. Those Arab and Muslim countries that have diplomatic and trade relations with the occupation state should sever all links until the genocide is stopped. Global efforts to isolate Israel diplomatically should be intensified. An isolated Israel maybe more amenable to make fundamental changes to its behaviour vis-a-vis the Palestinians and its neighbours.

However, neither the genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, nor the issue of warrants for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity appear to have diminished the Israeli thirst for Palestinian blood and land.

Nevertheless, external pressure upon Israel remains essential.

It must be remembered that there are significant number of skilled and talented Israelis — at least half a million — who have left the country. Its economy is shrinking and its ability to sustain growth has been compromised. The dichotomy between the religious and secular segments of society has become more pronounced. Extremist forces exploiting ethnic and religious sentiments have become more mainstream than ever before.

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The interplay of these forces within a challenging economic milieu may produce political actors who are more moderate and more inclined to realise the insane futility of trying to eradicate the indigenous Palestinian population. They may then learn the importance of treating Palestinians as equals with similar rights and freedoms as their Jewish citizens.

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