Attempts to spread despair will not pass

With the ceasefire in Lebanon coming into effect, the political and media focus is now entirely on the Gaza Strip and Palestine, noting that the agreement is still temporary and vulnerable to sabotage by Netanyahu and his fascist government, and with the confirmation that the war in Lebanon was a byproduct of the larger conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people, and remains wide open as Israel continues to carry out war crimes of genocide, ethnic cleansing and collective punishment, including starvation in the Gaza Strip.

So that no one falls into the trap of “frustration and despair” or into the trap of illusions due to misjudging the nature of the challenges before us, or into the trap of confusion that may result from minimizing the impact of what happened in Gaza and Palestine during the past year on the entire world, it is necessary to clarify three assessments of three basic elements in the ongoing conflict.

First, the US administration: US President Joe Biden and his administration have proven their absolute bias towards Israel, and have confirmed in this regard that they do not differ with the incoming Trump administration. When Biden announced from the White House the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Lebanon, we saw Biden on the screen, but in reality we heard Netanyahu. What Biden said was no different from what Netanyahu said.

Second, the Israeli entity: There are three characteristics that have come to distinguish the Israeli entity, and they cannot be overlooked: First, it does not want, nor accept, a compromise solution with the Palestinian people. Therefore, there is no room for the illusions of "Oslo", the "two-state solution" and negotiations with it. This assessment does not only include the ruling parties, but also the Zionist opposition parties, which appear, at times, to be more extreme than Netanyahu.

Second, the Israeli Zionist system has turned towards fascism, and there is no need to prove this in the presence of the three war crimes it is committing, which have made the dehumanization of the Palestinians as human beings its goal.

Third, the strategy of the Israeli entity is directed towards the complete annexation and Judaization of all Palestinian lands, the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, and the use of all available opportunities for that. But what governs and will govern the Israeli and American behavior is the balance of power, the facts on the ground, steadfastness in the face of their plans and resistance to them, and delving into what that requires, on the Palestinian and Arab levels, needs another article.

Third, the world and the international community: Resilient and wounded Gaza has exposed the flaws of the entire global system, revealed its flaws, and demonstrated the fragility of everything called international law and international humanitarian law, and the entire system that was built after World War II. It has also exposed the hypocrisy of many who claim to be concerned with democracy, human rights, and international law.

At the same time, the aggression on Gaza and Palestine has posed, and will continue to pose, challenges that the world cannot escape, including: A- The terrible and profound contradiction between allowing Israel to be exempt from international law, accountability and questioning, and attempts to apply that law in other areas. This is a contradiction that has shaken and will shake the foundations of what the West calls the international system. Western countries cannot continue to escape this contradiction, which has begun to create deep cracks, the latest of which is the decision of the International Criminal Court to indict Netanyahu and Galant and issue an arrest warrant for them.

B- Double standards when it comes to Israel. Two examples can be mentioned: the discrepancy between the sanctions imposed on Russia and the lack of sanctions against Israel, as well as the behavior of the US Congress, which threatens the judges of the International Criminal Court and the prosecutor of the court with sanctions because they applied what is stipulated by international law.

C- The extent of the rampant hateful racism used by Europe and America against the Palestinians, which expressed the extent of the spread of Islamophobia and hostility towards Arabs as human beings, and insists on refusing to treat Palestinians and Israelis as equal human beings.

D- The concept of self-defense, and is it a right for one party and not the other? Does the right to self-defense give its owner the right to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity? In connection with that, doesn’t a people under occupation have the right to defend itself with all forms of resistance, as long as it respects international humanitarian law. If the Ukrainians and Bosnians have the right to self-defense, don’t the Palestinians also have the same right?

E- The narrative and the story, as how can Israel be allowed to cover up the essence of the conflict with the Palestinian people by claiming that its problem with the Palestinian people is an Iranian issue today, after it was a Soviet, Egyptian, Iraqi, or Syrian issue in the past, when the two previous Iranian and Turkish regimes were Israel’s closest allies?

To what extent can the minds of people in the West and elsewhere be underestimated in order to hide the fact that the ongoing conflict is between a Palestinian people seeking freedom and self-determination in the face of a colonial settlement project that seeks to uproot them from their land?

Israel has not won, and will not win as long as the Palestinian people refuse to be defeated and submit, as the goal of every war or conflict is to break the will of the other party. After more than a hundred years of conflict and wars, the Palestinian people stand with more faith, determination and a deeper understanding, in all their generations, of the inevitability of steadfastness and survival.

It was striking how thousands of southern Lebanese residents returned to their villages and towns with the first minute of the ceasefire, ignoring the warnings and dangers, while thousands of Israelis waited for safety and protection before they dared to return to their colonies. It was indeed a moment that expressed the degree of authenticity of each party’s connection to the land and place, and there are many lessons in that.

*Quoted from Al-Araby Al-Jadeed