As the International Criminal Court continues to drag its heels over issuing an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on war crimes charges, the army under his political leadership continues to raze civilian infrastructure to the ground across vast swathes of the occupied Palestinian territories, not just in Gaza. Not even UNRWA buildings have been spared by the occupation forces, nor have places of worship, Muslim and Christian alike, nor schools and hospitals. The cancerous entity is perfecting its scorched earth policy after decades of practice since it was planted in the heart of the Arab world in the 1948 Nakba.
Gaza is more or less completely uninhabitable, which is what the Zionists want. And after killing as many Palestinians as it possibly can, Israel will seek to displace the survivors towards Jordan and Egypt. The pernicious ideology that underpins the apartheid state, Zionism, demands the creation of “Greater Israel”, and this has been the Zionist project from the very beginning. The Israeli hierarchy has never been content with the allocation of most of Palestine through the 1947 UN Partition Plan; it has pushed back its nominal “borders” for the past 80 years, taking ever more Palestinian and other Arab land. Today at least one Israeli minister has said that Israel’s future is to “expand to Damascus”, while a prominent Lebanese analyst has pointed out that the “historical Zionist objective” is to control “Southern Lebanon and parts of the wider region.” Will war criminal Netanyahu be able to implement this plan now, given the neo-fascist nature of his far-right government?
The legendary steadfastness of the people of occupied Palestine definitely has something to say about this, as they continue to hold fast to their land in the face of incredible odds against them.
Moreover, the legitimate resistance of the Palestinians against Israel’s brutal military occupation has inflicted heavy losses on the occupation forces.
Tens of thousands of Israeli soldiers have been killed and wounded, and even famed Merkava battle tanks have been damaged and destroyed. Thousands of soldiers have sought psychological support.
What the occupation state expected to be a short, sharp military campaign to “eradicate” the resistance has turned into a war of attrition. The freeing of hostages has never been Netanyahu’s priority. Israel could not continue without unstinting and unquestioned support and military supplies from the US, making it complicit in the crime of genocide. The reputation of both Zionist-controlled governments has been tarnished forever.
The famed “invincible” Israel Defence Forces have been humiliated and their “deterrent” factor has long gone. The claim that Israel has “the most moral army in the world” is laughable, as its soldiers film themselves committing war crimes and posting the videos on social media. Furthermore, the occupation state is becoming less attractive to foreign investors, who have seen with their own eyes that it is not engaged in “self-defence”, as its lackeys in Western governments still claim, but territorial expansion by the most cruel and murderous methods possible. Such governments have faced massive demonstrations against their complicity in the genocide by supplying Israel with weapons, money, intelligence and diplomatic protection. Their political downfall can, surely, only be a matter of time.
What happened on 7 October last year exposed the fragility of the settler-colonial state of Israel. In just a few hours, the Palestinian resistance groups dealt the Zionists the biggest blow in their history, which has been stained with Palestinian blood for a century or more. This was a first in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict; a strategic turning point for the entire region. The killing of 1,200 Israelis on 7 October has been used to justify the genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. However, although 796 of these casualties are described as civilians, many will have been reservists in the Israeli army. On top of the 400 soldiers killed on that fateful day, it can thus be seen how traumatic this was for a settler-colonial state built on the terrorism of the Stern Gang and Irgun and used to almost 100 per cent resounding victories for its armed forces.
This genocide, therefore, should be viewed as a murderous act of revenge by the occupation state.
It has hit out at anybody and everybody in Gaza; there have been no red lines and international laws and conventions have been violated day and night. This has had a physical as well as a psychological effect on Israeli soldiers.
All of this has laid bare the hypocrisy of the West and international institutions. International law is applied selectively and the hierarchy of suffering and open racism adopted by Israel and its supporters is clear for all to see.
Within occupied Palestine itself, the ongoing brutality has exposed the Palestinian Authority as a body created to protect the occupation — security coordination imposed by the discredited Oslo Accords is “sacred”, Mahmoud Abbas has said in the past — but not the Palestinian people. The PA is dysfunctional and cannot be sustained without serious reform free from the interference and involvement of the occupation state.
There can be no room for doubt that a state built upon occupation and the suppression of the Palestinian people cannot last forever. The brutality of Israel’s occupation and its continuous aggression against the Palestinians cannot guarantee security and safety for the Zionists. What can achieve this, though, is freedom and justice for the people of Palestine.
Those states which can only see Israeli casualties while ignoring the victims of Zionism in Gaza and the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, and now in Lebanon too, should have no delusions that change is coming. The world no longer believes what their corrupt politicians and media claim. This should also act as a warning to the Arab states which fell for the illusion of the Abraham Accords that they too must stand on the right side of history or fall headlong into the abyss. If we really believe in a world governed by the rule of law, then no other conclusion is possible.
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