Tags
Arab Spring, Gaza, Gaza Genocide, Imperialism, Israel, Palesine, palestine, politics, two-state solution, Zionism
One pita bread or a bottle of clean water to a hungry child in Gaza is more important than dozens of speeches, declarations, or conferences, never mind what you say about peace or justice or liberation. Yet, like people buried under the rubble of their homes, yearning for air and the voice of rescuers, our very sense of human dignity was crashed during the last two years, and we desperately need a dream, hope, and the perspective of a better future in which horrors like the genocide in Gaza cannot occur.
Speaking about the Future
Living in a consumer society, we are educated to discuss “what kind of society we want” – as if the different options are laid on the shelves in the supermarket for us to choose. What would you take: Anarchism, Capitalism or Socialism? The paradigm of representative democracy strengthens this consumerist concept of political discussion. At election season, each party tries to sell us its “electoral program.” We get an illusion of power, while real post-election politics usually happen in another sphere.
Palestinians are completely denied any path to self-determination. This makes you feel that any discussion about a future Palestine is futile. What we know is that apartheid, occupation, oppression, mass incarceration, land robbery, house demolition, wars, ethnic cleansing, and genocide are here to stay.
When I started my way in Palestinian political activism, I learned to think differently. The central concept was not “what we want” but “the balance of power.” What we should do in order to change that awful balance of power that denies us all our dreams?
Two types of Hope
There is this historic argument between “the two-state solution” and “one democratic state.” The very definition of the discussion tends to direct us toward illusionary utopian discussion, as both propositions cannot be implemented within the framework of the current balance of power. Instead, I will try here to transform this discussion to the realm of the question “what should we do in order to make any solution possible?”
Proponents of the two-state solution are ready to give up most of the Palestinian land, and the right of return of most Palestinian refugees, as they assume that this is the “realistic” and faster way to get rid of the most excessive forms of oppression. This hope is based on the assumption that Israel and its imperialist patrons will agree to this solution. As a result, many of those promoting this solution try to “calm Israeli concerns” by endless procession of concessions. The unstoppable advance of Zionism toward ever more fascist extremism, and the total unwillingness of its Western backers to take any step to stop it even from committing the most outrageous war crimes, do not bode well to this strategy.
Advocating one democratic state assumes that the balance of power can be changed, so that the basic human and national rights of the Palestinians can be restored, alongside the preservation of the basic rights of all current inhabitants of Palestine. This perspective directs us to do whatever we can to defend and strengthen the Palestinian society in the face of its torturers, to build alliances in the region and all around the world, and to work to dismantle Israeli apartheid and the imperialist-Zionist system of wars, aggression, and hegemony over our region.
Working to change the balance of power in our favor, and undermining the forces of aggression, is, not at all paradoxically, also the best hope that at some stage, along the way, those who hold today unrestrained power will feel obliged to look for compromises.
How can the balance of power be changed?
Israel’s system of constant aggression is unsustainable
The latest extreme violence by Israel is not a show of force. The brutality of its actions aims to compensate for its inability to force its will on the ground. In 1967 Israel defeated three Arab armies in six days, establishing itself as regional and international power. It delivered major changes in the region’s politics to the benefit of its imperialist backers.
Today, after more than two years of relentless Israeli attacks on multiple fronts, not a single “enemy” has surrendered.
If previously regimes in the region (and beyond) sought Israel’s friendship to improve their standing on the world stage, now connections with it are becoming an embarrassment. The technological gap between Israel and the rest of the region is fast evaporating.
Israeli society is in deep internal crisis along many fault-lines. Its relations with the rest of the world are fracturing. The Zionists stopped even dreaming of peaceful existence in the region and are stuck in a fanatic worldview summed by the saying “you shall live by the sword.”
By posing one democratic state as an alternative to the framework of Jewish-supremacist Sparta, we help the Jews in Palestine see more clearly what they already feel themselves: Zionism is a dead-end. Serving imperialism against the people of the region is a death-trap.
The imperialist powers are in decline
Israel’s destructive powers are completely reliant on constant external support. The last time they tried to fight as an army against an organized local militia, in their invasion of South Lebanon in 2006, Israeli troops were defeated. Since then, they prefer bombing civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure to create scorched earth zones. Their main weapons are those bombers they receive from the USA, dropping USA-made bombs. In all their wars, Israel depended on endless supply of weapons from its Western backers. This is before we speak about direct monetary support, preferred access to technology and markets, political backing, and legal impunity.
We live through a very special period in world history when the global balance of power is changing fast. It is not only that the US, torn by internal contradictions, is losing its place as the world hegemonic superpower. For the first time since colonialism, capitalism, and imperialism were established, the center of world power is transferred not between different imperialist powers but from the imperialist powers to the Global South. Yes, many of our dear westerners are still racist and supremacist, but, instead of ruling and enslaving the world with their racism, their rising fascist forces are basically mobilized against “aliens” in their own countries (and, meanwhile, undermining the foundations of their own economies).
For most countries in the region, like elsewhere, China is already the main economic partner. The US policy in the region was based on inflaming internal conflicts and wars, to make local rulers depend on it for defense from their own people and from neighbor states. Now Iran, the UAE, and Egypt are members of the BRICS, and Saudia and Turkey already with one leg in.
This might seem like making support of Israel an even more important axis of US policy. Its main leverage now is to let Israel hit everybody around and to have them come begging to restrain it. But this is not sustainable. No nation would accept to live constantly under threats and blackmail.
Israels war-hero Sharon once said: “The Arabs have the oil, but we have the matches.” This rule of terror could work as long as there were no alternatives. In a multipolar world, a declining US will either be driven out of the region or will have to find other ways to communicate, and abandon its reliance on Israeli aggression.
Palestinians are not alone
The campaign to eliminate Palestinians’ aspirations for freedom already expanded to attacks on Lebanon and Yemen, where local forces tried to help the Palestinians. Syria is under constant attacks because Israel decided unilaterally that it cannot allow a Syrian government to build a strong and independent state. Iran was attacked because it is suspected of inspiring to acquire nuclear weapons, which, according to many sources, Israel already has aplenty. Turkey now is on the verge of conflict with Israel as it tries to help the Syrian government.
Just two years ago the common view in Tel Aviv and Washington was that Palestinian rights can be ignored, at no price. Now dismantling Israeli aggression is central to the national security and to the path for development of all countries in the region.
The Palestinian struggle became the symbol of struggle for freedom all over the world and the struggle of the global south against imperialist hegemony. The readiness of Western powers to support the Gaza Genocide completely undermined their claim to hold the upper moral grounds. Their double standards concerning Israel and Palestinian lives and suffering was a brutal illustration of the dominant “values” in the current world order.
The Gaza Genocide became also a major dividing fault line in Western societies as they face the failure of their regimes to satisfy the aspirations of their own populations. It is telling to what degree many Western regimes restricted democracy and applied repressive measures to silence any criticism of Israel’s war crimes. Like in the global south, inside the old imperialist powers, support for Palestine converges with the struggle for better human-oriented future.
Everywhere, in this world movement for freedom and justice, you hear people calling “From the River to the Sea.”
For a New Middle East
It is time to stop fearing the future and start advocating a “New Middle East.”
When the imperialists and Zionists envisioned their “New Middle East” they dreamt of eliminating any resistance and establishing themselves as the rulers and arbitrators of a system based on neo-liberal limitless exploitation.
No foreign power can build the new Middle East.
The Palestinian people proved their resilience by “sumud” over a century and a half of ethnic cleansing, occupation, and genocide. But Palestinians are not alone. In a region suffering from endless injustice, the culture of resistance is everywhere. It defeated many imperialist invasions and topples many repressive regimes. The Arab Spring was one of the biggest revolutions in the world’s history, and was inspiring struggles from Tel Aviv to Madrid to Wall Street.
Maybe the main mistake of the Arab Spring was when many of us believed that the Western powers really supported democratic reform for our people. But democracy in the Middle East is incompatible with the strategic supremacy of the Jewish state, to which the Western powers are committed.
Another major obstacle was the multiplication of internal conflicts: between Arab, Iranians, Kurds, Turks and other nationalities; Between Suni and Shiaa Moslems; Between Islamists, Socialists and Democratic Liberals. In a democratic Middle East, like in a democratic Palestine, all dreams can come true.
Free Haifa 