Gaza and Our Future
The connection is critical
The wholesale slaughter of Palestinians, the flattening of buildings with civilians in them, the targeting of medical personnel and ambulances in Gaza — all are war crimes, all are without excuse and all are reprehensible. Yet there is still a wider discussion to be had.
Let’s have a ceasefire first. Let’s allow aid into Gaza, let’s turn the water and electricity back on first before any calls for justice or war trials.
Regardless of the rights and wrongs regarding Israel’s right to defend itself or the Palestinians’ right to resist it’s oppressors, war crimes are being committed in rapid succession while world leaders protect their own asses.
So what do we need to discuss? We could start with the Balfour agreement and the Nakba. We could look at the 1973 war or the Camp David Agreement. We could look at the election of Hamas in 2006 but it might be helpful to look forward first.
Israel has been promising a ground invasion and they’re now talking of gassing Hamas’s tunnels. Gassing the tunnels is such a logistical nightmare it’s probably safe to relegate it to Israel’s wish list. As for the ground invasion it’s relying on direct support from the USA which further complicated things.
While Israel is a nuclear power and has state of the art weaponry it lacks the experience of armies like that of the USA or Russia. It has little experience in the theatre of war apart from throwing all its toys at Gaza and terrorising children.
Without dismissing the effectiveness of Israel, apart from the continuation of wanton destruction the jury is out when it comes to a ground invasion.
What we should definitely not underestimate is the inertia Israel and the west has built up in its occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people. Short of bringing down the governments that support this settler colonial endeavour it’s hard to see how public opinion alone can fundamentally change the situation.
A ceasefire would be a significant event but unlikely to be a milestone. Netanyahu should fear for his neck because he is dispensable to the movers and shakers. Maybe Europe will conduct a PR exercise and provide Washington with an off ramp in order to appease world opinion.
If this happens it will be a fig leaf on the Israeli Palestine issue. Regardless off the hostility towards Israel’s government, the majority of Israel will have no truck with sharing anything with the Palestinians while US hegemony and Israeli domination will never be on the table.
We might need to be satisfied (in the short term) with a seismic shift in world opinion that has very little initial traction when it comes to international policy. What we can expect is that Palestinians will not be silenced nor appeased. The problem will be if fractures divide the Palestinian community.
There is a real danger that Palestine could share the fate of native Americans and be little more than a moral crusade. Western hegemony is fading and as the US empire falls apart Israel will become increasingly vulnerable. Unfortunately vacuums are not favourable to progressive movements. There needs to be a global movement based on geopolitical realities, not tree hugging desperation.
Indigenous societies around the world have to be at the forefront in pushing for a new world order if they’re not merely to be tapestries decorating the halls of history. The Palestinian cause has been the particle around which rain of peace and justice has coalesced. It cannot simply be a poster child. People are fundamentally emotional, respond to emotional stimuli and we create strong emotional highways in our brains. Yet world government is stubbornly pragmatic even to the point of seeing the genocide of Gaza as an inconvenience.
Environmentalists need to see a direct and critical connection between Gaza and the destruction of our planet. The climate catastrophe is deeply political and driven by a narrow but fierce stream of economics that sees 99.9% of us as dispensable. Unfortunately we are distracted by the overwhelming number of issues stemming from corporate corruption.
The people of Gaza don’t deserve to carry the weight of rotting imperialism on their shoulders or be the martyrs in a battle for world domination but that’s where they are. We can support the Palestinians in their hour of desperation and demand a ceasefire apart from seeing their plight in a broader context. Yet with a population less than 1/4 that of London and an area less than 1/5 Palestinians punch well above their weight.
History is essential in understanding the present and we need to make more people aware of the long history of the Israeli occupation but we have to connect the geopolitical realities of today with the free pass genocide we are witnessing and march with our minds as well as our hearts.
Even billionaires embrace environmentalism. Why wouldn’t they? Those amongst them with a brain know that their wealth won’t save them ultimately. Some also understand that their wealth is toxic just as some Israelis understand the Israel isn’t sustainable as an occupier.
From the river to the sea Palestine will be free.
From our heads down to our toes occupation we oppose.
