I am writing this at the request of a friend who wanted to know, in as few words as possible, what is happening in Israel, why it is happening, and where this is likely to go.
–The Zionist project in Palestine is a project of settler colonialism. In such projects, a people foreign to a land, decide to take territory in this land to settle down there and make it their home.
–To do this, the settlers need to displace the people who are already living in the area where they have decided to settle down.
–To displace the indigenous people force has to be used against them. And they, to retain their freedom and way of life are compelled to use violence in return.
–This results in an escalating spiral of violence in which both sides alternately raise the level of violence till one side submits and is driven to the margins both of society and geography.
–Often the settlers end up resorting to the genocide of the original inhabitants of the land where they intend to settle. This happened largely in the U.S., Canada, and Australia, and to a lesser but still significant extent in most of the rest of the Americas.
–In South Africa, where the ratio of the locals in the population was quite high, settler control was exercised by way of separate “development” called Apartheid.
–In Palestine, the settler Jews, to retain control, adopted a model of large-scale expulsion of the local population plus a creeping Apartheid, continuous dispossession, and a slow genocide of the local Palestinians. In this, they had the backing of most of the advanced and civilised countries of the world.
–But though driven to extremes, the Palestinians refused to take their lot lying down and kept fighting back with increasing ferocity, accepting in return the brutal suppression by the settlers as part of fate.
–The original Zionist settlers were largely non-religious socialists who had committed to a two-state solution i.e. Palestine to be partitioned into the state of Israel, and the state of Palestine.
–Paradoxically, though the Zionists were non-religious they believed in the Hebrew Bible insofar as this defined the boundaries of the ancient state of Israel, and were committed to extending the boundaries of the new Israel in accord with the Bible. And this did not admit of a Palestinian state in the borders of old Israel. So they began to create new “facts on the ground” so that the making of a Palestinian state would become impossible. This they did by planting ever more colonies in the land which was earmarked to become the Palestinian State in such a way that this could never be a contiguous state. It could only be many little islets which together would be called the Palestinian state.
Simultaneously with this the Israelis have resorted to the demolition of Palestinian homes in Palestinian territories, cutting down their olive trees, the only source of livelihood for many Palestinian families, and restricting their rights to water. Over and above this are hundreds of “security” laws designed to make life impossible for the Palestinians.
The joint purpose of all of the above is to rob Palestinians of all hope so that they are goaded into ever more violent reactions, which can be justified by ever greater brutality visited upon them by the Israeli state.
The aim is to make life for the Palestinians so hard that they would eventually prefer expulsion from their land.
–Meanwhile, all these years as the spiral of mutual violence has increased, politically Israel has moved increasingly to the right. Today it has finally achieved a government which has zero tolerance for the Palestinians on the one hand and is following a policy of endless provocation on the other.
–This government has three immediate objectives as under:
a. To impose Jewish religious law on Israel. It is to further this objective that Israel has seen an ongoing anti-judiciary movement. The aim is to make the judiciary subservient to the parliament because the judiciary is composed of largely “liberal” Jews who strike down legislation dictated by Jewish religious law.
b. To build the ancient Jewish Temple which was pulled down by Titus in 70 A.D. To do this the Al Aqsa Mosque will need to be demolished because this was built where this Temple once stood.
c. To expand the boundaries of Israel to incorporate the whole of Biblical Palestine. This would need the expulsion of all Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza.
–On Thursday, Oct 5 2023, Israeli police assaulted the Al Aqsa Mosque without there being any need to do so except provocation and to bring home to the Palestinians that Israelis were the boss.
–On May 7 2023, Hamas came out of Gaza in a very minutely planned operation to attack and slaughter as many Israelis as they possibly could. This operation had taken months to plan. Many believe that the immediate cause of the attack by Hamas on Israel was their raid on Al Aqsa two days earlier and that this was a deliberately planned provocation to elicit just such a response from Hamas.
–It is certain that Israel will now move to crush Hamas, and that at any time they are expected to launch a land attack on Gaza. But neither the Israeli government nor their generals would be prepared to accept the casualties that fighting in the built-up area of Gaza would entail. I guess that they will avoid taking these casualties. The only way they can do this is by first flattening their objectives inside Gaza by air assaults and fierce artillery bombardment, and only then allowing their land forces to advance, whose only job would be to flush out any sign of life left there after the bombardment.
–The casualties suffered by the Palestinians are likely to be horrendous. The only consideration that could soften the blow on the Palestinians would be the Israeli hostages that they hold. But if they opt for a full assault nevertheless, it will be a signal for total war. In that case, expect the Al Aqsa Mosque to be blown up, and for thousands of Palestinians to be driven out of the West Bank.
–If the Israeli assault on the Palestinians goes to its full logical extent, there will be uproar in the entire Muslim world. Crowd action in some states could become the cause of destabilization of their governments. This is an additional threat looming on Pakistan’s horizon as well, and one which it would do well to avoid. It should opt for the only diversion of mass public energy which is open to it.
