Asked to comment on the fact that Palestinians wouldn’t be allowed to return once they were forcibly displaced from Gaza, Kushner responded, “Maybe, but I’m not sure there’s much left of Gaza at this point.” And to further discredit the enclave, Trump’s son-in-law described it as having no historical precedent – “It was the result of a war – you had tribes that went different places and then Gaza became a thing.” He’s wrong, of course; Gaza has a very long history behind it. It’s the Gaza Strip as a territorial entity that is a relatively recent construct.

The simplifications have become obscene. Gaza is the entire symbol and experience of Palestine

It holds Palestinian history and memory within a confined space that is now subjected to what is very obviously genocide according to all legal definitions, while the world debates and questions whether Israel really is, when all is said and done, committing genocide. And if it is, what about 7 October? This obscene normalisation and acceptance of genocide is built upon normalising decades of Israeli colonial violence so, unfortunately, no one should really be surprised. Nevertheless, the shame of it should stain the international community forever.

Kushner’s humanitarian pretences are equally as hypocritical as those of the international community. The international community, a euphemism for Western countries, refuses to take in Palestinian refugees on the grounds that those countries do not want to be complicit in the forced displacement of the indigenous population of Palestine. But the same countries do not appear to mind Palestinians being subjected to an Israeli genocide, which is the ultimate form of ethnic cleansing. How far fetched would it be for Israel and Kushner to have their way, and we see the international community praising settlements and real estate deals as “economics for peace”? Of course, there would be no Palestinians left to make peace with in such a scenario, or the numbers would be so low that peace would fall from the equation, leaving only economic benefits for Israel and its accomplices.

There is not much left in terms of Gaza’s infrastructure, but Kushner is wrong to say there’s not much left of Gaza. If the citizens of a country are its essence, then 2.3 million Palestinians are Gaza. His sweeping statement eliminates even the existence of Gaza — and thus its Palestinian population — which is still a territorial reality, albeit one now imbued with a new bloody history that is Israel’s doing.

Majority Report with Sam Seder Video: “Jared Kushner Sees Israel “Cleaning” Gaza And Developing Its Beachfront Property”

“I’m sitting in Miami Beach right now,” Kushner added for context, while explaining to the interviewer what he’d do if he was in Israel. This was the epitome of how international politics plays out in Palestine, and what Palestinians have suffered as a result.

Someone sitting in Miami Beach, or anywhere else for that matter, has no right to decide the genocidal fate of Palestinians. However, as much as Kushner should be called out for his complicity, so should the UN, the international entity that recognised a colonial enterprise built upon an ethnic cleansing in process which has now morphed into the world’s most complicit genocidal action.

Waterfront real estate in Gaza when Palestinians’ homes have been completely destroyed? This is what happens when the UN only speaks in terms of purportedly isolated violations and not in terms of the ongoing Zionist colonial conquest of Palestine.

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Netanyahu listed three prerequisites for “peace” and no mention of the Israeli hostages who remain in Gaza and under the threat of being killed by the IDF’s bombing. “Hamas must be destroyed, Gaza must be demilitarised, and Palestinian society must be deradicalized.” Of course, Netanyahu requires international complicity and insisted that the international community “should blame Hamas for the massive civilian casualties of the current war”. No, it shouldn’t. Israel is bombing Gaza on the pretext of eliminating Hamas, to sustain a thorough ethnic cleansing campaign against the Palestinian people.

However, the international community has done nothing but haggle over humanitarian pauses and humanitarian aid. Meanwhile, behind closed doors, Netanyahu’s plan for Palestinians in Gaza is “voluntary migration” – Israel’s euphemism for forced transfer, which is prohibited by international law, and which the international community normalised for Israel in the 1948 Nakba.

The news is not surprising, given that Israel’s Intelligence Ministry deems forced transfer the preferred option, and Israeli Likud MK Danny Danon promoted the international law violation last November as a “moral imperative” for Western countries. While the West will likely raise little to no objection to Israel’s forced transfer plans, there is no moral imperative in complying with ethnic cleansing. The problem lies in the international community not having the moral imperative to permanently halt Israel’s colonial violence because its complicity can barely be distinguished from Israel’s actions now.

“Gaza Guernica 20: Refugees,” by Juan Cole. Digital. Dream/ Dreamland v.3/ IbisPaint/ PSexpress, 2023.

Roskin’s op-ed reeks of hatred, patronisation and blackmail which completely ignores the political realities of Gaza, including the international community’s refusal to accept the 2006 electoral results and engage in dialogue with Hamas. Egypt, Roskin writes, would be “hailed by the international community as the saviour of the dire plight of Gazans” if it accepts to be complicit in Israel’s ethnic cleansing plans. Roskin hails the Sinai Peninsula as an ideal place for the “resettlement” of Palestinians forcibly displaced from Gaza by Israel’s bombing campaign. Calling forced transfer “genuine rehabilitation programs”, Roskin states, “The ongoing obliteration of Hamas, which terrorizes Palestinian Authority officials and many Gaza residents, may pave the way to the emergence of the proposed Sinai solution, if presented in a wise and discrete manner that conforms to the Middle East mentality.”

So many antagonising words revealing nothing but colonial contempt for the indigenous Palestinian population. Are Palestinians not wise enough to form their own political trajectories, had they been given the space to do so, instead of rendering them perpetual refugees in the humanitarian paradigm, all for Israel’s benefit? If Palestinians in Gaza cannot return to their land, and are forcibly transferred with full blessings of the international community, Gaza may be lost, but there will be no end in sight for the Palestinian anti-colonial struggle.

A people that remembers cannot be lost, not with the knowledge that colonialism is reversible.

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( Middle East Monitor ) – After much useless public debate over Israel’s alleged right to defend itself, the international community regained its footing as the humanitarian paradigm, once more, comes within reach. A four day pause after an agreement reached by Israel and Hamas which would also see the release of 50 Israeli female hostages in exchange for the release of 150 female Palestinian prisoners. The pause has now been delayed until Friday.

The resumption of the humanitarian paradigm will be the first step the international community will exploit to normalise not only Israel’s colonial violence but the extent of the damage it has caused, not to mention the death toll of Palestinian civilians.

Not that there were no misgivings. According to an article on Politico, the Biden administration was concerned that the humanitarian pause “would allow journalists broader access to Gaza and the opportunity to further illuminate the devastation there and turn public opinion on Israel.”

“Gaza Guernica 2” by Juan Cole, Digital (Wombo Dream + Lunapic), 2023.

The EU’s Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management, Janez Lenarčič, expressed the hope of “substantial surge in humanitarian aid delivery into and within Gaza” and called for further humanitarian pauses to allow further assistance. What is left unsaid by the hypocritical humanitarian advocates is what will be done in between. Is the international community, in this case the EU, really concerned with humanitarian aid reaching Palestinian civilians in Gaza, or is it a case of enabling Israel’s war crimes and providing the settler-colonial entity with a lull while it decides its next aggressive steps?

A pause is not a ceasefire and, while humanitarian aid will offer Palestinians slight temporary respite, it will never match or surpass what Israel has the capability to inflict in terms of destruction. The international community, however, would prefer no debate on this reality. As long as Gaza, once again, falls within the parameters of the humanitarian paradigm, and the new wave of displacement, larger than that of the 1948 Nakba and from a sliver of what remains of Palestine, is boxed into statistical data, humanitarian aid will not be seen as a matter of necessity, but a series of financial pledges that might or might not be effected.

Israeli Intelligence Minister, Gila Gamliel, is the latest to suggest voluntary resettlement of displaced Palestinians in Gaza. “Instead of funnelling money to rebuild Gaza or to the failed UNRWA, the international community can assist in the costs of resettlement, helping the people of Gaza build new lives in their new host countries,” she wrote in the Jerusalem Post, leaving out the part that Israeli colonisation would benefit from a complete expulsion of the Palestinian people from Gaza. There is no voluntary resettlement in colonialism, only the replacement of the indigenous Palestinian population.

Gamliel’s purported solution is one that would be effected “after Hamas has been defeated and annihilated”. Given that Israel has failed in that endeavour, which means a prolonged aggression with temporary pauses may not be too far-fetched, how will the international community sustain the paradigm now, and how much will Palestinians have to settle for, less thaN what is already meagre and dehumanising in terms of humanitarian aid?

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( Middle East Monitor ) – US President Joe Biden placed much emphasis on rhetorically opposing Israel’s settlement expansion. Hence the reaction from Washington over the Israeli Knesset passing the second and third readings of the Disengagement Law that would allow resettlement of Jewish Israelis in four previously vacated illegal settlement areas in the occupied West Bank. Israel’s Ambassador to the US Mike Herzog was summoned by the US State Department over the rescinding of the 2005 bill, while the State Department’s Deputy Spokesman Vedant Patel referenced the agreement between then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and US President George W. Bush on Palestinian territorial contiguity.

The Abraham Accords have changed much of politics since then. Settlement expansion continued and despite the two-state compromise being still touted as the only solution, the international community is not working towards its implementation. The normalisation agreements have now eclipsed the two-state politics, validating the Trump administration’s claims that annexation was just temporarily suspended, as did Netanyahu’s return as prime minister.

Repealing the Disengagement Law may have temporarily irked the US, but within Israel, the sentiment is different. Far-right MK Orit Strok has already declared the law as a step towards settlers reoccupying Gaza, after Sharon evacuated the settlements in 2005. “I don’t know how long it will take,” Strok stated. “Sadly, a return to the Gaza Strip will involve many casualties, just as the departure from the Gaza Strip came with many casualties. But ultimately it is part of the Land of Israel, and a day will come when we will return to it.”

Primarily, colonial settlement does not constitute a return, but a continuation of land theft. The language of return is stolen from the Palestinians’ historical narrative – the 1948 Nakba is the reason why Palestinians speak of their right to return to their homeland. Gaza is one of the main locations where Palestinians fled to during the Nakba – the population is not merely symbolic of refugees but consists of refugees who have not just lived their initial displacement, but whose generations have also suffered internal forced displacement as a result of Israel’s periodic bombing of the enclave.

Strok’s words were not uttered in isolation. While Gaza has been vilified and marginalised by Israel and the Palestinian Authority, not to mention being the primary weapons testing ground for Israel’s military-industrial complex, the concept of Greater Israel, upon which Zionism rests, will not exclude any Palestinian territory from colonisation. Israel’s earlier disengagement from Gaza has been touted by officials as a cessation of military occupation, yet Gaza remains under siege as a result of the colonial process Israel is constructed upon.

The current Israeli government is going beyond its usual levels of inciting violence against Palestinians, and one of the reasons Israel can get away with it is that the international community has normalised the forced displacement of Palestinians. Strok speaks of casualties, yet Israel would be committing further violations of international law with full knowledge of impunity. The international community’s categorising of Gaza and the occupied West Bank as distinct entities despite calling for an independent and viable Palestinian state facilitates Israel’s narrative. One must not forget, however, that the new Palestinian resistance is changing the international community’s status quo. As a result, despite the current focus on the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian narrative will, with time, shift heavily towards the Palestinian refugees, which Gaza particularly embodies.

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In January this year, the EU’s Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell responded to a parliamentary question posed in March 2022 by pro-Israel lawmakers, based upon Amnesty International’s 2022 report on Israel’s apartheid practices and whether the report falls under the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism. The non-legally binding IHRA definition provides possible examples of anti-Semitism which basically exempts Israel from any criticism other than that which might be “levelled against any other country”. Given that Israel is a settler-colonial enterprise that continuously displaces Palestinians from their land, criticism of Israel inevitably differs from that levelled at other countries.

Borrell did not disappoint the Zionists, though. “The Commission is aware of the report referred to by the Honourable Members and is giving it due attention,” he said. “In any case, the Commission considers that it is not appropriate to use the term apartheid in connection with the State of Israel. Claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour is amongst the illustrative examples included under the IHRA definition.”

After taking this stance, Borrell’s answer regurgitated the EU’s purported commitment to the two-state compromise, with a very clear footnote. To further emphasise the EU’s political stance on not recognising Palestine as a state when affirming its “commitment to a negotiated two-State solution”, Borrell added, “This designation shall not be construed as recognition of a State of Palestine and is without prejudice to the individual positions of the members states on this issue.” The EU uses the ‘two-state’ framework to evade any kind of acknowledgement that Israel imposes apartheid on the Palestinians.

While it is clear that Israel’s war crimes are ongoing rather than isolated bouts of violence, the EU’s approach consists of the absolute minimum focus on normalised atrocities against the Palestinian people. The two-state compromise has allowed Israel ample time to further its territorial ambitions to control what remains of Palestine. If the EU, which prides itself on illusory state-building in Palestine, continues to avail itself of the defunct premise, it may as well admit, unequivocally, that the bloc stands up for Israel’s colonisation of Palestinian territory and, as a result of colonisation, for the ongoing displacement of the Palestinian people.

What does Borrell think is “not appropriate” about calling out Israel’s apartheid policies? In 2017, Haaretz reported former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak as warning that the state was heading for a “slippery slope of apartheid”. He had issued a similar warning as long ago as 2010.

Moreover, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared in December Israel’s exclusivity in terms of it being a Jewish state: “The Jewish people have an exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the Land of Israel. The government will promote and develop the settlement of all parts of the Land of Israel — in the Galilee, the Negev, the Golan and Judea and Samaria.” If Israel is endowing itself with apartheid policies as of “inalienable right”, through which it will prevail and finalise the colonisation project to which the EU has proven itself to be so partial, then Borrell should have no difficulty declaring his allegiance. After all, the EU’s purportedly pro-Palestine stance has repeatedly been exposed as a fraudulent farce.

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“Last Friday we made it clear that supporting settlements does not contradict upholding the law,” he claimed. “The defence minister received our backing. We expect the defence minister to act with the same determination in the face of rampant Palestinian illegal construction in the West Bank. We will no longer tolerate discrimination against the settlers.”

Israeli settlements and settlers are, of course, illegal under international law, something that Danon is adept at overlooking when he makes such outrageous claims.

As the Israeli government prepares to submit its response to the High Court over the impending demolition of the Palestinian Bedouin village of Khan Al-Ahmar, Danon and Likud MK Yuli Edelstein visited the village, calling for its demolition and accusing the government of selective enforcement over the evacuation of the Or Chaim illegal settler outpost in the occupied West Bank.

In an op-ed, Danon described the EU’s funding of infrastructure in Khan Al-Ahmar as “subversive involvement of international entities in Israel’s domestic affairs” and accused the bloc of violating Israel’s sovereignty and international law. “It is part of an ulterior agenda that seeks to delegitimise Israel’s historical claim to its own land,” Danon wrote.

The Demolition of Khan Al-Ahmar by the IOF – Cartoon [Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitor]

Completely eliminating Israel’s colonial context and the fact that Khan Al-Ahmar is built on Israeli-occupied Palestinian land, Danon referred to the evacuation of Or Chaim and said, “The law is the law and must be applied to all citizens and communities, Jews and Arabs alike.” However, there is no equivalence between the coloniser and the colonised, as Danon knows well.

Khan al-Ahmar has attracted enough international attention to become newsworthy periodically, and the related activism has ensured that Israel’s violations are fully exposed. The village, though, is also part of a long colonial process that seeks to dispossess Palestinians of their land. Its demolition is not an isolated incident. Earlier expulsions and destruction of properties, including the ethnic cleansing from the 1948 Nakba onwards, need to be kept in mind.

Israel benefits from the international community’s differentiation of colonial settlement expansion. It has gained a veneer of legitimacy for the earlier colonial settlements despite the atrocities committed by Zionist paramilitary terror gangs to establish control over Palestinian territory. Israeli law is justifiable only unto itself and the violence it created. In terms of equality and rights, there is no justification for Israel’s colonial expansion. Likewise, there is no equivalence in calling for the demolition of Khan Al-Ahmar because an illegal (even under Israeli law) settlement outpost was dismantled. Palestinians are rarely issued building permits on what remains of their land. Danon’s use of the word “rampant” is totally dishonest. Indeed, his words only reflect his country’s colonial violence and privilege when calling for Khan Al-Ahmar’s destruction, not to mention targeting an integral part of Palestinian resilience in the face of impending demolition orders.

Lest Danon forgets, Khan Al-Ahmar’s residents relocated to the area after being displaced by Israel in 1950, laying bare the lie of delegitimising “Israel’s historical claim to its own land”. Israel wants territorial contiguity to Jerusalem, not demolitions based on equal rights. Erasing the Palestinian landscape through colonial settlement expansion does not erase the fact that Israel’s settler-colonial population cannot lay legitimate claims to Palestinian land, and neither can the Israeli government. The only claim that Israel can make with any degree of accuracy and honesty is that it colonised Palestine and intends to finalise its colonial enterprise. Khan Al-Ahmar stands in the way of its plans, just as other Palestinian towns and villages did decades ago. More than 500 paid the price and were totally destroyed and wiped off the map.

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“It cannot be that lawbreakers wave terrorist flags, incite and encourage terrorism, so I ordered the removal of flags supporting terrorism from the public space and to stop the incitement against Israel,” Ben-Gvir declared.

Yet the speed at which Netanyahu is stifling any form of Palestinian political expression point towards maintaining Israel’s colonial expansion and Palestinian erasure.

Equating Palestinian legitimate anti-colonial resistance with terrorism enabled Israel to build its false security narrative. Colonial opposition to the Palestinian flag dates back to the aftermath of the 1967 war when Israel established its military occupation over all of Palestine. With annexation plans back to the helm, silencing Palestinians is becoming Israel’s new normalised form of violence which the international community will not object to. Removing Palestinian flags is far from a global concern and the action will not raise any urgency, not even for perfunctory statements. The latter, after all, have already been saved for the more visible international law violations, including settlement expansion, forced displacement, and the killing of Palestinian civilians. If diplomats worldwide have failed to act on what the International Criminal Court has clearly deemed to be war crimes, how will a flag resonate enough to catch attention internationally?

For Palestinians, however, Ben Gvir’s directive has grave implications. Not so long ago, during the funeral of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, Israeli police officers disrupted the funeral violently and arrested mourners for displaying the Palestinian flag. In 2017, Israeli snipers killed Palestinian activist and double amputee Ibrahim Abu Thurayya during the Great March of Return demonstrations, who was known for displaying Palestinian flags during protests. Similarly, to Abu Akleh, Israel was able to construct impunity for Abu Thurayya’s killing, claiming that it was impossible to determine his cause of death.

Behind the Palestinian flag displays, there are Palestinians whose voices are being silenced through various repressive means and, at times, murder. What the flag stands for; that is, the perseverance of Palestinians despite the looming annexation, is what Ben Gvir seeks to currently eliminate. Yet the current focus on the Palestinian flag by the Israeli government should not be dissociated from the ultimate plans to colonise all of Palestine. And this is precisely why the international community, if it was truly in favour of Palestinians’ political rights, should go beyond Ben Gvir’s explanation and treat the latest repressive action against Palestinians in terms of colonial violence.

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