[News] Israel and its western allies have run out of Palestinian enforcers
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Fri Jun 11 11:35:39 EDT 2021
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/Israel-western-allies-run-out-Palestinian-enforcers
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/Israel-western-allies-run-out-Palestinian-enforcers>
Israel and its western allies have run out of Palestinian enforcers
Joseph Massad - June 11, 2021
------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the wake of the recent Israeli onslaught
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-aqsa-sheikh-jarrah-jerusalem-world-how-reacting>
against the Palestinian people in Israel, Gaza and the occupied West
Bank, including Jerusalem, the strength of Palestinian resistance
against the might of the Israeli war machine worried Israel’s imperial
sponsors.
The US, its European Union and UK imperial allies, and its Arab
allies panicked and rushed to ensure the status of Israel as a Jewish
supremacist and apartheid settler-colony.
In that vein, the Biden administration has been endeavouring to prove
that it is even more pro-Israel than the Trump and Obama administrations
- if this is even possible. Its efforts have included repeatedly
blocking
<https://apnews.com/article/middle-east-israel-israel-palestinian-conflict-business-government-and-politics-479bd6f033ae398736299e91667a21f0>
UN Security Council resolutions that condemned Israel, which led even
the fanatically pro-Israel EU
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/18/eu-sidelined-and-divided-as-war-rages-again-in-middle-east>
leadership to worry that Biden was no different from Trump on Israel.
The drive to subdue the Palestinian people has been the principal
condition since Britain conquered Palestine in late 1917
As the Israeli <https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/rJU20kYFO> newspaper
Yedioth Ahronoth
<https://www.raialyoum.com/index.php/%D8%B5%D8%AD%D9%8A%D9%81%D8%A9-%D8%A5%D8%B3%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%A6%D9%8A%D9%84%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D8%AA%D9%83%D8%B4%D9%81-%D9%83%D9%88%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%8A%D8%B3-%D8%AD%D8%B1%D8%A8-%D8%BA%D8%B2%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%84/>
uncovered, it was, in fact, at the request of shocked Israeli leaders
that US President Joe Biden immediately set out to contact Egypt. He
also contacted Jordan and Qatar to help curtail Palestinian resistance
in order to ensure that international pressure to dismantle the racist
nature of Israel does not intensify further.
This is important, as UN-commissioned experts issued a report
<https://www.unescwa.org/news/escwa-launches-report-israeli-practices-towards-palestinian-people-and-question-apartheid>
in 2017, as did Israeli and US human rights groups
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-palestine-apartheid-long-making-news>
more recently, finding that the Jewish settler-colony is nothing less
than an apartheid state, which could lead to more pressure to dismantle
its very foundations. When the foreign minister
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog-may-27-2021/> of France worried
that Israel was at risk of “long-lasting apartheid”, the situation
became grave.
The new-old solution that the US
<https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/biden-no-peace-until-region-recognizes-israels-right-to-exist-668803>
and its European and Arab allies
<https://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/country-files/israel-palestinian-territories/news/2021/article/joint-statement-of-the-leaders-of-france-egypt-and-jordan-19-may-2021>
offer is the two-state solution, which would maintain Israel as a Jewish
supremacist and apartheid state, but would allow a phantom
pseudo-Palestinian state to exist in the manner of the bantustan
homelands under apartheid South Africa.
In light of the military performance of the Gaza-based Palestinian
resistance, Hamas was told by the EU
<https://www.aljazeera.net/news/politics/2021/5/21/%D9%82%D8%A7%D9%84-%D8%A5%D9%86%D9%87%D8%A7-%D8%AC%D8%B2%D8%A1-%D9%85%D9%86-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AD%D9%84-%D9%85%D8%B3%D8%A4%D9%88%D9%84-%D8%A3%D9%88%D8%B1%D9%88%D8%A8%D9%8A-%D8%B1%D9%81%D9%8A%D8%B9>
that it could be invited to the negotiating table if it would reconcile
with the Palestinian Authority (PA); implying also to the EU that Hamas
accepted the Oslo Accords
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/problem-oslo-its-still-alive>,
recognising Israel’s right to be a Jewish supremacist and apartheid
state. Biden has insisted
<https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/biden-no-peace-until-region-recognizes-israels-right-to-exist-668803>
that “until the region says unequivocally they acknowledge the right of
Israel to exist as an independent Jewish state, there will be no peace”.
Revolt suppressed
This is hardly a new imperial ploy. The drive to subdue the Palestinian
people and coerce them into recognising the right of their European
Jewish colonisers to rob them of their homeland has been the principal
condition since Britain conquered Palestine in late 1917
<https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2018/4/10/how-britain-destroyed-the-palestinian-homeland>.
At the time, the Palestinian response to British colonialism and Jewish
settler-colonialism was adamantly hostile, which impelled the British to
embark - as it had done with the rest of its colonial possessions - on a
policy of divide-and-conquer on the one hand, and of outright
co-optation on the other.
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-palestine-apartheid-armed-resistance>
Israel-Palestine: Apartheid cannot be defeated without armed resistance
Read More »
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-palestine-apartheid-armed-resistance>
At the time, Palestinian elites competed to curry favour with the
British, in hopes of swaying them against Zionist colonisation. They
established several bodies to speak on behalf of Palestinian interests,
most prominently the Arab Executive
<https://www.britannica.com/place/Palestine/World-War-I-and-after>,
established in 1920 - but the British refused to recognise any such body
unless it recognised in turn the main purpose of the British colonial
mandate over Palestine, namely facilitating European Jewish
settler-colonisation, which the Palestinians refused to do.
The Palestinians would soon be divided into three main groups in
reaction to their colonial condition. A group of elite landowners and
merchants who served the Ottoman Empire and who cooperated with the
British in containing Palestinian popular protests against the British
and the Zionists and to safeguard their own class interests; a second
smaller group of Palestinian landowners and merchants who collaborated
outright with the British and the Zionists and accepted bribes from
both; and the mass of the Palestinian people, especially the peasants,
but also including intellectuals associated with the “Istiqlal
(Independence) Party” in the early 1930s, who chose resistance to the
British and the Zionists in contrast with the cooperating and
collaborating elites.
The British-appointed Palestinian leader Amin al-Husseini
<https://www.britannica.com/biography/Amin-al-Husayni> and his elite
followers helped the British in subduing Palestinian resistance from the
early 1920s until 1935, when they were no longer able to contain a
massive Palestinian revolt that continued from 1936 to 1939 and was
savagely suppressed by the British and the Zionists. Husseini ultimately
had no choice but to support the revolt, and was thus no longer of use
to the British, who removed him as mufti. He fled the country
<https://www.britannica.com/biography/Amin-al-Husayni> to escape arrest.
A picture dated before 1937 during the British Mandate in Palestine
shows Arabs demonstrating in the Old City of Jerusalem against the
Jewish immigration to Palestine (AFP)
A picture dated before 1937 during the British Mandate in Palestine
shows Arabs demonstrating in the Old City of Jerusalem against the
Jewish immigration to Palestine (AFP)
The British Colonial Office continued to search in vain for more a
“moderate” leadership. What better strategy, already successfully
deployed in other colonial possessions, than to have Palestinians aid
British troops and Zionist colonists in murdering the resisting
Palestinians and suppressing their anti-colonial revolt, while claiming
to defend them. The search succeeded in finding such collaborators, but
not in gaining them legitimacy in the eyes of the Palestinian people,
who regarded them as traitors.
To that end, the British organised a Palestinian mercenary force, which
they named the “peace bands”
<https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0022009415572401>, in
1938, which embarked on helping the British military and the Jewish
death squads (their official name was the “Special Night Squads”) in
murdering the revolutionaries and instilling terror in Palestinian
society. Unfortunately for the British, the two main Palestinian
collaborators who headed the “peace bands” were assassinated
<https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0022009415572401> in 1941
and 1943.
Collaborators and enforcers
Nonetheless, the precedent of recruiting Palestinians to shoot their own
people - as the British had done in other colonies in Asia and Africa
just as effectively - was set. Moreover, leaders of neighbouring Arab
countries were brought in by the British to apply pressure on the
Palestinians to stop their revolt.
After Israel was established, it also recruited Palestinian
collaborators, but failed to lend them legitimacy in the eyes of its
captive Palestinian population. Following its conquest of the West Bank
and Gaza, it tried again to enlist more collaborators through mayoral
elections in 1972
<https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/are-all-politics-local-look-palestinian-municipal-elections-results>
and 1976
<https://press.syr.edu/supressbooks/1353/israel-jordan-and-peace-process/>,
and through its subsequent Village Leagues
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1983/05/20/israel-still-pursues-leadership-role-for-west-bank-leagues/ee015ecb-48f8-4551-8c71-1f53c3641fe0/>
project, but failed.
Israel and its imperial sponsors’ efforts would, however, be fruitful in
the late 1980s. It was then that the Palestine Liberation Organization
(PLO), which had gained legitimacy internationally since the early 1970s
as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, was
told to accept Israel’s right to be a Jewish supremacist apartheid
state, in exchange for recognition of the PLO.
The Arafat leadership did just that, transforming themselves into
collaborators with Israel and enforcers of its settler-colonial,
apartheid occupation. The PA, created from Oslo
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/out-ruins-oslo-democratic-state-all-its-citizens-can-be-born>,
set out immediately to create its security forces, trained and financed
by the US and Europe
<https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2016/12/2/how-us-security-aid-to-pa-sustains-israels-occupation>,
to attack resisting Palestinians, just as the 1938 “peace bands” had
done against the Palestinian revolutionaries of the 1930s.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas speaks in Ramallah on 25 May 2021 (AFP)
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas speaks in Ramallah on 25 May 2021 (AFP)
Their first act in November 1994 was to shoot
<https://www.nytimes.com/1994/11/20/weekinreview/nov-13-19-palestinian-vs-palestinian-arafat-s-police-use-guns-quell-gaza-riots.html>
and kill 13 Palestinian civilians and wound 200 in Gaza for protesting
against this collaboration - an inaugural performance that set the stage
for their violent suppression of the Palestinian people ever since.
PA's legitimacy gap
The panic that has gripped the US, Europe, Arab client regimes and the
PA since the recent heroic Palestinian resistance
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-palestine-apartheid-armed-resistance>
stems from the major loss in international standing of the PA, which was
sidelined during the latest revolt, and indeed helped in suppressing it.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas
<https://al-akhbar.com/Palestine/306072/%D9%85%D9%86%D8%AA%D9%81%D8%B6%D9%88-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B6%D9%81-%D8%A9-%D9%8A%D8%B5%D9%81%D8%B9%D9%88%D9%86-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D9%84%D8%A7%D8%AD%D9%82%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A3%D9%85%D9%86%D9%8A-%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%B2%D8%AF%D9%88%D8%AC>
reportedly issued orders to put down support for Hamas and the
resistance in the occupied West Bank during the revolt.
Whereas the PA had lost all legal legitimacy as an unelected body since
2007 <https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-56929547>, and Abbas
lost his in 2009
<https://www.csmonitor.com/World/2009/1216/Why-the-PLO-extended-Abbas-s-term>,
its official pretence of suppressing Palestinian anti-colonial
resistance in order to defend Palestinians against colonialism was no
longer sustainable internationally.
Only the gullible believe that a continuation of this strategy will
forestall the massive Palestinian anti-colonial revolt to come,
whose aims have now been declared to the entire world
Swift action had to be taken to save the PA as an instrument of
Palestinian submission. Egypt, Jordan and Qatar were asked to help the
US by pumping money
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/27/bidens-pa-emphasis-in-gaza-reconstruction-aid-risks-backfire>
into PA coffers, supposedly for the reconstruction of Gaza.
Meanwhile, the EU
<https://www.aljazeera.net/news/politics/2021/5/21/%D9%82%D8%A7%D9%84-%D8%A5%D9%86%D9%87%D8%A7-%D8%AC%D8%B2%D8%A1-%D9%85%D9%86-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AD%D9%84-%D9%85%D8%B3%D8%A4%D9%88%D9%84-%D8%A3%D9%88%D8%B1%D9%88%D8%A8%D9%8A-%D8%B1%D9%81%D9%8A%D8%B9>
offered Hamas the possibility of coming to the negotiating table
provided it reconciled with the PA, which would indicate that Hamas
recognises Israel’s right to be a Jewish supremacist and apartheid state
- in line with EU “values”
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/islamophobia-europe-turned-into-dangerous-myth>.
But these are all tired, old strategies, as the US, EU, their Arab
allies and Israel know very well. The rhetoric of the two-state solution
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/why-two-state-illusion-refuses-die>,
the restoration of PA legitimacy, and the hope that a new Israeli
government
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-palestine-mansour-abbas-icon-supporters-settler-colonialism>
can uphold the basis of Israel as a Jewish supremacist, apartheid state
- while calling it “a Jewish and democratic state” - aim not to redress
the Palestinian colonial condition, but rather to extend the status quo
indefinitely, as Israel's settler-colonisation proceeds unhindered.
The colonial attempt since the end of World War I to appoint Palestinian
collaborators as leaders of the Palestinian people at the behest of
western imperialism and Jewish settler-colonialism has achieved only
temporary and partial success, but it has always ultimately failed to
bring about a final legitimation of Israel.
Only the gullible believe that a continuation of this strategy will
forestall the massive Palestinian anti-colonial revolt to come, whose
aims have now been declared to the entire world: the complete
dismantlement of Jewish supremacy and the Israeli apartheid regime from
the river to the sea.
/The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not
necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye./
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