[News] ‘Two-State Solution’ as a Distraction - The Problem is Zionism

[Anti-Imperialist News]

counterpunch.org
<https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/02/23/two-state-solution-as-a-distraction-the-problem-is-zionism/>
‘Two-State Solution’ as a Distraction - The Problem is Zionism
Ramzy Baroud
February 23, 2024
------------------------------

Image by Levi Meir Clancy.

The problem is not the absence of a Palestinian state, but Zionism itself.

What is the use of a Palestinian state, if Zionism, as a racist,
exclusivist ideology continues to define Israel, and impose that definition
on the Palestinians?

This ideology calls for racial purity of Jews in Palestine, of course, at
the expense of the native inhabitants of the land. To achieve this,
millions of Palestinians had to be forced into exile
<https://theconversation.com/the-nakba-how-the-palestinians-were-expelled-from-israel-205151>,
hundreds of thousands needed to be killed, wounded or incarcerated.

Neither two states, nor even one state is possible if Zionism is not
entirely defeated – not revamped, not ‘fixed’, but eradicated.

As Palestinians are being killed
<https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/palestinian-death-toll-in-israeli-attacks-on-gaza-climbs-to-28-775/3139397>
in unprecedentedly large numbers in Gaza, western politicians are waking up
to the necessity
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/24/uks-cameron-to-raise-concerns-over-gaza-death-toll-on-israel-visit>
of a Palestinian state.

But why now? After all, it was these very politicians and their governments
that either defended or remained silent as Israel thwarted every
possibility of peaceful co-existence.

Theirs is not a moral awakening, but a distraction, to appear – at least
before their own people – to be proactive, while Israel is systematically
destroying the Palestinian people.

Former UNRWA official, Chris Gunnes, said
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUotyH5zE80> about the Israeli war on Gaza
that this is “the first genocide in the history of humanity that is
livestreamed on television”.

The genocide is worsening now that Palestinians are starting
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUotyH5zE80> to die from starvation, while
an even larger number is dying from disease
<https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/11/world/middleeast/gaza-health-infectious-disease.html#:~:text=The%20most%20common%20diseases%20raging,dire%20living%20conditions%2C%20she%20said.>
and polluted water
<https://www.aa.com.tr/en/world/genocide-and-more-the-varied-forms-of-destruction-in-gaza/3131585#:~:text=According%20to%20Shuker%2C%20Gaza's%20environmental,for%20human%20consumption%2C%20she%20mentions.>,
aside, of course, from those being blown up or shot by Israel.

For the likes of David Cameron, Britain’s Foreign Minister, to talk
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/01/uk-could-recognise-a-palestinian-state-before-a-two-states-deal-david-cameron>
about the recognition of a Palestinian state as “absolutely vital” for
“long-term peace”, is bewildering, to say the least. Those struggling to
survive daily are hardly concerned about yet more empty western promises.

The genocide underway in Gaza tells us that the issue is not merely
political, but an ideological one. And, while western leaders speak of
‘long-term peace’, Israel entrenches its system of violence and apartheid.

“There cannot be a situation in which children and women approach us from
the wall. Anyone (…) must receive a bullet,” Israeli National Security
Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240212-ben-gvir-calls-on-israel-army-to-shoot-gazas-children-women/>
on February 12.

In Gaza, the violence is far more sickening. Euro-Med Monitor, a rights
group, reported
<https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6153/%E2%80%9CThey-brought-Israeli-civilians-to-watch-our-nude-torture%E2%80%9D:-IDF-torture-of-Palestinian-prisoners-is-turned-into-entertainment-for-Israeli-viewers>
on February 12 that “groups of ten to twenty Israeli civilians at a time
were permitted to watch and laughingly film Palestinian prisoners and
detainees in their underwear” as they were tortured and abused by Israeli
soldiers.

There can be no rational political justification for any of this.

All of this – the language <https://www.arabnews.com/node/2396301> of
genocide, the genocide
<https://jewishcurrents.org/a-textbook-case-of-genocide> itself and the
threats
<https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/historian-raz-segal-blasts-israel-s-genocidal-incitement-against-gazans/3096633>
of committing a greater genocide – is rooted, not in a rational political
theory, but in Zionism.

The problem keeps getting worse because we refuse to address it head-on. In
fact, many are doing the exact opposite. For example, western governments
have passed
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/6/anti-zionism-is-antisemitism-us-house-asserts-in-dangerous-resolution>
– or are passing – laws equating between criticism of Zionism and
anti-Semitism. Even Facebook wants to ban
<https://theintercept.com/2024/02/08/facebook-instagram-censor-zionist-israel/>
the use of the term ‘Zionist’ if it is critical of Israel.

When Israeli Heritage Minister, Amichai Eliyahu, threatened
<https://www.politico.eu/article/israel-minister-amichai-eliyahu-suspend-benjamin-netanyahu-nuclear-bomb-gaza-hamas-war/>,
on November 5, to drop a nuclear bomb on Gaza, he was condemned by many
merely for his inappropriate language, not the act itself. Some Israeli
officials also criticized Eliyahu as well, only for damaging
<https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/eliyahu-nuclear-statements-caused-immense-harm-to-israeli-re>
Israel’s international reputation.

The Israeli Minister, however, was not simply talking out of anger. He
meant it, because Israel’s behavior in Gaza, since then, has demonstrated
that such willingness to kill Palestinians en masse actually exists.

Zionists are ready to do anything to survive, and their survival is wholly
dependent on the erasure of the perceived enemy; not ‘erasure’ in an
intellectual, political, or even cultural sense, but the physical
destruction of the Palestinians as well.

The ethnic cleansing of Palestine, known as the Nakba, in 1948, was a
serious attempt at achieving that goal. But since the ‘enemy’, being the
Palestinian nation, had survived and continues to resist and demand its
collective rights, the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people is now
back <https://www.arabnews.com/node/2458781/amp> on the mainstream Israeli
political agenda.

This ongoing Gaza war is the most serious attempt, to date, to destroy
<https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/15/rafah-gaza-israel-airstrikes-war>
the Palestinian people. This is why Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin
Netanyahu, and his government want to carry on with the war. On the one
hand, they want to ensure the continued slaughter, thus the extermination
of the Palestinians and, on the other, they are also fully aware that this
is a historic opportunity to finish a job that previous Zionist leaders did
not complete, 75 years earlier.

Indeed, Israel sees the war on Gaza beyond the geographic confines of the
tiny Gaza Strip. It is a war on the Palestinians everywhere. If Israel
succeeds in subduing Gaza, it will turn its gaze immediately to the West
Bank, then to the millions of Palestinians inside Israel.

It is important to recall that, before the current war, the Israeli
incitement against Palestinians was focused mostly on the West Bank – with
the declared aim of annexing
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200530-netanyahu-we-will-annex-30-of-the-west-bank-area-to-israel/>
over a third of that occupied region.

There was also a major official Israeli campaign to curtail
<https://adc.org/racist-incitement-by-israeli-leaders-must-end/> the rights
and incite hatred against Palestinian Arabs inside Israel. This campaign is
rooted in history but has become far more apparent following the Unity
Intifada (uprising) of May 2021.

It was then that Israel realized that the ‘division’ of the Palestinians
was largely political, and that, as a nation, Palestinians remain strongly
connected.

That is why Ben-Gvir lobbied
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/defense-minister-pans-ben-gvirs-proposed-national-guard-as-a-private-militia/#:~:text=Ben%20Gvir%20has%20said%20that,group%20in%20the%20Gaza%20Strip.>,
even before he claimed his ministerial position in December 2022, to have a
National Guard tasked with “restoring governance where needed”.

If Gaza falls, all Palestinians in the rest of Palestine will become the
new target for Israeli violence, ethnic cleansing and, if necessary,
genocide.

Reducing all these issues to that of finding creative political solutions
that would merely sell false hope to the Palestinian people is not only
ignorant, or devious, but also a diversion from the real issue: Israel’s
Zionist ideology.

Zionism, like all racist colonial ideologies, operates with a zero-sum
approach to their relationship with the natives of colonized land:
dominance through ethnic cleansing and genocide.

For ‘long-term peace’ to take place, Zionism must end.

*Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He
is the author of five books. His latest is “**These Chains Will Be Broken*
<https://www.amazon.com/These-Chains-Will-Broken-Palestinian/dp/1949762092>*:
Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons” (Clarity
Press, Atlanta). Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the
Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA), Istanbul Zaim University (IZU).
His website is **www.ramzybaroud.net* <http://www.ramzybaroud.net/>
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