[News] United against Israel: Time to end the world’s longest occupation

[Anti-Imperialist News]

 United against Israel: Time to end the world’s longest occupation
By Ramzy Baroud <https://english.palinfo.com/?p=250012>

Thursday 29-February-2024 -
https://english.palinfo.com/opinion_articles/united-against-israel-time-to-end-the-worlds-longest-occupation/

Left to its own devices, Israel would never grant Palestinians their
freedom. In the past, though, some people, whether in ignorance or
otherwise, claimed that peace in Palestine can only be achieved through
“unconditional negotiations”. This mantra was also championed by Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he cared enough to pay lip service
to the “peace process” and other US fantasies. Back then, he spoke about
his readiness to hold unconditional negotiations, while arguing constantly
that Israel does not have a partner for peace.

All of this, of course, was “doublespeak”. What Netanyahu and other
Israelis were actually saying was that Israel should be freed from any
commitment to international law, let alone international pressure. Worse,
by declaring that Israel has no Palestinian partner for peace, the Israeli
government has essentially cancelled the hypothetical and “unconditional
negotiations” before they have even taken place.

For years — in fact, for decades — Israel has been allowed to perpetuate
such nonsense, empowered, of course, by the total and unconditional support
of Washington and its other Western allies. In an environment where Israel
receives billions of dollars of US-Western aid, and where it has grown to
become a thriving technological hub, as well as one of the world’s largest
weapons exporters, Tel Aviv simply had no reason to end its occupation or
dismantle its racist apartheid in Palestine.

But things must change now. The genocidal Israeli war in Gaza should
completely alter our understanding, not only of the tragic reality in
occupied Palestine, but of past misunderstanding as well. It should be made
clear that Israel has never had any intention of achieving a just peace,
ending its colonization of Palestine — that is, the expansion of illegal
settlements — or granting Palestinians an iota of rights. On the contrary,
Israel has been planning to carry out genocide against the Palestinians all
along.

It is a fact that Israel has already carried out many terrible war crimes
against Palestinians, starting with the 1947/48 Nakba and in successive
wars ever since. Such crimes, large or small, have always been accompanied
by ethnic cleansing. Over 800,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed,
for example, when Israel was established on the ruins of Palestine 76 years
ago. An additional 300,000 were ethnically cleansed during the Naksa, the
war and “setback” of 1967.

Throughout the years, mainstream Western media outlets did their best to
hide Israeli crimes, or minimize their impact; or even blame someone else
for them.

This process of shielding Israel remains in place to this day, even when
tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed since 7 October and most
of the civilian infrastructure in the Gaza Strip, including hospitals,
schools, mosques, churches, homes and shelters, has been destroyed by the
occupation state.

Considering all of this, anyone who still speaks of “unconditional
negotiations” — especially those conducted under the auspices of Washington
— is, frankly, only doing so to help Israel escape international legal and
political accountability. Fortunately, the world is waking up to this fact
and, hopefully, this awakening will mature sooner rather than later, as
Israeli massacres in Gaza continue to claim hundreds of innocent lives
every single day.

This collective realization that Israel must be stopped through
international measures is also accompanied by an equally critical
realization that the US is not an honest broker for peace. Indeed, that it
never was.

To appreciate the ruinous role of the US in this so-called conflict, just
marvel at this fact. While practically every country that participated with
a legal opinion and a political position in the International Court of
Justice (ICJ) public hearings from 19 to 26 February formulated its
position based on international law, the US did not.

“The Court should not find that Israel is legally obligated to immediately
and unconditionally withdraw from occupied territory,” the acting legal
adviser for the US State Department, Richard Visek, said embarrassingly on
21 February. That’s right: 76 years after the Nakba and following 57 years
of military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the position of the
US — even in the ICJ — remains committed to defending the illegality of
Israel’s conduct throughout Palestine.

Compare this US stance with the rounded, courageous and legally grounded
position of almost every country in the world, especially the 50-plus
countries which asked to speak at the ICJ hearings. Take China, for
example. Its words and actions seem far more consistent with international
law than many Western nations, especially now, and it went even further:
“In pursuit of the right to self-determination, Palestinian people’s use of
force to resist foreign oppression and complete the establishment of an
independent state is [an] inalienable right well founded in international
law,” Chinese representative Ma Xinmin told the ICJ on 22 February.

Unlike the cliched and non-committal position of the likes of UK Foreign
Secretary David Cameron on the need to start “irreversible progress”
towards an independent Palestinian state, the Chinese position is arguably
the most comprehensive and realistic articulation. Ma linked
self-determination to liberation struggle, to sovereignty, to the
inalienable rights of people, which are all consistent with international
laws and norms. In fact, it is these very principles that have led to the
liberation of numerous countries in the Global South.

Given that Israel has no intention of freeing Palestinians from the grip of
apartheid and military occupation, the Palestinian people have had no other
option but to resist that occupation. According to the Geneva Conventions,
resistance is an entirely legitimate response.

The question now is whether or not the international community will
continue to defy the US position in words only, or if it will formulate a
new approach to the Israeli occupation of Palestine, thus bringing it to an
end by any means necessary.

In his statement to the ICJ on 19 February, British barrister Philippe
Sands, who is a member of Team Palestine, offered a roadmap on how the
international community can force Israel to end its occupation: “The right
of self-determination requires that UN Member States bring Israel’s
occupation to an immediate end. No aid. No assistance. No complicity. No
contribution to forcible actions. No money. No arms. No trade. No nothing.”

Indeed. Now is the time to turn words into actions, especially when
thousands of children are being killed for no other reason than that they
were born Palestinian. It’s time to end the world’s longest military
occupation.

*-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:
Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons’. Baroud is
a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global
Affairs (CIGA) and also at the Afro-Middle East Center (AMEC).*
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