[News] From Gaza to Syria: The unyielding reality of Israeli settler-colonialism

[Anti-Imperialist News]

 From Gaza to Syria: The unyielding reality of Israeli settler-colonialism
By Ramzy Baroud <https://english.palinfo.com/?p=250012>

Saturday 8-March-2025 -
https://english.palinfo.com/opinion_articles/from-gaza-to-syria-the-unyielding-reality-of-israeli-settler-colonialism/

The conversation on settler-colonialism must not be limited to academic
discussion. It is a political reality, demonstrated clearly in the everyday
behavior of Israel. The occupation state is not merely an expansionist
regime historically; it remains actively so today. Moreover, the core of
Israeli political discourse, both past and present, revolves around
territorial expansion.

We succumb frequently to the trap of blaming such language on a specific
set of right-wing and extremist politicians or on a particular US
administration. The truth is vastly different: the Israeli Zionist
political discourse, although it may change in style, has remained
fundamentally unchanged.

Zionist leaders have always associated the establishment and expansion of
their state with the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.

This was later referred to in Zionist literature as the “transfer” of the
indigenous population. Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern political
Zionism, wrote in his diary about the ethnic cleansing of the Arab
population from Palestine: “We shall try to spirit the penniless population
across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries,
while denying it any employment in our own country… Both the process of
expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly
and circumspectly.”

It is unclear what happened to Herzl’s grand employment scheme aimed at
“spiriting” the population of Palestine across the region. What we know is
that the so-called “penniless population” resisted the Zionist project in
numerous ways. Ultimately, the depopulation of Palestine occurred through
force, culminating in the Nakba, the Catastrophe of 1948.

The discourse of the erasure of the Palestinian people has been the shared
foundation among all Israeli officials and governments, but it has been
expressed in different ways. It has always had a material component,
manifesting in the slow but decisive takeover of Palestinian homes in the
West Bank, the confiscation of farms and the constant construction of
“military zones”.

Despite Israeli claims, this “incremental genocide” is not linked directly
to the nature and degree of Palestinian resistance. Jenin and Masafer Yatta
illustrate this clearly.

The ongoing ethnic cleansing in the northern West Bank, which, according to
UNRWA, is the worst since 1967, has seen the displacement of tens of
thousands of Palestinians. This has been justified by Israel as a military
necessity due to the fierce resistance in that region, primarily Jenin, but
other areas as well.

However, many parts of the West Bank, including the area of Masafer Yatta,
have not been engaged in armed resistance. Yet, they have been primary
targets for Israel’s colonial expansion.

In other words, Israeli colonialism is in no way linked to Palestinian
resistance, action or inaction.

This has remained true for decades.

Gaza is a stark example. While one of the most horrific genocides in recent
history was being carried out, Israeli real estate developers, members of
the Knesset (parliament), and leaders of the illegal settlement movement
were all meeting to discuss investment opportunities in a depopulated Gaza.
The callous tycoons were busy promising villas on the beach for competitive
prices while Palestinians starved to death, amid an ever-growing body
count. Even fiction cannot be as cruel as this Zionist reality.

It is no wonder that the Americans joined in, as evidenced by equally
ruthless comments made by Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of US President
Donald Trump, and eventually by Trump himself.
While many at the time spoke about the strangeness of US foreign policy,
few mentioned that both Israel and the United States are prime examples of
settler-colonialism.

Unlike other settler-colonial societies, both Israel and the US are still
committed to the same project.

Trump’s desire to take over and rename the Gulf of Mexico; his ambition to
occupy Greenland and claim it as American territory; and, of course, his
comments about owning Gaza are all examples of settler-colonial language
and behavior.

The difference between Trump and previous US presidents is that others used
military power to expand American influence through wars and hundreds of
military bases worldwide without explicitly using expansionist language.
Instead, they referenced the need to challenge the Soviet “red menace,”
“restore democracy” and launch a global “war on terror” as justifications
for their actions. Trump, however, feels no need to mask his actions with
false logic and outright lies. Brutal honesty is his brand, although in
essence, he is no different from the rest.

Israel, on the other hand, rarely feels the need to explain itself to
anyone. It remains a model of a ferocious, traditional colonial society
that fears no accountability and has no regard for international law.

While the Israelis pushed to conquer and ethnically cleanse Gaza, they
remained entrenched in southern Lebanon, which they invaded last September.
They insisted on remaining in five strategic areas, thus violating the
ceasefire agreement with Lebanon, which was signed on 27 November.

A perfect case in point with reference to settler-colonial action was
Israel’s immediate — and I mean immediate — expansion into southern Syria,
the moment that the Assad regime collapsed on 8 December. When events in
Syria opened up security margins, Israeli tanks rolled in, warplanes
destroyed almost the whole Syrian army, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu unilaterally cancelled the armistice agreement signed in 1974.

That expansion continued, even though Syria represented no so-called
security threat to Israel whatsoever. Israel is now in control of the
Sheikh Mountain and Quneitra inside Syria.

The unquenchable appetite for land in Israel remains as strong as it was
upon the formation of the Zionist movement and the takeover of the
Palestinian homeland nearly eight decades ago.

This is a crucial fact, and Arab countries, in particular, must understand
it.

Sacrificing Palestinians to the Israeli death machine with the flawed
calculation that Israel’s ambitions are limited to Gaza and the West Bank
is a fatal mistake.

Israel will not hesitate for a minute to move militarily into any Arab
geographic space the moment it feels able to do so, and it will always get
US support and European silence, regardless of how destructive its actions
are. Jordan, Egypt and other Arab countries could find themselves facing
the same predicament as Syria today, watching their territories being
devoured while remaining powerless and without recourse to justice.

This realization should also matter to those busy finding “solutions” to
the Palestinian-Israeli “conflict”, which frame the problem narrowly to
that of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

Settler-colonialism can never be resolved through creative solutions. A
settler colonial state ceases to exist, and a settler colonial society
ceases to function, if territorial expansion is not a permanent fixture of
both state and society.

The only solution to this is that Israel’s settler-colonialism must be
challenged, curtailed and ultimately defeated. It may be a difficult task,
but it is an inescapable one.

*-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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