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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/02/23/two-state-solution-as-a-distraction-the-problem-is-zionism/">counterpunch.org</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">‘Two-State Solution’ as a Distraction - The Problem is Zionism</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Ramzy Baroud</div>
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<div class="gmail-reader-estimated-time" dir="ltr">February 23, 2024<br></div>
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<div id="gmail-attachment_314213" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-314213" src="https://www.counterpunch.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/levi-meir-clancy-O4co1hWcPKE-unsplash-680x453.jpg" alt="" width="423" height="282" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 0px;"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-314213" class="gmail-wp-caption-text">Image by Levi Meir Clancy.</p></div>
<p>The problem is not the absence of a Palestinian state, but Zionism itself.</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>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<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-nakba-how-the-palestinians-were-expelled-from-israel-205151"> exile</a>, hundreds of thousands needed to be killed, wounded or incarcerated.</p>
<p>Neither two states, nor even one state is possible if Zionism is not
entirely defeated – not revamped, not ‘fixed’, but eradicated.</p>
<p>As Palestinians are being<a href="https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/palestinian-death-toll-in-israeli-attacks-on-gaza-climbs-to-28-775/3139397"> killed</a> in unprecedentedly large numbers in Gaza, western politicians are waking up to the<a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/24/uks-cameron-to-raise-concerns-over-gaza-death-toll-on-israel-visit"> necessity</a> of a Palestinian state.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Former UNRWA official, Chris Gunnes,<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUotyH5zE80"> said</a> about the Israeli war on Gaza that this is “the first genocide in the history of humanity that is livestreamed on television”.</p>
<p>The genocide is worsening now that Palestinians are<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUotyH5zE80"> starting</a> to die from starvation, while an even larger number is dying from<a href="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."> disease</a> and<a href="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."> polluted water</a>, aside, of course, from those being blown up or shot by Israel.</p>
<p>For the likes of David Cameron, Britain’s Foreign Minister, to<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/01/uk-could-recognise-a-palestinian-state-before-a-two-states-deal-david-cameron"> talk</a>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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<a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240212-ben-gvir-calls-on-israel-army-to-shoot-gazas-children-women/"> said</a> on February 12.</p>
<p>In Gaza, the violence is far more sickening. Euro-Med Monitor, a rights group,<a href="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"> reported</a>
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.</p>
<p>There can be no rational political justification for any of this.</p>
<p>All of this – the<a href="https://www.arabnews.com/node/2396301"> language</a> of genocide, the<a href="https://jewishcurrents.org/a-textbook-case-of-genocide"> genocide</a> itself and the<a href="https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/historian-raz-segal-blasts-israel-s-genocidal-incitement-against-gazans/3096633"> threats</a> of committing a greater genocide – is rooted, not in a rational political theory, but in Zionism.</p>
<p>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<a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/6/anti-zionism-is-antisemitism-us-house-asserts-in-dangerous-resolution"> passed</a> – or are passing – laws equating between criticism of Zionism and anti-Semitism. Even Facebook wants to<a href="https://theintercept.com/2024/02/08/facebook-instagram-censor-zionist-israel/"> ban</a> the use of the term ‘Zionist’ if it is critical of Israel.</p>
<p>When Israeli Heritage Minister, Amichai Eliyahu,<a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/israel-minister-amichai-eliyahu-suspend-benjamin-netanyahu-nuclear-bomb-gaza-hamas-war/"> threatened</a>,
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,<a href="https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/eliyahu-nuclear-statements-caused-immense-harm-to-israeli-re"> only for damaging</a> Israel’s international reputation.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<a href="https://www.arabnews.com/node/2458781/amp"> back</a> on the mainstream Israeli political agenda.</p>
<p>This ongoing Gaza war is the most serious attempt, to date, to<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/15/rafah-gaza-israel-airstrikes-war"> destroy</a>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200530-netanyahu-we-will-annex-30-of-the-west-bank-area-to-israel/"> annexing</a> over a third of that occupied region.</p>
<p>There was also a major official Israeli campaign to<a href="https://adc.org/racist-incitement-by-israeli-leaders-must-end/"> curtail</a>
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.</p>
<p>It was then that Israel realized that the ‘division’ of the
Palestinians was largely political, and that, as a nation, Palestinians
remain strongly connected.</p>
<p>That is why Ben-Gvir<a href="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."> lobbied</a>,
even before he claimed his ministerial position in December 2022, to
have a National Guard tasked with “restoring governance where needed”.</p>
<p>If Gaza falls, all Palestinians in the rest of Palestine will become
the new target for Israeli violence, ethnic cleansing and, if necessary,
genocide.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>For ‘long-term peace’ to take place, Zionism must end.</p>
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<em>Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is “</em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/These-Chains-Will-Broken-Palestinian/dp/1949762092"><em>These Chains Will Be Broken</em></a><em>:
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 </em><a href="http://www.ramzybaroud.net/"><em>www.ramzybaroud.net</em></a>
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