The Hamas-Israel War

 

Thinking about the recent upheavals, we come across the following trends: -

1.       The Israel- Hamas War would likely weaken the world Jewry, and increase pressure on Israel and the US for a two-state solution in Palestine. It will also change the Middle Eastern political landscape, and increase tension between the Muslim and Judeo-Christian worlds.

2. The worldwide sense of uncertainty about the future of democracy, particularly the public disenchantment with America’s political system.

3. The decline of the US as a global hyperpower. However, an immediate end is not in sight

Is there a two-state solution to the Palestine problem?

Even if Hamas’ narrative, based on denying the killing of innocent Israelis on 7 October, is wrong, it was justified in taking extreme action to break the inertia caused by a US-sponsored détente between Israel and the impotent Arab regimes. The contemplated détente was aimed at burying the Palestinian problem forever. The opposite happened when Hamas aborted it by throwing a spanner.   

The early Zionists were offered by the British and nearly accepted, Uganda

(some sources say Kenya) as the Jewish homeland. However, the Sixth Zionist Congress, held in 1903, rejected it because the Zionists preferred Palestine for emotional and historical reasons. Zionists support the legitimacy of Israel as an independent Jewish state.

Resolution 181, passed by the UN General Assembly in 1947, was rejected by the Arab states and the Palestinian leadership. The resolution called for the partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states, with the city of Jerusalem as a corpus separatum (Latin: “separate entity”) to be governed by a special international regime. The resolution was considered by the Jewish community in Palestine to be a legal basis for the establishment of Israel, but it was rejected by the Arab community. The Palestinian Arab leadership and the Arab states rejected partition as unacceptable, given the inequality in the proposed population exchange and the transfer of one-third of Palestine, including most of its best agricultural land, to recent Jewish immigrants, mostly from Eastern Europe. The Arab rejection was succeeded almost immediately by violence when the Arab states attacked Israel.

According to the UN report on partition of Palestine:

The Nakba, which means “catastrophe” in Arabic, refers to the mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Before the Nakba, Palestine was a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society. However, the conflict between Arabs and Jews intensified in the 1930s with the increase of Jewish immigration, driven by persecution in Europe, and with the Zionist movement aiming to establish a Jewish state in Palestine.

During the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight, approximately 750,000 Palestinian Arabs--over 80% of the population in what would become Israel--were expelled or fled from their homes and became refugees in neighboring states.

Israel, supported by the US and the EU, would never allow a Palestinian state alongside Israel. The reasons are:

·        Israel, as envisioned by its Zionist founding fathers, is a Jewish state. According to Netanyahu and his far-right supporters, Palestinians are the descendants of Arab invaders who colonized the Roman province of Judea and Samaria in the 7^th Century. “At the most”, said Netanyahu in an interview, “Palestinians can stay in Israel, but the land belongs to us”.

·        According to the late Israeli PM Ariel Sharon, there is space only for one state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. As for a proposed Palestinian state, said Sharon, the Palestinians should be settled in Jordan.

·         A final settlement, demand the Palestinians, must include the return of Palestinian refugees who were forced out of their homes in 1948. Israel rejects any such demand.

·        In South Africa, Namibia, and Rhodesia, the Apartheid collapsed because, for strategic reasons, the US, the UK, and 23 other countries, imposed sanctions that forced the white settlers to share power with the black and colored majority. The mostly Dutch-origin white settlers in South Africa, Namibia, and Rhodesia didn’t have a strong lobby in the US, such as the American Jewish lobby, to exert pressure and hold Americans hostage to the Zionist whims through emotional blackmail. No such pressure is exerted on Israel.

Is the Hamas – Israel War a conflict between good and evil?

The human race, as it stands today, is an advanced model of baboons. This fact is exemplified in the Gaza War where, to date, 18,000+ unarmed Palestinians have perished in Israeli bombing. 7000 of them children. Professor Stephen Hawking predicted that should we make contact with extraterrestrials; the outcome might not be positive. “If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans”, he said in a 2010 interview with the Discovery Channel.

Hawking spoke publicly about his fears that an advanced alien civilization would have no problem wiping out the human race, the way a human might wipe out a colony of ants. He noted that human beings have a terrible history of mistreating, and even massacring, other human cultures that are less technologically advanced — why would an alien civilization be any different?

 

Saleem Akhtar Malik

12 December 2023