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    Global Solidarity Brings Hope to Palestinians After Decades of Oppression

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    If there is one thing Palestinians are known for, it is that we are extremely patriotic. We decorate our homes with Palestinian merchandise and paintings, we continue to dress in traditional patterns, and even though many of us have never even seen Palestine, we continue to identify ourselves as Palestinians. There is even a well-known joke about how Palestinians always have to bring up the fact that they are Palestinian in any setting or conversation. But the underlying reason behind that is our need to prove to the world that we exist.

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    Palestinians all over the world have been struggling and calling for the same things for over 70 years while not only being ignored, but invalidated. However, for the first time ever, there is a trace of hope. Palestinians — and their supporters — have used many terms to describe the conditions they have been living in under the Israeli occupation, including apartheid, genocide and ethnic cleansing, among others. While those inside Palestine have been trying to show the world the truth and sub-par living conditions, those of us outside are trying to shed light on our family history and lack of right to return to our own land.

    Nevertheless, for once, we are seeing notable progress. Now, with the latest developments in the Occupied Palestinian Territories with the evictions in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, the attacks on Al-Aqsa Mosque and Gaza and the assaults on peaceful protesters, one cannot look at all the footage on social media and the news and continue to believe that the Zionist state of Israel is not ethnically cleansing Palestinians.

    Shifting Narrative

    For years, Palestinians all over the globe felt like they were alone in this fight to shed light on their plight with no success or extremely slow progress. We have been fighting more battles than anyone knows. Above all, we have been tackling those who spin the narrative to make it look like the oppressors are the victims, which is emotionally and mentally draining. Twitter user Jehad Abusalim says, “One of the worst things about experiencing this pain is that Palestinians need to mourn but also are expected to educate the world from scratch, every time, and make the case for why they must be treated like humans.”

    One of the most dominant arguments against Palestinians and their supporters is the anti-Semitism argument. For years, celebrities, leaders and individuals have avoided discussing the crisis in Palestine for fear of being labeled as an anti-Semite. Yet another battle that we have been fighting is the burden of having to explain to the world how criticism of Israel does not make someone anti-Semitic.

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    But now, with the help of social media, the narrative is shifting. People are differentiating between Zionism and Judaism. It is no longer a taboo to call out the injustices happening to Palestinians. We no longer feel alone in this fight because Palestine is seen as less of a political cause and more of a humanitarian one. Showing support and standing in solidarity with the Palestinians is becoming normalized because the truth is being exposed. For once, Palestinians are hopeful. We feel change coming.

    Several changes have already taken place. Besides the worldwide protests with hundreds of thousands taking to the streets to spread awareness on the many issues in the occupied territories, a few examples of such change is the number of celebrities with millions of followers who are speaking out against the Zionist state. Political leaders, especially in the US, Israel’s strongest ally, are calling for change and sanctions. Senator Bernie Sanders submitted a resolution to limit the sale of American weapons to Israel. Dockworkers in Italy have refused to load arms for Israel, some governments have stood firm in their response to Israel, and many people are boycotting Israeli products and companies that financially support the Israeli military.

    The biggest and most prominent proof that Palestinian voices are being heard is different social media platforms attempting to censor and silence supporters of the Palestinian cause so that Israel remains in control of the narrative. But this time, it is not working. Israel has lost control.

    Despite the major progress in raising awareness of the Palestinian plight, there continues to be excessive pressure on influential people to change the narrative, “tone down the rhetoric” and even apologize for standing with the Palestinians. Some, such as actor Mark Ruffalo, have caved but other influential people, such as writer Shaun King and model Bella Hadid, continue to stand strong.

    Keep the Momentum

    Now that Palestinians are hopeful, this is our time to turn our hope into reality. We are calling on everyone who wants to support our cause to boycott companies that support the Israeli apartheid regime and put pressure on their representatives and leaders for political change. But most importantly, we want everyone to continue making noise and keep the momentum going. Although Israel has agreed to a ceasefire in Gaza, as Palestinians have experienced in the past, this is only a cover-up for other crimes against Palestinians in an attempt to kill the buzz.

    Our biggest concern is that the conversation will die down and Palestinians will go back to living under the status quo, which remains unjust. After all, if one were really on the right side of history, they would not try to cover up their crimes.

    There is a beautiful quote being shared on social media that reads: “The only thing Israel failed to consider when they expelled 750,000 Palestinians 73 years ago was their grandchildren — now from all over the world — coming back to defend their rights.” So, why are Palestinians more patriotic than any other group of people? We believe that our existence is resistance, so we are doing everything in our power to highlight our existence and resist crimes committed against us. Palestinians have always been courageous fighters, saying: “It’s free Palestine until Palestine is free.” And we will never give up on that fight.

    *[This article is submitted on behalf of the authors by the Hamad bin Khalifa University (HBKU) Communications Directorate. The views expressed are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the university’s official stance.]

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      For the US, Rules Don’t Exist

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      The world is reeling in horror at the latest Israeli bombardment of Gaza. Much of the world is also shocked by the role of the United States in the crisis, as it keeps providing Israel with weapons to kill Palestinians, including women and children, in violation of US and international law. The US repeatedly blocks action by the UN Security Council to demand ceasefires or hold Israel accountable for its war crimes. 

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      In contrast to US actions, in nearly every speech or interview, Secretary of State Antony Blinken keeps promising to uphold and defend the “rules-based order.” But he has never clarified whether he means the universal rules of the United Nations Charter and international law or some other set of rules he has yet to define. What rules could possibly legitimize the kind of destruction we just witnessed in Gaza, and who would want to live in a world ruled by them?  

      Violating the UN Charter

      We have both spent many years protesting the violence and chaos the United States and its allies inflict on millions of people around the world by violating the UN Charter’s prohibition against the threat or use of military force. We have always insisted that the US government should comply with the rules-based order of international law.

      The United States’ illegal wars and support for allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia have reduced cities to rubble and left country after country mired in intractable violence and chaos. Yet American leaders have refused to even acknowledge that aggressive and destructive US and allied military operations violate the rules-based order of the UN Charter and international law. 

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      Donald Trump, the former US president, was clear that he was not interested in following any “global rules,” only supporting American national interests. His national security adviser, John Bolton, reportedly prohibited National Security Council staff attending the 2018 G20 summit in Argentina from even uttering the words “rules-based order.” 

      So, you might expect us to welcome Blinken’s stated commitment to the “rules-based order” as a long-overdue reversal in US policy. But when it comes to a vital principle like this, it is actions that count. The Biden administration has yet to take any decisive action to bring US foreign policy into compliance with the UN Charter or international law.

      For Secretary Blinken, the concept of a “rules-based order” seems to serve mainly as a cudgel with which to attack China and Russia. At a UN Security Council meeting on May 7, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov suggested that instead of accepting the already existing rules of international law, the United States and its allies are trying to come up with “other rules developed in closed, non-inclusive formats, and then imposed on everyone else.”

      From the Yalta Agreement to Today

      The UN Charter and the rules of international law were developed in the 20th century precisely to codify the unwritten and endlessly contested rules of customary international law with explicit, written rules that would be binding on all nations. The United States played a leading role in this legalist movement in international relations, from The Hague peace conferences at the turn of the 20th century to the signing of the United Nations Charter in San Francisco in 1945 and the revised Geneva Conventions in 1949. This included the new Fourth Geneva Convention to protect civilians, like the countless numbers killed by American weapons in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Gaza.

      In 1945, after returning from Yalta, President Franklin D. Roosevelt described the plan for the United Nations to a joint session of Congress. The Yalta Agreement, he said, “ought to spell the end of the system of unilateral action, the exclusive alliances, the spheres of influence, the balances of power, and all the other expedients that have been tried for centuries — and have always failed.” Roosevelt went on to “propose to substitute for all these a universal organization in which all peace-loving nations will finally have a chance to join. I am confident that the Congress and the American people will accept the results of this conference as the beginning of a permanent structure of peace.”

      But America’s post-Cold War triumphalism eroded US leaders’ already half-hearted commitment to those rules. The neocons argued that they were no longer relevant and that the US must be ready to impose order on the world by the unilateral threat and use of military force — exactly what the UN Charter prohibits. Madeleine Albright, the secretary of state under the Clinton administration, and other Democratic leaders embraced new doctrines of “humanitarian intervention” and a “responsibility to protect” to try to carve out politically persuasive exceptions to the explicit rules of the UN Charter. 

      America’s “endless wars,” its revived Cold War on Russia and China, its blank check for the Israeli occupation of Palestinian Territories, and the political obstacles to crafting a more peaceful and sustainable future are some of the fruits of these bipartisan efforts to challenge and weaken the rules-based order.

      Today, far from being a leader of the international rules-based system, the United States is an outlier. It has failed to sign or ratify about 50 important and widely accepted multilateral treaties on everything from children’s rights to arms control. Its unilateral sanctions against Cuba, Iran, Venezuela and other countries are themselves violations of international law. The Biden administration has shamefully failed to lift these illegal sanctions, ignoring UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ request to suspend such unilateral coercive measures during the COVID-19 pandemic.

      Rules-Based Order

      So, is Secretary Blinken’s “rules-based order” a recommitment to Roosevelt’s “permanent structure of peace,” or is it in fact a renunciation of the UN Charter and its purpose, which is peace and security for all of humanity? 

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      In light of President Joe Biden’s first few months in power, it appears to be the latter. Instead of designing a foreign policy based on the principles and rules of the UN Charter and the goal of a peaceful world, Biden’s policy seems to start from the premises of a $753-billion US military budget, 800 overseas military bases, endless US and allied wars and massacres, and massive weapons sales to repressive regimes. Then it works backward to formulate a policy framework to somehow justify all that.

      Once a “war on terror” that only fuels terrorism, violence and chaos was no longer politically viable, hawkish US leaders — both Republican and Democratic — seem to have concluded that a return to the Cold War was the only plausible way to perpetuate America’s militarist foreign policy and multi-trillion-dollar war machine. But that raised a new set of contradictions. For 40 years, the Cold War was justified by the ideological struggle between the capitalist and communist economic systems. But the Soviet Union disintegrated and Russia is now a capitalist country. China is still governed by its Communist Party, but it has a managed, mixed economy similar to that of Western Europe in the years after World War II — an efficient and dynamic economic system that has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in both cases.

      So, how can these US leaders justify their renewed Cold War? They have floated the notion of a struggle between “democracy and authoritarianism.” But the United States supports too many horrific dictatorships around the world, especially in the Middle East, to make that a convincing pretext for a Cold War against Russia and China. An American “global war on authoritarianism” would require confronting repressive US allies like Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, not arming them to the teeth and shielding them from international accountability as the United States is doing.

      Just as American and British leaders settled on non-existent “weapons of mass destruction” (WMDs) as the pretext they could all agree on to justify their war on Iraq in 2003, the US and its allies have settled on defending a vague, undefined “rules-based order” as the justification for their revived Cold War on Russia and China. But like the emperor’s new clothes in the fable and the WMDs in Iraq, the United States’ new rules don’t really exist. They are just its latest smokescreen for a foreign policy based on illegal threats and uses of force and a doctrine of “might makes right.” 

      We challenge President Biden and Secretary Blinken to prove us wrong by actually joining the rules-based order of the UN Charter and international law. That would require a genuine commitment to a very different and more peaceful future, with appropriate contrition and accountability for the United States’ and its allies’ systematic violations of the UN Charter and international law, and the countless violent deaths, ruined societies and widespread chaos they have caused.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Biden Invests His Capital in Israel

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      Though the stale expression “political capital” has become a handy item in every pundit’s vocabulary, there was a time when the financial metaphor would have seemed jarring and paradoxical in the context of democracy. Its popularity today reflects a disturbing trend in the reasoning that governs democratic decision-making. The traditional focus on ensuring the general welfare and responding to the will of the people has been replaced by a process of cold calculation we associate with the world of finance and investment. Politics is no longer about governing. It is exclusively about winning elections, accumulating capital and living off the spoils of victory.

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      Living metaphors play on comparison between two disparate orders of reality. Dead metaphors fester in their own world as meaningless rhetorical artifacts. Attempting to analyze US President Joe Biden’s strategy of refusing to comment on Israel’s disproportionately violent campaign of “self-defense,” New York Times journalists Annie Karni and David E. Sanger propose this explanation: “Mr. Biden’s tactic was to avoid public condemnation of Israel’s bombing of Gaza — or even a public call for a cease-fire — in order to build up capital with Mr. Netanyahu and then exert pressure in private when the time came.” In this case, the metaphor is so definitively dead the authors don’t bother with the epithet “political” and simply call it “capital.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Political capital:

      According to the New York Times, the advantage one hopes to obtain from offering a gift to someone known to be selfish, greedy and disrespectful

      Contextual Note

      US media have made a major effort in recent days to make sense of the strategic logic behind Biden’s behavior at the height of the crisis that some now believe has been resolved by a ceasefire. Of course, nothing at all has been resolved, even if the fireworks have come to a provisional halt. The media, as usual, focus on identifying winners and losers. They present a scorecard and retrospectively imagine the strategy that governed the play of the actors. 

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      Western media continue to view what is clearly a deep, complex and enduring historical crisis not for what it is, but as a game being played by leaders on both sides seeking to reinforce their image and consolidate political capital with their base. In this reading, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s aim was to cling to power after losing an election. The adversary, Hamas, reacted with the sole motivation of reaffirming its position as the most resolute defender of the Palestinian cause, all for the sake of obtaining electoral advantage both in Gaza and the West Bank. The analysis contains a grain of truth but appeared more as a random factor in a much bigger geopolitical drama than as the basis of a serious account of the events.

      What journalists call political capital today was once expressed by the notion of “goodwill,” a term borrowed from business vocabulary that includes the idea of customer satisfaction, trust and loyalty. Like so much else in the English language, goodwill itself has been transformed by the trend to financialize our thinking about everything under the sun.

      The authoritative Shorter Oxford Dictionary (SOD) gives this primary definition of goodwill: “Virtuous, pious, upright position or intention.” Investopedia begins with this definition: “Goodwill is an intangible asset that is associated with the purchase of one company by another.” The SOD does include another definition of goodwill in use as early as 1571: “the possession of a ready-formed connexion of customers” used to evaluate “the saleable value of a business.” Investopedia sees goodwill as an asset before citing its virtuous status in the eyes of customers. The SOD puts virtue first, customers second and “saleable value” (= asset) last. Goodwill began its history as a virtue and ended up as a proprietary asset.

      Historical Note

      Political capital has definitely replaced political goodwill as an operational concept in modern political thinking. Kenya may be the last English-speaking country to continue to use the metaphor of political goodwill in preference to capital. In an editorial dated May 15, 2020, the Times of San Diego referred to goodwill as something real but now associated with the historical past. “It was not so long ago that we experienced a time of goodwill in our national political life, with Jimmy Carter promising never to lie… Now all that has changed,” adding, “we have lost what had been an open window to the fresh air that characterized the late 1970s.”

      There are two related semantic principles underlying this historical shift that reveal a lot about how society itself has changed, precisely in the decade that followed Carter’s presidency. The first concerns the shift in social culture itself from an ability to focus on collective interest that has been replaced by a narcissistic obsession with individual competitive advantage. The second concerns the trend toward the financialization of all human activities and attributes.

      The 1980s witnessed the triumph of the transformative Thatcher-Reagan ideological coalition. The ideas associated with government “of the people, by the people and for the people” found themselves suddenly radically subordinated to theoretical principles purportedly derived from the logic of free market capitalism. The idea of goodwill has always had a collective connotation. It was never about an asset or property, but a state of mind shared by the public. In 2007, Robert Kuttner in The New York Times complained that George W. Bush’s warmongering “squandered the global goodwill that has long been the necessary complement to America’s military might.” Goodwill was an asset shared by the nation and its people.

      Kuttner correctly noted that Bush’s Middle East adventures both broke the solidarity of goodwill and squandered its value as a collective asset. In 2004, Chris Sullentrop, writing for Slate, noticed how, at the same time goodwill was disappearing from the media’s vocabulary, Bush himself relentlessly insisted on the idea of political capital. “Now the most common usage of ‘political capital,’” according to Sullentrop, “means the power that popularity confers on a politician, or something like that. ‘Political capital’ is shaping up to be the first buzzword of the second Bush administration.”

      Sullentrop cites multiple examples in Bush’s discourse. In 2001, the president, newly elected (by the Supreme Court), explained: “I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it. It is my style.” Really? Is spending one’s public reputation — to say nothing of blood and treasure in the Middle East — a feature of presidential style? When Time magazine asked Bush, “What did you learn about being president from watching your father?” he answered, “I learned how to earn political capital and how to spend it.” There are many other examples. If for Americans “time is money,” for post-Reagan Americans, goodwill (earned or unearned) is also money.

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      In 2008, Barack Obama insisted that he was on a mission to restore America’s goodwill. But after eight years of Bush, the very idea of goodwill had lost all its ancient connotations of being “virtuous” and “upright.” It was now reduced to the simplistic idea of marketing the nation’s image to the rest of the world. By continuing most of Bush’s policies, from maintaining his tax breaks for the rich to prosecuting Bush’s wars and even expanding them to new regions, Obama’s efforts at creating goodwill could only remain superficial and cosmetic. That bothered no one in Washington, since the reigning ideology, formerly focused on seeking politically coherent solutions to complex problems, had converted to an ideology based on the newly adored laws of branding and marketing.

      Some saw Donald Trump’s triumph in 2016, built around his guiding principle, “America First,” as a shift away from even the need to spread goodwill. In reality, his hyper-narcissistic ideology was an extension of the same trend that had replaced the notion of virtuous action by that of accumulated assets.

      And what about Joe Biden’s plan to order to “build up capital with Mr. Netanyahu and then exert pressure in private when the time came”? It sounds like a joke. Playing the accomplice to someone else’s criminal actions cannot produce political capital. Al Jazeera quotes Nader Hashemi, a Middle East expert at the University of Denver: “[T]he more Israel is coddled, supported, sustained, the more belligerent and intransigent Israel becomes to making any concessions.” Bibi Netanyahu is not done with managing America’s foreign policy.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      The US Is Complicit in the Atrocities Israel Commits

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      American media usually report on Israeli military assaults in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Gaza as if the US is an innocent, neutral party to the conflict. In fact, a majority of Americans have told pollsters for decades that they want the United States to be neutral in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

      But US media and politicians betray their own lack of neutrality by blaming Palestinians for nearly all the violence and framing flagrantly disproportionate, indiscriminate and, therefore, illegal Israeli attacks as a justifiable response to Palestinian actions. The classic formulation from US officials and commentators is that “Israel has the right to defend itself.” For these same officials, Palestinians do not have the right to defend themselves even as the Israelis massacre hundreds of civilians, destroy thousands of homes and seize ever more Palestinian land.

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      The disparity in casualties in Israeli assaults on Gaza speaks for itself. At the time of writing, the current Israeli bombing of Gaza has killed at least 213 people, including 61 children and 35 women. Rockets fired from Gaza by Hamas militants have killed 12 people in Israel, including two children. 

      In recent years, Gaza has seen numerous deadly conflicts. In the 2008-09 war, 1,417 Palestinians were killed while nine Israelis died. In 2014, 2,251 Palestinians (including 1,462 civilians) and 72 Israelis (one Thai and six Israeli civilians) were killed. US-built F-16s dropped at least 5,000 bombs and missiles on Gaza, and Israeli tanks and artillery fired 49,500 shells — mostly massive six-inch shells from American-made M-109 howitzers. In 2018, in response to largely peaceful “March of Return” protests at the Israel–Gaza border, Israeli soldiers killed 183 Palestinians with live ammunition and wounded over 6,100. This included 122 Palestinians who required amputations, 21 paralyzed by spinal cord injuries and nine who suffered permanent loss of vision.

      Embed from Getty Images

      As with the Saudi-led war on Yemen and other serious foreign policy problems, biased and distorted news coverage by US media leaves many Americans not knowing what to think. Many simply give up trying to sort out the rights and wrongs of what is happening and instead blame both sides. They then focus their attention closer to home, where the problems of society impact them more directly and are easier to understand and do something about.

      So, how should Americans respond to horrific images of bleeding, dying children and homes reduced to rubble in Gaza? The tragic relevance of this crisis for Americans is that, behind the fog of war, propaganda and biased media coverage, the US bears an overwhelming share of responsibility for the carnage taking place in Palestine. US policy has perpetuated the crisis and atrocities of the Israeli occupation by unconditionally supporting Israel in three ways: militarily, diplomatically and politically. 

      Militarily

      On the military front, since the creation of the Israeli state in 1948, the US has provided $146 billion in foreign aid, nearly all of it military-related. It currently provides $3.8 billion per year in military aid to Israel. In addition, the United States is the largest seller of weapons to Israel. Its military arsenal now includes 362 US-built F-16 warplanes and 100 other US military aircraft, as well as a growing fleet of the new F-35s; at least 45 Apache attack helicopters; M-109 howitzers; and M270 rocket-launchers. At this very moment, Israel is using many of these US-supplied weapons in its devastating bombardment of Gaza.

      The US alliance with Israel also involves joint military exercises and joint production of Arrow missiles and other weapons systems. The American and Israeli militaries have collaborated on drone technologies tested by the Israelis in Gaza. In 2004, the United States called on Israeli forces with experience in the Occupied Palestinian Territories to give tactical training to American special operations forces as they confronted popular resistance to the hostile US military occupation of Iraq. 

      The US Army also maintains a $1.8-billion stockpile of weapons at six locations in Israel, pre-positioned for use in future US military strikes in the Middle East. During the Israeli assault on Gaza in 2014, even as Congress suspended some weapons deliveries to Israel, the US approved handing over stocks of 120mm mortar shells and 40mm grenade launcher ammunition from the US stockpile for Israel to use against Palestinians in Gaza.

      Diplomatically

      Diplomatically, the United States has exercised its veto in the UN Security Council 82 times —  45 of those have been to shield Israel from criticism or accountability for war crimes or human rights violations. In every single case, the US has been the lone vote against the resolution, although a few other countries have occasionally abstained. It is only the United States’ privileged position as a veto-wielding permanent member of the Security Council, and its willingness to abuse that privilege to shield its ally Israel, that gives it this unique power to stymie international efforts to hold the Israeli government accountable for its actions under international law. 

      The result of this unconditional US diplomatic shielding of Israel has been to encourage increasingly barbaric Israeli treatment of the Palestinians. With the United States blocking any accountability in the Security Council, Israel has seized ever more Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, uprooted more and more Palestinians from their homes, and responded to the resistance of largely unarmed people with ever-increasing violence, detentions and restrictions on day-to-day life. 

      Politically

      On the political front, despite most Americans supporting neutrality in the conflict, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and other pro-Israel lobbying groups have exercised an extraordinary role in bribing and intimidating US politicians to provide unconditional support for Israel. The roles of campaign contributors and lobbyists in the corrupt American political system make the United States uniquely vulnerable to this kind of influence peddling and intimidation. This is the case whether it is by monopolistic corporations and industry groups like the military-industrial complex and Big Pharma, or well-funded interest groups like the National Rifle Association, AIPAC and, in recent years, lobbyists for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

      Embed from Getty Images

      On April 22, just weeks before this latest assault on Gaza, the overwhelming majority of congresspeople, 330 out of 435, signed a letter to the chair and ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee opposing any reduction or conditioning of US monies to Israel. The letter represented a show of force from AIPAC and a repudiation of calls from some progressives in the Democratic Party to condition or otherwise restrict aid to Israel. 

      President Joe Biden, who has a long history of supporting Israeli crimes, responded to the latest massacre by insisting on Israel’s “right to defend itself” and inanely hoping that “this will be closing down sooner than later.” His ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, also shamefully blocked a call for a ceasefire at the Security Council. 

      Congressional Action

      The silence from Biden and most of the US representatives in Congress at the massacre of civilians and mass destruction of Gaza is unconscionable. The independent voices speaking out forcefully for Palestinians, including Senator Bernie Sanders and Representatives Rashida Tlaib, Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, show us what real democracy looks like, as do the massive protests that have filled streets all over the country.

      US policy must be reversed to reflect international law and the shifting American public opinion in favor of Palestinian rights. Every member of Congress must be pushed to sign a bill introduced by Representative Betty McCollum over Israeli actions. The bill insists that US funds to Israel are not used “to support the military detention of Palestinian children, the unlawful seizure, appropriation, and destruction of Palestinian property and forcible transfer of civilians in the West Bank, or further annexation of Palestinian land in violation of international law.” Congress must also be pressured to quickly enforce the Arms Export Control Act and the Leahy laws to stop supplying any more US weapons to Israel until it stops using them to attack and kill civilians.

      The United States has played a vital and instrumental role in the decades-long catastrophe that has engulfed the people of Palestine. American leaders and politicians must now confront their country’s and, in many cases, their own personal complicity in this conflict. They must act urgently and decisively to reverse US policy to support full human rights for all Palestinians.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      Netanyahu and Hamas Are Playing a Deadly Game

      by

      In March, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu was unable to achieve a parliamentary majority in the Knesset after a fourth Israeli election in two years. As a result, he needed a national crisis to prevent the establishment of an alternative government by the opposition. Such a coalition would include right, centrist and left-wing parties, presenting a threat to Netanyahu’s premiership.

      The last crisis in 2020 was the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused opposition leader Benny Gantz to cave in and agree to form a national unity government with Netanyahu. Now, Netanyahu has a new national emergency with the conflict in Gaza. This has led Naftali Bennet, leader of the right-wing Yamina party, to abandon efforts to form an alternative government with Yair Lapid, head of the centrist Yesh Atid, the largest opposition in Israel. Yamina and Yesh Atid have attempted to combine with Gantz’s Blue and White, the left-wing Labor and Meretz parties, and the United Arab List to reach a 61-seat majority in the Knesset.

      The Future of Jerusalem Matters to Us All

      READ MORE

      Netanyahu may not have planned the exact scenario of the current conflict with Hamas militants in Gaza, but his policies laid the foundation for it. First, he has refused to negotiate with the Palestinian Authority and its leader, Mahmoud Abbas, for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Instead, Netanyahu has preferred to bolster divisions between the Palestinian factions of Hamas in Gaza and Fatah in the West Bank.

      There is no chance that Netanyahu would order the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to overthrow the Hamas government in Gaza. The prime minister wants the division amongst the Palestinians to continue. Netanyahu is content with having Qatar — which did not join the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in recognizing Israel in 2020 — prop up Hamas’ rule in Gaza.

      Evictions in Sheikh Jarrah

      Other Israeli decisions connected to East Jerusalem and its Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood have led to the multiple crises now taking place.

      The first spark that lit the flame was the decision by Israeli police to set up barricades toward the end of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month, at the Damascus Gate entrance to the Old City. Since that is a place where many young Palestinians gather in the evening after breaking their fasts, it led to anger and protest — some violent. Kobi Shabtai, the novice police commissioner, falsely claimed this was a longstanding policy to prevent crowding. He later lifted the ban.

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      This was followed by clashes in East Jerusalem inside a compound known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif. Israeli police made another major mistake of firing stun grenades into Al-Aqsa Mosque, which is inside the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif. This led to outrage amongst Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the West Bank and Israeli-Arab citizens in Israel.

      The second spark was due to right-wing Israeli extremists attempting to evict Palestinians from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah to make way for Jewish settlers. These Palestinian families became refugees in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and were relocated to Sheikh Jarrah in 1956 after the Jordanian government, which controlled East Jerusalem at the time, built homes for them.

      An extremely unfair law permits Israelis to try to reclaim property in East Jerusalem that was held by Jews before 1948. Yet Palestinians are not allowed to do the same with property they once owned in West Jerusalem. A hearing over the legality of the eviction attempts was due to be heard by the Israeli Supreme Court on May 10. The case has since been postponed for a month at the request of Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit.

      With the events on the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif and the evictions in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, the focus is on Netanyahu. To reach a majority in the Knesset, the prime minister encouraged the newly-elected Itamar Ben-Gvir — a follower of the extreme right-wing Rabbi Meir Kahane — and his Jewish Power Party to join forces with Bezalel Smotrich and his Religious Zionism, a nationalist, far-right party.

      Ben-Gvir has been accused by the Israeli police chief of supporting young, right-wing extremists who attacked Palestinians in the Old City and in Sheikh Jarrah last week. “The person who is responsible for this intifada [uprising] is Itamar Ben Gvir. It started with the Lehava protest at Damascus Gate,” Shabtai said. “It continued with provocations in Sheikh Jarrah, and now he is moving around with Lehava activists.”

      To his credit, even Netanyahu realized that the situation in Jerusalem was at risk of turning ugly. This year, just before what Israelis call the “Jerusalem Day Flag March,” marking the capture of the Old City and East Jerusalem in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, Palestinians marked Laylat al-Qadr (night of decree), one of the holiest nights in Ramadan and the Islamic calendar. On May 10, thousands of young, right-wing Israelis were scheduled to march through Damascus Gate while taunting Palestinians in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City. Instead, it was rerouted via the Jaffa Gate adjacent to West Jerusalem.

      Uncertainty for Hamas

      This is where Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, comes into the picture. Hamas has been losing popularity in Gaza because of the dire conditions that Palestinian face there. In May and July, Palestinians were due to vote in legislative and presidential elections, respectively. While the elections have been postponed by President Abbas, who blamed Israel for uncertainty about whether Palestinian elections could take place in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, the Hamas leadership was concerned.

      On the one hand, it was predicted that Hamas might benefit from the weakness of the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority. Fatah has split into three groups for the elections, with Abbas part of the main one. On the other hand, Nasser al-Qudwa’s decision to run a separate list from Fatah poses a risk to Hamas. Qudwa, a senior diplomat who was sacked by Fatah in March, is the nephew of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Qudwa represents a group led by Marwan Barghouti, a popular Fatah leader who is currently in an Israeli prison and is dubbed “Palestine’s Nelson Mandela,” while a third Fatah list is led by Mohammed Dahlan, an exiled rival of Abbas who is originally from Gaza.

      Embed from Getty Images

      An election for the Palestinians presents uncertainty for both Fatah and Hamas. Therefore, Hamas decided to present itself as the guardian of Jerusalem and of Al-Aqsa Mosque, hoping to take advantage of Palestinian disappointment at the postponement of elections by Abbas. Hamas leaders threatened Israel by saying unless its police forces withdrew from the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif compound and from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, they would fire rockets on Jerusalem. Most observers thought this was a bluff, since it was assumed that Hamas wouldn’t shoot missiles at Jerusalem out of fear they might hit Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam.

      It turns out that they weren’t bluffing. Ever since this round of deadly clashes began on May 10, Hamas militants have kept their word. A few nights ago, Hamas said it would fire rockets toward Tel Aviv in retaliation for IDF actions during the day. Minutes after midnight, the anti-missile alert sirens sounded and 2 million people in the greater Tel Aviv area headed into bomb shelters, including my family and neighbors.  

      By firing indiscriminately at a civilian population, Hamas is committing war crimes. Any government facing such a situation would feel compelled to respond. Of course, since the Israeli army is far more powerful than Hamas forces — and because Gaza is densely populated — there are many more Palestinian casualties than Israeli. At the weekend, Haaretz, an Israeli daily, published an article with the headline: “Israeli killed by rocket; IDF destroys media offices, kills families in Gaza.” The Israeli died on May 15 after a “barrage of rocket fire targeted Tel Aviv.” On the same day, Hamas said “it had fired dozens of rockets at central Israel in response to the killing of eight children and two women, all members of the same family, in a [strike] on the Al-Shate refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip.” As the exchange of fire enters its second week, the death toll at the time of publishing stands at 212 in Gaza, including 61 children. In Israel, 10 people have died, including a 10-year-old Israeli-Arab girl.

      By evicting families and building settlements on occupied Palestinian territory, Israel is also committing war crimes. This includes Israeli attempts to displace Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah. Israel’s disproportionate use of military force to defend itself — though justifiably — against repeated rocket fire is also problematic.

      Violence on the Street

      The worst byproduct of the current situation is perhaps the inter-communal conflict in Israel that has evolved as a result of the broader crisis. This is particularly in the mixed Jewish and Arab cities of Acre, Lod, Ramla, Jaffa and other locations such as Jerusalem.

      This is tragic given the progress that has been made in recent years with Jewish-Arab cooperation and partnership inside Israel. To tackle the COVID-19 pandemic, Israeli-Arab medical personnel have taken on a central role. In football, Israeli-Arabs have played a prominent part. In politics, the Joint List, an alliance of Arab-majority parties, recommended Gantz for the role of prime minister in 2020. Now, the United Arab List led by Mansour Abbas could play a decisive role in the possible formation of an alternative Israeli government.

      All of this has been undermined in a few violent weeks. It was as if we suddenly had a throwback to the murderous intercommunal strife that occurred in 1921, 1929 and 1936 in the British Mandate of Palestine before the state of Israel was created. Fortunately, there is a strong foundation for the revival and continuation of Jewish-Arab cooperation within Israel. Young people in Standing Together, a Jewish-Arab grassroots movement, have taken to the streets in protest. Mayors of joint and neighboring municipalities have also been active in trying to heal the social wounds.

      Time for a Plan

      Israelis and Palestinians will need to find the strength as societies to deal with the current crisis and to develop paths toward internal solidarity and a cross-border resolution of the conflict. It is equally important that the international community takes an active role. World powers have played a major role in the region in modern times — from the Ottoman Empire, the British Mandate of Palestine and the 1917 Balfour Declaration to the 1947 UN General Assembly resolution to create two states, Arab and Jewish. Now, they cannot stand aside and watch. They must play a part in defusing the current violence and creating the foundations for a more fundamental resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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      In Washington, the Biden administration, which has a lot on its plate domestically, had hoped it could ignore the Middle East conflict. That is clearly not working. US President Joe Biden has even delayed designating a new American ambassador to Israel. He has also not yet reopened a US consulate in Jerusalem to serve as an address for American communication with the Palestinians. These are two simple steps that should urgently be taken.

      In addition, the Americans can revive the role of the Middle East Quartet — which is made up of the US, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations — in seeking to advance a resolution of the conflict. The Arab world can bring back and activate the Arab Peace Initiative. Proposed by Saudi Arabia and confirmed at the Arab League’s 2002 summit in Beirut, the plan offers Israel recognition, peace and normalized relations with the Arab world, backed by all Muslim-majority countries. In exchange, a Palestinian state would be established in the West Bank and Gaza, with East Jerusalem as its capital, alongside the state of Israel, with small, mutually agreed-upon land swaps.

      When it comes to Jerusalem, it would perhaps be best to return to the original partition plan of 1947. According to the UN General Assembly’s decision, a Jewish state and an Arab state were to be established, while Jerusalem was to be an international city. While the situation today is completely different from that plan 74 years ago, the conflict around the Old City and the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif — which contains the sites considered holy in Judaism, Christianity and Islam — could be neutralized by making it an area shared by all peoples. Jerusalem would be what Jordan’s late King Hussein called “God’s city.” 

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More