Jahangir Mohammed of the Ayaan Institute argues that food and medicines will not end Palestinian slaughter. Only a political settlement and end to the ideology of European Jewish supremacy and US imperialism can end political violence in the region. In the present conflict he believes Israel may effectively annex Gaza and the West Bank.
GAZA: FOOD AND MEDICINE ARE NO DEFENCE AGAINST BOMBS AND BULLETS
What has happened in Gaza over the last month is sheer cruelty and inhumanity. The images from Gaza, of dis-membered bodies of babies, children, women, men, and over 12,000 dead, in buildings and on the streets, resembles a human slaughterhouse. The self-proclaimed Jewish State has bombed Gaza back to the stone age, destroying all means of civilian livelihood. This bloody vengeance and collective punishment are against international law and rules of war. Yet, there is no one to hold Israel to account. Israel is protected by the United States and United Kingdom but also by other Western European countries, and it is seemingly above all international laws, sanction, even criticism. Its leaders also claim divine authority for its behaviour, at times referencing Biblical scripture and using God to justify its actions (as do those Zionist Christians who are a major source of support for Israel). When Muslims quote scripture, even a prayer, it is seen as a sign of extremism and being an “Islamist” in the West, not so with supporters of Israel.
The so-called rules-based international order (including the Muslim world) has watched as Gaza has burned, doing little to stop it. Politicians in the West even oppose a cessation of war, thus giving a green light to the Jewish State to achieve its genocidal intent and unlawful collective punishment of an occupied people. The Jewish State’s policies of collective punishment are habitually justified by the so-called impartial mainstream media, presenters, and political pundits. In their blind love for Israel, they cannot see how similar their rhetoric and defence of Israeli propaganda narratives sounds to that of leaders of Al Qaeda and ISIS justifying violent revenge attacks against civilians in the West.
The belated calls for a “humanitarian pause” by Western politicians in the face of public pressure is too little too late. It is more about easing their own consciences, and to preserve the false image of a superior Western civilisation that pretends to care for the life of non- Europeans. They want to fool their own public into believing they are a moral, caring, and civilised people (the mass protests show few believe their politicians and media anymore). In failing to call for a ceasefire, and finding a political solution, they have shown they are complicit in what Israel is doing – the UK and USA have always been complicit. Calls for a humanitarian pause remind us of the colonial era when the European invaders (or their native sepoys) would carry out massacres of villages and then themselves administer food and bandages. What meaning does a humanitarian pause have in Gaza? Give them some respite, food and water for a short time, only so they can be attacked again?
Western politicians and media that go on endlessly about Israel’s right to self-defence, should note that there are no exceptions to committing acts of collective punishment in Article 33 of the Geneva Conventions. Self-defence is not a defence for crimes against humanity.
Article 33 Geneva Conventions 1949- Individual responsibility, collective penalties, pillage, reprisals “No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited. Pillage is prohibited. Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited.”
The Gaza Prison Camp.
Gaza is a strip of land 25 miles long by 6 miles wide with a population of 2.2 million Palestinians, one of the most densely populated areas in the world. There is nowhere for people to run or hide.
Israel’s presents its ground military withdrawal from Gaza (2005) as a benevolent act. That is far from the truth. It was a consequence of the first Palestinian Intifada (1987-1993) in response to increasing illegal settlements, settler and military brutality which led Israel and the PLO to sign the Oslo Accords in 1993-1994. The intifada surprised Israel as much as the attacks on 7th October 2023, Israel had assumed then, as now, that they had largely pacified the Palestinian population into submission. The Oslo agreement granted a Palestinian Authority (PA) limited powers in the West Bank and Gaza, mainly security and policing, in effect to pacify their own people. Yasser Arafat, the PA, and its military wing Fatah took over the administration of Gaza, with the blessing of the United States and Israel. In the face of Palestinian resistance, Israel’s leaders had calculated that the cost of maintaining a military presence inside Gaza to protect 9000 illegal Jewish occupiers, among a large Palestinian population, outweighed the benefits. They removed their armed civilian occupiers from Gaza. In other words, it was acts of collective resistance that led to the granting of even limited authority to the PA and withdrawal of occupying Israeli forces inside Gaza.
The imposition of the PA on a youthful Palestinian resistance did not lead to improvements in life for the Palestinian people, illegal settlements continued and brutality by the Israel military was now accompanied by that of Fatah. With funding from the West being handed to the PA. Palestinian people began associating the PA with corruption. This was especially the case in Gaza where people began supporting Hamas as a rival to the PA, because they were seen as less corrupt and more committed to resisting occupation. The effect of this dual military occupation strategy was the second Palestinian Intifada (2000-2005) which led Israel to enhance its policies of enforced separation, underpinned by an ideology of Jewish majoritarian domination. This was expressed concisely by then Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in November 2003. In fact, Ariel Sharon had termed the disengagement from Gaza as a “separation plan”.
“There is no doubt in my mind that very soon the government of Israel is going to have to address the demographic issue with the utmost seriousness and resolve. This issue above all others will dictate the solution that we must adopt. In the absence of a negotiated agreement – and I do not believe in the realistic prospect of an agreement – we need to implement a unilateral alternative… More and more Palestinians are uninterested in a negotiated, two-state solution, because they want to change the essence of the conflict from an Algerian paradigm to a South African one. From a struggle against ‘occupation,’ in their parlance, to a struggle for one-man-one-vote. That is, of course, a much cleaner struggle, a much more popular struggle – and ultimately a much more powerful one. For us, it would mean the end of the Jewish state… the parameters of a unilateral solution are: To maximize the number of Jews; to minimize the number of Palestinians; not to withdraw to the 1967 border and not to divide Jerusalem… Twenty-three years ago, Moshe Dayan proposed unilateral autonomy. On the same wavelength, we may have to espouse unilateral separation… [it] would inevitably preclude a dialogue with the Palestinians for at least 25 years.”
The rivalry between the PA and Hamas resulted in the Palestinian Legislative Council elections of 2006 in Gaza. Hamas won 74 of the 132 seats. The West and Israel however prefer those they back to win elections and the US rejected the result. No sooner had Hamas won, then Fatah with USA backing, started a war with them. Having defeated Fatah, Hamas took charge of Gaza in 2007. The blockade and siege of Gaza by land, air, and sea, was imposed by Israel thereafter. Egypt closed the Rafah border to prevent Israel achieving its goal of ethnic cleansing. The siege has been maintained for 16 years since then. It destroyed Gaza’s economy and made it dependent on over a thousand trucks of UNWRA aid daily, with even access to clean drinking water and medicines limited. The appalling conditions of those inside the Strip is well documented by the UN and NGO’s.
Gaza under siege has been described as an open-air prison and concentration camp by some, including human rights organisations and academics. The inhumane conditions that Palestinians have been placed under by the Israeli siege has been considered by the UN, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch as collective punishment. Some legal experts have also described it as a continuation of unlawful Israeli occupation.
Gaza, Resistance and Rebellion.
The 16-year-old blockade constitutes collective punishment of a people in Gaza for choosing representatives that the colonisers did not approve of. It was also a war against Hamas for failing to surrender to Israeli and US demands. Hamas and other resistance groups have not become agents of US/Israeli occupation like the PA has in the West Bank. In 16 years, there have been four previous Israel-Gaza wars. Hamas and the Palestinian people have tried to break free from their incarceration by all peaceful and legal means, as well as by firing primitive rockets, often in retaliation against Israeli aerial bombardment of Gaza.
In May 2010 a flotilla of ships tried to break the siege of Gaza, delivering humanitarian aid. The Turkish ship Mavi Marmara was raided and led to the killing of 9 Turkish citizens by Israeli forces, leading Turkey to break off relations with Israel. A second flotilla set off the following year with aid.
Between 30 March 2018 -27 December 2019 the people of Gaza attempted peaceful non-violent protests near their prison border separation fence. The protests were attempts to end the siege and demand that Palestinian’s be allowed to return to their stolen and occupied homes across the fence. The protests known as the “Great March of Return” took place every Friday for 18 months and were met with Israeli violence. Israeli forces killed 223 Palestinians and wounded 13000 by June 2018, according to the International Red Cross. Any attempts by Palestinians to address their cause and grievances and seek justice at the United Nations, is always blocked by the United States. Recently attempts to act through the International Court of Justice (ICJ) have also been blocked.
The Failure of the PA in the West Bank
The PA has always had limited powers, and that only in some Zones of the West Bank not others. Since Oslo the PA has failed to prevent expansion of illegal settlements and violence against its people from armed Israeli civilian and military occupying forces. The rise of religious Zionists in the current Israeli government has enhanced the plans for ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from occupied territories. Since January this year, 237 Palestinians had been killed in the West Bank before 7th October. There had been attacks and raids on Al Aqsa Mosque and armed civilian occupiers have engaged in thefts of Palestinian homes. After October 7th the killing and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the West Bank has intensified, with very little media attention, 206 Palestinians have been killed and 2780 wounded.
Attempts to free Gaza from siege since 2007 have been thwarted by Israel and its Western backers, and largely ignored by the Western media. The events in West Bank since the new Israeli government came to power have also been overlooked. It is only when Israel is attacked, or Israeli’s die that Western politicians and media become concerned about Israel’s “right to self-defence”.
The truth is that it is not a nuclear armed military power, backed by Western nuclear powers, that needs defending, or at risk of being eliminated by a small lightly armed militia. Nor are Jews in Israel defended by Israel, at risk of genocide. It is the Palestinians who need to be defended from the brutality of Israel’s occupying military and armed civilians. It is Palestinians who have been subject to racism, hate preaching and dehumanisation (inside and outside of Israel) and are being subject to ethnic genocide, dispossession of their land, and denied the right to self-determination. The “civilised” world is indifferent to Palestinian loss of lives, property, and their inhumane conditions in Gaza and the West Bank. When even justice and legal redress is denied then Palestinian political violence is an inevitable consequence. The Palestinians have a human right to self-defence and normal life free from persecution. The public in the West can see and recognise this injustice.
Israeli Annexation of Gaza and the West Bank
There is a dilemma for Israel and the Western powers that back it after Gaza 2023. Israeli and Western leaders have never seriously been committed to a two-state solution. Most have always wanted Palestinians part of other Arab lands, whilst Israel wants one state from the river to the sea. There is now insufficient land for a viable Palestinian state, and a demilitarised Palestinian cannot be a state at all.
Israel and the West also do not want one Israeli state for two peoples, because they are committed to an ideology of Jewish supremacy, racial domination, and a Jewish state. The PA has failed. It serves no purpose for the Palestinian people, yet still goes on about a two-state solution. Israel will not accept the political representatives that the Palestinian people choose in Gaza or West Bank.
Faced with this dilemma there are four options for Israel; put some other Muslim country in charge of Gaza; exile the population to somewhere else, which seems to have been a goal but the Palestinians have refused to leave on mass despite the bombs; physically eliminate the Palestinian population; or, annex Gaza and the West Bank as India has done in Kashmir and re-populate Gaza with more Jews leaving the Palestinians to live as a marginalised, excluded and persecuted people in the same way Hindutva supremacy is doing to Muslims in India. The PA is also about to learn what the occupation approved Kashmiri leadership in Jammu and Kashmir learned. You can only act for the interests of the occupier if they want you to, and to serve their purpose. I believe that the current leaders of the Jewish state will choose the latter if they cannot achieve mass expulsion.
European Imported Jewish Supremacy Cannot Win.
Israel is unlikely to get rid of Hamas and resistance, because Hamas is an idea more than a group; that is, only acts of resistance to Israel make it and the world take notice of Palestinian suffering and bring it to the negotiating table.
An increasing minority of Jewish people inside and outside Israel (religious and secular) support Palestinian liberation and a just solution. They also understand that the real problem to be solved for peace to occur in the Holy Land is to defeat the ideology of Jewish racial supremacy, an extreme form of Jewish racial nationalism at the heart of the Israeli state. Just as white racial supremacy was the obstacle to peace in South Africa, so too Jewish racial supremacy is the root cause of all violence between Palestinian and Jewish people. The West’s leaders currently support Jewish supremacy and settler colonialism, whilst proclaiming a commitment to anti-racism and equality. Those that refuse to accept and admit to colonial racial supremacy are declared terrorists, just as all those who resisted European colonialism and fought for independence once were.
The Muslim world on the other hand has had centuries of experience of either seeing off invaders or assimilating them into their region. Mongols, crusaders, colonialists and now US imperialists have all had their day. They too brought mass slaughter and bloodshed to Muslim lands. The European Christian crusaders brought bloodshed to Palestine and the European Jewish leaders are also doing so. Israel and its global supporters will one day also come to learn that the Muslim world of 1.8 billion may accept Jewish people in their world as equals, but it will never accept imperialist European Jewish supremacy, nor persecution of Muslims. The Muslim world may now have reached its lowest point in the post-colonial era. However, it will surely rise again, and history may well record that October 7th and its aftermath was a turning point for the Muslim world.
As for those Jewish and Christian leaders who misuse the verses of the Bible and God to justify Israel’s mass destruction and slaughter in Gaza, we refer them to Allah’s (God) guiding words in the Holy Quran. A reminder from Allah to Muslims, and all people. Allah has not ordained the unlawful killing of innocents. However, any people pumped up with envy, greed, racism and hate are prone to digress, despite being warned by previous messengers of God not to do so. May Allah guide all of humanity away from the evil of all forms of racial supremacy, dehumanisation, and hate, toward a civilisation based on peaceful co-existence.
“That is why We ordained for the Children of Israel that whoever takes a life—unless as a punishment for murder or mischief in the land—it will be as if they killed all of humanity; and whoever saves a life, it will be as if they saved all of humanity. ˹Although˺ Our messengers already came to them with clear proofs, many of them still transgressed afterwards through the land.” Al Quran 5:32
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