These are the strangest of times. On this almost everyone will agree.
Yet what seems worse beyond even these forebodings is the persistence of gangster geopolitics of Israel and the USA in its various manifestations.
Intensifying United States sanctions in the midst of the health crisis on already deeply afflicted countries such as Iran and Venezuela is one striking example. This display of the primacy of geopolitics is highlighted by its rejections of numerous high-profile humanitarian appeals for the suspension of sanctions, at least for the duration of the pandemic. Instead of suspension and empathy, we find a tone-deaf Washington almost gleefully upping its "maximum pressure" policy, perversely grabbing the opportunity to rachet up the pain level.
Another dark tale is the macabre Israeli dance around the disruptive lawlessness of the annexation of parts of the occupied West Bank promised by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
The insistence that any annexation of occupied Palestinian territory directly violates fundamental norms of international law seems no longer to be taken seriously. Maybe because of this, Israel is poised to annex without even attempting to offer legal justifications for overriding the widely endorsed and rigidly interpreted rule that a sovereign state is not allowed to annex foreign territory acquired by force.
For all these reasons it is not surprising that even Israeli heavyweights, including former heads of Mossad and Shin Bet, as well as retired army officers are sounding the alarm. Of course, none of this Israeli internal debate objects to annexation because it violates international law, rejects UN or European Union authority, and ignores Palestinian inalienable rights.
All the objections to annexation from within Israel are couched by exclusive reference to a variety of concerns about alleged negative impacts on Israeli security. In particular, these critics from within Israel's national security establishment are worried about disturbing Arab neighbours and further alienating international public opinion, especially in Europe, and to some extent the critics worry about weakening the solidarity of American and European Jews for Israel.
The pro-annexation side of the Israeli policy debate also mentions security considerations, especially with respect to the Jordan Valley and the settlements, but much less so. Unlike the critics, the more ardent proponents of annexation are land claimants.
They invoke a Jewish biblical entitlement to Judea and Samaria (known internationally as the West Bank). This entitlement is reinforced by referencing Jewish deep cultural traditions and centuries of historical connections between a small Jewish presence and this land held sacred.
As with Israeli critics of annexation, supporters feel no need to explain, or even notice, the disregard of Palestinian grievances and rights. Annexationists do not dare put forward an argument that the Jewish claims are more deserving of recognition than are the competing national claims of Palestinians, undoubtedly because their case is so weak in terms of modern ideas of law and the ethics of entitlement.
As has been the case throughout the Zionist narrative, Palestinian grievances, aspirations, and even the existence of a Palestinian people is not part of the Zionist imaginary except as political obstacles and demographic impediments.
At the same time, all along Zionism has been tactically opportunistic about disclosing the full extent of its project, instead focusing on what it could gain under a given set of circumstances as all that it wanted.
When one considers the evolution of the main drift of Zionism since its inception, the longer-term aspiration of marginalising Palestinians in a single dominant Jewish state that encompassed the whole of Israel's "promised land" has never been forsaken. In this sense the UN partition plan - while accepted as a solution at the time - is better understood as a stepping stone to recovering as much of the promised land as possible. In the course of the last 100 years, from a Zionist perspective utopia became reality, while for the Palestinians reality became dystopia.
How the prelude to annexation is being addressed by both gangster States - Israel and the USA - is as dismaying as the underlying erasure of the Palestinians, who will be cast out as a restive population to be kept fragmented and as disunited as possible so that their resistance and objections can be efficiently muted.
Netanyahu managed to secure approval for his annexation plan in the unity government deal with his rival-turned-coalition-partner, Binyamin Gantz. The only precondition for the proposal he is set to submit after July 1 was conforming the contours of the annexation to the territorial allocations embodied in the notoriously one-sided "Peace to Prosperity" proposal put forward by the Trump administration.
Even without the disclosure of the Trump peace plan, US tacit approval for annexation was hardly ever in doubt. It follows from Trump's endorsement of Israel's annexation of the occupied Syrian territory of the Golan Heights in March 2019.
As could be expected, Donald Trump's America is creating no friction, not even whispering to Netanyahu at least to offer legal justifications or explain away the negative effects of annexation on Palestinian peace prospects. Instead, the US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, gave a green light to West Bank annexation even before Israel formalised its claim, declaring provocatively that annexation is a matter for the Israelis to determine on their own (as if neither Palestinians nor international law had any relevance). He added that the US will convey its opinions privately to the government of Israel.
On the basis of past experience, it seems likely that after a few days of media coverage, concerns will subside, and the world will move on. Even the Palestinians, discouraged by years of fruitless waiting, seem to be suffering, at least temporarily, from a combination of resistance fatigue and ineffectual solidarity initiatives.
Such an assessment is one more sign that Israeli-US relations are being managed in accord with "gangster geopolitics", and without paying heed to international law or UN authority. It is a despicable act that sweeps law and morality aside while political space is forcibly cleared for land theft.
It follows an incredible pattern of official behaviour both in the US and Israel.
First, there is the defiant nature of the Israeli annexation claim. Secondly, there is the single qualification that Israel must obtain a geopolitical stamp of approval from the US government before going forward with annexation. Thirdly, there is the US government's move to throw the ball back to Israel by saying the decision to annex is Israel's to make, yet it will give Israel the benefit of its private opinion on the matter, presumably on the tactics of timing and presentation, without any consideration of matters of principle.
There is a ghostly melody accompanying this macabre dance. Israel tames its unilateralism by a gesture of geopolitical deference, and by this posturing, acts as if the approval of the US matters as something more than a political show of support. The US does not question the Israeli logic, yet it does not want to accept responsibility for a public show of approval. It declares in public that Israel is free to act as it wishes although withholding, at least for now, any public expression of approval or disapproval with respect to annexation.
Whether this will cause any problems as the July date approaches is unlikely, especially as Israel will present annexation as a partial implementation of the Trump proposals.
I suspect that the US private message will be one of discreet approval, which Netanyahu will undoubtedly treat as satisfying the agreement with Gantz.
What stands out here is the arrogance of the politics of annexation. Not only are the rules and procedures of the world public order cast aside, but the internal discourse on the transfer of rights is carried on as if the people most affected are irrelevant, a kind of "internal Orientalism". Such is the reality of gangster geopolitics of rogue States such as Israel and the USA.
Well, it began with the Balfour Declaration in early twentieth century, then came the Nakba in 1948, then came the disguised genocide through the occupation and its repression, oppression, humiliation, and the theft of natural resources, of land, again and again; until the "Deal of the Century" and the scheme of annexation.
The ultimate step of the Zionist project of erasing the Palestinians of their country's equation is the annexation. Which came to public knowledge with the formation of an "annexation government" in Israel, which didn't come as a surprise to observers. It has been a long time coming.
Establishing direct Israeli control over most or all of what it calls "Judea and Samaria", ie, the illegally occupied Palestinian West Bank, has long been the wet dream of the Zionists in general and the Zionist right in particular.
Everything the Zionist movement has ever done and everything the Palestinian national movement has failed to do, has led up to this moment.
After a century of unabated settlement expansion, half a century of military occupation and a quarter of a century of a dubious peace process, annexation marks a new stage in the evolution of Zionism.
The question is when, not if, Israel will formalise the reality of its expansion and what may be the implications for the Palestinians and peace in the region.
Binyamin (Benny) Gantz's u-turn from being Beinyamin (Bibi) Netanyahu's chief political nemesis to his main governing partner was quite shocking to his partners in the Blue and White alliance.
After all, former general Gantz, the military chief cum opposition leader, ran three elections campaigns focused primarily on Netanyahu's unfitness to govern, calling on him to resign after his indictment on three charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust, claiming that no prime minister who is on trial should be allowed to govern.
Interestingly, Netanyahu made the same claim back in 2008, when he called on Ehud Olmert to resign after his indictment on corruption. Olmert did resign and ended up in prison, and Netanyahu became prime minister for a second time.
Gantz, on the other hand, did not stand by his word. He succumbed to his opponent's political machinations, shifting from "anyone but Netanyahu" to "no one but Netanyahu" in a matter of weeks and ultimately serving the cunning incumbent a fifth term on a silver platter.
Why?
The answer lies in what happened between January and April this year.
It all started with the invitation to go to Washington delivered personally by US Vice President Mike Pence which both of his accomplices - "Bibi" and "Benny" - wholeheartedly accepted.
"Bibi", with the full support of the Trump family and administration, used the occasion to upstage his rival.
Not only was the former general in no position to rebuff Trump's overtures, but he also had no reason to do so.
He faced the leader of the most powerful country in the world, Israel's own patron saint and guardian angel, enthusiastically supporting a "Greater Israel" with full control over all of historic Palestine.
Remember, while on average two-thirds of the people surveyed in 32 countries disapproved of Trump in a Pew poll published in January, a head-turning 71 percent of Israelis have confidence in him.
Who was general Binyamin Gantz to oppose him?
The March elections confirmed the new US "Jewish state" consensus. Despite his indictment, Netanyahu renewed his majority among Israeli Jewish voters, leaving Gantz dependent on the support of Arab parliamentarians to form a government.
So Gantz baulked. Unlike Yitzhak Rabin, also a former general cum political leader, who depended on Palestinian support in the Knesset to pursue the Oslo Accords in 1993, Gantz demonstrated a lack of both conviction and courage to engage the Arab-majority Joint List.
The outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic sealed the deal. Netanyahu swiftly imposed a national emergency and called on Gantz, the loyal soldier, to form an emergency government to lead the country through the crisis.
Gantz acquiesced, but his partners rejected the deal, accusing him of deceit. This led to the break-up of his Blue and White coalition, leaving the general relatively exposed.
Netanyahu, the consummate politician outmanoeuvred Gantz, the political rookie, and struck a deal to lead the government in its first 18 months.
Considering the many ambiguities in their agreement, Netanyahu is sure to outstay his term.
He did not even wait for the new government to be formed before declaring on May 4 victory against COVID-19 with a particularly low death toll of 235. This is despite the fact that, just a few weeks earlier, the prime minister made claims that tens of thousands of Israelis would die, to scare the public and rally support for a unity government.
In a country where quite a few generals have become politicians, Gantz may prove the most gullible of them all. He is now seen as Netanyahu's "bodyguard", a useful idiot, lending military credibility to the indicted prime minister's cynical political calculus.
He helped Netanyahu amend Israel's basic law in parliament and ensure his premiership is not contested in the future.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
But history is paramount to understanding the ideological and strategic logic behind the annexation.
It is a consensus that dates back to at least the late 1960s and deepened with the rise of the right in the late 1970s. Everything Israel has done since then, especially its strategic settlement expansion, enforced this consensus, and nothing it proposed or signed ever compromised it.
It is a consensus that encompasses the ideological, security and theological beliefs of most Israelis.
The fact that the ever-shrinking centre-left Labour party is eager to join Netanyahu's "annexation government" is a testimony to the depth of this consensus. Indeed, even the two major secular opposition parties - Yesh Atid and Yisrael Beiteinu, would have joined the "annexation government", if it were not for Netanyahu and his partnership with the religious parties.
Israeli politicians may have differed on how to maintain Israel's control of Palestinian lands, de facto or through formal annexation, but not on the principle.
Most preferred the earlier option until the circumstances are ripe.
Even Netanyahu has avoided formal annexation until it became a useful slogan to garner the support of the radical right to win a fifth term.
However, Trump's support may have now settled the issue for Netanyahu and the Israeli establishment, turning the slogan into actionable policy.
Well, unless the US president changes his mind again.
Meanwhile, the new Trump boost may help Netanyahu secure his other objectives.
Personally, such a move, coupled with the US recognition of Israel's annexation of Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights, will further cement his own legacy as the founder of a Greater Israel.
After 14 years in power, he has already surpassed Israel's founder, David Ben Gurion, in terms of years served as prime minister.
Politically, the "looming annexation" may help him downplay the "looming trial" and strengthen his position on the right.
Strategically, Netanyahu and his backers in the Trump administration reckon the geopolitical environment is ripe to make the move towards annexation.
The Palestinian and Arab leaders are weak, divided and ever more dependent on Washington.
And the rest of the world, especially the Europeans, who made their opposition heard, are too preoccupied with the pandemic to resist, let alone prevent such an Israeli move.
So now the question becomes, when exactly?
The coalition agreement stipulates that Netanyahu could present the annexation plan to the Knesset from July onwards. It may be timed before or after the Republican convention that will nominate Trump for a second term.
This confirms the claim made by Trump's ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, that the US is ready to recognise the annexation in a few weeks' time.
A long-time Trump lawyer and confidant, Friedman is one of the main architects of the plan and is presently overseeing the mapping of prospective annexation of up to 30 percent of the West Bank.
Meanwhile, Trump's Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who claimed the annexation is "an Israeli decision", is expected in Israel this week, and may suggest first reaching out to the Palestinians on the basis of the Trump plan, which the administration claims, rather falsely, is a fair, win-win plan for both sides.
Although the Palestinians have already rejected the plan categorically, deeming it an assault on Palestinians' national rights, the annexation will still happen, sooner or later.
Even many of Israel's own friends on the "left" and more than a few on the right oppose it.
But since might is right in the Trump-Netanyahu era, powerful Israel will do whatever it wants and the international community can puff all it wants.
This is especially true for the huffing-n-puffing Palestinian leaders, who may feel aggrieved, but seem increasingly delusional, especially in Israel's eyes.
Their tired warnings against "the end of the peace process" and "the end of security coordination" are met with utter scorn and ridicule in Israel.
Likewise, their tepid warning of abandoning the two-state in favour of a one-state solution, as if these are off the shelf options, is indeed ridiculous.
It is high time for them to say and do something else, something serious and more effective.
And to mean what they say.
But what might that be?
Perhaps I could attempt the beginning of an answer in the coming days. If the Palestinian youth doesn't raise up against the last hope of having a Palestinian citizenship and a decent future.
PALESTINA
May 15, 1948, is a date inked in infamy for generations of Palestinians who know it as the Nakba, or "the catastrophe", after the declaration of the state of Israel in Palestine.
On Friday, Palestinians marked the Nakba's 72nd anniversary since the Yishuv, the pre-state Zionist-Jewish community that emmigrated to Palestine, transformed into Israel after former colonial sponsor the United Kingdom departed Palestine, which it had invaded and occupied during World War I.
For Palestinians, the Nakba does not just represent an historical event but a continuing process that began in the 1880s as European Zionist settlers started moving into Palestine to lay the groundwork for their future state.
While the Zionist project fulfilled its dream of creating a homeland in Palestine in 1948 after defeating five ill-equipped and outnumbered Arab armies, Palestinian displacement has never stopped.
Between 1947 and 1949, about 750,000 Palestinians out of a population of 1.9 million were expelled from their towns and villages to make way for the new Jewish invaders.
Most of the these Palestinians fled to neighbouring countries, where they settled as refugees.
Only 150,000 Palestinians remained in Israel, which was founded on 78 percent of the total landmass of Palestine. The remaining 22 percent of the eastern part of Palestine was later annexed by Jordan and renamed the West Bank, and its residents became Jordanian citizens.
In June 1967, the West Bank was occupied by Israel along with the Gaza Strip, which had been under Egyptian military control.
According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, about five million Palestinian citizens live in the occupied West Bank and blockaded Gaza Strip, and 1.5 million in Israel. Six million more live in the diaspora in neighbouring countries and worldwide.
Many Palestinians, however, argue that the Zionist victory is not complete.
A large number of Palestinians argue that Palestinians can regain their homeland by resisting Zionist attempts to erase them from history and have them accept their defeat, as "we have succeeded in foiling the Zionist project of our total expulsion by rejecting the Zionist narrative that the Nakba is something from the past. In resisting the Nakba, the Palestinians have struck at the heart of the Zionist project that insists that the Nakba be seen as a past event. In resisting Israel, Palestinians have forced the world to witness the Nakba as present action; one that, contrary to Zionist wisdom, is indeed reversible. This is precisely what galls Israel and the Zionist movement. Israel's inability to complete its mission of thoroughly colonizing Palestine, of expelling all Palestinians, of 'gathering' all Jews in the world in its colony, keeps it uneasy and keeps its project always in the present continuous."
These Palestinians main argument is their people's assertiveness and "resistance" has evolved over the decades to employ art and culture as a key to keeping the collective sense of nationhood alive and undo the Nakba. "The problem for Israel is not in believing and knowing that there is not one single place in its colonial settlement that did not have a former native population, but in its realization that there is no place today in its imaginary 'Jewish State' that does not still have a Palestinian population who claims it."
The planned annexation would effectively kill the 1993 Oslo Accords between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel, which stipulated the establishment of a Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem within five years after its signing.
Adnan Abu Odeh, a Palestinian and former head of Jordan Royal Court during the reign of the late King Hussein, said he still believes in the reversibility of the Nakba, and that Palestinians will one day reconstitute themselves back in Palestine as a nation, despite the current political conditions against them.
Abu Odeh, 87, who was born in the Palestinian city of Nablus during the British occupation of Palestine, told Al Jazeera he does "not believe Israel will remain in its present form for eternity, in part because it is still viewed by the Arabs as an alien body in the midst of their region". He added that despite official peace treaties between Egypt and Jordan with Israel, as well as Israeli gains in establishing official and unofficial relationships with several Arab countries, the fact remains that Israel allies itself with Arab governments only, not their people. "The Arabs still consider the Palestinian cause as their cause, even if their regimes didn't," he said.
As for what future lies ahead for Palestinians who are facing a much more powerful foe and often hostile Arab regimes, Massad's message is to keep the resistance alive.
"Those who counsel the Palestinians to accept the Nakba know that to accept the Nakba is to allow it to continue unfettered. Palestinians know better. The only way to end the Nakba, Palestinians insist, is to continue to resist it."
AL-NAKBA
BRASIL
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário