By Mazin Qumsiyeh
1) Palestine was a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-religious, &
multi-lingual country targeted to be transformed it to a “Jewish state”.
The core of this project (Zionism) is thus ethnic cleansing which started under British Rule (to fulfil the illegal Balfour declaration) and
accelerated under more direct Zionism control. That is why we have 8
million Palestinian refugees and displaced people and 530 villages and
towns wiped out and 250,000 native Palestinians killed (ongoing genocide).
2) International law is very clear: Palestinian Refugees have a right to
return to their homes and lands, Israeli colonial settlements built since
1967 including in Jerusalem are illegal, and Israel has engaged in
processes that amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity
3) Israel has never been a democracy. It is an apartheid racist regime that even after expelling most Palestinians, have instituted 65 laws that
discriminate against the remaining native Palestinians.
4) Zionist propaganda is easy to refute with logical explanations based on facts (and the three principles above). For example, it is easy to answer the nonsense like Israel is “defending itself”. Someone comes and shoots your brother, points a gun at your head and tells you to get out of your house and claim their religion tells them to do so. Then you are pushed down the street and they besiege you and stop you from getting food and medicine and test new guns on you every few years. You are not the aggressor if you resist. International law is clear on this point: colonized/occupied people have a right (and even duty) of resistance. Anyway colonization is itself violence: ask native Americans and Blacks in South Africa or any other country that went through the experience. Colonization kills 15 native civilians for every 1 colonizer. The answer is simple, end apartheid ends the violence (exhibit A: South Africa).
5) No colonial – anti-colonial struggle has ever ended in a “two-state
solution”. It is fictional and the TALK about it from the time that Ben
Gurion proposed it over 100 years ago is merely (as Ben Gurion himself stated on more than one occasion) intended for PR efforts (he even cited colonial treaties with native Americans which could be broken after consolidating powers). Colonial-Native struggles end in one of three scenarios: a) Algerian model (nearly 2 million killed, 1 million colonizers and their descendants left the country), b) genocide of natives (USA, Australia), c) coexistence in one country of descendants of colonizers and of native people (the rest of the world >140 countries). There is no fourth scenario. Palestine will not be an exception. It is the last struggle and prolonged only because of the resourcefulness and wealth of Zionistsm western and Arab collusion, and the weakness of their victims.
6) If we want a roadmap to real sustainable peace (not pacification), all
we have to do is insist that we implement the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights. It has all the needed elements (no discrimination, rights of refugees to return etc).
7) Palestine is important to 2.5 billion Christians, 1.8 billion Muslims,
15 million Jews. It is also at a pivotal land bridge between Africa and
Eurasia. It is also important becausev the Zionist lobbies decapitated
international law and made western countries support a
horrific genocide/holocaust of our people (complicity). Thus, people around this planet developed joint struggle (including via a push for boycotts, divestment and sanctions) which could help end the nightmare just like it did with Apartheid South Africa. But unlike there, if we do not succeed, then a catastrophic global war is coming.
It is really not that satisfying when one’s own predictions come true. In a chapter in a book titled “Moment of Truth: Tackling Israel-Palestine’s
Toughest Questions” published in 2018 (https://www.palestinenature.
I argued that another (15th) intifada is inevitable and hoped it would be
the last. But much earlier in my 2004 book “Sharing the Land of Canaan” (available free here http://qumsiyeh.org/
feel sad that I did not manage to convince too many of them who remained tribalistic (with that classic superiority-inferiority complex found in all colonial oppressors). A rather tectonic shift in awareness is happening to humanity as we collectively watch the utter depravity and insane behavior of the colonizers (demolishing high rise building, pogroms against non-Jews, children massacred, ethnic cleansing) facing heroic resistance from the indigenous people. Yet, it is still not clear that this sumud is enough to coerce the oppressors to abandon oppression or that the machinations of the oppressors that created the Oslo (Vichy) government would not succeed. Perhaps I was too optimistic to assume that popular resistance can succeed to end Zionism in a half-decent way. Perhaps the deep-rooted brain-washing of generations of colonizers and colonized makes it too hard to turn back. I hope I am wrong. But we Palestinians must face up to the reality that we have far more challenges than a well financed and
powerful Zionist movement that corrupted many governments to support oppression. We must acknowledge that the Zionist movement greatest success was facilitating the empowerment of a political elite group of Palestinians who hijacked a political faction (Fatah) and claiming representation of Palestine and do not want to pay the (financial) cost of repentance and return to sanity. Instead they continue to live in their delusions of importance and ignoring corruption all around them not even realizing that the end of such a road for them will be far more ruinous than the alternative. They need to learn the lesson of history of encounter with Zionism and its Arab facilitators. It is urgent. It is existential to them and to all of us (and indeed the whole of humanity). Zionism does not merely aim to control Palestine and ethnically cleanse it (when strong even of its own collaborators). Like previous colonial movements (see US as an
example) it is expansionist and aims for empire. No one will be safe even the collaborators and the facilitators as far as the Arab Gulf (and
certainly not Jews themselves yearning for normality).
Mazin Butros Qumsiyeh is a Palestinian scientist and author, founder and director of the Palestine Museum of Natural History and the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability at Bethlehem University where he teaches
4 September 2024