Israel has never been divided in its 75-year history as it has been since October 7, 2023. On that day, Palestinian activists breached the over-hyped Israeli security apparatus to kill and hijack people inside Israel, an event that, viewed from any angle did not happen in a vacuum. Like October 7, signs of the division in Israel did not happen in a vacuum.
Notable sign of the division was that, when the country celebrated its 75th anniversary, the mood was, at best, fractious and uncertain. For the first time on May 14, 2023, Israelis were too divided to even celebrate their independence together or mourn their fallen soldiers. Unsurprisingly, even in the midst of last year’s fraught celebrations, the question that gnawed most Israelis was whether their country’s toehold occupation of Palestine, so far a costly, even if manageable misadventure, will remain manageable in the foreseeable future.
As Israelis brace for another fractious anniversary next May, a growing number of Israelis believe another October 7 will be more disastrous for the Israelis and Palestinians. The hawkish and stiff-necked political establishment in Tel Aviv, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, baulks at any idea of a two-state solution. Despite growing calls on him to step down, Mr Netanyahu wants a prolonged war in Gaza as an excuse to remain in power to deflect attention from the damaging corruption case hanging on his neck.
Ousting Netanyahu will not translate into immediate resolution of the Middle East crisis, but it may present an opportunity for the emergence of a leadership that can appropriately read the political climate and, therefore, more amenable to ending the costly Israeli occupation of Palestine. Such a scenario, against the backdrop of increasing icing of ties between Washington and Tel Aviv, ignited by the intransigence of Mr Netanyahu, provides an opportunity for China to play a greater role in the Middle East. China confirmed her capacity and capability to resolve some of the intractable diplomatic crises ignited by Washington and her European allies after it brokered the Iran/Saudi peace deal.
The world can no longer rely on America, whose diplomacy is determined by might of force, to resolve the Arab-Israeli crisis. For more than 230 of her 248 years of nationhood, history records Americans to have, directly and indirectly, fought some 110 wars during which they killed millions, destroyed nations and wiped out civilizations. What this means is that America has known peace for less than 20 years since she fought a bitter seven-year war of independence (1776-1783). Since the end of World War II, Washington has, in the name of “containment”, been the cause of major global conflicts resulting in genocide, socioeconomic dislocations and mass destruction. Where she is not fighting a proxy war as in Ukraine, Washington is directly involved in combat, as in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, or directly funding and arming belligerents as in Nicaragua.
In the crisis-prone Middle East, Washington sticks out like a sore thumb. Till date, the United States and her European allies continue to regard and treat Occupied Palestine as a befitting indemnification to the Jews for the West’s complicity in the so-called holocaust while America’s endless supply of weapons of mass destruction has helped Israel to continue its slaughter of Palestinians whose forebears had no hand in, or played any role, however insignificant, in the alleged incineration of some six million Jews in Europe. If Israelis are true to their own law of “an eye for an eye”, all they need to do is look beyond the Middle East in their determined effort to avenge the holocaust.
This is not about joining the appeal on Israel to end its occupation of Palestine. No! After all, the Boers, whose apartheid system the Israelis have perfected, tried it in South Africa for 350 years. But Frederik Wilhem de Klerk assumed power in 1989 and realised that without making peace, a future black-ruled South Africa would be less amenable and unduly hostile to whites. Within two years of assumption of power, Nelson Mandela was released without conditions. Sadly, successive stiff-necked politicians in Tel Aviv are poor students of history!
Liberation struggle is never a tea party. The Israelis know this because their struggle for the creation of Israel was the result of terrorism and not because of peaceful negotiations. It was, in fact, the bombings, kidnappings and targeted assassinations by Jewish terrorist organisations that forced the hands of the British who supervised the United Nations Mandate in Palestine.
In all honesty, there would not have been a state of Israel in May 1948, had Jewish terrorists settled for a negotiated settlement, instead of embarking on armed struggle. That is one of the lessons of history that Palestinian groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad and their supporters, must learn. For now, the Palestinian liberation movements should feel fulfilled and justified in armed struggle because no amount of hours spent around tables would give them a home!
Palestinian freedom fighters should know that had pioneer Jewish terrorists like David Ben Gurion, Chaim Weizmann, Menachem Begin and their band of Zionist land grabbers fallen for the sweet talk of the British, Jews would probably still be wandering in Europe, homeless like the Gypsies, and not as lords of the manor in the Middle East. Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian liberation movements should know that what is left of their homeland today will continue to shrink and could disappear within the next decade, going by the ongoing criminal land-grabbing policy of the Jews.
Palestinian liberation fighters have proved to be good students of history by emulating Jewish terrorist organizations like Haganah, Irgun Zvai Leumi aka Etzel and Lohmei Herut aka Stern Gang of the early twentieth century which introduced terrorism in their struggle for a Jewish homeland. If terrorism helped Israelis to secure their homeland in 1948, nothing stops Palestinians from employing terrorism to secure their own homeland.
Magaji resides in Abuja and can be reached via [email protected]
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