Let's bring it all back to basics. Since the Nakba of 1948, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict reflects a persistent and consistent dispossession of Palestinians from their land, and actively cutting off any path to self-determination and statehood. Over the years, Israel has gained the upper hand in terms of political and battlefield achievements, resulting in effective control over occupied territories and populations, establishing superiority and advantages in the field.
Since the UN General Assembly Resolution 181 and Security Council Resolution 242, an international consensus has upheld a two-state solution as a win-win scenario for Israel and the Palestinians, allowing control over defined pieces of land and fulfilling respective aspirations for self-determination, enabling coexistence, and ending the continued military occupation of Palestine.
Ebbs and flows and changes on both the Palestinian and Israeli socio-political fronts have led the two sides to continuously stray and drift away from reaching any win-win scenario, while Israel continued to have the upper hand as the occupying power. For a very brief window of time, the win-win scenario of a two-state solution was almost viable in the early 1990s. However, that window closed as the rising right-wing in Israel engineered and led changes to the reality on the ground and disengaged itself from any opportunity for a political settlement while benefitting from continued impunity for its violations of international law in general, and Palestinians’ human rights.
Despite the closure of that two-state window, it was convenient for many regional and international actors to maintain that fictitious future scenario as the sought solution to the conflict. In doing so, they were effectively in denial of the emergent reality of deliberate acts to eliminate the two-state path by consistent Israeli settlement policy, continued weakening of Palestinians, and undermining any progress towards Palestinian unity and state-building. That emerging reality was shaping up as a de facto apartheid system along with assertions of the illegality of Israel’s continued occupation of Palestinian Territories occupied in 1967.
By avoiding confrontation and refraining from meaningful pressure on Israel, the international community was effectively complicit in the continued occupation and the crime of apartheid taking shape. The violations of rights and international law on the ground eventually added up and painted the reality attested to by numerous Israeli, Palestinian, and international organizations and legal scholars: the crime of apartheid was in full swing in the occupied Palestinian territories and the Israeli occupation was increasingly viewed as illegal by virtue of Israel’s actions in contradiction to the Geneva conventions and the length of said occupation. An advisory opinion sought from the International Court of Justice is expected to confirm this reality in 2024.
The horrific October 7th attack and an unprecedented illegal opportunity for Israel
So again, let us look at what is happening in Gaza today from the perspective of the fundamentals and basics of the conflict. The horrific attacks of October 7th aside, is Israel’s current war on Gaza a war on terror to eradicate Hamas, or is it more closely aligned with making gains related to the basics and fundamentals of the conflict? Considering the extreme right-wing shift in Israeli society and government, it is not farfetched but rather necessary and essential to examine what is happening on the ground from the lens of the fundamentals. Illegal as it is, Israel sees an unprecedented opportunity to address a ‘demographic threat’ while grabbing more land. Israel does not recognize that the continued military occupation of the Palestinian people is the root cause to address and achieve a lasting peace. From their perspective, this is a no-brainer, a once-in-a-lifetime early Black Friday genocidal deal to squash the population, raze the land, clear out the people, and continue what was started in 1948. Netanyahu invoked that himself by declaring this a second war of independence. The NY Times reported on November 8th that a third of northern Gaza’s homes have been demolished based on the analysis of satellite images, and much of the population forcefully displaced to the south. The reality is much worse four days later as more people fled and the bombardment and shelling continues non-stop.
There is a strong belief within key Israeli circles that Palestinians could be forced into Sinai as the smell of dead corpses, indiscriminate targeting of civilians, collapsing public health system, lack of water, food, fuel, and medicine continuously make survival impossible for them. Israel is erasing entire families from the civil registry and making tremendous efforts to materialize this scenario by maintaining the siege, taking out bakeries, destroying solar panels and water tanks even on the roofs of private houses in addition to all the other measures of collective punishment. They see this as an opportunity to claim more Palestinian land rather than a war to dismantle Hamas. The recent images of planting flags on Gaza’s beach and an Israeli soldier planting a tree inside Gaza where Israeli settlements stood in the past, all clearly exemplify the motives of many in the Israeli establishment. Recent statements from Netanyahu about a long presence in Gaza, a lengthy war, ruling out handing over control to the Palestinian Authority and preconditions for the return of close to one million Gazans already displaced are all red flags that the world needs to act on with urgently or face the consequences of in a few years.
The international community allowed this to happen
Back to basics, we must see what is happening for what it is: First, a forced displacement and a land grab in the making, which is actually a continuation of the Nakbah that did not stop since 1948 and Israeli officials have invoked it as such. Second, a repeat of many instances over the past decades where the international community had to make a choice between lip service and hollow statements on the one hand and assertive meaningful action on the other. The international community has allowed Israel to get away with the continued occupation of Palestinians, committing the crime of ethnic cleansing/apartheid, and over a month of massacres and displacement ongoing today. As a result, emboldened and drunk on power combined with impunity, Israel is committing these new crimes with no expectation of accountability and with total disregard for any consequences. The recent Arab and Islamic summit provided an additional boost to the Israeli military machine’s onslaught on Gaza.
Israel has a well-developed arsenal of delay tactics and optical hoops and framings to numb the world while a new reality is created on the ground through security and buffer zones, a prolonged military presence to clear out pockets of resistance, and other tactics. Israeli politicians, settlers, and the army have often collaborated to expand settlements on Palestinian lands. If the past is an indicator of the future, then the international community will choose not to face the emergent reality on the ground. The world will play along, pay lip service with calls and urges and appeals without any decisive or meaningful actions or sanctions. In the meantime, there will be an Israeli effort to create a new reality in Gaza drawing on the playbook from the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Palestinians will be gradually deprived of territorial contiguity and control in what remains of the Gaza Strip and the Palestinians left in it. This will reproduce and further enshrine the reality of apartheid and make the occupation harder to undo.
The international community must learn from its past mistakes
These scenarios are not farfetched unless the international community learns from the mistakes of the past and realizes Israel has gone too far and has crossed one red line too many. Short of that, the reality will only get more complicated, and when the dust eventually settles, Israel’s war on Gaza will have achieved three outcomes in the long run: First, seeding further radicalization rooted in the utter inhumanity and genocidal violence unleashed onto Palestinians since Oct. 7th; Second, accelerating the overdue formal declaration of death for the two-state solution; and Third, catalyzing renewal and emergence of a Palestinian national movement and leadership that sees a one-state solution as the only viable solution for Palestinians to achieve self-determination on their historical land, living side by side with Israelis as equals in one state. Israel is setting the stage and paving the way for these outcomes unless it thinks its genocidal campaigns can eventually decimate and dissipate 7+ million Palestinians currently residing between the river and the sea.
In all cases, the past month and this ongoing war is a moment of truth and a test for the international community, the international world order, and the rules-based system with global implications beyond Palestine and Israel.