By Babatunde Jose
“Not a Conflict, Not a War, But Genocide” – A protester
According to the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, the land known as Canaan was situated in the territory of the southern Levant, which today encompasses Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, Jordan and the southern portions of Syria and Lebanon.
One year ago, 7th October 2023, Hamas, the Palestine nationalist movement of Gaza Strip, carried out a daring Blitzkrieg. The term is German for “lightning war” developed by Heinz Guderian (1888-1954).
The Islamic Resistance Movement, abbreviated Hamas, is a Palestinian nationalist Sunni Islamist political organization with a military wing called the Ezzedeen Al-Qassam Brigades. It has governed the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip since 2007. Founded by Ahmad Yasin, Hassan Yousef, Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, it has governed the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip since 2007. The United States designated Hamas a foreign terrorist organization, rather than seeing them as representatives of the people.
On the morning of October 7, Israel admitted to the greatest intelligence breach in its history, they were caught off guard. During the operation which was carried out like a scene from a James Bond movie, 1,139 people were killed, 251 Israelis and foreigners were taken hostage and carted away to Gaza in anticipation of being exchanged for Palestinian prisoners, 11,000 of whom were incarcerated in Israeli jails.
By the following day, the much dreaded and anticipated biblical Armageddon descended on the people of Gaza. It was marked by an orgy of unprecedented killing and infrastructural destruction not witnessed since the Nazis unleashed terror on Poland during the Second World War. What followed has been given various connotations, but the most apt description is Genocide! One year on, 75% of Gaza has been destroyed.
365 days of unrelenting Israeli attacks has resulted in one of the deadliest conflicts of the 21st century. This has been a war of many firsts, breaking records in scale and brutality.’ Israel placed a complete siege on Gaza; no food, no water, no fuel, no electricity, no medical supplies. In short, no nothing, the perfect hallmark of genocide.
One year on, we begin to wonder, why the genocide? Hamas infiltrated Israel and killed less than 1,500 people, and took 250 hostages. The quantum of destruction, deaths and dislocations caused by the Israeli invasion has been defined as overreaction and out of proportion. Why? Why? Why? The answer lies in the historical antecedent of that piece of real-estate referred to as Palestine. It has all along been a fight for lebensraum, or a place in the sun. It is not religious or ideological, neither is it ethnic or tribal. Here are two peoples descended from a common patriarch, Abraham. They are both Semites, going by racial nomenclature. The problem is, simply put, a dispute over real estate.
The struggle for control over some or all of the territory of Palestine pits two nationalist movements against each other. In spite of their claims to uniqueness, all nationalist movements bear a remarkable resemblance to one another.
The Jewish claim to Palestine comes from their ancient habitation in Palestine. The Zionist narrative of Jewish history begins with Abraham and his descendants, who immigrated to Palestine in the second millennium BC, possibly from the territory that is now Iraq. The tenth-century BC reigns of King David and King Solomon being the highpoint of the Jewish presence in Palestine. Archaeologists are divided on just how glorious the kingdom actually was and in any event, this was also a short-lived period, lasting a little less than seventy years.
Following the death of King Solomon, the Jewish community fragmented politically, save for eighty years under the rule of the Maccabees. In 63 BC, the Romans conquered Jerusalem, and in AD 135, after a series of revolts, they destroyed Jerusalem, enslaved or slaughtered its inhabitants, and dispersed most of the Jewish community. The Romans renamed the province “Palestina” (from which we get the names “Palestine” and its Arabic equivalent, “Filastin”).
The hub of Jewish life shifted to the Diaspora – Jewish communities outside Palestine, until the emergence of the Zionist movement. Palestine was, after all, recalled in Jewish texts and rituals for centuries, and for centuries Jews proclaimed at their yearly Passover Seders, “Next year in Jerusalem.”
But what Zionists did, as all nationalist movements before and since have done, was to read their history selectively and draw conclusions from it that would not have been understandable to their ancestors before the advent of the modern era.
The narrative of the Jewish people, as recounted by Zionists, situates periods of Jewish exile from Palestine gives pride of place to ancient periods of political unity and dominance within Palestine. As the nineteenth-century French philosopher Ernest Renan once put it, “Getting history wrong is part of being a nation.”
The town of Hebron lies in an area that most observers call “the occupied West Bank” but that Israelis officially designate “Judea and Samaria” after the territory’s Biblical names. By calling the territory “Judea and Samaria,” Israelis are calling attention to their Biblical roots in the land and their right to inhabit or control it.
On the other hand “the occupied West Bank,” of course, presumes the Palestinianness of the territory and the foreignness of the Israeli occupation. It thus serves to justify Palestinian aspirations to establish an independent entity there.
Like the Zionist narrative, the Palestinian narrative commonly begins in ancient times. Whereas Zionists begin their narrative with the migration of Abraham and his family to Palestine, the Palestinian narrative begins with the peoples he encountered there. Before the arrival of the Israelites, the ancient inhabitants of the land were of two types. First, there were the Canaanites, who spoke a northern Semitic language similar to Arabic and Hebrew. Palestine was hardly a “land without a people.”
Another group, the Philistines, came to Palestine in the twelfth century BC. As a matter of fact, the Philistines united themselves into a “league of five cities” – Ashdod, Ashkelon, Ekron, Gath, and Gaza – in the territory of present-day Palestine.
The evolution of the question of Palestine from its beginning up to today has been dealt with in several studies. The question has remained in the forefront of United Nations attention. Its political and humanitarian aspects in particular have recently reverted to the centre of international attention as never before.
It has become evident that the overwhelming majority of the members of the international community are convinced that the attainment of the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people is a sine qua non for peace in the Middle East.
Certain basic considerations have also emerged which have the acceptance of the majority among the international community. These are that:
(a) The question of Palestine is at the heart of the problem of the Middle East and consequently no solution to the Middle East problem can be envisaged without taking into account the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people;
(b) The realization of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people to return to their homes and to self-determination, and the right to establish their own independent State in Palestine will contribute to a solution of the crisis in the Middle East;
(c) The participation of the representative of the Palestinian people, on an equal footing with all other parties on the basis of General Assembly resolutions 3236 (XXIX) and 3375 (XXX), is indispensable in all efforts, deliberations and conferences on the question of Palestine and the situation in the Middle East undertaken under the auspices of the United Nations;(branding the nationalists terrorists will not solve the problem).
(d) The acquisition of territory by force is inadmissible and hence the obligation which devolves on Israel to withdraw completely and unconditionally from all territory so occupied.
Unfortunately, the patron saints of Zionist apartheid and genocide in Palestine will never allow this to happen. Until the United States and Germany, the suppliers of arms to Israel and its backers at the UN relent in their intransigence, Palestine, nay, Canaan will never know peace
In the last year alone, the US have given over $21 Billion to Israel. 500 aircrafts and 107 Ships delivered the weapons Israel used in its genocide in Gaza. 4 955 Artillery shells, 14,000 90 kg Bombs , 6,500 226 kg bombs, 3000 Hellfire Missiles, 1,000 Bunker Buster Bombs, 2,600 Air dropped Small Diameter Bombs were used in destroying Gaza; All courtesy of the United States. Gaza was destroyed using 85,OOO tonnes of explosives compared to 56,210 tonnes of explosives dropped on Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden, Hamburg and Tokyo during WW2.
Israel’s wars mean ‘massive’ returns for US arms company investors. It’s hard to see the past year in the Middle East as anything other than an unmitigated disaster. But not everyone has been harmed in the rapidly spiraling conflict. Investors in weapons stocks have enjoyed record gains over the past year.
The war has now spread to Lebanon, which Israel invaded last week, and Iran, where Israel assassinated leaders of Hezbollah and Hamas, actions that Iran retaliated against with massive strikes against targets inside Israel.
Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest weapons firm and the manufacturer of the F-35 aircraft that Israel uses in its regular bombings of Gaza, at the close of trading on October 4, has produced a 54.86% percent total return in the one year following the October 7th attacks, outperforming the S&P 500 by about 18%.
After a year of genocide it has dawned on Israel that there would not be another nakba. Palestinians are now wiser. They are not leaving their land. They can run from northern Gaza to Rafah and back, but they would not leave Gaza, they would not leave their land like it happened in 1948, when Israel refused to allow émigrés to return till today.
Secondly, Israel must come to the realization it is not invincible any longer. The so-called missiles of Hama’s and Hezbollah are finding their targets inside Israel, despite its Iron Dome. Therefore, Israel can no longer sleep with two eyes closed. The chicken is coming home to roost.
However, both Israel and Hamas need to face some home truths. Sooner rather than later, Palestinians will come to resent Hamas’s brutal recklessness, which has led to more Palestinian bloodshed even than the catastrophe of 1948. Israeli leaders, too, could reap the whirlwind if the war should escalate into a wider conflagration.
Military might alone cannot change the politics of the Middle East. In the past, even hawkish Israeli leaders have been forced to choose diplomacy over conflict.
Israel’s ambitious goals—of destroying Hamas completely in Gaza and of incapacitating Hezbollah in southern Lebanon—likely ensure war will continue.
As Dalia Dassa Kaye, of Foreign Affairs wrote, Israel’s battlefield success, “appears uncoupled from any serious momentum toward peace with the Palestinians—Israel’s most serious existential challenge. After a year of war, there is a real possibility of no better ‘day after’ in Gaza or the rest of the region. … Without a change in the current Israeli government, Israel and its neighbors could be moving toward a very different day after: Israeli reoccupation of Gaza and potentially even of southern Lebanon, as well as reinforced control over, if not annexation of, the West Bank. This is a recipe not for victory but for perpetual war.”
Barka Juma’at and a happy weekend
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