Palestine and the Making of a New Middle East
Prof. As’ad Abdul Rahman
The principle of change is known as “progressive evolution in time” which naturally has to take time to allow human beings to adjust, accept and adopt the change required for social progress to take hold in the practice of individuals and nations. A sudden change is the antithesis of a progressive social evolution because the time needed to progressively adapt to the changes is being skipped, thus bringing chaos instead and on top overwhelming confusion and destruction. That is exactly how the so-called ‘Arab Spring’, -the sudden change-, may become ‘the Arab Autumn’ that could strip the Arab landscape of its stability and security. Once more, Palestine and its people are targeted.
It is wise to remind ourselves of the major radical change that struck the Arab world, namely, the loss of Palestine in 1948. Such a change will never be accepted even after 65 years of its happening. The Palestinian catastrophe of 1948 took place in the total absence of justice or adherence to international law, but was triggered by fabricated history glossed over with a religious garb that has no bases in the Torah as falsely claimed. The “Holocaust” that was ignited by the West in Europe exacted a very heavy price from the Palestinians in the Arab East who had absolutely nothing to do with it. Resisting the ‘catastrophe’ to regain Palestinian national rights came in many forms and ways. Essentially, it was based on the revival of Arab Palestinian national identity, a struggle that defied all the odds to bury it through the years. Indeed, it has been kept alive to this day shining in the hearts and minds of Palestinians wherever they are in our world. Needless to say that all means of rewarding or punishment have been used to make the Palestinians forget and give up their national Palestinian identity which Zionism considers as a major threat to the Zionist agenda that plans the judaization of historical Palestine. The latest ‘plan’ to bury for good the Palestinian national identity has reached a crossroad with two ways that are meant to lead eventually to the loss of all the legitimate Palestinian rights.
The first road was precipitated by the Palestinian split represented by Hamas who chose to Islamize the Palestinian national struggle and Fatah who kept it as a civil national struggle. The Islamization of the Palestinian struggle may give a religious credibility to the Zionist agenda that seeks the Judaization of historical Palestine which in effect negates the presence of non-Jews in the ‘Jewish state’. If Muslims are allowed to establish Islamic religious states as a political product of the ‘Arab Spring’ (which Islam prohibits anyway) then, according to the Zionists, Jews should be allowed-in turn- to establish ‘a Jewish state’ in the Holy Land of ‘Israel’.
In fact, Israel built itself as a ‘Spartan state’, a state that is always surrounded by real and imaginary enemies to encourage and maintain international support. Such enemies can always be conveniently changed to maintain the cohesiveness of the military Zionist state. One day the enemy is Jamal Abdul Nasser and another day it is Saddam Hussein and now it is Iran and Hezbollah. All of those have never really had the military means to end the Zionist state which has all the means of “weapons of mass destruction” in its hands. Along the lines of such policy, the Gaza Strip under the control of Hamas has to be kept separated as “a Jihadist state” to prevent any Palestinian unity on one hand and to give credibility for the far right in Israel to seek “a religious Jewish State”.
The other road is being proposed by the United States and Israel. They both want the Palestinians to adopt the path of economic prosperity instead of national liberation. Such prosperity is intended to “break the paralysis” towards a negotiated political settlement while allowing the colonial Israeli settlements to expand and grow peacefully in the occupied territories. The US Secretary of State has recently proposed an ‘economic plan’ to invest $4 billion in the West Bank “to encourage the Israelis and Palestinians to reach a political settlement in the form of a two-state solution”!!! Naturally, there is no mention of the legitimate rights or “the right of return” of Palestinian refugees and of course no halt to building of Israeli colonies/settlements. Mere promises from the American administration would eventually be forgotten in a few weeks’ time, at the most. Palestinians are being asked to forget all their legitimate rights, except the right to make money and more money most probably for the selected few. This economic proposal is partly geared to specifically defeat the worldwide campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel which is working on stripping away the legitimacy of the Zionist state.
While an increasing number of civil societies around the world are boycotting Israel, we find some peculiar Palestinian establishments in the West Bank normalizing relations with Israeli entities in a conscious or unconscious attempt at breaking the boycott established by the BDS and its supporters around the world. Greed, as usual, stands behind attempts to defeat the national civil Palestinian struggle. Every conscientious Palestinian (and Arab) is called upon to confront such a bribe which is intended to strip the Palestinian people of their national rights. As once said: “the whole course of a human life can be measured by taking a stand of integrity, regardless of the cost”.
