Palestinian uprising: a firm stand against apartheid

Once again, Palestine has been devastated by death and terror that ensued after fatal land and air assaults by Israel's security forces. The fact is now disclosed to the entire world that the murderous slaughter of Palestinians was not a mere coincidence of a battlefield; it was a systematic effort of ethnic cleansing by settler groups and security forces encouraged by the right-wing Israeli politicians along with their chauvinistic alliances.

The sole responsible reason for the creation of the dreadful atmosphere from Sheikh Jerrah to all of Jerusalem and to Gaza was the ethnic cleansing of Sheikh Jerrah and the rest of occupied Jerusalem, followed by illegal construction of Jewish settlements. Literally, it was no longer a conflict or a dispute or a war in the traditional sense, but a unilateral war of Israeli force met with simple but determined resistance of Palestinians. As a result, vigils and protests were aggressively broken up by the Israeli security forces. At stake were the homes of hundreds of Palestinians, who were long subject to eviction campaigns.

The repulsive assaults of Israel army were made upon a well-planned conspiracy to ensure the demographic majority of Jews over the Palestinian Arab population. According to the UN, transferring civilian populations into occupied territory is illegal under international law and may amount to war crimes, but this activity has been going on for decades, all the way back to when Israel was founded in 1948. Israeli forces seized around 78 per cent of Palestinian land, dispossessing more than seventy thousand Palestinians from their homes. In 1967, during the Six-Day War, Israel annexed the entire West Bank, including East Jerusalem, over time as a result of these illegal settlements.

Awful assaults in Gaza

Israel had launched an 11-day brutally aggressive air and land assault on Gaza, killing at least 250 and injuring almost 2,000 Palestinians. The attack was followed by Palestinian protests in East Jerusalem over an anticipated decision of the Supreme Court of Israel on the eviction of six Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah. The imprisoned and besieged population of Gaza underwent another terrific episode of the Israel-Palestine conflict after 2014. While the siege of Israel upon the Gaza Strip was ongoing, creating an air, land, and sea blockade, destructive movements from Israel in the past week had generated a troublesome condition for the citizens.

Even if the estimated loss of the Gaza Strip from the last week's attacks amounts to $150 million, it is the human cost that is the most devastating. Egypt had already assured us of providing $500 million for the rehabilitation and rebuilding of Gaza City. It is observed as an awkward double standard that the US, France, and Britain, while having a soft touch with Israel, have also promised financial aid for the rehabilitation. But as per the latest reports, drones are hovering intensively over Gaza even after the ceasefire last Thursday.

How do pro-Israel concerns emerge?

As usual, the US, along with other right-wing nations, has justified the dismantling of the human rights of Palestinians by the Israeli army and supported Israel’s “right to defend itself". The justification is an ongoing routine of each US government from Harry S. Truman to Joe Biden for decades.

Zionist lobbying since the establishment of Israel in 1948 is what inspires US state policy to keep quiet about the brutal harassment of Palestinians’ human rights by Israeli forces. Even though there have been turbulent protests shouting for free Palestine in American streets, democratic leaders, just like the Republican ones, are being guilty victims of Zionist lobbying.

Israel defends itself with the help of the United States, and especially they stand with European countries by erecting pseudo-facts and circulating them through pro-Israel news media and social media, manipulating the policies of foreign countries, and penetrating pro-Israel ideas, covering up the intensive critiques against Israel.

But the lobbying organised by the Zionists has its legal, political, and academic dimensions. As John Meyer Scheymar and Stephen Walt state, the Jewish lobby operates in two ways. The first way is to influence the Congress and the Legislature to institute that the “Smart Choice” is to support Israel. Therefore, they could demonstrate the anti-Israel position as a suicidal one and resist the pro-Palestinian representatives such as Bernie Sanders, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Keith Ellison. The second way is to fabricate myths about the formation of Israel, thereby reaping the sympathy of the whole world and establishing itself as a virtuous state for Jews.

Palestine’s right to self-defence

The Palestinians’ right to self-defence has been a controversy after the death of a Kerala woman caused by the bombardment of Hamas in Ashkelon as a response to Israel’s bombardment over Gaza. Although the controversy is ongoing, the striking reality is that ultimately Israel is the occupier and the Palestinians are the occupied ones.

While Israeli courts allowed Israeli Jews to claim Palestinian properties as their own and the illegal eviction campaign was going on, it was Palestinians’ right to resist and repel it.

Moreover, 'the right of resistance' is authorised by international law through the Hague Regulations of 1907 and the Fourth Geneva Convention, as well as in certain provisions of Additional Protocol I and customary international humanitarian law.

If Israel has the right to defend itself by launching air raids that have destroyed Palestinian neighbourhoods, then surely Palestinians have the right to protect themselves from the brutal and escalating Israeli violence, which has led to a death toll of more than 250 over the past few days alone.

Blossoming of unlaundry unity

Colonialism in Israel remains a state-run project. Benjamin Netanyahu was determined to implement racist policies against Palestinians to grip the regime of Israel once more. But his apartheid politics were also convenient for bringing together all the Palestinians, which acted as a bulwark against the invasion of Israeli forces in Al-Aqsa Masjid. Palestinians were bringing themselves to the line of unity, moving past all the political divisions and factional squabbles. There didn’t matter any geographic distinctions or religious differences; rather, religion was transformed into the source of spiritual unity.

The sublime unity based upon resistance, liberation, and internal solidarity was an absolute challenge against all factional ideas, the scandalous Arab normalisation of Israeli brutality, and more precisely, against the colonial efforts of the the Zionist apartheid state.