Just peace means equal rights for all
The Al-Aqsa Deluge is welcome anti-colonial resistance
1. The Al-Aqsa Deluge warns Israel: no more impunity for your crimes!
On 7th October the Palestinian resistance in Gaza launched a surprise military operation across the Israeli border, variously called the ‘Al-Aqsa Deluge’ or ‘Al-Aqsa Storm’. According to a Hamas statement, the action was resisting Israel’s attacks on the Al-Aqsa Mosque, its blockade of Gaza and its ongoing violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. In 1948 Israel was founded on the violent theft of Palestinian land & lives. Since starting its siege of Gaza in 2005, Israel turned it into the largest open-air prison in the world. Since last year the Israeli government intensified its Gaza-ghetto siege and its decades-long colonization of the West Bank, further dispossessing Palestinians and making their lives intolerable.
The Al-Aqsa Deluge is an act of resistance against the atrocities visited on Gaza and the rest of Palestine for many decades. The only people who have the right to oppose any hurt and loss of innocent lives which occurred, are those who have consistently stood against the 75 years of relentless, overwhelming and systematic Zionist and Israeli state violence; which JNP does.
Meanwhile Israeli society paid almost no price for the colonization process of the Israeli settler-colonial apartheid regime. Its frequent war crimes and terrorist attacks became easily normalised within Israeli society. As Gideon Levy observed, ‘Behind all this lies Israeli arrogance; the idea that we can do whatever we like, that we’ll never pay the price and be punished for it.’
Hence the 7th October operation was a welcome role-reversal. The Palestinian resistance built its capacity to take the offensive and punish Israel’s crimes. This has pushed Israeli society to face some consequences of its complicity. As one solidarity protest declared, ‘No peace on stolen land’. By analogy with anti-racist movements, ‘No Justice, No Peace’.
The role-reversal also features hostages. Since the 1967 Occupation, the Israeli military authority has been imposing a long-term ‘administrative detention’ on thousands of Palestinians. This is illegal under international law, from which Israel has been exempted in practice. Under Israel’s military rule, Palestinian political hostages have been denied any legal redress. As the only available option, the Palestinian resistance has taken Israeli captives in order to bargain for the release of their hostages. Hamas has offered to release Israeli women and children in exchange for the release of Palestinian women hostages. This is a modest step towards redressing the power imbalance between colonized and colonizer.
2. The Al-Aqsa Deluge ruptured Israel’s invincible façade
For the cross-border raid, the Palestinian resistance devised ingenious methods and shattered Israel’s invincible façade (see article by Ahmed Abu Artema),Hamas’ military wing, The Al-Qassam Brigades, organized paragliders to cross over the border wall and land in Israeli colonies, evading Israeli surveillance (see the film).
Apparently the Brigades have learned from anti-colonial struggles such as in Algeria and Vietnam. The Al-Aqsa Deluge has an analogy with the 1968 Tet offensive, when 85,000 combatants staged a surprise attack all across South Vietnam. Although the insurgency was eventually defeated, it gained a psychological victory by frightening the US colonial forces and creating doubts about a military solution.
Through the Al-Aqsa Deluge, Palestinians likewise disoriented the colonizers and sent Israelis a long-term message: We can drag you into the hell that you make for us and that we suffer every day (see article by Larry Haiven). When Palestinian fighters crossed the Gaza border, the IDF was ill-prepared to protect Israelis. It has been trained to act as the surveillance and police force of a settler colonial state, not to fight an innovative, highly-motivated guerrilla force.
As another reason for Israeli weakness near the Gaza border, many IDF units had been relocated to West Bank sites of Israeli pogroms, anticipating greater Palestinian protest there. The soldiers’ role has been described by Breaking the Silence, the Israeli-Palestinian organisation of ex-soldiers, as follows: ‘We send soldiers to secure settler incursions into the Palestinian city of Nablus, to chase Palestinian children in Hebron, to protect settlers as they carry out pogroms. Settlers demand that Palestinian flags are removed from the streets of Huwara; soldiers are sent to do it.’
Thus the IDF role in pogroms, alongside Palestinian protest against them, created a greater opportunity for the Gaza cross-border operation. Indeed, resistance at many sites can weaken the colonizer’s capacity. Having lost its invincible façade, Israel may face greater civil insubordination, which has the greatest potential to subvert the settler-colonial apartheid regime.
3. Israel’s war crimes still enjoy legal impunity
In response to the cross-border operation, the Israeli Prime Minister declared, ‘Israel is at war against Hamas’. In reality the regime has been waging a continuous unilateral war against the Palestinian people since the 1948 Nakba, and especially since 1967, while claiming to target only ‘terrorist groups’. The Israeli government has now escalated its military attacks and material restrictions on Gaza. The Prime Minister further declared, “All of the places which Hamas is deployed, hiding and operating in, that wicked city, we will turn them into rubble”. As well as being genocidal, this offensive endangers the Israeli captives; the Israeli regime gives priority to taking revenge over saving Israeli lives.
Full support for the Israeli regime has been the predictable response of major imperialist powers, often euphemistically called ‘the international community’ (especially the US, UK, Germany and the EU). They have sanitised Israel’s criminal project as its ‘right to self-defence’ against terrorism, thus inverting the political reality.
Throughout Israel’s violations of international law over the past half-century, UN Security Council Resolutions have simply asked Israel to desist, with no enforcement. In effect, major Western powers have exempted Israel from international law; they have likewise exempted themselves and any regime that serves their strategic interests. As a major vendor of arms and ‘security’ systems, Israel helps to spread political repression, destruction and death worldwide; it has become an attractive partner for the West’s R&D and business.
By contrast, major Western powers target sanctions at states which threaten or defy their interests. This explains the West’s inconsistent responses to war crimes by Israel and Russia, for example. Moreover, major Western powers have rewarded Israeli’s crimes with R&D cooperation, arms sales, political alliances and diplomatic favours.
Politically speaking, there is a single standard – supporting any Israeli crime – which results in legal double-standards. It is necessary but ineffectual to demand that international law be applied to Israel: to be enforced by whom? its partners in war crimes?
4. Expand BDS against international collusion
The 2005 Palestinian call for BDS identified the fundamental problem, namely: Israel’s settler-colonial apartheid regime, which has enjoyed legal impunity through collusion by major Western powers. Therefore, the BDS movement has sought to undermine Israel’s international support in all its forms: military, economic, sports, cultural events, and academic links. Outside Israel-Palestine, the BDS campaign is the only available means to promote Palestinian rights and to apply international law. Any restriction on BDS means collusion with the settler-colonial apartheid regime and its war crimes.
The BDS campaign is necessary to deter or end collusion by governments, institutions and companies. In the UK, Palestine Action has shown a way forward by sabotaging Elbit Systems at many sites. Such efforts can be expanded against all forms of collusion. To the extent that Palestinian resistance and external solidarity weakens the settler-colonial apartheid regime, the just alternative lies in One Democratic State with equal rights for everyone who lives in historic Palestine.
