Gazing on the strangled way before the CleansOcide in Palestine

Without him dwelling on the issue lengthily, in his speech in late October 2023, when UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres argued that the October 7 Operation Al-Aqsa Flood “did not happen in a vacuum” he, as a knowledgeable man, must have not hinted only to the ongoing Palestinian Nakba since the “Climax of the Nakba” between 1947-1949, rather at least since the criminal issuance of the Balfour letter by colonial Britain back in November 1917. Mr. Guterres attempted to contextualize, albeit briefly, for you cannot familiarize yourself with the establishment of UNRWA in 1949 without going back three decades before the criminal factors and brutal catalysts. 

It is highly likely that every undergraduate student understands that providing historical background is necessary for the understating of every case study of political legal injustice. However, this is neither a sufficient mediation nor professionally moral. This article neither intends to problematize the single  October 7, 2023, operation carried out by factions of the Palestinian Resistance in the Gaza Strip nor pretends to act as an international commission inquiry about the number of people killed, their origins, who killed them, and how.

Rather, this article intends to help those receptive Western decision-makers, academicians, and public figures normally engaged in international conflict to reflect on their shortcomings and moral inaction and ask if they have been complicit in the ongoing CleansOcide against Palestinians decades before October 2023.

The current reflection derives from and is based on an article I wrote and published in Arabic on the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, back in May 2023, i.e. five months before the Palestinian operation was conducted. Having re-read the article, one can safely argue that the world’s negligence of its legal and moral obligations toward Palestine and the suffering of the Palestinian people has significantly influenced the Palestinian decision in opting for an armed operation in the absence of hope and action. Western academia, in particular, prides itself on calling and recalling to understand the sociological, psychological, and economic impact on the lives of human societies (e.g., physical and environmental, etc).

We hardly hear any leading Western figure stating loudly (let alone Western mainstream media) the inhuman political, legal, economic, and psychological suffering the Palestinians have been enduring for over a century. It may well be that their Western orientalist approach makes them think that these contexts and paradigms apply only to Western societies rather than the Orient. They do not apply to the Palestinian people because of the Western guilt towards European Jews following the holocaust, which was part of WWII when 50 to 60 million people were killed.

In my article a year ago (May 2023), I wrote that “the Israeli occupation has besieged 2.3 million Palestinians by land, sea, and air in the largest and most densely populated open prison in the world for 17 years, which is the Palestinian Gaza Strip. In the absence of a port or airport, and with control over the crossings, the Israeli occupation controls their most basic daily rights, such as their movement, work, quality of life, development, agriculture, industry (and fishing), water, electricity, food, and medical supplies. In addition, the Israeli occupation repeatedly bombs them with compact and prohibited weapons, slaughters their women and children, and, as usual, tries to sell a distorted media narrative while pressuring them to close social media. The Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, located in southern Palestine, where the spark of the first Palestinian intifada broke out in mid-December 1987 (and I was at the time the journalist who announced its outbreak), are a pioneering and oppressed part of the resisting Palestinian people as a whole, whose population in the world reaches about 15 million.”

In addition to the Gaza Strip, another part of the Palestinian population is suffering under various forms of military occupation in eastern Palestine that the Israelis occupied in June 1967 (the West Bank and eastern al-Quds) and the apartheid in 1948 (as the Israeli occupation controls all historic Palestine). It had imposed a military rule on western Palestine, which it occupied in 1948 and replaced the rule with other methods of control on December 1, 1966, that were applied immediately to eastern Palestine when it occupied it six months later in June 1967.

The Israeli occupation still renews (through the Knesset) the state of emergency in western Palestine every half year, affecting Palestinian citizens and revoking the right of return of those still living in refugee camps within Palestine and the neighboring Arab countries, such as Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria, and the diaspora across Arab countries, the Americas, Canada, Australia, Africa, and Asia, since the “Climax of the Nakba” 76 years ago.

The Palestinian people, in Palestine in particular, and also everywhere (each according to their circumstances, energies, the laws of the country in which they live, or the oppression in effect) are still struggling to regain their rights and fulfill their basic human rights, including the right to return, freedom, self-determination, and independence with al-Quds as their capital.

Despite all the political deceptions (such as the Oslo and Paris Agreements of 1993-1994), the Israeli occupation administration never agreed at any stage to a two-state or one-state solution at all (to remind the readers that these words were written before the flood of Zionist Israeli hate speech and blatant demands to either expel, kill, or nuke the Gaza Strip, in addition to the genocidal intent discourse carried out by Israeli political figures and repeated in the order of the International Court of Justice in the Hague in January 2024). 

Instead, I continued, “They constantly seize geography (confiscating/plundering lands, expanding settlements, demolishing homes and schools, and displacing entire Palestinian villages). The Zionist occupation also carries out the crime of ethnic cleansing against demographics: liquidating individuals and groups and controlling all natural resources.”

The Israeli occupation continues to work tirelessly to constantly change the features of the lands/terrain, imposing “facts” on the ground, and practicing identity theft particularly that of antiquities and architecture (such as theft of bricks from old building sites, art, gastronomy, embroidery, music, etc.) in its various forms. Furthermore, “Israel” alters the history presented to the global public opinion in one of the largest political marketing theft and deception operations.

Every day, not only do the Israelis commit more war crimes against humanity in Palestine, but they also destabilize the entire Middle East region.

Prolonging the Israeli occupation of Palestine is an illegal and immoral process. Indeed, it is a heinous crime and a disgrace to everyone who promotes the value system that calls for freedom and justice but does not implement them in Palestine. Therefore, the massacres against the Palestinian people must cease immediately, and the occupation must come to a swift end, by an act from the United Nations, the international community, the Quartet, the European Union, NATO, and the League of Arab States.

It’s deeply frustrating and morally infuriating to witness the ongoing disregard for the warnings we’ve been voicing for decades. Despite our efforts to draw attention to the situation, it seems the world continues to believe it can simply “manage the conflict” and maintain control over the Palestinians indefinitely with empty rhetoric and immoral tactics. Before they accuse Palestinians, each Western politician, public figure-intellectual, or religious leader should ask himself: How have I been contributing to the ongoing catastrophic CleansOcide, and to what extent could I be complicit in war crimes?