Don't lose your bearings in understanding the conflict with Zionism

Dr. Mustafa Barghouti

In the midst of the intense conflict taking place on the land of Palestine and its surroundings, misunderstandings arise from time to time in the understanding of the nature of the opponent facing the peoples of the region, foremost among them the Palestinian people.

Of course, conceptual confusion always leads to policy disruption and confusion, or to the promotion of misleading ideas to justify weakness in the face of challenges.

In order not to lose the strategic vision amidst tactical reactions and fleeting and temporary emotions, the following basic rules must be clarified to understand the behavior of the leaders of Israel and the Zionist movement in general.

First, Israel is not just an entity created by certain historical circumstances, but rather a colonial settlement project based on the imaginary Talmudic idea that Palestine, Jordan, large parts of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and northern Saudi Arabia are the Greater Land of Israel that God promised to the Jews thousands of years ago, even though only a small number of them lived there for a short period of time. There is no place within the borders of the “imagined Greater Israel” for the Palestinian people or any other peoples.

This project - the idea - is the basic reference established in the brain and mind of all leaders of the Zionist movement from its right to its left, if there is one, and it is the ideological basis for all Israeli policies, practices and wars.

Secondly, the implementation of the idea is subject to the balance of power, and may involve temporary solutions and pauses, during which Israel and the Zionist movement will be forced to accept it due to the existing balance of power, such as peace agreements with some Arab countries or temporary armistice agreements. However, all pauses and temporary agreements do not in any way cancel the aforementioned basic project, but rather serve to achieve its ultimate goals.

Thirdly, the Zionist project, since its first contemporary beginnings, has been and continues to be linked to Western colonial states and projects that saw it as a natural strategic ally to control the peoples and wealth of the region and the Middle East in general, and to prevent the crystallization of an organized and unified force in it, and saw it as the source of strength and support without which it is impossible to implement the Zionist project and transform it from an idea into reality.

The interaction between the Zionist idea and the colonial powers began in the days of Napoleon Bonaparte and his campaign in the region, and extended through flirting with the German Emperor, and even tried with the Ottoman Empire, which rejected him, but the deepest and strongest alliances that succeeded were with the Zionist evangelical thought in Britain, and after that in the United States, in which the Zionist movement found its desire and the strongest sources of support and material, intellectual and ideological backing for it.

Since its inception, the Zionist movement has continued to play a functional colonial role to serve colonial and imperial interests in the region and the world. It was the striking arm and claw of British and French colonialism in the 1956 aggression against Egypt and the Algerian revolution, and then in 1967 to strike the Arab liberation movement. It was the greatest ally of the dictatorial Shah of Iran and the trainer of the repressive SAVAK apparatus. It participated in the kidnapping and liquidation of the Moroccan activist Ben Barka, and became the closest ally of the racist apartheid regime in South Africa... and the list goes on.

Fourth, although important parts of the Zionist movement, especially in the thirties and forties of the last century, wore leftist cloaks to serve their purposes, due to the global balance of power at the time, and the inclinations of Jewish groups towards leftist thought due to their exposure to anti-Semitic persecution as minorities in Europe, the Zionist ideology remained essentially a fundamentalist religious ideology, and the fanatical and extremist Talmudic Zionist thought constituted one of the most important drivers of its behavior at this stage. Indeed, the extremist Israeli religious parties became one of the most important elements influencing Israeli policies, its settlement expansion, and its aggressive military tendencies.

Fifth, the Zionist movement has never been a local movement, but rather a global movement that works tirelessly to recruit and exploit Jews all over the world and is now recruiting large parts of Zionist evangelicals, especially in the United States and Britain, and exploiting their financial and economic influence to control elections and their results in Western countries in particular, but not exclusively. The most prominent example of this is what the Zionist lobby does to influence legislative and presidential elections in the United States.

Sixth, as the conflict with the Palestinian people and the peoples of the region intensified, a dangerous shift took place in the Zionist movement, whose ideology had always been characterized by extreme racism, towards fascism. The genocide that was and is being carried out in the Gaza Strip, the projects of comprehensive ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, and other war crimes such as collective punishment and starvation can only be explained as the product of a dangerous fascist ideology and policy that the world has not witnessed since World War II. This shift is completely consistent with similar shifts in other Western countries towards right-wing, racist, and fascist fanaticism.

Seventh, the ongoing settlement and settlement expansion in the West Bank is not a passing phenomenon, or limited to an extremist group, but rather it is the actual application of the entire settlement project that repeats in the West Bank, including Jerusalem, what it did in terms of settlement expansion and re-engineering of the geographical and demographic reality in the 1948 territories. It is doing the same thing in the occupied Golan and will implement it in any geographical area it is able to occupy and control.

Eighth, the Zionist movement and the rulers of Israel are constantly prepared to launch the most severe and fierce attacks against anyone who resists their original plan, regardless of the form of resistance, whether armed, popular, peaceful, or even intellectual and verbal. These attacks use not only force and armed violence, but also media and incitement systems and lobbies, whose influence is often stronger than military tools, to impose the dominance of the Zionist narrative of the ongoing conflict, to mobilize support and endorsement for Israel and the Zionist movement, and to suppress the forces and movements that support the struggle of the Palestinian people. Demonizing the opponent, distorting his image, and branding him as a terrorist are the most important tools of the campaigns launched against anyone who resists the Zionist project.

What we see today of incitement and demonization of Hamas and other resistance forces, and through that the demonization of the entire Palestinian people, is just an example of behavior that was repeated with other forces in the past. If Hamas had acquiesced and accepted, for example, the Oslo Accords and recognized Israel, and accepted coexistence with the occupation and settlement, Israeli behavior toward it would have changed, but that would not guarantee its survival or the survival of the Palestinian people in Palestine. Before Hamas, the Fatah movement and other Palestinian forces and the PLO were described as terrorists, and are still classified as terrorists in the US Congress, because they participated in resisting the Zionist project. Everyone remembers how the late martyr Yasser Arafat became a symbol of Zionist attacks, despite his approval of the Oslo Accords, only to discover later that it was a trap, and how he was classified as the greatest terrorist after he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, then he was besieged and isolated until he was assassinated.

There is no room here to go into more detail in explaining these eight mentioned rules, but it is indispensable to understand them deeply and comprehend their content for anyone who wants to understand, deal with, or participate in the existential conflict taking place in Palestine and the region.

The fundamental problem in the official Palestinian behavior, and the behavior of many regional parties, is the continued attachment to the illusion of a compromise solution with the Zionist movement, which has said and done everything possible, and carried out all possible crimes, to convey its message that there is no room for compromise solutions with the Palestinian people. It has even destroyed every project in that direction, including the Oslo Accords, which it used temporarily to change the balance of power in its favor. Although the title of the declared strategy of the current Israeli rulers, as well as the leaders of the Zionist opposition, is to resolve the conflict with the Palestinian people, and end their presence on the land of historic Palestine.

The illusion of compromise is accompanied by another illusion: that the United States can be an honest broker in the ongoing conflict, despite its constant affirmation in deeds and words that it is Israel’s strategic ally. This does not mean that it is not possible to sometimes take advantage of the tactical gaps and differences that appear from time to time between Israel and the United States, but that is one thing and considering the United States a fair broker is another.

There is only one explanation for clinging to illusions that have been repeatedly proven to be false, which is a lack of understanding of reality at best, or inability, fear, or inaction in confronting the irreplaceable task in the ongoing conflict, which is adopting a unified strategy to change the balance of power in favor of the Palestinian people and the Arab peoples, by confronting the aggressive Zionist project, instead of trying in vain to hide from confronting it and confronting its destructive effects.

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Before Hamas, the Fatah movement, other Palestinian forces, and the PLO were described as terrorists, and are still classified as terrorists in the US Congress, because they were participating in resisting the Zionist project.