After 75 years of the Nakba... back to square one

75 years have passed since the Nakba of the Palestinian people, and the Zionist gangs carried out one of the largest ethnic cleansing operations in the twentieth century, which resulted in the destruction and removal of no less than 520 Palestinian towns and villages, the implementation of more than 50 brutal massacres, and the forcing of 70% of the Palestinians to leave, To become more than 6.5 million refugees deprived of return to their homeland.

The Zionist movement did not stop its aggressive expansion, and in 1967 it occupied what remained of Palestine, the West Bank, including Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, in addition to the occupied Golan. However, that aggression, in particular, led to the unification of the struggle of all Palestinians at home and abroad, and the crystallization of the unifying Palestinian national character insisting on achieving freedom and self-determination. The overarching Palestinian goal, adopted by the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization, was to achieve return and establish a democratic state over all of historic Palestine.

It followed that the Palestinian national liberation movement and the PLO were subjected to great international pressure, to abandon the goal of a single democratic state, and to accept the so-called “two-state solution”, whose content, at best, is the end of the occupation and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, i.e. on the 22nd. % of the land of historic Palestine, less than half of what was approved by the United Nations partition project, which gave the Palestinians 44%, when they owned 84% of the land of Palestine.

The acceptance by the PLO leadership of the "two-state solution" paved the way towards the Oslo Accords that were signed in 1993, which was, from the Zionist point of view, the best way to contain the first popular uprising and its consequences, subjecting the right of return to bargaining, as well as state borders, the future of Jerusalem, settlements, and security.

When the Zionist project began to colonize Palestine and implement a colonial, uprooting, substitutional occupation, its main weapon and means were settlement colonies, and the seizure of Palestinian lands by fraud at times, and by armed force, massacres and arbitrary laws in most cases. Since 1948, the Zionist movement has reduced Palestinian ownership of land in what became "Israel" from 82% to only 3.5%, and is still pursuing Palestinian communities to seize more of their lands. With the occupation of the West Bank, Israel immediately began implementing its settlement projects at an escalating pace, and the major sin of the Palestinian negotiators when they signed the Oslo Accord was that they did not stick to the condition of a comprehensive cessation of settlements before signing any agreement, in contrast to the position of Haider Abdel Shafi, who headed the official Palestinian delegation to the Madrid Conference.

Consequently, a reprehensible situation arose in which Israel continued to negotiate and buy time, in parallel with the rapid expansion of settlements in the West Bank, including Jerusalem, until the number of settlers increased from 121,000 when the Oslo agreement was signed to more than 750,000 today.

Settlement did not stop except in the Gaza Strip after 2005 due to its small area, which does not exceed 1% of the land of Palestine, and because of the density of the Palestinian population in it, and the inability of Israel to bear the escalating resistance in it.

Today, no objective observer can fail to realize that what Israel has done and is still doing in the West Bank is no different from what it did in the lands of 1948, that is, it continues to implement and expand the uprooting and expanding settler colonialism, and continues the settlement project itself without concealing its intentions to reject the existence of any Palestinian entity. Independent between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, and after it halted negotiations (since 2014) that had exhausted their purposes by containing the Intifada and deceiving the Palestinians and the world.

As for the international community, especially the West, which continues to pay lip service to the idea of a “two-state solution,” it has not exercised, and is not exercising, any actual pressure on Israel to stop settlement expansion, annexation, and Judaization in Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank. Thus, the Palestinians are facing a situation in which they demand adherence to the two-state solution, while they are watching Israel's devouring of their lands and an unprecedented settlement expansion that kills and destroys any possibility of an independent Palestinian state in the occupied territories.

The major dilemma facing the Zionist movement is its failure, despite its seizure of land by armed force, in forcing the Palestinians to emigrate more and leave, and the biggest failure appears to be Israel. On the other hand, the greatest achievement of the Palestinian people is that the number of Palestinians today on the land of historical Palestine is slightly greater than the number of Israeli Jews. And while the Zionist movement continues its strategy of fragmenting the Palestinians by separating the Gaza Strip from the West Bank, Jerusalem from its surroundings, and the interior from the occupied territories, and dividing the West Bank itself into 224 islands or ghettos separated by more than 645 barriers, the apartheid wall, and racist settlements and roads, Intellectually and on the ground, a state of unity emerges in the Palestinian vision, which transcends the divisions created by the Oslo Accords, and the retreat of the role of the Liberation Organization and its preoccupation with an authority under occupation from the tasks of the national liberation movement.

This unified vision rebels against the attempt of Israel and international parties supporting it to keep the Palestinians imprisoned in the cage of the impossible "two-state solution", to give Israel the necessary time to destroy that solution, or what is left of its possibilities. The unified vision is based on the principle of the unity of the struggle (and goals) of the Palestinian people, which Israel reaffirmed by imposing the apartheid regime as a solution to its demographic dilemma, and which international human rights organizations unanimously agreed that it persecutes not only the Palestinians of the occupied territories, but also those living in the 1948 territories and those forcibly refugees. outside. In fact, the Oslo agreement divided the Palestinians and sought to convince them that Palestine is only the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, or some of them, while the Palestinians’ steadfastness on the land of Palestine, and their joint struggle against the system of apartheid and racial discrimination, restores the unity of the Palestinian people with all its components.

Therefore, the return became legitimate to the roots of the Palestinian cause, and to the only logical and practical goal that fulfills the aspirations of all components and parts of the Palestinian people, which is ending the occupation and achieving the return of all Palestinian refugees to their homes from which they were expelled, and the overthrow of the entire system of apartheid and racial discrimination and the establishment of a single democratic state in which there are equals. Everyone is on all of historic Palestine.

After 75 years of the Nakba, we return to square one, for the Zionist movement to face its worst nightmares, with the return of comprehensive awareness to the Palestinian people, against whom it practiced all kinds of oppression, injustice, displacement and enslavement.