WORLD WORLDWIDE ITALY SICILIA PALESTINE GAZA News Journal Update - (en) Italy, Sicilia Libertaria: Palestine. For a coexistence without states - R-EXISTENCE1 (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 

The carnage that bloodied the streets of Gaza in recent weeks, after
having been stopped by the truce reached between Israel and Hamas,
thanks to the mediation of Qatar and the support of the United States,
has started again and Israel has resumed bombing Gaza with the same
brutality. Unfortunately we are faced with yet another confirmation that
the suffering of populations matters nothing to states and governments.
The truce, or humanitarian pause as it is often defined, has been in
place for several days and has allowed the exchange between some of the
Israeli hostages in the hands of Hamas and the Palestinians locked up in
Israeli prisons, mostly women and children. However, it was a moment of
relief for the inhabitants of Gaza, who were thus able to supply
themselves, in an absolutely insufficient way, with food and every other
necessary good to try to survive the bombing that the Israeli government
immediately undertook at the end of the truce. The attack on November
30, at the bus stop in West Jerusalem, claimed by Hamas, gives new life
within Israel to the supporters of total war and to the immediately
proclaimed objective of annihilating Hamas.

This umpteenth Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a continuous trail of blood
from 1947 to today which has seen a state and an equipped army facing
each other in an asymmetrical way with a population sometimes armed only
with stones, probably marks a turning point full of disastrous
consequences. If the 7 October attack by Hamas was the most brutal one
could have expected, the reaction of the Zionist government was filled
with unprecedented ferocity and cynicism: killing in the throes of a fit
of revenge, without sparing anyone , women, girls, children, elderly
people, civilians, guilty only of living in Gaza. From the rubble of a
half-destroyed city it is difficult to imagine any future, not one of
coexistence but not even of détente; new violent extremisms, new
conflicts and new massacres will inevitably arise. On the one hand, a
people reduced to chains, threatened in their very existence, what
reaction can it produce other than that of further extremization, of old
and new Hamas who only in armed conflict, albeit from a situation of
inferiority, think they can obtain something, perhaps just the simple
recognition of existing. On the other, increasingly biased and
irresponsible governments that consider themselves legitimated in
pursuing real ethnic cleansing. The Nakba, the Palestinian exodus
following the birth of the State of Israel in 1948, always claimed by
the Zionist right and denied by the Israeli centre-left political
coalition, as claimed by the historian Ilan Pappé, is now openly invoked
by the government and by increasingly large populations. How to get out
of such a tangle that becomes ever more enveloping? At the moment,
contrasts prevail in which both rights and wrongs are invoked on one
side: the Nakba is contrasted with Israel's right to exist, the launch
of missiles with the control of Gaza and the occupation of new
territories, the threat and to "terrorist" attacks, the apartheid regime
and repression, in a crescendo that causes continuous carnage. Of
course, this does not mean that the condition of the Palestinians is
comparable to that of the Israelis. It seems quite obvious that in this
historical moment no one is threatening to eliminate the Israeli state;
if anyone risks dispersion it is the Palestinians, and the action of the
Israeli army in Gaza seems to outline this possibility. Not to mention
the incessant activity of Jewish settlers in the West Bank who continue
to occupy territories. In the partisan climate that emerged after the
October 7 attack, unscrupulous propaganda brought up the Shoah and
anti-Semitism to justify the crimes that the army is committing against
a defenseless population, subjected to indiscriminate bombing. This is
certainly not the way to get out of the cul de sac of a conflict that
has lasted for more than seventy years. Instead, a process should be
started that begins to reduce hostilities and friction, capable of
"resetting" a nefarious past and redesigning a future of real peaceful
coexistence. But this certainly cannot happen under the pressure of
institutions or states.

The impotence of the UN, which by statute should ensure peaceful
coexistence, is unequivocal precisely at this juncture; even the timid
stances of Secretary General Guterres have been either acrimoniously
attacked or beautifully ignored. The United States, China and Russia and
their respective satellites move on the imperialist chessboard in search
of ever new influences and wars are an opportunity, as for Russia and
Ukraine, to measure forces and gain positions. The ongoing conflict in
Palestine is no exception: it is one of the many theaters of the
perennial clash between imperialisms.

A clash that is currently operating at a distance and against the
backdrop of the conflict between Israel and Hamas, since after the first
few weeks in which it seemed that any spark could precipitate a war
involving the entire Middle East, this possibility now seems to have
been averted. However, the general picture is certainly not comforting,
the attitude of states and powers is always that of "being willing to
risk a partial conflict", as Anna Bravo claimed, with the presumption of
being able to avoid a generalized conflict, limiting oneself to warlike
skirmishes and diplomatic. But until when?

Returning to the Israeli-Palestinian question, the Israeli historian
Ilan Pappé, interviewed by various Italian newspapers, argued with great
lucidity that until Israel's colonizing attitude ceases it will not be
possible to find any solution. At the conclusion of a meeting held at
the University Library of Genoa, Pappé said: "History teaches that
decolonization is not a simple process for the colonizer. It loses its
privileges, must return the occupied lands, renounce the idea of a
mono-ethnic nation-state. Israeli pacifists think they will one day wake
up in a democratic country. It won't be that simple, the decolonization
processes are painful: peace begins when the colonizer agrees to
overturn its institutions, the constitution, the laws, the distribution
of resources. The day the colonization of Palestine ends, some Israelis
will prefer to leave, others will remain in a free territory where they
are no longer anyone's jailers. The sooner they understand this, the
less bloody this process will be. In any case, history is always on the
side of the oppressed, all colonialism is destined to end."

Yes, but it will have to be a strong stance and awareness of the
populations involved, Palestinian and Israeli, capable of rejecting
violence and distrust, and popular support outside Palestine to reverse
the course and start a real process of coexistence, without states and
without armies.

Angelo Barberi

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
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