No amount of chaos in the Middle East can ever help fulfill the wet dreams of some Israeli politicians, namely: to drive the Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza into neighboring Jordan and Egypt, respectively. The Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza are here to stay. There will be no second Nakba.
Despite all the hateful rhetoric that we are hearing from certain Israeli politicians and its echoes among some segments of the Israeli populations, the very idea of going down the road of permanent mass displacement of the Palestinians in Gaza and/or the West Bank is untenable considering Israeli social and political realities, not to mention the fact that the world, including Israel’s staunchest allies, will continue to hold her to a different set of criteria than those deployed in the case of other Middle Eastern states. The fact that Bashar Al-Assad, the head of the ruling regime in neighboring Syria, is getting away with genocide does not mean that world opinion has become so desensitized to such developments that it might be willing to turn a blind eye on a similar development in Gaza.
Just consider the current headlines:
Israel Creates ‘No Man’s Land’ in Gaza, Shrinking Strip by 40 Percent
Not about tunnels: Israeli tanks take aim at central Gaza
Pentagon expert: Getting rid of Hamas will only make things worse
Israel seeks to force 400,000 People from Homes in North Gaza
What all these articles have in common is their stress on the mass suffering endured by the Palestinians as a result of Israeli bombardment as well as the untenability of Israeli objectives in Gaza, where even toppling Hamas could lead to an even worse outcome for the Israelis as a result of the growing radicalization of the Gaza inhabitants in the face of Israeli brutality.
Indeed, as soon as hostilities are over, the displaced Palestinians in Gaza will go back to rebuild their destroyed neighborhoods, even if they have to do it in the dark. Egypt would not have them, and they would not want to go there to begin with.
What Israel is doing at this stage amounts to nothing more than an additional measure of collective punishment, to add to the ongoing siege, against a population that for years has had little say when it came to determining the actions of their leaders.
Only a just peace agreement can end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the sooner it is reached, the better for all. The madness of endless war without clearly stated objectives, or with completely untenable ones, has to stop. But can elite that has become addicted to “conflict management” and untenable wet dreams ever listen?
Meanwhile, the leaders of Hamas really need to revise its charter if they intend to be taken seriously by Western leaders and engaged as legitimate political actors. Removing any mention of destroying Israel is not “a concession to Israel,” as some would have it, but a sign that Hamas leaders have become mature enough to actually govern and develop that part of the Holy Land that is actually under their control. But here, too, we seem to be dealing with elite that is addicted to untenable wet dreams, ideological fantasies and the dividends of power at the expense of peace, development and the wellbeing of the very people in whose name they speak.
And for this, the current conflict seems likely to rage on grinding with it so many souls, wet dreams, and our very sense of humanity. Rather than bringing the benefits of Western pragmatism to our part of the world, as was heralded by some “astute” analysts so many decades ago, the Israelis seem to have succumbed to the nihilist attitudes that continue to plague its peoples. They have gone native, it seems, there is no denying it anymore, they are as indigenous and as legitimate as everybody else, and the proof: just look how fucked up they are.
Who cares about the skyscrapers of Tel Aviv, or their amazing industrial output, scientific achievements and GDP when the political philosophy prevalent among so many Israelis today has come more and more to evoke and reflect the pre-modern political thinking of their enemies?
Israel might be a democracy, and a “First World” state in a “Third World” region, but the political attitudes of its ruling elite as well as that many of its citizenry have come increasingly to resemble those of the tribalistic autocrats next door. This is why Israel, for all her military and economic might, has been defeated.
The Ammar Abdulhamid Archive 