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On ethnic cleansing and land theft

4 0
28.01.2025

The pattern is familiar. Israel tightens the screws. Palestinians resist. Israel, under the pretext of self-defence, massacres Palestinians, steals their land to add to its ever expanding fluid borders, and rewrites history.

I listen to Trump’s shameless call for Jordan and Egypt to take the Palestinians of Gaza. It could be temporary, he says, and I think ‘And pigs might fly.’ I listen to him describe the beauty of Gaza with its mild weather and location by the sea, and I think ‘Gaza is not yours. It is not a piece of real estate Daddy left you’. I listen to his brazen talk of Gaza’s wonderful prospects once it has been ‘cleaned’, and I think ‘The Palestinians are today’s untermensch’. I turn the television off and I reflect on the familiar pattern, on a process that has always worked like clockwork. Provocation, resistance, ethnic cleansing, land theft and rewriting of history. Repeat.

Dahlia Scheindlin writes about Israel’s well-established pattern of leveraging wars for annexation Hypothetical, but Plausible: How to End the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict for Good, Right Now – Israel News – Haaretz.com ‘If Israel maintains its current path, it will soon complete the de facto annexation of the West Bank. The cease-fire arrangement in Gaza will collapse after the first stage, the hostages will die, fighting resumes and Israel establishes a military government to occupy Gaza, with settlements to follow. The Palestinian national movement is smashed, Israel becomes a theocratic imperial actor ruling through subjugation of noncitizens mounting permanent insurgency, while suppressing residual dissent and opposition among its citizens forever.’

‘This option should no longer sound shocking – and certainly not to readers of this column. Until recently, no global force proved........

© Pearls and Irritations


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