Shafeeq Ghabra

The Israeli war on Gaza that began last July 8 produced a new consensus among Palestinians. Their most important priority was to break the seven-year Israeli siege that strangled Gaza and its 1.8 million residents, and alter the conditions affecting Palestinians under occupation in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where more than 2.5 million Palestinians live. What we saw is a paradigm shift in the Palestinian liberation movement, both in the land of Palestine and the diaspora. 

Palestinian steadfastness in Gaza challenged the impasse created by Israel’s right-wing government, led by Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu’s policy undermined the two-state solution through settlement activity (reaching 750,000 in the West Bank and East Jerusalem), while implicating the Palestinian Authority through security coordination with Israel and increasing Palestinian dependency on the occupation.

 

Previously, the stalemate was a result of Israeli repression in the West Bank, including attempts to liquidate the military wings of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine during the second (Al-Aqsa) intifada from 2000 to 2005. Most militants involved in the West Bank were killed in battle with the Israeli army, assassinated or imprisoned. A political vacuum had thus existed there since 2005. But when Hamas gained momentum again and won the popular election of 2006 in both the West Bank and Gaza, a unity government was formed. The government did not last and collapsed as a result of Israeli and U.S. pressures. 

Israel’s attempt to impose a “solution” to the conflict through further control of the West Bank, while weakening the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas, encouraged it to keep Gaza under siege, after Hamas’ successful takeover of the strip. Since 2008 Israel has waged war three times against Gaza.

 

Prior to the start of the most recent war, Hamas, according to Israeli assessments, was at its nadir, in part because of the open hostility of the military regime in Egypt toward the Muslim Brotherhood, an ally of the Palestinian Islamist group. This was reinforced by the Egyptian blockade of Gaza and destruction of the smuggling tunnels along the Egyptian- Gaza border after the coup against President Mohammad Morsi in July 2013. Egyptian policy, along with the Israeli blockade, negatively affected the Palestinians’ ability to manage Gaza’s economy. Furthermore, relations between Hamas, Syria and Iran had soured because of Tehran’s support for President Bashar Assad’s regime and Hamas’ opposition to the Syrian regime’s actions. 

Before the Gaza war the situation was favorable to Israel, as a number of Arab governments, fearful of the grassroots effect of the Muslim Brotherhood, had rallied against the group and consequently toward Hamas in Gaza. Hamas’ reconciliation last June with the Palestinian Authority to form a national-unity government reflected its leadership’s pragmatism. Israeli leaders, fearing Palestinian unity would challenge the occupation, concluded that all indicators were favorable for the elimination of Hamas as the last symbol of Palestinian defiance. 

Israeli control of Palestinian land is the cornerstone of its colonial and apartheid approach toward Palestinians. In the West Bank and East Jerusalem Israeli dominance has been bolstered by an illegal separation wall and other forms of segregation and settlement activity. 

Meanwhile, Israel’s subjugation of Palestinian citizens of Israel has forced the latter to live under a system of racism, discrimination and Judaization. Furthermore, there are hundreds of thousands of diaspora Palestinians living in refugee camps waiting for a solution to the 1948 defeat, or Nakba. Millions of others await the right to return to a land from which their ancestors were forcibly expelled. While it may not be possible to apply this to the letter, a political solution would devise arrangements to accommodate a right of return.

 

Israel knows that more that half of Gaza’s population are descendents of Palestinian refugees expelled in 1948. The situation in Gaza is a cruel reminder of the legacy of 1948, as Israel persists in the displacement and disproportionate killing of Palestinians. 

While the Gaza war demonstrated the ability of a small population to continue to resist a much more powerful army, Israel faces a dilemma now that a more permanent truce has taken hold. Whatever happens in the coming weeks, Israel is an occupying power destined to trigger resentment and resistance by the Palestinians. This, almost by definition, will provoke a global backlash against Israel’s colonial policies.

 

This is why the Gaza conflict was only the beginning of a new paradigm in the Palestinian movement in pursuit of justice, freedom, equality and political rights. It is accompanied by challenges to the siege of Gaza, the separation wall, settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem, and Israel’s ongoing racism directed against its Arab Palestinian citizens. 

This project will include Hamas and Fatah, Islamic Jihad and all the others, including the Palestinian Authority and its leadership in one form or another. The Palestinians will have to rebuild the leadership structure of the Palestinian liberation movement, in particular the Palestine Liberation Organization, while defining clear and inclusive roles for Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Palestinian diaspora. The boycott campaigns against Israel and international solidarity with the Palestinians will be central to future civil resistance. 

The steadfastness of the Palestinian people remains the cornerstone in the quest for liberation from occupation, discrimination and apartheid. This situation could easily evolve into a one-state, two-people struggle instead of pursuit of the two-state solution, which has permitted the continuation of the Israeli occupation and suppression of the Palestinians.