Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian-American Congresswoman was censured by the U.S.House…because she dared to speak up for the people of Palestine. In a rare move, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a motion of censure against one of its members on November 7. It voted 234-188 to censure Rashida Tlaib, a three-term Democrat politician. Her tweet “From the river to the sea – Palestine will be free” was interpreted by the right-wing in the Congress to demonise her as an anti-Semite. She eloquently spoke to elucidate what the phrase really meant …that the State of Palestine should be free of apartheid.
The never-ending chaos in the Middle East had started with the strategic design of the Western powers who emerged as the victors in the World War II. They wanted to implant a Jewish state in the midst of the Arab nations. If given a choice, most of the European Jews would have preferred to emigrate to the United States instead of a land in the third world. But that would not have suited the strategic purpose of the imperialist regimes.
Holocaust of the Jews was used as an alibi to allow the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous people of Palestine. In 1948 the Nakba (Catastrophe) was allowed to happen as hundreds of thousands of people were forcibly driven out from their lands. One can Google to see how the U.S. President Harry Truman was openly advocating the eviction of the Palestinians. Showing the map, he said, “Palestine could not be given on a silver plate. You cannot remove 5 or 6 million people and fill it up 5 or 6 million people in one shot. It could be done in small doses…”
The 1947 United Nations plan to divide Palestine, into a Jewish state and an Arab state could never become a reality. The unending urge of the Zionist regime to usurp the lands of the native people was the stumbling block, which was shamelessly supported by the U.S.
When the Likud party won the elections in 1977, Ariel Sharon, who was serving as a Defense General, took the Agriculture ministry. One might have wondered what purpose a defense man had in mind to take up the agriculture ministry. He put in place the settlement projects to wipeout Palestinian villages. Thousands of settlements were built to change the facts on the ground. Israel is doing the settlements even to this day.
Israel knows that “if you keep changing the facts on the ground…and if the conditions are made so difficult…the objective of two-state plan could never be implemented”.
When Oslo Accord was signed in 1994, it appeared that a two-state solution was possible. It was agreed by the PLO Chief Yasser Arafat to settle-down for East Jerusalem, West Bank and Gaza as the Palestine State, though it was a much diminished part. One of the conditions of the Accord was that there will be free movement in the territory and there will be no settlements in any of these areas. But from the very next day Oslo Accord was signed, free passage was invalidated, apartheid wall was started to be built around West Bank…and East Jerusalem increasingly was encroached upon.
When Israel annexed more Arab lands after the six-day war of 1967, the U.S. utilised this as an opportunity to make peace between Israel and the warring nations. Egypt and Jordan were the first to fall prey to the American pressure and to mend relations with Israel.
In 2020, Donald Trump initiated Abraham Accords, which resulted in the establishment of full diplomatic relations by Bahrain, Morocco and U.A.E with Israel. There were ‘back door’ quid pro quo dealings by these monarchies for mending their ties with Israel. For example, Morocco was allowed ‘legalized’ occupation of Western Sahara. Even the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman was on the verge of normalizing relations with Israel at the behest of Biden Administration. Little did the Arab nations realize, that Normalisation of relations with Israel would mean – the last nail in the coffin of the Palestine State!
Israel was viewing the proximity with its ‘new friends’ as an additional validation of seizure of Gaza and West Bank. The betrayal of Arab nations to the Palestine cause was disgraceful. Therefore, what Hamas has done on October 7 was a “do or die” moment.
The pertinent question is ‘what is the viable solution to this imbroglio’? The UN Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples (1960) states: ‘The process of national liberation is irresistible and irreversible’. History has shown that no occupying force can suppress the aspirations of the people to liberate themselves. The U.S forces had faced humiliating defeats in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, because people in those countries had refused to surrender. Even if Israel succeeds in dismantling Hamas, though it is nowhere near its avowed mission, will there be an end to the resistance of the Palestinians?
The two-state theory was a myth and it was never on the cards of the Western powers. They are committed to a “THREE STATE” solution…as envisaged in 1948 by the then U.S. President Harry Truman…to push the Palestinians to Jordan on one-side and drive the Gazans to the Sinai desert of Egypt on the other side…and make the rest to flee to Lebanon. The true and viable alternative is the One State solution, to go back to the Historical Palestine where the Muslims, Jews and Christians live in peace and dignity with full democratic rights! That is what the people across the nations are taking to the streets to chant the slogan ‘From the river to the sea – Palestine will be Free’.