Surrender or Starve?

palestine key

This vile ultimatum that’s been the undercurrent of the so very well touted ‘Deal Of The Century’ has a touch of the deja vu for me. Obviously I’ve seen it before. To be exact, over 71 years ago when the Hagganah Zionist terrorist organisation, after committing massacre after massacre in Palestine in 1948, pursued the fleeing Palestinians who were advancing towards my place of birth, Jenin. The threat then was ‘LEAVE OR DIE’.

Some of us did leave. Some of us did die. Some of us stayed and some of us are still trying to return to our homes, farms, villages and towns in Palestine only to be denied over and over and over again. All of this, despite the Right of Return being clearly enshrined in United Nations Resolution, 194 of December 11th 1948, which stated that “refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.” (Article 11).

Not only did the ‘government responsible’, Israel not honour this clear obligation it continued ethnically cleansing Palestine, conquering further parts of Palestine and expelling yet more Palestinians.

They see the very word ‘Palestinians’ as an existential threat to their state. They see the Right of Return as an existential threat to their state. They see the 5,000,000 refugees scattered around the Middle East as an existential threat to their state. They see the one-state solution as an existential threat to their state. They see the two-state solution as an existential threat to their state. They see any solution that does not reaffirm and cement the supremacy of their colonial, Jewish, Apartheid state as an existential threat.

They tried wars. Their tried siege. They tried deportation, house demolition, incarceration and deprivation and when the Palestinians did not surrender a new doctrine had to be found. And this is where the ‘Deal of the Century’ comes in. Who better to champion this new wave of ethnic cleansing than the most powerful empire known to man, the United States of America? Enter hardened Zionist, Mr Mr Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of the President and his Special Envoy on Israel, closely followed by Mr Jason Greenplatt, another Zionist and the President’s advisor on Israel along with the most aggressive of Zionists, and now a resident of Jerusalem, the Ambassador of the United States to Israel, Mr. David Friedman. A trio made in hell. Don’t you agree?

Mr Kushner, prime mover of ‘The Deal of The Century’ was asked in an interview whether he believes the Palestinians are capable of governing themselves without Israeli interference. Mr Kushner responded “That’s a very good question. … The hope is, is that over time, they can become capable of governing.” Clearly, Mr Kushner sees us Palestinians as intellectual inferiors to the white/supremacist colonisers of South Africa, the American South and now Israel personified by himself and his fellow Zionists. Has this intellectual pygmy never heard of Edward Said, Ghassan Kanafani, Mahmoud Darwish, Toufik Zayyad, Ibrahim Abu Lughd, Hisham Sharabi, Naji Al-Ali, or Fadwa Touqan?—to mention but a few Palestinian minds.

Haider Eid, Associate Professor of Political Sciences at Al Aqsa University in Gaza, summed up Mr Kushner and his entourage in a recent article in Mondo Weiss.

“Palestinians, for white, rich kids like Kushner, are not genuine and authentic human beings, like Ashkenazi Israelis because they do not produce bombs and machines. Thus, they simply cannot govern themselves. But they are, of course responsible for the tragedy in their lives from 1948 until today. Israel, with the U.S., has been trying to civilize them.”

The extremely civilised American, David Friedman, an active investor in the illegal settlements in the West Bank and current United States Ambassador to Israel, not only denied that the West Bank is under occupation, but topped it up in a recent interview with the New York Times saying Israel has the right to annex part of the West Bank.

Is that part of the surrender ultimatum, Mr Friedman?

Talking of occupation, yesterday Mr Friedman’s opposite, Mr Ron Dermer, the Israeli Ambassador to the United States explained that Israel’s occupation of Palestine is “good for them”. Just like the US occupation of Germany and Japan the people grew to like it, he maintained.

“It was imposed,” he said, “ then they understood it was good for them…..Our situation is different than America’s situation; this is not a threat thousands of miles away. This is right next door, so Israel’s security service, Israel’s military, is going to have to have control west of the Jordan River, period.”

Another form of surrender, Mr Dermer?

From all the above it is clear as day that what the Zionists, all over the world, want is not a solution but a surrender.

As for the starvation? It’s all there for everyone to see. From the early days of the attack and siege on Gaza the Israelis said that they would keep the 2,000,000 inhabitants of Gaza on a ‘survival’ diet. The people of Gaza are denied even the bare minimum for survival. Clean water. Food. Medicine.

The Trump Administration, to ensure the starvation takes hold, has not only stopped any aid to the Palestinian Authority and the hospitals in Jerusalem, but starved UNRWA, the only available line of survival for over 5000,000 Palestinian refugees of funds. The USA has also gone into the offensive against the United Nations Human Rights Organisation which has dared to say that what goes on in Gaza could amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

We Palestinians are made of sterner stuff than they think or would imagine. Surrender we will not. Starve? Maybe, but still we shall endure and we shall prevail.

Jafar M Ramini is a Palestinian writer and political analyst, based in London, presently in Perth, Western Australia. He was born in Jenin in 1943 and was five years old when he and his family had to flee the terror of the Urgun and Stern gangs. Justice for the people of Palestine is a life-long commitment.

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