Palestine without Palestinians: Rhetoric and reality?

No meaningful solution to the crisis in Gaza is possible with Netanyahu’s far-right Likud in power

“Colonialism is not a thinking machine, nor a body endowed with reasoning faculties. It is violence in its natural state, and it will yield only when confronted with greater violence” – Frantz Fannon

“Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich proposes to build around 3,000 homes in West Bank to increase settlement and cut West Bank off from East Jerusalem to ‘bury’ the idea of Palestine.” 

It is almost 680 days since Israeli genocide in Gaza commenced with weapons supplied mostly by previous colonial powers, all from Global North. Their complicity in this human tragedy is written in blood. Netanyahu’s most cruel strategy of starving children and parents to death with the ultimate objective of expelling all Palestinians from that concentration camp and absorbing the Gaza strip into Eretz Israel is the latest chapter in the five-century history of Western conquest and colonisation. Israel is the organic extension of Western imperialism, and none of these colonial powers is going to do anything to disturb that status quo. 

Is the world expected to believe that the former colonial powers, notably US, UK, France and Germany which had profited and continuing to profit by shipping weapons and military hardware to Israel do not have the strength and means to force open Netanyahu’s embargo and drive those 5,000 or so trucks said to be stocked with food and medicine to feed and cure the starving and sick Gazans? Why air drop food packages, which only make Gazans to run after them like vultures to pick and get killed by the IDF? What humbug and hypocrisy for these countries after watching in silence Israel’s carnage in Gaza since October 2023 now suddenly waking up to repeat that almost forgotten mantra of a two-state solution? Their attempt to pass a resolution at UN to recognise a Palestine state is old wine in new bottle. 

The world has lost all confidence in the UN, which has failed to live up to its expectations and become no more than a glorified but expensive international talking shop. Its agencies like the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court have no powers to implement any of their decisions, while the UN Security Council has turned out to be a theatre for shadow boxing among the five members with veto power US, UK, France, Russia and China. Over the last 58 years the first three of these shadow boxers all of whom from Global North had been reiterating like a cracked album the so called ‘two-state’ solution to the Palestine issue without making any effort to translate into action what they meant by it. 

Two-state solution is a camouflage

Students of history should realise that this art of camouflaging with verbal gimmicks is another legacy of colonialism where the colonisers promised one thing to the colonised but delivered something else and justified it as the same as what they promised. The promise of a two-state solution is also a camouflage to protect Israel’s status as an imperial agent while showing the world that these powers are working for an independent Palestine state. Even if the UN General Assembly passes the resolution in September to recognise the Palestine state, will it make any difference to stop the carnage and destruction in Gaza? Already, the chief player US has given a negative response to the resolution. That response was couched in the State Department’s announcement that US would deny visas to members of Palestinian Authority (PA) and PLO that are to be part of the governing body of the proposed Palestine state. 

US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabe put it more bluntly when he said that US will support a Palestine state elsewhere in the Middle East, because there is no space for it in Gaza and West Bank. Wasn’t that the original solution in Donald Trump’s plan to build another Riviera in Gaza? If the proponents of the two-state solution are serious, let them at least demand as a prerequisite that IDF should withdraw from Gaza at once. Without that withdrawal any resolution on Palestine is pure rhetoric and razzamatazz. Why a Palestine without Palestinians? 

Since Israel was created in 1948 the West continued to propagate the canard that Israel is the only democratic state in the Middle East. Is it because that country has its Knesset and conduct periodic elections to choose its representatives or because the way it governs its citizens, particularly the Arab minority which accounts for 21% of the total population, with equal rights and privileges as enjoyed by the Jewish 79%? Has the Western media ever dared informing the world of the systemic and structural discrimination and socioeconomic disadvantages the Arab minority is experiencing in Israel? Omar Ben Haman’s recent research piece, “The Arab Minority and Housing Exclusion in Israel” published online (21 April 2025), illustrates at least one area where this minority is facing officially sanctioned discrimination. Israel is not a democracy as Global North touts, but the only apartheid state in the Middle East. 

US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabe put it more bluntly when he said that US will support a Palestine state elsewhere in the Middle East, because there is no space for it in Gaza and West Bank. Wasn’t that the original solution in Donald Trump’s plan to build another Riviera in Gaza? If the proponents of the two-state solution are serious, let them at least demand as a prerequisite that IDF should withdraw from Gaza at once. Without that withdrawal any resolution on Palestine is pure rhetoric and razzamatazz. Why a Palestine without Palestinians? 

Hidden fact about Netanyahu’s miscalculation

There is another hidden fact about Netanyahu’s miscalculation that led to this turn of events. Global North’s so-called terror outfit Hamas, which in reality is a legitimate force of resistance against Netanyahu’s settler colonisation, was originally propped up by Netanyahu himself to counter the rising popularity of Mahmud Abbas. ‘Bibi’ was therefore a foster parent of Hamas, a fact conveniently forgotten by the two-state promoters. Under Netanyahu’s successive Likud governments work permits were issued to Gazan labourers to be employed in Israel, and more funds to support Hamas were permitted to flow in from Qatar. 

Netanyahu defended his action in the Knesset when his Likud Party members criticised his decision. By the time Netanyahu was returned to power in 2023 after the fall of Bennet-Lapid Government the number of work permits issued to Gazans had reached almost 20,000. (Tal Schneider, “For Years Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it has blown up in our face”, in The Times of Israel, 8 October 2023). Incidentally, it was the cancellation of those work permits and dismissal of Gazan labourers after October 2023, which opened the doors to Sri Lankan workers through a deal signed between Ranil Wickremesinghe and Netanyahu Government. This deal is now turning out to be a security nightmare to manage for President AKD and NPP. 

However, amidst all this humbug and hypocrisy of the West there is one positive development within Israel itself which promises a glimmer of hope for peace in Gaza and West Bank. Netanyahu’s own supporters who hitherto demanded only the return of Israeli captives languishing in the underground cells of Hamas are now rebelling against the war itself and Bibi’s plan for territorial expansion. While they are appealing to Netanyahu’s chief consultant, financier and supplier of weapons Donald Trump to stop the war, their children, Israeli teens are revolting by burning in public their draft papers and refusing to enrol for compulsory national service even at the risk of being jailed. This turn of events has set the scene for an ultimate showdown between the far-right Likud regime and a new generation of Israelis. 

Awakened generation of young men and women

If there is one positive and commendable outcome of the post-Cold War world order it is the rise of an awakened generation of young men and women who are not only outspoken against the structural injustices built into the new order, but also their willingness to risk their lives in fighting against them. Sri Lanka witnessed this development in 2022 when the Aragalaya led to the end of the ancient regime. Similarly, the revolt of the teens in Israel is part of this global phenomenon. Greta Thunberg for example, the Swedish environmental activist who led the aid carrying vessel Madlene to Gaza in June this year, but only to be arrested along with her companions before being repatriated by Netanyahu’s forces, represents an iconic figure of this new generation. Thus, the revolt of Israeli youth is an encouraging sign that a regime change in Tel Aviv is not far away. No meaningful solution to the crisis in Gaza is possible with Netanyahu’s far-right Likud in power. 

Moreover, with all the rhetoric about an independent Palestine state the reality on the ground is that nothing could be achieved unless the tyrant in White House gives his nod, and that nod in turn depends on that of his Zionist cabal whose money, power and influence pervade all over Global North including Australia. 

(The writer is a retired economist, W. Australia.)