Don’t be fooled. It’s not just Gaza
The world has been focusing on Gaza and rightfully so, as the Gaza Strip has gone from open-air prison to a giant refugee camp of starving people without shelter, food, water, nor medical supplies. But the occupation, seeing as it’s goal is to “occupy”, is trying to annex parts of Lebanon, parts of the West Bank, and other areas of Palestine. Diana Buttu via Zeteo, reminds us how “40,000 people have been forced out of their homes in West Bank cities like Jenin and Tulkarm will not be allowed to return.”
Diana recounts how she was forced out of her home in Ramallah in 2002 when tanks invaded her city, but she was allowed back into her home after a few days. That is not how it works today. She quotes Netanyahu saying how proud he is that they’re leveling the streets, and destroying homes. Israel has killed dozens of Palestinians in the West Bank this year, and the tired narrative of “Oh, it’s Hamas. They need to release the hostages.” has nothing to do with the West Bank. October 2023 was just a convenient excuse to escalate the daily violence that the IDF had been doing for years.
Diana also reminds us in that article how UNRWA, one of the last lifelines of humanitarian assistance for Palestinians, was kicked out of Jerusalem. They had been in operation since 1949 for the sole purpose of providing Palestinian refugees with education, healthcare and social support. Israel claims that UNRWA participated in the October 2023 attack, but after an investigation failed to find hard evidence, still fired 12 staff members to try and save face, and reiterated how UNRWA condemns the October 2023 attack, and that its priority is to continue lifesaving and critical services for Palestine refugees.
With Palestinians being displaced from cities in the West Bank, Diana is referring to it as Nakba 2.0 as Israel “transfers” (ethnically cleanses) the Palestinians from the West Bank.
It was never about the hostages. It’s about land. Israel wants all of it, and Vladimir Jabotinsky’s words from 1923 in his essay titled, “The Iron Wall” alludes to the philosophy of the Israelis with:
I am optimistic that they [the Arabs] will indeed be granted satisfactory assurances and that both peoples, like good neighbors, can then live in peace. But the only path to such an agreement is the iron wall, that is to say the strengthening in Palestine of a government without any kind of Arab influence, that is to say one against which the Arabs will fight. In other words, for us the only path to an agreement in the future is an absolute refusal of any attempts at an agreement now.
Unless Israel loses its support from the United States and United Kingdom, it will continually feel empowered to keep doing what it’s doing. And if the world lets this continue, Dr. Jill Stein’s words from her 2024 presidential campaign will make us all look like fools. Her message to us all was, “As Gaza Goes, we all go.“