Reply To: Russian Tensions
While being sympathetic to the Palestinian people’s plight does not mean I have to fully endorse all their chosen tactics.
There can be no military solution for the Palestinians. Armed struggle against an all-powerful militarised authoritarian state will fail. That is not up for debate.
Can you explain its purpose other than to give some political credibility to its proponents?
As a tool to challenge the Jewish-Israeli opinion, the rockets and individual acts merely reinforce Jewish-Israeli intransigence. Only a very small minority of Jewish-Israelis support the peace movement such as B’tselem. I once did hold hope when there were protests in the more cosmopolitan Tel Aviv over the cost of living that an alliance would be formed with liberal Israelis and Palestinians. It didn’t develop
It is implausible that the present Palestinian policy of two-states can ever succeed. Economically it is not workable. No airport. No seaport. After the intifada, most of the Palestinian workers were replaced by Asian and European migrant workers in Israel. West Bank has no industry nor manufacturing. No work.
The PA and Gaza governments are corrupt entities and dependent on foreign aid and charities. As Norman Finkelstein often says the cost of Israel’s occupation is cost-free to Israel.
Not only is it Israeli apartheid but it is also endorsing a Bantustan solution because the million Jewish settlers are not realistically going to be evicted by any Israeli government so need to be accommodated.
What may succeed is a non-violent civil disobedience campaign witnessed when the fifth of Israel’s citizens joined in a campaign alongside the West Bank Palestinians.
There is some speculation that a way ahead would be for the Palestinians to start a civil-rights movement to be declared full and equal citizens and West Bank and Gaza become a part of Israel in a form of a new federal constitution. A proposal that the Ukrainian government mistakenly rejected for the DPR and LPR.
Internationally, BDS is also a positive strategy yes that too has limitations as too many countries place their own vested interests before the Palestinian cause. (Perhaps the possible threat of such sanctions being imposed is one reason why Israel so far refuses to join in the sanctions against Russia.)
But personally, I see no answer to the Palestinian problem in the foreseeable future. The Jewish-Israelis have acquired a siege mindset.
No Arab nation is willing to come to the Palestinian’s aid.
There is no Palestinian Mandela to placate the fears of the Jewish-Israelis with the hope of reconciliation.
A political compromise as seen at the end of the Northern Ireland civil war with the IRA becoming a part of its government is not an option
I am pessimistic.
But those who believe that violent insurrection is a solution for Palestinians are callously playing straight into the hands of the Zionist right-wing.
