Who enabled the process of “Greater Israel”?
In a recent interview with i24, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated he is “on a mission of generations” for “Greater Israel”. Meanwhile, the international community is still bleating about the two-state paradigm. The Arab League spoke out against Israel’s “aggressive and expansionist tendencies”. But in the midst of all this, who is listening to the Palestinian people?
The concept of “Greater Israel” is not a novelty. Early Zionist ideology, even before the atrocities of the 1948 Nakba, already envisaged a complete colonial process. Netanyahu is just availing himself of the opportune moment to remind the entire world what Zionist colonisation is all about, but this statement cannot be treated as a surprise.
It was the international community that decided upon the 1947 Partition Plan, despite the concept of “Greater Israel”. The same international community legitimised the Nakba’s colonial atrocities by recognising Israel – a settler-colonial enterprise on ethnically cleansed Palestinian land. It ensured the Palestinian right of return would be flawed to give priority to Israel’s expansion plans, and coerced Palestinians into the humanitarian paradigm – recipients of aid with no rights.
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Israel may have carefully crafted its narrative, but it also exposed its intentions along the way. The international community has no excuse. During the same time the two-state paradigm was deemed obsolete, Netanyahu was boasting about how Palestine was no longer a priority in diplomatic relations and no longer a precondition that would jeopardise normalising relations with Israel. This is relatively recent history. Had the international community really wanted to eradicate colonialism, it could have taken action before 1947. But former colonial powers invested in a new colonial power that has now been committing genocide for almost two years, under the pretext of eliminating Hamas. And while Netanyahu feels he can unveil the entire truth about Israel and its genocide, the international community is still focused only on humanitarian aid and the two-state compromise – none of which ultimately give Palestinians political rights.
Can the international community admit all its complicity with Israeli settler-colonialism, expansion and genocide since the time it started to indulge the Zionist colonial ideology? How about admitting that the humanitarian paradigm has aided Israel more than it helped Palestinians? Or that the two-state compromise was a stepping stone for Israel to unleash genocide in Gaza and eventually declare “Greater Israel”?
The international community only ever took on board what aided its diplomatic engagement with Israel; hence the focus on Hamas, humanitarian aid, the two-state paradigm and forced displacement. Keeping all these slivers isolated enabled Israel to gradually prepare for prominent announcements of its ultimate colonisation plans. “Greater Israel” requires ethnic cleansing on a larger scale. Genocide fulfils that prerequisite. The international community is concerned about Palestinians starving to death but not Palestinians torn to shreds and blasted apart by bombs. The international community chooses which part of genocide to weakly condemn, just as it chose which parts of settler-colonialism to speak out against without any repercussions. Feigning ignorance now is just adding to the hypocrisy.
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