Yousef Abuddayeh
While the depth and breadth of pain of the ongoing Zionist massacre against the Palestinian people is immeasurable, victory for the Palestinian people has never been closer. Although the past 18 days of pure fascistic Zionist murder spree have to date killed more than 971 Palestinians and have injured over 4,400, the resulting local, national, regional, and international conditions are all pointing towards a political crisis of monumental scale for the tripartite axis. Composed of the US, the Zionist Israeli polity, and various Arab regimes, this tripartite axis of colonial and neo-colonial conquest is now facing a dead-end spanning geopolitics, demographics, and economy.
The overall political balance today is that the two forces that are diametrically opposed to each other (colonists and colonized) are that much more entrenched in their positions. On the one hand, the axis of colonists and neo-colonists is running out of political space to maneuver.
The fight today is in the very last homes (actual houses) where the Arab people live, be it in Palestine, Lebanon, or Iraq. In this context, the only option available is to physically conquer not only the very families that reside in these last homes, but also impose a political structure that would be acceptable to these same embattled families. Lebanon and Iraq both have shown that this would not be possible in any way, regardless of the level of military devastation used. In the case of Palestine, it has been tried before numerous times, and has failed each and every time without exception. In fact, the same areas of Gaza currently under attack by the Zionists are the ones that were literally erased with bulldozers during the early seventies to make room for the advances of the Zionist armies. The Zionists' scorched earth policy is also efficiently scorching any Zionist ability to impose its will, directly through military rule or indirectly through proxy powers such as that of Mahmud Abbas.
Additionally, the repeated brutality during the past few years in Iraq, Lebanon, and now Palestine again, targeting all aspects of society through direct bombardment and long term forced starvation, has forever exposed the role played by local and regional complicit functionaries. The Arab masses in every Arab state are now increasingly calling for regime change in unison, directly accusing their leadership of treason in an unprecedented manner. Undoubtedly, this is a prerequisite prelude to organized political movements leading to change. This is a dangerous condition for all Arab despots, as they have now exposed their role in total, including their inability to conquer the conscience of the Arab people. It is for this specific reason that the United States opted not to veto UN Security Council resolution 1860, simply to give its allies of Arab functionary regimes a fig leaf with which to return home. Anyone following the official Egyptian television and print media can detect a highly defensive and overt pushback by the regime in an attempt to justify that it did not commit treason. It actually uses these very terms. This is unprecedented, particularly since the vast majority of Egyptian population is also overtly making the charge of treason at the risk of imprisonment, indicative of the dictatorial regime.
The banning of Palestinian Arab political parties from running in the upcoming Israeli elections within 1948 Palestine is perhaps the biggest indication of the crisis the Zionists and their allies are facing. While we are certain that the majority of political activists will race to point to the organically and structurally racist character of the Zionist polity, and they are certainly correct in that, we opt to consider the real causes and implications of such a decision.
Effectively, the Zionist political leadership is succumbing to its exclusivist need for self-preservation as a colonial settler polity. Effectively, the Zionists are unable to use even a feeble fig leaf to cover its Apartheid system. How else would a polity expel 20% of the population from political representation, albeit superficially, while simultaneously scorching its surrounding in the literal meaning of the word? The Zionist political system is clearly showing significant signs of implosion. It cannot reconcile settler colonialism with democratic representation, and certainly cannot reconcile citizenship with theocratic exclusion. Hence the two major attributes of Zionism (exclusion and colonialism) are the very same factors that the Israeli polity is now facing.
This was the case in South Africa. Several decades after it was founded as a settler colony, and years following the imposition of the Apartheid system as a state policy, it too had to face the inevitable: settler colonialism and democratic representation cannot be reconciled. And it too imploded during a time when many believed that it was the strongest military power in the area and one of the most powerful in the world. Naturally, South Africa's strongest ally was at that time the Zionist polity itself, given the equivalence in ideology, form of government, and militarist nature. In fact, just as the Zionist regime continuously attacks Lebanon, the Apartheid regime continuously attacked neighboring states.
Interestingly enough, the two decades leading to the implosion of Apartheid witnessed a similar political scene as the one currently faced by Zionists:
(1) International condemnation that eventually led to widespread boycotts, sanctions, and charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. This is underway and is expanding. In that regard, we call for a widespread boycott of all aspects related to the Zionist polity, including economic, cultural, sports, political, and diplomatic. This boycott must evolve into sanctions. As an initial step, popular sanctions can be implemented through the process of divestment, to be followed by official sanctions. The Arab people must lead this effort by ending all aspects of normalization with Zionism, forced as it maybe.
(2) Collapse of the surrounding regimes, leading to regional economic, diplomatic, and political isolation. All surrounding regimes are facing major challenges that will require structural political change.
(3) Internal contradictions caused by political dynamics, demographic changes, and the inability to impose on a long term basis a racist structure of government on a colonized people; hence the banning of the Arab Palestinian parties from the elections.
(4) Political and organizational defection within the social structure as well as in within allies.
(5) Failure of the military option to secure military victories over a significantly less equipped population. While the Zionist army must show actual military victory and full control, the Palestinians need only withstand the assault and brutality. At the conclusion of the assault, the Zionist army will have to withdraw leaving the resistance movement that spans the entire Palestinian political spectrum (not just Hamas) that much stronger in terms of its political influence. The Gaza Strip will be ungovernable by any entity not supported by the Palestinian people.
(6) The inability of the regime to impose a governing system that would be acceptable to the colonized, an inability that is significantly exacerbated with the level of brutality imposed. Hence, the obedient PA option is null and void at this point.
(7) Recognition by the US and Western allies that role played by the regime is a threat to the interests of the Western powers in the area. This has not yet occurred in the Zionist case, albeit starting.
(8) Loss of economic trade and supply of needed natural resources, including the once available labor pool.
(9) A reversal in the flux of people, where more colonists leave than colonists arrive.
(10) A full collapse in all attempts to normalize the conquest. This is a major task for the Arab political spectrum throughout the Arab Homeland (A-Wattan Al-Arabi).
These factors lead to a conclusion that Zionism as a political system is unable to survive in the long term, just as was the case for Apartheid. This is because it needs extraordinary brutality over a lengthy period to force the presence of an exclusivist political system that cannot survive otherwise.
As such, in the current Palestinian resistance against Zionist fascism, the only outcome for the Palestinians is to approach victory and the only option for the Zionists is to sustain cumulative defeat. There will come a point when there will be enough quantitative change in the geopolitical spectrum that a qualitative change will occur. This will occur when the Palestinian steadfast, supported by an Arab populist movement within an international sea of solidarity, crosses the threshold where the losses for the colonial axis are more than the gains. We are at that point.
Here, it is critical to recognize the importance of progressive and principled solidarity movements. They constitute the only sea within which a liberation movement can survive. Just as the resistance in the Gaza Strip is carried out by the entire spectrum of the Palestinian population (it is not Hamas vs. Israel, it is the Palestinian people in their entirety resisting a colonial project in Gaza and everywhere), the solidarity movement must be all inclusive. The FPA recognizes the principled role played by many organizations and political parties worldwide, and we ask that this role be amplified and expanded. The Palestinian struggle remains a critical anchor for all anti-colonial struggles everywhere, including the fight to end war and occupations.
In the US, the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition has been that principled ally to the Palestinian people, standing firm on the fundamentals of the struggle as a national liberation even when under massive Zionist and liberal attacks. While we recognize that there will always be damage caused by the attacks of camouflaged Zionists, the gains of a principled position far exceed that damage. In that context, the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition has evolved and has been the principled political and organizational space from within the Palestinian and Arab community can organize on large scale in the US. It is also the vehicle to appropriately make the needed links of a reciprocal solidarity with other targeted peoples and communities - the stronger the movement, the faster the victory.
The Free Palestine Alliance
January 13, 2009
Yousef
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http://wewillreturn.blogspot.com
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