In the early hours of May 21, an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire came into effect between Israel and Palestine, ending one of the deadliest episodes of violence in decades. During the 11-day onslaught that began on May 10, 232 Palestinians, including 65 children, were killed, with thousands more wounded. The World Health Organization reported that 8,538 people had been injured across Gaza, a staggering number in light of the 30 health facilities damaged by the Israeli bombardment. In Israel, at least 12 were killed, including two children, according to the Israel Defense Forces and emergency services.

In any war, there are “winners” and “losers.” Typically, the winners kill the most and have the fewest deaths. Winning a war does not turn the victor into a villain. But the Israeli-Palestine crisis is not a war. It is a settler-colonialist project undertaken by Israel, one that is subsidized in large part by its colonial predecessors.

With Israel’s parliament set to vote on June 13 on whether to approve a new government coalition, the world waits for a decision that could mark the end of current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s 12-year rule. A fragile alliance between far left and right ideologies, the new coalition led by Naftali Bennet includes an independent Arab party—a watershed moment in Israeli politics that might just be the turning point away from the country’s predilection to crimes against Palestine.

Ouroboros 

It is impossible to talk of Israel’s militarist assaults on Palestine, and the dramatic power difference between the two, without addressing how the former is armed. Since the creation of Israel, the United States has provided it with USD146 billion in bilateral assistance and missile defense funding. At present, almost all the US bilateral aid to Israel is in the form of military assistance, according to a report by the US Congressional Research Service.

The US-funded anti-rocket shield system, also known as the the “Iron Dome,” intercepts 90 percent of the aerial attacks using mostly homemade rockets launched by Palestinian resistance forces. On May 5, just days before the onset of the recent assault, the Biden administration notified Congress of its approval of a USD735 million sale of precision-guided weapons to Israel.

“If there were not an Israel, we would have to invent one to make sure our interests were preserved,” US President Joe Biden said to a pro-Israel crowd at a conference in Washington in September 2013, when he was still vice president under the Obama administration. His words echoed, almost exactly, what he had said in the US Senate, in 1986, in opposition to the arms sale to Saudi Arabia and in defense of the US government’s support for Israel: “Were there not an Israel the USA would have to invent an Israel to protect her interest in the region.”

It was as though a riff on Voltaire’s “If God did not exist,” revealing the moral imperative the US assigns to Israel as its foothold in the Middle East.

The relationship between the US and Israel began to take its true shape during the early years of the Kennedy presidency, where, in August 1962, the administration sold the Hawk anti-aircraft missile to the Jewish state. The Hawk Sale, the first transaction involving a major weapon system between the two, was a major departure from previous administrations’ diplomatic policies. As the Cold War raged on, the US came to see Israel as its proxy shield in the region against Soviet influence. In the wars that followed, in 1967 and 1973, the US cemented its commitment to Israel. But Israel is not the only American ally in the Middle East. There are others: Jordan, Egypt, and Turkey, to name a few.

America’s support can also be attributed to the deep sympathy the American public has for the Israeli cause. For many Americans, indoctrination into the Zionist agenda is an inescapable part of growing up. In elementary, middle, and high schools across the country, Jewish literature is required reading during January, the international month of Holocaust remembrance.

Often the assigned literature contains overt Zionist themes, such as Leon Uris’ historical-fiction epic Exodus. With its rousing portrayal of Jewish freedom fighters’ courage against Palestinian barbarians and the birth of democratic Israel, the novel captured the imagination of readers around the world and became the most successful bestseller in the US since 1936’s Gone with the Wind. Indelible moments of violence by pro-Palestinian forces, such as the killing of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, have likewise helped garner international sympathy for Israel.

Washington’s unwavering commitment may also be seen in 2015’s political theater where, in a truth-is-stranger-than-fiction moment, Netanyahu spoke before a joint session of Congress against the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) sought by the Obama administration. Under JCPOA, also known as the “Iran nuclear deal,” Tehran was to accept constraints on its nuclear work in exchange for sanctions relief. It was unthinkable for a foreign head of state to address Congress in open opposition to the president and receive a bipartisan standing ovation. And yet it happened.

Homeland

Prior to 1946, the Jewish and Palestinian peoples co-existed as reasonably as could be expected. But, with the post-World War II mass exodus of European Jews and others from Arab lands, more violent episodes began to erupt. After decades of increasingly brazen annexations of land by the Israeli government, modern maps of Palestine take on a Swiss cheese-like appearance, with slivers of non-contiguous patches of land. How any viable Palestinian state can exist in such a formation is beyond imagination.

Resistance groups in Palestine naturally emerged. Formed in 1987 as a successor to the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas is an Islamic resistance political party, conveniently classed by the US and the European Union as a terrorist organization. During Hamas’s early years, Israel tolerated and even funded the group, most likely in an attempt to drive a wedge between what was then just a fringe group and other existing Islamic movements. Israel did not anticipate the group’s meteoric rise, nor its continued resistance. In retribution for Hamas’ victory in the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections, Israel placed Gaza, a small strip of land that is home to over two million people, under a brutal siege that continues until the present.

Today, Israel maintains effective control of six of the seven entry points to Gaza and its infrastructure, leaving less than four percent of its water undrinkable, according to Oxfam International. Gazans are only allowed four hours of electricity per day. With its oversight of the Strip’s entrances and exits, Israel is able to control food supply chains, infrastructure, and logistics.

According to Gisha, a human rights organization, following the 2006 elections, the Israeli government was reported to have only allowed in the minimum number of food trucks daily, based on calculations of Gazan population’s requisite caloric intake, just enough to avoid malnutrition. Although Israel states that the caloric scheme was never formally implemented, the claim is still hotly disputed. Major donors, blocked by Israeli-imposed restrictions, are unable to fly in and maneuver equipment at the scale or speed necessary to repair the Strip’s crumbling infrastructure.

As for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, their lives are that of second-class citizens. The designation is not mere rhetoric. There, Palestinians and Israelis are governed under a different set of laws; If the same crime is committed by both, the latter go through civilian court, while the former are subjected to a military court.

Moving the Needle 

Over the last decade and since the previous Israeli onslaughts, in 2008 and 2014, there has been a perceptible shift in international public opinion.

According to a 2021 survey conducted by Gallup, a Washington-based analytics and advisory firm, 25 percent of Americans sympathize more with Palestine than Israel. It is becoming more and more common to see Israel’s actions called apartheid—an allegation that would have been shut down with accusations of anti-Semitism not long ago. In large part, the change is the product of successful pro-Palestinian and anti-colonial campaigns. Another factor may be the growing international spotlight on human rights. But while the needle has been moved, legacy media and politicians are still behind the curve.

Support for Palestine’s Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement Israel has yet to gain greater traction. The movement, modeled on South Africa’s own anti-apartheid efforts, urges various forms of boycott against Israel until it meets its obligations under international law. As of 2021, 35 states have passed executive orders and bills designed to cripple BDS initiatives and underline the intersection of American and Israeli interests.

The increased attention to the crisis has also coincided with an uptick in vitriol and violence against Jewish-Americans, according to the Anti-Defamation League. The group stated in a May 20 press release that it had received 193 reports of anti-Semitic incidents during the preceding week. Politicians on Capitol Hill quickly condemned the surge and stressed the moral dissonance between anti-Semitism and standing with Palestine and the oppressed the world over.

Remains of the Day

Despite an apparent end to one of the deadliest moments of the Israeli-Palestine violence, questions persist regarding the future of the Palestinian Territories. Nearly two years after 2020, the year by which the United Nations predicted Gaza would become unlivable, uncertainty lingers on the possibility of a future where Israel’s existence does not necessitate the eradication of the Palestinian people. Apartheid rests on the survival of its ideological foundations.

With faith in a peaceable outcome flagging, the promise of a two-nation solution has become an unspoken political fantasy. In its current conception as an ethno-state, Israel cannot co-exist with Palestine. As radical Zionist narratives replace history, the incomplete, falsified past constructs a new history for the present, while the present prepares itself to be a falsified past for the future.

After all the buildings are leveled, after all the homes destroyed, and all the lives to give have been given and lost, what will remain is a futile search for the answers to questions that politicians called hope. ●