“I hope we’ll have a great opportunity with the new US administration to create full normalisation [of the Israeli occupation],” he was quoted as saying by Israeli media. This is not the first time that Smotrich, along with other Israeli extremists, has made the connection between Donald Trump moving back into the White House and the illegal expansion of Israel’s nominal borders.

Two things make Israel’s far-right optimistic about Trump’s return to the Oval Office: the Israeli experience during Trump’s first term in office, when the US president allowed the occupation state to claim sovereignty over illegal settlements, the Syrian Golan Heights and occupied East Jerusalem; and Trump’s more recent statement in the run-up to the elections.

Israel is “so tiny” on the map, said Trump when addressing the pro-Israel group Stop Anti-Semitism at an event in August, asking aloud: “Is there any way of getting more?” The statement, absurd by any definition, prompted joy among Israeli politicians, who understood it to be a green light for further annexation of Palestinian land.

Israel’s aims for colonial expansion have also received a boost in more recent days.

Following the fall of Bashar Al-Assad’s regime in Syria, Israel immediately invaded large swathes of the country, reaching as far as the Quneitra governorate, less than 20 kilometres from the capital, Damascus. What is taking place in Syria serves as a model of what to expect in the West Bank in coming months.

Israel occupied nearly 70 per cent of the Syrian Golan Heights in 1967. It cemented its illegal occupation of the Arab region by formally annexing it in 1981 through the so-called Golan Heights Law. That illegal move came shortly after another illegal annexation, that of occupied Palestinian East Jerusalem the previous year.

Although the West Bank was not formally annexed, the boundaries of East Jerusalem have been expanded well beyond its historic borders, thus swallowing large parts of the West Bank. Like East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, the West Bank is also recognised as illegally occupied under international law. Israel has no legal basis to maintain its occupation, let alone annex any Palestinian or Arab land. It is allowed to do so, however, due to US-Western support and international silence.

But why is Israel keen on annexing the West Bank now?

Aside from the “great opportunity” linked to Trump’s return to power, Israel feels that its ability to sustain a genocidal war on Gaza without any international intervention to bring the extermination to an end, would make the annexation of the West Bank a far less consequential matter on the international agenda.

“King Smotrich,” Dream / Dreamland v.3 / Clip2Comic, 2024

Even though the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued a decisive ruling on the illegality of the Israeli occupation on 19 July, followed by the issuance of arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on 21 November, no action was taken to actually hold Israel accountable. The annexation of the West Bank is unlikely to change that, especially as Israel conducts its wars and illegal actions with direct US support.

The Democratic administration of Joe Biden has financed and supported all Israeli wars, including the current genocide. Trump is expected to be equally generous, or at the very least, not at all critical.

With all of this in mind, the annexation of the West Bank in the coming weeks or months is a real possibility. In fact, Smotrich has already informed “workers of the Defence Ministry body in charge of Israeli and Palestinian civil affairs in the West Bank” about his plans to “shut down the department as part of an envisioned Israeli annexation of the area,” the Times of Israel reported on 6 December.

While such annexation will not change the legal status of the West Bank under international law, it will have dire consequences for the millions of Palestinians living there, as annexation is likely to be followed by a violent campaign of ethnic cleansing, if not from the whole of the West Bank, certainly from large parts of it.

Annexation will also render the Palestinian Authority legally irrelevant.

It was created following the Oslo Accords to administer parts of the West Bank in anticipation of a future sovereign state, which has never materialised. Will the PA agree to remain functional as part of the Israeli military administration of a newly annexed West Bank?

Palestinians will certainly resist, as they always do. The nature of the resistance will prove critical in the success or failure of the Israeli scheme. A popular Intifada, for example, will overstretch the Israeli military, which will likely use an unprecedented degree of violence to suppress Palestinians, but is unlikely to succeed.

Annexing the West Bank at a time when Palestine — in fact, the whole region — is in turmoil, is a recipe for perpetual war. From the viewpoint of Smotrich and his ilk, that will be another “great opportunity”, as it will secure their political survival for years to come.

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Long before the current devastating war on Gaza and the escalation of Israeli violence and repression in the Occupied West Bank, Palestinian and pro-Palestinian voices have been censored.

Some date the censorship to an agreement in 2016 that, according to the Israeli government, sought to “force social networks to remove content that Israel considers to be incitement.”

This was translated, almost immediately, to the shutting down of thousands of accounts and the barring of many social media influencers, with the hope of slowing down the vastly growing pro-Palestinian tendencies in all Meta-linked platforms.

The war on Gaza, however, has escalated the censorship. In a report submitted to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression, Human Rights Watch noted that the documented restrictions on freedom of speech “undermine the fundamental human rights to freedom of expression and assembly.”

The censorship became so sophisticated and increasingly involved a direct Israeli role. To ensure that ‘offenders’ to Israeli sensibilities were eliminated in large numbers, Meta began censoring specific words, thus deeming entire contents offensive, racist and anti-Semitic.

But Meta was not the only social media network involved in this practice. On 17 November, 2023, the X platform (previously known as Twitter) declared that users who write terms like “decolonisation”, “from the river to the sea”, or similar expressions would be suspended.

One year later, the social media platform Twitch followed suit by revising its ‘Hateful Content Policy’ to include “Zionist” as a potential slur.

Not only do these decisions, and many others, directly impair the freedom of speech and press, but they also confuse rational conversations with anti-Jewish sentiments.

The word ‘genocide’, for example, is not a swear word, but a common term, embraced by numerous countries around the world, accusing Israel of carrying out acts of genocide, meaning the “systematic destruction of a group of people because of their ethnicity, nationality, religion, or race”.

Under pressure from many countries, and after presenting a powerful case at The Hague, South Africa managed to compel the International Court of Justice to investigate Israel’s acts of genocide in the Gaza Strip in violation of the 1948 Genocide Convention.

In other words, this is not a matter for Mark Zuckerberg or any other social media company to decide, based on direct consultations with those carrying out the mass killings in Gaza.

The same applies to Zionism, an ideologically situated political movement that traces its history to 19th-century Europe, thus, neither to a specific race nor a religious text.

While many are, rightly, outraged by the fact that this kind of widespread, and growing, censorship directly challenges the main tenets of democracy, the actual harm for Palestinians is much bigger.

According to a November 2024 report by the Sada Social Centre for Digital Rights, the surge in digital violations targeting Palestinian content could not come at a worse time.

According to the organisation, “Meta platforms accounted for the largest share of violations at 57 per cent, followed by TikTok at 23 per cent.” YouTube and X follow at 13 and 7 per cent respectively.

“Palestine Exception,” Digital, ChatGPT, 2024.

This censorship, according to Sada, includes the shutting down of WhatsApp accounts, another Meta-owned platform that is also tightly controlled.

Unlike most of us, Palestinians in Gaza use these platforms to communicate with one another, to know who is dead and who is alive, and to raise awareness of certain massacres, often taking place in isolation, especially in the northern Gaza Strip.

Regarding northern Gaza, Sada Social spoke of a ‘digital blackout’, which has compounded the horror of that region – famine, mass killing, destruction of all hospitals, etc.

In the specific case of social media censorship in Gaza, lives are literally being lost as a result of politically motivated decisions.

HRW was one of many rights groups that have routinely spoken about the ‘systematic censorship’ by Meta. A December 2023 HRW report identified the following recurring patterns of censorship: removal of content, suspension of pro-Palestinian accounts, the reduction of visibility, known as ‘shadow-banning’, the restrictions on engagement, and the deliberate misuse of policies on hate speech and graphic content.

The danger of this kind of censorship is multilayered. It is a direct threat to one of the most basic freedoms guaranteed under the law in any democratic society. In the case of Gaza, the censorship takes a dark, deadly turn as it could make the difference between people dying under the rubble of their homes or receiving assistance.

Additionally, censorship of this magnitude often creates precedents and often leads to other forms of censorship that, in fact, are already taking place against other vulnerable communities, whether on a national stage or globally.

While the international community is yet to translate its verbal solidarity with Palestinians into any meaningful action, the least we could do is to give Palestinians their full rights to express their views, share their pain, and raise awareness of their collective plight. The world owes them that much, and no social media company should be permitted to hinder such a simple and reasonable demand.

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The above assertion is critical, both for ending the Israeli occupation of Palestine and achieving Palestinian freedom. This is why.

In all past wars and related war crimes, Israel has managed to push the reset button in its relationship with occupied Palestinians. Following each war, the Israeli hasbara — propaganda — machine, clicks into overdrive, utilising the ever-willing Western mainstream media, to paint Palestinians in a negative light and to present Israel as the perpetual victim in a permanent state of self-defence, or even the lone defender of Western civilisation.

This campaign always runs parallel with the whitewashing of Israel in popular entertainment, from Hollywood movies to TV sit-coms and magazine covers with such headlines as “Gorgeous Photos Capture The Unseen Lives Of Female Soldiers In Israel”. Generally, Western politicians of varied ideologies, along with intellectuals, talking heads on news bulletins and church leaders, all praise the “miracle” that is Israel.

At the beginning of Israel’s genocidal war in October 2023, for example, British playwright Tom Stoppard said that, “Before we take up a position on what’s happening now, we should consider whether this is a fight over territory or a struggle between civilisation and barbarism.” He, of course, leaned towards the latter.

This Israeli tactic always includes the demonisation of Palestinians, where the victim becomes the “terrorist” and those under siege become the besiegers. This last claim, in particular, was expressed in the words of former US Secretary of State Madeline Albright who said, in an August 2000 interview with NBC, that, “The Israelis feel under siege from the Palestinian rock throwers and the various gangs that have been roaming around.”

Why will such Israeli tactics fail this time?

Because they will fail, but not due to a lack of trying. In fact, Israel is already bracing for the hasbara fight of a lifetime.

One new tactic that Israel is already employing in “friendly” countries, like the United States, is to push its bought and paid for elected politicians to pass laws to block any and all conversations about the Israeli genocide in Gaza. Israel, alone, must have exclusive access to the American public through the media and political discourse.

On 14 November, the US House of Representatives passed two bills: H.R.6408 and H.R.9495. The latter, in particular, is aimed at giving the Treasury Secretary the authorisation to revoke an organisation’s tax-exempt status and decide when the designation might end. Once these bills pass the Senate and are approved by the president, the most democratic and peaceful expressions of rejecting the Israeli occupation of Palestine and demanding a sensible US foreign policy will be equated with a direct violation of the law and, in some cases, to terrorism, as defined by the Treasury Department, and at the behest of the pro-Israel lobby.

However, even these desperate attempts will not quell public anger or distract attention from the need for such open conversations about what is being done in occupied Palestine (much of it courtesy of US tax dollars). Here’s why: Not only is Israel committing genocide in the Gaza Strip, but this genocide is also being investigated and is acknowledged by the world’s highest legal institutions, namely the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC).

“Palestine Exception,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3, 2024

Unlike previous investigations — the Goldstone Report probing the 2008-09 war on Gaza, for example — the international community has already taken some practical steps to hold Israeli war criminals to account. The ICC has issued warrants for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.

Moreover, those who routinely come to Israel’s defence, such as the US and other Western governments, are now clashing directly with the same canon of international law that they helped articulate after World War II, depriving them of any credibility as “neutral” parties in this issue. For example, US President Joe Biden called the warrants “outrageous”, while the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs claimed that Netanyahu and other ministers enjoy immunity since Israel is not a party to the ICC.

There is also the fact that, despite the inherent pro-Israel bias of Western media, Palestinian journalists, isolated and killed in large numbers, have still been able to communicate details of the genocide to the rest of the world, making it impossible for Israel to hide its crimes.

Indeed, many Israeli soldiers have posted videos and photos of themselves committing war crimes on social media.

The impact of the Israeli genocide on Gaza has thus already penetrated many layers of public opinion, a fact which is unprecedented in history.

Until now, the conversation on Palestine has generally been confined to specific strata of society, reaching academics, social justice activists and other groups interested in politics and global issues. Today, though, ordinary people have been made aware of the conversation, to the extent that it is believed widely that anger over Gaza has contributed towards determining the outcome of the latest US presidential and other elections.

In Africa, the growing political and public interest in the Palestinian struggle has re-enlivened the spirit of anti-colonial, liberation struggles on the continent, bringing many countries, from South Africa to Algeria, back to the front lines of global solidarity.

No amount of Israeli propaganda, unjust laws, unfair categorisations of Palestinians or claims about Israel’s “most moral army” will ever succeed in reversing these realities. There can be no reset buttons. Rather, the global momentum of Palestine’s liberation will accelerate in the coming months and years.

The price exacted from the Palestinian people for this earth-shattering moment has been high and painful, but the history of all national liberation struggles, Palestine included, demonstrates that freedom doesn’t come cheap.

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But a term that many seem to agree on is that the warrants represent an earthquake, though many are doubtful that Netanyahu will actually see his day in court.

The pro-Palestine camp, which as of late represents the majority of humankind, is torn between disbelief, skepticism and optimism. It turned out that the international system has a pulse, after all, though faint, but is enough to rekindle hope that legal and moral accountability are still possible.

This mixture of feelings and strong language is a reflection of several important and interconnected experiences: one, the unprecedented extermination of a whole population which is currently being carried out by Israel against Palestinians in Gaza; two, the utter failure of the international community to stop the grisly genocide in the Strip; and, finally, the fact that the international legal system has historically failed to hold Israel, or any of the West’s allies anywhere, accountable to international law.

The real earthquake is the fact that this is the first time in the history of the ICC that a pro-western leader is held accountable for war crimes. Indeed, historically, the vast majority of arrest warrants, and actual detention of accused war criminals seemed to target the Global South, Africa in particular.

Israel, however, is not an ordinary “western” state. Zionism was a western-colonial invention, and the creation of Israel was only possible because of unhindered, die-hard western support.

Since its inception on the ruins of historic Palestine in 1948, Israel has served the role of the western-colonial citadel in the Middle East. The entire Israeli political discourse has been tailored and situated within western priorities and supposed values: civilisation, democracy, enlightenment, human rights and the like.

With time, Israel became largely an American project, embraced by American liberals and religious conservatives alike.

America’s religious crowds were motivated by the biblical notion that “whoever blesses Israel will be blessed, And whoever curses Israel will be cursed.” The liberals, too, held Israel within a spiritual discourse, although disproportionately favoured the classification of Israel as the “only democracy in the Middle East”, constantly emphasising the “special relationship”, the “unbreakable bond” and the rest.

Thus, it would not be an exaggeration to claim that the ICC’s indictment of Netanyahu, as a representative of the political establishment in Israel, and Gallant, as the leader of the military class, is also an indictment of the United States.

It is often reported that Israel would not have been able to carry on with its war – genocide – on Gaza without American military and political support. According to the investigative news website ProPublica, in the first year of the war, the US shipped over 50,000 tonnes of weaponry to Israel.

Mainstream American media and journalists are also culpable in that genocide. They elevated the now war criminals Netanyahu and Gallant, along with other Israeli political and military leaders, as if they were the defenders of a “civilised world” against the “barbarians”. Those in the conservative media circles portrayed them as if they were prophets doing God’s work against the supposed heathens of the South.

“ICC Warrant,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3, 2024

They, too, have been indicted by the ICC, the kind of moral indictment, and “hard stigma”, that can never be eradicated.

When Karim Khan, the ICC’s chief prosecutor, originally filed for arrest warrants in May, many were in doubt, and justifiably so. The Israelis felt that their country commanded the needed support to disallow such warrants in the first place. They cited previous attempts, including a Belgian court case where victims of Israeli brutality in Lebanon attempted to hold former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon accountable for the Sabra and Shatila massacre. Not only was the case dropped in 2003, but Belgium was pressured by the US to change its own laws so that they do not include universal jurisdiction in the case of genocide.

The Americans, too, were not too worried, as they were ready to punish ICC judges, defame Khan himself, and, according to a recent social media post by US Senator Tom Cotton, ready to “invade the Hague”.

In fact, this is not the first time that Americans, who are not signatories of the Rome Statute, thus not members of the ICC, flexed their muscles against those who merely attempted to enforce international law. In September 2020, the US government imposed sanctions on then-Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and another senior official, Phakiso Mochochoko.

Even those who wanted to see accountability for the Israeli genocide were in doubt, especially as pro-Israeli western governments, like that of Germany, stepped forward to prevent the warrants from being issued. Unreasonable delays in the proceedings contributed to the skepticism, especially as Khan himself was suddenly being paraded for supposed “sexual misconduct”.

Yet, after all of this, on 21 November the arrest warrants were issued, charging Netanyahu and Gallant with alleged “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” – the other punishable offenses within the ICC jurisdiction being genocide and aggression.

Considering that the world’s highest court, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), has already found that it is plausible that Israel’s acts could amount to genocide and is currently investigating the case, Israel, as a state, and top Israeli leaders have suddenly, and deservingly so, become the enemies of humanity.

While it is right and legitimate to argue that what matters most is the tangible outcome of these cases – ending the genocide while holding the Israeli war criminals accountable – we must not miss the greater meaning of these earth-shattering events.

The ICJ and the ICC are essentially two western institutions created to police the world by reinforcing the double standards resulting from the post-World War II western-dominated international system.

They are the legal equivalent of the Bretton Woods agreement, which regulated the international monetary system to serve US western interests. Though, in theory, they championed universally commendable values, in practice they merely served as tools of control and dominance for the western order.

For years, the world has been in a state of obvious and irreversible change. New powers were rising and others were shrinking. Political turmoil in the US, Britain and France were only reflections of the internal struggle in the west’s ruling classes. The incredible rise of China, the war in Europe and the growing resistance in the Middle East were outcomes and accelerators of that change.

Thus the constant call for reforms in the post-WWII international system to reflect in a more equitable way the new global realities. Despite American-western resistance to change, new geopolitical formations continued to take place, regardless.

The Gaza genocide represents a watershed moment in these global dynamics. This was reflected in Karim Khan’s language when he requested the arrest warrants, stressing on the credibility of the court. “This is why we have a court,” he said in an exclusive interview with CNN on 20 May. “It’s about the equal application of the law. No people are better than another. No people anywhere are saints.”

The emphasis on credibility here is a culmination of the obvious loss of credibility on all fronts. This should hardly be a surprise as it was in the west, the self-proclaimed champion of human rights, the very political entity that championed, defended and sustained the Israeli genocide.

While one would like to believe that the ICC’s arrest warrants were made exclusively for the sake of the victims of the Israeli genocide, plenty of evidence suggests that the unexpected move was a desperate western attempt at salvaging whatever little credibility it had maintained up to that moment.

The US government, an unrepentant violator of human rights, has maintained its strong position in defence of Israel, shaming the ICC for the warrants, not the Israeli war criminals for committing the genocide.

The conflict in Europe has been much more palpable, however, reflected in the position of Germany, which said it would “carefully examine” the arrest warrants but that it is “hard to imagine that we would make arrests on this basis”.

One remains hopeful that the shifts of global powers will eventually save international law from the hypocrisy and opportunism of the west. But what is clear for now is that the west’s own conflict will only gain momentum. Will those who created the Zionist Israeli menace be the very powers that demolish it? One is doubtful.

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“Is it possible that after 42,000 people killed, you cannot empathise with the Palestinians?” Albanese said in her statement about the need to “recognise (Israel’s war on Gaza) as a genocide”. “Those of you who have not uttered a word about what is happening in Gaza demonstrate that empathy has evaporated from this room,” she added.

Was Albanese too idealistic when she chose to appeal to empathy which, in her words, represents “the glue that makes us stand united as humanity”?

The answer largely depends on how we wish to define the role being played by the UN and its various institutions; whether its global platform was established as a guarantor of peace, or as a political club for those with military might and political power to impose their agendas on the rest of the world?

Albanese is not the first person to express deep frustration with the institutional, let alone the moral collapse of the UN, or the inability of the institution to effect any kind of tangible change, especially during times of great crises.

The UN’s own Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, himself had accused the executive branch of the UN, the Security Council, of being “outdated”, “unfair” and an “ineffective system”.

“The truth is that the Security Council has systematically failed in relation to the capacity to put an end to the most dramatic conflicts that we face today,” he said, referring to “Sudan, Gaza, Ukraine”. Also, although noting that “The UN is not the Security Council”, Guterres acknowledged that all UN bodies “suffer from the fact that the people look at them and think, ‘Well, but the Security Council has failed us.’”

Some UN officials, however, are mainly concerned about how the UN’s failure is compromising the standing of the international system, thus whatever remains of their own credibility. But some, like Albanese, are indeed driven by an overriding sense of humanity.

On 28 October, 2023, mere weeks after the start of the war, the Director of the New York office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights left his post because he could no longer find any room to reconcile between the failure to stop the war in Gaza and the credibility of the institution.

“This will be my last communication to you,” Craig Mokhiber wrote to the UN High Commissioner in Geneva, Volker Turk. “Once again we are seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes and the organisation we serve appears powerless to stop it,” Mokhiber added.

The phrase “once again” may explain why the UN official made his decision to leave shortly after the start of the war. He felt that history was repeating itself, in all its gory details, while the international community remained divided between powerlessness and apathy.

The problem is multi-layered, complicated by the fact that UN officials and employees do not have the power to alter the very skewed structure of the world’s largest political institution. That power lies in the hands of those who wield political, military, financial and veto power.

“UN in Gaza,” Digital, Midjourney / Clip2Comic, 2024.

Within that context, countries like Israel can do whatever they want, including outlawing the very UN organisations that have been commissioned to uphold international law, as the Israeli Knesset did on 28 October when it passed a law banning UNRWA from conducting “any activity” or providing services in Israel and the Occupied Territories.

But is there a way out?

Many, especially in the Global South, believe that the UN has outlived its usefulness or needs serious reforms.

These assessments are valid, based on this simple maxim: The UN was established in 1945 with the main objectives of the “maintenance of international peace and security, the promotion of the well-being of the peoples of the world, and international cooperation to these ends.”

Very little of the above commitment has been achieved. In fact, not only has the UN failed at that primary mission, but it has become a manifestation of the unequalled distribution of power among its members.

Though the UN was formed following the atrocities of WWII, now it stands largely useless in its inability to stop similar atrocities in Palestine, Lebanon, Sudan and elsewhere.

In her speech, Albanese pointed out that, if the UN’s failures continue, its mandate will become even “more and more irrelevant to the rest of the world”, especially during these times of turmoil.

Albanese is right, of course, but considering the irreversible damage that has already taken place, one can hardly find a moral, let alone rational justification of why the UN, at least in its current form, should continue to exist.

Now that the Global South is finally rising with its own political, economic and legal initiatives, it is time for these new bodies to either offer a complete alternative to the UN or push for serious and irreversible reforms in the organisation.

Either that or the international system will continue to be defined by nothing but apathy and self-interest.

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The group represented the who’s who in the Israeli right, far right and ultranationalists. They included Israeli Ministers, Itamar Ben-Gvir, May Golan and Bezalel Smotrich, as well as ten MKs of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party.

The event, entitled “Preparing to Resettle Gaza”, was organised by one of Israel’s most extreme settler movements, Nachala, led by the notorious Daniella Weiss.

To appreciate how extremist this 79-year-old settler is, consider this: on 27 June, the Canadian government, though one of the most stalwart supporters of Netanyahu and his wars, imposed sanctions on her, due to her “role in facilitating (…) acts of violence by Israeli extremist settlers against Palestinian civilians.”

The hate-filled conference, however, was but a culmination of a year-long effort to build a case of why Israel should ethnically cleanse Palestinians in the Strip and re-establish illegal settlements.

The story, however, does not start on 7 October. In 2005, Israel decided to redeploy its forces out of the tiny coastal region. That was the start of the hermetic Israeli siege on the Strip, which led to multiple wars and, ultimately, the 7 October events and the ongoing genocide.

Although the number of Jewish settlers who were evacuated from the dismantled 15 illegal settlements was fairly small – 8,500 – the sense of betrayal felt by the settlers created deep divisions throughout Israeli society.

Chaotic scenes of settlers being forcefully removed from the Gush Katif settlements bloc in Gaza created a national crisis in Israel, and was compared to the forceful evacuation of the illegal Sinai settlement of Yamit, which Israel dismantled in April 1982 as part of a previous agreement with Egypt. But, why the crisis?

Israel is a settler-colonial society, which has linked its colonial expansion to religious diktats and prophecies. So the forced departure from Gaza, to most of these settlers, must have appeared to represent both national treason and a sacrilegious act.

This is why resettling Gaza became the immediate rallying cry for Israeli settlers. Compared to their limited political share of power during the redeployment of 2005, current extremists are now effectively the decision-makers.

While the army remains unclear regarding its strategic objectives in Gaza, the settlers have always been aware of the nature of their mission: the ethnic cleansing of all Palestinians from Gaza and the rebuilding of the settlements.

Thus, quickly, the likes of Weiss and many of her supporters began calling on Israelis to join the recolonisation campaign. “Register, register, you’ll be in Gaza,” Weiss told an audience of supporters last March, joyfully declaring that 500 families had already signed up, according to a CNN report.

“Settling,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3, Crop2Comic, 2024

Weiss and Nachala are not acting independently from the overall objective of the country’s leading politicians. For example, on the first day of the war, 7 October, 2023, Netanyahu made his intentions clear: “I say to the residents of Gaza: Leave now, because we will operate forcefully everywhere.”

On 17 October, a position paper introduced by the Israeli Misgav Institute for National Security & Zionist Strategy called for the “relocation and final settlement of the entire Gaza population.”

The report saw in the war “a unique and rare opportunity to evacuate the whole Gaza Strip” into the Sinai desert. Later that same month, the Israeli intelligence ministry itself became involved, with the Israeli news outlet, Calcalist, publishing a document “recommend(ing) the transfer of Gaza residents to Sinai.”

On 14 November, far-right Minister Smotrich spoke of ‘voluntary migration’. In December, media reports said that Netanyahu himself had told Likud party members that Israel’s real challenge is finding “countries that are willing to absorb them”, meaning the people of Gaza.

Conferences began to be organised to gather support around the idea of ethnically cleansing Palestinians. The first major conference was held by a coalition of settler movements last December. “A house on the beach is not a dream”, an advertisement for the gathering proclaimed. The ‘beach’ here is a reference to the Gaza beach.

Even Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, jumped on the opportunity. In March, he spoke of Gaza’s “very valuable … waterfront property”, which required Israel to remove the civilians and “clean up the Strip”.

The ongoing so-called General’s Plan, aimed at the extermination and ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza, is but the military component of the settlers’ vision, that of ‘Gaza is ours, forever’.

But if Israel has failed to sustain its settlements in the rebellious Strip under more manageable circumstances in the past, will it succeed now?

The settlers are already aware of the challenge at hand. This is why they constantly link their colonisation of Gaza with the ethnic cleansing of the Strip’s Palestinian inhabitants.

Israel’s success and failure, however, will ultimately be determined by this maxim: as long as the Palestinian people are fighting back, Weiss and her fellow extremists will not find safety in Gaza.

Indeed, the native population of Gaza has subsisted in that historical land for thousands of years. If genocide has not forced them off their land, nothing else will.

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“The Palestinians look at everything from a broad, long-term perspective,” he said in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in 2019. “They see that, at the moment, there are five-six-seven million Jews here, surrounded by hundreds of millions of Arabs. They have no reason to give in, because the Jewish state can’t last. They are bound to win. In another 30 to 50 years they will overcome us, come what may.”

Morris is right. He is correct in the sense that Palestinians will not give up, that there can never be a situation where societies indefinitely survive and thrive within a permanent matrix of racial segregation, violence and exclusion – exclusion of the other, the Palestinians and the isolation of the self.

The very history of Palestine is a testament to such a truth. If the oppressed, the natives of the land, are not fully vanquished or decimated, they are likely to rise, fight and win back their freedom.

It must be utterly frustrating for Israel that all the killings and destruction underway in Gaza have not been enough to affect the overall outcomes of the war: the ‘total victory’ of which Netanyahu continues to speak.

Israel’s frustration is understandable because, like all military occupiers of the past, Tel Aviv continues to believe that the right quantity of violence should be enough to subdue colonised nations.

But Palestinians have a different intellectual trajectory that guides their collective behavior.

Of the many classifications of history, modern French historians separate between ‘histoire événementielle’ – evental history – and ‘longue durée’ – long history. In short, the former believes that history is the result of the accumulation of consequential events over the course of time, while the latter sees history on a far more complex level.

Credible history can only be seen in its totality, not merely the total events of history, recent or old, but the sum of feelings, the culmination of ideas, the evolution of collective consciousness, identities, relationships and the subtle changes that occur to societies over the course of time.

Palestinians are the perfect example of history being shaped by ideas, not guns; memories, not politics; collective hope, not international relations. They will eventually win their freedom, because they have invested in a long-term trajectory of ideas, memories and communal aspirations, which often translate to spirituality or, rather, a deep, immovable faith that grows stronger, even during times of horrific wars.

“Palestinicity,” Digital, Midjourney, 2024

In an interview I conducted with former United Nations Special Rapporteur, Professor Richard Falk in 2020, he summarised the struggle in Palestine as a war between those with arms and and those with legitimacy. He said that in the context of national liberation movements, there are two kinds of war: the actual war, as in soldiers carrying guns and the legitimacy war. The one who wins the latter will ultimately prevail.

Palestinians do, indeed, “look at everything from a broad, long-term perspective”. Agreeing with Morris’ statement may seem odd for, after all, societies are often driven by their own class struggles and socio-economic agendas instead of a unified and cohesive long-term vision.

This is where longue durée becomes most relevant in the Palestinian case. Even if Palestinians have not made a common agreement to wait for the invaders to leave, or for Palestine to, once again, become a place of social, racial and religious co-existence, they are driven, even if subconsciously, by the same energy that compelled their ancestors to push back against injustice in all its forms.

While many western politicians and academics are busy blaming Palestinains for their own oppression, Palestinian society continues to evolve based on entirely independent dynamics. For example, in Palestine, sumud, or resilience, is an ingrained culture, hardly subject to outside stimuli, political or academic. It is a culture that is as old as time. Innate. Intuitive. Generational.

This Palestinian saga started long before the war, long before Israel, long before modern colonialism. This truth demonstrates that history is not just moved by mere events, but by countless other factors; that, while ‘evental history’ – the political, military and economic aspects that contribute to the making of history through short-term events – is important, long-term history offers a more profound understanding of the past, and its consequences.

This discussion should engage all of those who are concerned about the struggle in Palestine, and are keen to present a version of the truth that is not driven by future political interests, but a profound understanding of the past. Only then we can begin to slowly liberate the Palestinian narrative from all the convenient histories imposed on the Palestinian people.

This is not an easy task, but an unavoidable one as it is critical to break away from the confines of superimposed language, historical events, recurring dates, dehumanising statistics and outright deception.

Ultimately, it should be clear to any astute reader of history that, while fighter jets and bunker-buster bombs may impact short-term historical events, courage, faith and communal love determine long-term history. This is why Palestinians are winning the legitimacy war, and this is why freedom for the Palestinian people is only a matter of time.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

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These were the last words written by my sister in a text message to one of her daughters.

Dr Soma Baroud was murdered on 9 October when Israeli warplanes bombed the taxi that carried her and other tired Gazans somewhere near the Bani Suhaila roundabout near Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip.

I still don’t know whether she was on her way to the hospital where she worked, or leaving the hospital to go home. Does it even matter?

The news of her assassination — which was a political murder; Israel has deliberately targeted and killed 986 medical workers, including 166 doctors — arrived through a screenshot copied from a Facebook page: “Update: these are the names of the martyrs of the latest Israeli bombing of two taxis in the Khan Yunis area…” It was followed by a list of names. “Soma Mohammed Mohammed Baroud” was the fifth name on the list, number 42,010 on Gaza’s ever-growing list of martyrs.

I refused to believe the news, even when more posts began popping up everywhere on social media, listing her as number five, and sometimes six in the list of martyrs of the Khan Yunis air strike.

I kept calling her, over and over again, hoping that the line would crackle a bit, followed by a brief silence, and then her kind, motherly voice would say, “Marhaba Abu Sammy. How are you, brother?” But she never answered the call.

I had told her repeatedly that she does not need to bother with elaborate text or audio messages due to the unreliable internet connection and electricity.

“Every morning,” I said, “just type: ‘We are fine’.” That’s all I asked of her.

But she would skip several days without writing, often due to the lack of an internet connection. Then, a message would arrive, although never brief. She wrote with a torrent of thoughts, linking up her daily struggle to survive, to her fears for her children, to poetry, to a Qur’anic verse, to one of her favourite novels, and so on.

“You know, what you said last time reminds me of Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude,” she told me on more than one occasion, before she would take the conversation into the most complex philosophical spins. I would listen, and just repeat, “Yes… totally… I agree… one hundred per cent.”

For us, Soma was a larger-than-life figure. This is precisely why her sudden absence has shocked us to the point of disbelief. Her children, although grown up, felt orphaned. But her brothers, me included, felt the same way.

I wrote about Soma as a central character in my book My Father Was a Freedom Fighter, because she was indeed central to our lives, and to our very survival in a Gaza refugee camp.

The first born, and only daughter, she had to carry a much greater share of work and expectations than the rest of us. She was just a child when my eldest brother, Anwar, still a toddler, died in an UNRWA clinic at the Nuseirat refugee camp due to the lack of medicine. Then, she was introduced to pain, the kind of pain that with time turned into a permanent state of grief that would never abandon her until her murder by a US-supplied Israeli bomb in Khan Yunis.

“Operating Room,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3 / Clip2Comic, 2024

Two years after the death of Anwar, another boy was born. They also called him Anwar, so that the legacy of the first boy could carry on. Soma cherished the newcomer, maintaining a special friendship with him for decades to come.

My father began his life as a child labourer, then a fighter in the Palestine Liberation Army, then a police officer during the Egyptian administration of Gaza, then, once again, a labourer, because he refused to join the Israeli-funded Gaza police force after the 1967 Naksa (the Six Day War).

A clever, principled man, and a self-taught intellectual, my Dad did everything he could to provide a measure of dignity for his small family; and Soma, a child, often barefoot, stood by him every step of the way. When he decided to become a merchant, as in buying discarded and odd items in Israel and repackaging them to sell in the refugee camp, Soma was his main helper. Although her skin healed, cuts on her fingers due to wrapping thousands of razors individually, remained as a testament to the difficult life she lived.

“Soma’s little finger is worth more than a thousand men,” my father would often repeat, to remind us, eventually five boys, that our sister will always be the main heroine in the family’s story. Now that she is a martyr, that legacy has been secured for eternity.

Years later, my parents sent her to Aleppo to obtain a medical degree. She returned to Gaza, where she spent over three decades healing the pain of others, although never her own.

She worked at Al-Shifa Hospital and Nasser Hospital among other medical centres. Later, she obtained another certificate in family medicine, and opened a clinic of her own. She did not charge the poor, and did all she could to heal those victimised by war.

Soma was a member of a generation of female doctors in Gaza who truly changed the face of medicine.

Collectively, they put great emphasis on the rights of women to medical care and expanding the understanding of family medicine to include psychological trauma with particular emphasis on the centrality as well as the vulnerability of women in a war-torn society.

When my daughter Zarefah managed to visit her in Gaza shortly before the ongoing war, she told me that, “When aunt Soma walked into the hospital, an entourage of women — doctors, nurses and other medical staff — would surround her in total adoration.”

At one point, it felt that all of Soma’s suffering was finally paying off: a nice family home in Khan Yunis, with a small olive orchard, and a few palm trees; a loving husband, a professor of law and eventually the dean of law school at a reputable Gaza university; three daughters and two sons, whose educational specialties ranged from dentistry to pharmacy, to law to engineering.

Even under siege, life — at least for Soma and her family — seemed manageable. True, she was not allowed to leave the Strip for many years due to the blockade, and thus we were denied the chance to see her for years on end. True, she was tormented by loneliness and seclusion, hence her love affair with and constant citation of García Márquez’s seminal novel. But at least her husband was not killed or missing. Her beautiful house and clinic were still standing. And she was living and breathing, communicating her philosophical nuggets about life, death, memories and hope. And then…

“If I could only find the remains of Hamdi, so that we can give him a proper burial,” she wrote to me last January, when the news circulated that her husband had been executed by an Israeli quadcopter in Khan Yunis. Because his body was missing, she held on to some faint hope that he was still alive. Her boys, on the other hand, kept digging in the wreckage and debris of the area where Hamdi was shot, hoping to find him and give him a proper burial. They would often be attacked by Israeli drones in the process of trying to unearth their father’s body. They would run away, and return with their shovels to carry on with the grim task.

To maximise their chances of survival, my sister’s family decided to split up between displacement camps and other family homes in southern Gaza. This meant that Soma had to be in a constant state of moving, travelling, often long distances on foot, between towns, villages and refugee camps, just to check on her children, following every incursion, and every massacre.

“I am exhausted,” she kept telling me. “All I want from life is for this war to end, for cosy new pyjamas, my favourite book, and a comfortable bed.”

These simple and reasonable expectations looked like a mirage, especially when her home in the Qarara area, in Khan Yunis, was demolished by the Israeli army last month. “My heart aches,” she wrote. “Everything is gone. Three decades of life, of memories, of achievement, all turned into rubble.”

She pointed out that this is not a story about stones and concrete. “It is much bigger. It is a story that cannot be fully told, however long I write or speak. Seven souls had lived here. We ate, drank, laughed, quarrelled, and despite all the challenges of living in Gaza, we managed to carve out a happy life for our family.”

A few days before she was killed, she told me that she had been sleeping in a half-destroyed building belonging to her neighbours in Qarara. She sent me a photo taken by her son, as she sat on a makeshift chair, on which she also slept amidst the ruins. She looked tired, so very tired.

There was nothing I could say or do to convince her to leave. She insisted that she wanted to keep an eye on the rubble of what remained of her home. Her logic made no sense to me. I pleaded with her to leave. She ignored me, and instead kept sending me photos of what she had salvaged from the rubble, an old photo, a small olive tree, a birth certificate…

My last message to her, hours before she was killed, was a promise that when the war is over, I would do everything in my power to compensate her for all of this. That the whole family would meet in Egypt, or Turkiye, and that we would shower her with gifts, and boundless family love. I finished with, “Let’s start planning now. Whatever you want. You just say it. Awaiting your instructions…” She never saw the message.

Even when her name, as yet another casualty of the Israeli genocide in Gaza was mentioned in local Palestinian news, I refused to believe it. I continued to call. “Please pick up, Soma, please pick up,” I pleaded.

Only when a video emerged of white body bags arriving at Nasser Hospital in the back of an ambulance did I think that maybe my sister was indeed gone.

Some of the bags had the names of the others mentioned in the social media posts. Each bag was pulled out separately and placed on the ground. A group of mourners, bereaved men, women and children would rush to hug the body, screaming the same shouts of agony and despair that have accompanied this ongoing genocide from the first day.

Then, another bag, with “Soma Mohammed Mohammed Baroud” written across the thick white plastic.

Her colleagues carried her body and laid it gently on the ground. They were about to zip the bag open to confirm her identity. I looked away.

I refuse to see her in any way but the way that she wanted to be seen, a strong person, a manifestation of love, kindness and wisdom; someone whose “little finger is worth more than a thousand men.”

But why do I continue to check my messages with the hope that she will text me to tell me that the whole thing was a major, cruel misunderstanding and that she is okay?

My sister Soma was buried under a small mound of dirt, somewhere in Khan Yunis.

No more messages from her.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

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Many Palestinians welcomed the international consensus that essentially declared to be null and void any Israeli attempt to make what is meant to be a temporary military occupation permanent. However, many were not impressed, understandably so, simply because the international community has proven ineffectual in bringing the catastrophic Israeli war against the Palestinians in Gaza to an end, or in enforcing its previous resolutions on the matter.

Israeli media largely ignored both events, while mainstream western media repeatedly emphasised that both the advisory opinion and the resolution are “non-binding”. This is true. However, as former UN Special Rapporteur John Dugard said twenty years ago, the laws and conventions upon which advisory opinions are based “are binding”, not least the Fourth Geneva Convention. [See Protecting Human Rights in Occupied Palestine…, Clarity Press, 2022, p19]

Although it is also true that international law without enforcement is largely useless, one must not be rash to conclude that the latest actions by the ICJ and the General Assembly deserve no pause for consideration. To appreciate the importance of both, we must place them within their proper context.

Unlike the ICJ’s advisory opinion of 2004, the 19 July opinion does not focus on a specific issue, the illegality of Israel’s so-called Separation Wall in the occupied West Bank. The latest decision by the world’s highest Court was the outcome of a specific request by the UNGA on 20 January, 2023, to opine “on Israeli practices affecting the human rights of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem.”

Moreover, the ICJ reached its conclusions after listening to the testimonies of representatives of 52 countries and three international organisations, which sided fully with the Palestinians in their historic quest for freedom, justice and respect for international law.

The ICJ opinion leaves no space for Israeli and US misinterpretation

Then there is the fact that the ICJ opinion touched upon numerous issues, leaving no space for any misinterpretation on the part of Israel and the United States. For example, it called on Israel to end its “unlawful presence” in occupied Palestine, and for it to “withdraw its military forces; halt the expansion of settlements and evacuate all settlers from occupied land; and demolish parts of a separation wall constructed inside the occupied West Bank.”

US officials give Israeli PM Netanyahu standing ovation as he vows to continue bombing Gaza – Cartoon [Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitor]

The ICJ opinion follows years of supposed Israeli achievements in marginalising the Palestinian cause, and exacting American support, which effectively recognised Israeli sovereignty over occupied Palestinian and Arab land.

If the ICJ pressed the reset button on the illegality of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, the UNGA pressed the political button. Indeed, UN Resolution A/ES-10/L.31/Rev.1 on 18 September has ended any Israeli illusions that it will be able, through pressure, threats or the passage of time, to end the conversation on its military occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.

The resolution “calls for Israel to comply with international law and withdraw its military forces, immediately cease all new settlement activity, evacuate all settlers from occupied land, and dismantle parts of the separation wall it constructed inside the occupied West Bank.”

Importantly, 124 countries voted in favour of the resolution, while 14 voted against it, separating once again those who believe in the primacy of international law in conflict resolution and those who don’t. Also significant is that the UN set a time frame for when the Israeli occupation must come to an end: “No later than 12 months from the adoption of the resolution.”

In international law, military occupations are meant to be a temporary process, regulated through numerous treaties and legal understandings, including the Fourth Geneva Conventions. Israel, however, has turned that temporary process into a permanent one.

If the Israeli military occupation does not end within the resolution’s specified time frame, Israel would then be in violation of two sets of laws: previous UN resolutions on the matter, including the ICJ advisory opinions, and the latest resolution as well.

The emphasis by western media on the “non-binding” element of these resolutions does not, in any way, alter the illegality of the Israeli occupation, or undermine the unanimity of the international community regarding the righteousness of the Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation and all other injustices.

Ultimately, Palestine will not be liberated by a UN resolution.

UN resolutions are merely an expression of the balances of power that exist on the international stage. As such, Palestinians and their supporters should not expect that a UN resolution, binding or otherwise, will drive the Israeli military out of the West Bank and Gaza.

I believe that the Palestinians will liberate themselves. However, the position of the international community remains significant as it re-emphasises the legitimacy of the Palestinian struggle, creates space for solidarity and helps further marginalise Israel for its continued violations of international law and the rights of the Palestinian people.

<i>The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.</i>

Via Middle East Monitor

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