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| First Published In Al Mayadeen English. |
While some may claim the past is a country we should not visit, when it comes to Palestine it seems only the past exists.
A past filled with occupation exploitation and deception.
From the Romans via the Ottomans to the British, Palestine has a history of colonial conquest and military occupation which continues today under the Zionist Israeli apartheid regime.
During the first World War, while Britain and her allies fought the German Austro-Hungarian Turkish alliance, the British promised all the countries and people under Ottoman rule freedom, if they rose up and fought against the Turks. An Arab army was raised and those people fought for their independence
Yet independence they were denied: under the Sykes Pico agreement of 1916, the Ottoman empire was to be broken up into its constituent parts and reconfigured in the image and interests of British and French imperialism. New kingdoms were created, new countries formed, and sectarianism was used to place those now forced to live in these new territories under imperialist military dominance at each other's throats.
New regimes, friendly, subordinate and subservient to western capitalist designs came into being.
The scene was set for civil unrest, community tensions, sectarian division, and conflict for decades to come.
Most if not all of the violence, destruction, death, misery, hurt, pain, poverty, and despair that we witness today in West Asia is a direct result of Britain and France with their exploitation of the resources the land and the people of the region.
The war between Iraq and Iran can be traced to the US and Britain encouraging Saddam Hussein to attack Iran in a proxy war to destabilize the Iranian Revolution of 1979, which was itself a response to the coup led by the British and the Americans, a coup by which they installed the Shah in 1952 in power in order to protect Britain's continued exploitation of the Iranian oil fields. From 1980 until the end of the Iraq-Iran war, 1 million died in the conflict, with "Israel" the main beneficiaries as two of its regional opponents bled both men and military assets in a war encouraged by the West.
The Balfour declaration of 1917 was a secret communique between Lord Balfour, on behalf of the British government, to Lord Rothschild and the representatives of Zionism, in which he declared Britain's willingness to create a Jewish homeland in the country of Palestine.
While Palestinians fought alongside the British on the promise of attaining their freedom, the British had secretly negotiated the surrender of Palestine to Zionism.
It has been claimed Zionists have assured the British government they could bring America into the war on the side of the allies.
So here we have the treachery of the British government who sold out the Palestinian right to self-determination when they simply replaced the Ottoman empire covering vast areas of West Asia with an Anglo-French empire of military and financial occupation.
"Israel" was birthed in the blood of the Palestinian people in 1948 under a UN mandate that gave Zionists who were a minority in the country, more than 52% of the land of Palestine.
In reality, Zionists had been emigrating to Palestine from as early as 1880, and in 1901, the Jewish National Fund (JNF) - which still exists today - began buying land in Palestine from absentee Turkish landlords.
The JNF stands accused today of secretly buying land in the Occupied Palestinian Territories of the West Bank for Zionist settlements.
They brought European Jews onto the land of Palestine, displacing the indigenous farmers and laborers. In effect, it was the beginning of the Nakba. The colonization and ethnic cleansing of Palestine dunum by dunum. First by stealth and latterly by violent expulsion.
Many Europeans believe the exodus of Jews from Europe to Palestine began as a response to the violence of the second world war and the Holocaust.
In reality, Zionists had been expropriating land for almost 50 years prior to the ending of the Second World War and the birth of "Israel".
Riots between Palestinian Christians and Muslims against Jewish immigrants erupted in Al-Quds in 1926, as the demographics between indigenous and immigrant began to converge in the city.
This was not anti-Semitism, as Palestinians are Semitic people born in the land of Sham. These were riots between the indigenous people who were being marginalized, replaced, losing their homes jobs, economic wealth, and place in society, who were being systematically expunged from their land.
The interloper was replacing the indigenous people with the full acquiescence of the British authorities.
The growing resistance in Palestine to both unregulated Jewish immigration and Britain's continued military and financial occupation was brutally repressed at the point of British guns.
Anti-Semitism in Europe was the driving force behind Jewish migration to Palestine.
It is the people of West Asia, and especially the people of Palestine, who have paid the price for European anti-Semitism.
From national wars of liberation against British and French colonial occupation of their countries in decades past, to the war on Yemen by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the destruction of Iraq, Libya, and Syria, the confessional sectarian fuelled state of Lebanon, all can be placed on the altar of British French EU and now American capitalist Imperialism.
The partition of Palestine in 1948 led to 800,000 Palestinians being forced to flee.
The diaspora living in refugee camps today in neighboring countries is counted in the millions.
The colonization and ethnic cleansing of Palestine continue daily in the 21st century as this European project in West Asia unfolds.
The house demolitions, the house possessions, the land theft, the illegal settlement building program, the murder, imprisonment, torture, and brutalization of Palestinians civil society continues apace.
"Israel" is in the final phase of its desire to fully colonise Palestine.
It refuses to define its borders as it may very well have further military colonial desires to occupy neighboring lands, notably since it already does illegally in the occupied Golan and the occupied Shebaa farms of Lebanon.
The history of "Israel's" existence in West Asia as part of an Anglo-American European colonization project has brought nothing but war death disaster destabilization and destruction to the entire region.
The response from the world should be one of complete abhorrence. The world should boycott divest and sanction "Israel" much like it did the apartheid pariah state of South Africa. Yet instead, the US subsidizes "Israel" financially and offers it a shield politically.
Every bomb "Israel" drops on Gaza or Syria or Lebanon is replaced by its surrogate father, the US.
Indeed, while millions of Americans are homeless and tens of millions cannot afford health care, "Israel" receives nearly 4 billion dollars annually from the American taxpayer. While many US citizens hold down two jobs and avail of food banks, Israelis in comparison live a life of comparative luxury.
Instead of the US punishing Israeli war crimes against the Palestinian people with sanctions, the US under Trump trumpeted the "Deal of the Century" and the so-called "Abraham Accords."
A series of policies - most likely agreed upon between American and Israeli policymakers - is to encourage the further entrenchment of "Israel" within West Asia, through a process of normalization of diplomatic, economic, and military ties between the colonial regime and some of its Arab neighbors. Namely, those pro-western Gulf kingdoms established under the Sykes Pico Agreement of 1916.
It must be remembered that former President Trump is first and foremost a businessman, not a politician.
He sees policy as a business deal and money is the key to resolving issues.
This proposal was unveiled by Trump and Netanyahu on January 28 2020 and was dubbed at the time: "Peace to Prosperity : A Vision to Improve the Lives of Palestinian and Israeli People."
"The Deal of the Century" was the name given to a process agreed between "Israel" and the US without any Palestinian consent. It was proposed as the latest inclusive peace settlement between Palestinians and Israelis. It was described by many, including US democrats, as a thinly disguised blueprint for the further expansion of illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied territories of the West Bank.
It is dead in the water as a peace deal, yet the illegal settlements are still being built at pace.
What appears to have succeeded is a policy of normalization between "Israel" and some of its regional allies.
The "Deal of the Century" was meant to be a vehicle through which normalization could be negotiated, a fig leaf of respectability whereby some West Asian monarchies could normalize relations with "Israel" while hiding behind the new "Peace and Prosperity" initiative as cover for their betrayal of the Palestinian right to self-determination.
The plan was to offer a deal to the Palestinians in order to allow others to complete diplomatic economic and military ties with "Israel".
Both the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed the normalization agreements, thereby legitimising the Israeli apartheid entity and selling out the Palestinian birthright to self-determination and the right of return enshrined in international law.
What is in this for "Israel"?
Well that's obvious: Money, new markets to exploit.
The Accords pave the way for sales of medicine technology arms food and military support from "Israel" to their new regional allies. It further weakens the cause of Palestine, ensuring more censure of the public calls for peace and justice for Palestine which emanates from the populace of these nations. In the wider context of the geopolitical chess game, it will further isolate Syria Iran and Yemen, the axis of resistance, and may lead to an Israeli-Saudi Arabian-Emirati-Bahraini military alliance in opposition to the resistance.
This is all manna from heaven to the apartheid regime.
While the governments and leaders of the Gulf kingdoms may be in thrall to "Israel", the people are not.
What is in this for the new friends of "Israel"?
I would say nothing. "Israel" will bleed them dry of their oil wealth.
Already Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and latterly Bahrain have been seduced into a war with Yemen.
One of the poorest countries in the world is being bombed into oblivion by a group of some of the richest nations on the planet.
With technical aid and military arms sales from "Israel", the US, and Britain, these rich countries will soon find all their wealth in Israeli, American, and British arms dealers bank accounts.
The countries will edge towards financial difficulties inspired by their foolish slavish subservience to American, British, and Israeli foreign policy which they so fervently adhere to.
Ultimately Yemen will win the war against its aggressors.
Saudi Arabia and the Emirates will be defeated. "Israel", the US, and Britain will continue to foment war in the region while laughing all the way to the bank.
Meanwhile, Palestinians will become homeless, again, and suffer Zionist imprisonment. Yemenis will die under a sanction-induced famine. Syrians and Iranians will die due to a lack of medicines and the continued destabilization of their economies while under siege. Libyans and Iraqi's will die under failed western exploitation.
While western citizens sleep soundly under their blanket of white exploitative supremacist military superiority, millions in the east cry out for justice while sleeping under the fog of War.
During the first World War, while Britain and her allies fought the German Austro-Hungarian Turkish alliance, the British promised all the countries and people under Ottoman rule freedom, if they rose up and fought against the Turks. An Arab army was raised and those people fought for their independence
Yet independence they were denied: under the Sykes Pico agreement of 1916, the Ottoman empire was to be broken up into its constituent parts and reconfigured in the image and interests of British and French imperialism. New kingdoms were created, new countries formed, and sectarianism was used to place those now forced to live in these new territories under imperialist military dominance at each other's throats.
New regimes, friendly, subordinate and subservient to western capitalist designs came into being.
The scene was set for civil unrest, community tensions, sectarian division, and conflict for decades to come.
Most if not all of the violence, destruction, death, misery, hurt, pain, poverty, and despair that we witness today in West Asia is a direct result of Britain and France with their exploitation of the resources the land and the people of the region.
The war between Iraq and Iran can be traced to the US and Britain encouraging Saddam Hussein to attack Iran in a proxy war to destabilize the Iranian Revolution of 1979, which was itself a response to the coup led by the British and the Americans, a coup by which they installed the Shah in 1952 in power in order to protect Britain's continued exploitation of the Iranian oil fields. From 1980 until the end of the Iraq-Iran war, 1 million died in the conflict, with "Israel" the main beneficiaries as two of its regional opponents bled both men and military assets in a war encouraged by the West.
The Balfour declaration of 1917 was a secret communique between Lord Balfour, on behalf of the British government, to Lord Rothschild and the representatives of Zionism, in which he declared Britain's willingness to create a Jewish homeland in the country of Palestine.
His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
While Palestinians fought alongside the British on the promise of attaining their freedom, the British had secretly negotiated the surrender of Palestine to Zionism.
It has been claimed Zionists have assured the British government they could bring America into the war on the side of the allies.
So here we have the treachery of the British government who sold out the Palestinian right to self-determination when they simply replaced the Ottoman empire covering vast areas of West Asia with an Anglo-French empire of military and financial occupation.
"Israel" was birthed in the blood of the Palestinian people in 1948 under a UN mandate that gave Zionists who were a minority in the country, more than 52% of the land of Palestine.
In reality, Zionists had been emigrating to Palestine from as early as 1880, and in 1901, the Jewish National Fund (JNF) - which still exists today - began buying land in Palestine from absentee Turkish landlords.
The JNF stands accused today of secretly buying land in the Occupied Palestinian Territories of the West Bank for Zionist settlements.
They brought European Jews onto the land of Palestine, displacing the indigenous farmers and laborers. In effect, it was the beginning of the Nakba. The colonization and ethnic cleansing of Palestine dunum by dunum. First by stealth and latterly by violent expulsion.
Many Europeans believe the exodus of Jews from Europe to Palestine began as a response to the violence of the second world war and the Holocaust.
In reality, Zionists had been expropriating land for almost 50 years prior to the ending of the Second World War and the birth of "Israel".
Riots between Palestinian Christians and Muslims against Jewish immigrants erupted in Al-Quds in 1926, as the demographics between indigenous and immigrant began to converge in the city.
This was not anti-Semitism, as Palestinians are Semitic people born in the land of Sham. These were riots between the indigenous people who were being marginalized, replaced, losing their homes jobs, economic wealth, and place in society, who were being systematically expunged from their land.
The interloper was replacing the indigenous people with the full acquiescence of the British authorities.
The growing resistance in Palestine to both unregulated Jewish immigration and Britain's continued military and financial occupation was brutally repressed at the point of British guns.
Anti-Semitism in Europe was the driving force behind Jewish migration to Palestine.
It is the people of West Asia, and especially the people of Palestine, who have paid the price for European anti-Semitism.
From national wars of liberation against British and French colonial occupation of their countries in decades past, to the war on Yemen by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the destruction of Iraq, Libya, and Syria, the confessional sectarian fuelled state of Lebanon, all can be placed on the altar of British French EU and now American capitalist Imperialism.
The partition of Palestine in 1948 led to 800,000 Palestinians being forced to flee.
The diaspora living in refugee camps today in neighboring countries is counted in the millions.
The colonization and ethnic cleansing of Palestine continue daily in the 21st century as this European project in West Asia unfolds.
The house demolitions, the house possessions, the land theft, the illegal settlement building program, the murder, imprisonment, torture, and brutalization of Palestinians civil society continues apace.
"Israel" is in the final phase of its desire to fully colonise Palestine.
It refuses to define its borders as it may very well have further military colonial desires to occupy neighboring lands, notably since it already does illegally in the occupied Golan and the occupied Shebaa farms of Lebanon.
The history of "Israel's" existence in West Asia as part of an Anglo-American European colonization project has brought nothing but war death disaster destabilization and destruction to the entire region.
The response from the world should be one of complete abhorrence. The world should boycott divest and sanction "Israel" much like it did the apartheid pariah state of South Africa. Yet instead, the US subsidizes "Israel" financially and offers it a shield politically.
Every bomb "Israel" drops on Gaza or Syria or Lebanon is replaced by its surrogate father, the US.
Indeed, while millions of Americans are homeless and tens of millions cannot afford health care, "Israel" receives nearly 4 billion dollars annually from the American taxpayer. While many US citizens hold down two jobs and avail of food banks, Israelis in comparison live a life of comparative luxury.
Instead of the US punishing Israeli war crimes against the Palestinian people with sanctions, the US under Trump trumpeted the "Deal of the Century" and the so-called "Abraham Accords."
A series of policies - most likely agreed upon between American and Israeli policymakers - is to encourage the further entrenchment of "Israel" within West Asia, through a process of normalization of diplomatic, economic, and military ties between the colonial regime and some of its Arab neighbors. Namely, those pro-western Gulf kingdoms established under the Sykes Pico Agreement of 1916.
It must be remembered that former President Trump is first and foremost a businessman, not a politician.
He sees policy as a business deal and money is the key to resolving issues.
This proposal was unveiled by Trump and Netanyahu on January 28 2020 and was dubbed at the time: "Peace to Prosperity : A Vision to Improve the Lives of Palestinian and Israeli People."
"The Deal of the Century" was the name given to a process agreed between "Israel" and the US without any Palestinian consent. It was proposed as the latest inclusive peace settlement between Palestinians and Israelis. It was described by many, including US democrats, as a thinly disguised blueprint for the further expansion of illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied territories of the West Bank.
It is dead in the water as a peace deal, yet the illegal settlements are still being built at pace.
What appears to have succeeded is a policy of normalization between "Israel" and some of its regional allies.
The "Deal of the Century" was meant to be a vehicle through which normalization could be negotiated, a fig leaf of respectability whereby some West Asian monarchies could normalize relations with "Israel" while hiding behind the new "Peace and Prosperity" initiative as cover for their betrayal of the Palestinian right to self-determination.
The plan was to offer a deal to the Palestinians in order to allow others to complete diplomatic economic and military ties with "Israel".
Both the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed the normalization agreements, thereby legitimising the Israeli apartheid entity and selling out the Palestinian birthright to self-determination and the right of return enshrined in international law.
What is in this for "Israel"?
Well that's obvious: Money, new markets to exploit.
The Accords pave the way for sales of medicine technology arms food and military support from "Israel" to their new regional allies. It further weakens the cause of Palestine, ensuring more censure of the public calls for peace and justice for Palestine which emanates from the populace of these nations. In the wider context of the geopolitical chess game, it will further isolate Syria Iran and Yemen, the axis of resistance, and may lead to an Israeli-Saudi Arabian-Emirati-Bahraini military alliance in opposition to the resistance.
This is all manna from heaven to the apartheid regime.
While the governments and leaders of the Gulf kingdoms may be in thrall to "Israel", the people are not.
What is in this for the new friends of "Israel"?
I would say nothing. "Israel" will bleed them dry of their oil wealth.
Already Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and latterly Bahrain have been seduced into a war with Yemen.
One of the poorest countries in the world is being bombed into oblivion by a group of some of the richest nations on the planet.
With technical aid and military arms sales from "Israel", the US, and Britain, these rich countries will soon find all their wealth in Israeli, American, and British arms dealers bank accounts.
The countries will edge towards financial difficulties inspired by their foolish slavish subservience to American, British, and Israeli foreign policy which they so fervently adhere to.
Ultimately Yemen will win the war against its aggressors.
Saudi Arabia and the Emirates will be defeated. "Israel", the US, and Britain will continue to foment war in the region while laughing all the way to the bank.
Meanwhile, Palestinians will become homeless, again, and suffer Zionist imprisonment. Yemenis will die under a sanction-induced famine. Syrians and Iranians will die due to a lack of medicines and the continued destabilization of their economies while under siege. Libyans and Iraqi's will die under failed western exploitation.
While western citizens sleep soundly under their blanket of white exploitative supremacist military superiority, millions in the east cry out for justice while sleeping under the fog of War.
𒍨The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al Mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.
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| Fra Hughes is a columnist with Al Mayadeen. |
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