Israel never compromises

Published 11 June 2024 at 21.51

Column. Israel's goal is not peace but a Jewish state that encompasses everything within the boundaries set forth in the Old Testament. Therefore, the ethnic cleansing will continue until the Palestinians are expelled from both Gaza and the West Bank, writes Jonas De Geer.

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The UN Security Council has adopted a US resolution on a plan for a cease-fire in Gaza. Broadly speaking, it first involves a six-week ceasefire, the release of the hostages and then the rebuilding of the infrastructure on the bombed-out coastal strip. At the time of writing, Hamas has accepted it, but Israel has not yet made any announcement. A bit strange because it is essentially the same plan that was proposed by Israel just ten days ago. On SVT it was then said that “even though the agreement has been presented as an Israeli proposal, it is clear that it is the USA that is pulling the strings”.

But who is really pulling whose strings when it comes to American-Israeli relations? US foreign and security policy is not under the influence of the Israeli lobby; rather, it is in its firm grip. This has been the case for a long time, but if we now only look at the Biden government, for example the foreign minister, the finance minister, the justice minister, the security minister, the White House chief of staff and the national security chief are all Jews.

When US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken went to Israel after October 7 and stood on the podium with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he announced: “I stand here, not only as US Secretary of State, but also as a Jew.” A little later in the speech, after at length and extensively condemning the evils of Hamas, repeatedly touching on the Holocaust and praising Israeli heroism, he promised: “You may be strong enough to defend yourselves, but as long as the United States exists, you will never , ever, to have to do it.”

The same Blinken went to the region yesterday again to persuade Hamas to accept the ceasefire proposal. Should the Palestinians trust him?

Benjamin Netanyahu has said that there can be no talk of an end to the war until Israel has achieved its goals. So what are the goals? We are constantly told to crush Hamas. Hamas was founded at the end of the 1980s and is therefore a relatively late actor in this more than a century-old drama. Establishing an Eretz Israel, a greater Israel encompassing everything within the boundaries specified in the Old Testament, has, on the other hand, been the stated goal of Zionism since its beginning: that is, that Gaza and the West Bank should also become an integral part of the Jewish state.

This is not Netanyahu's own policy, not “right-wing politics” as figures Jonas Sjöstedt wants to imagine, but is in the very DNA of the state of Israel. Bibi wants to go down in history as a great Jewish leader who took an important step on the road to Eretz Israel, but he follows the same course as all representatives in office, regardless of party affiliation.

The large protests against his government in Israel before and after the latest “war” in Gaza began have nothing to do with his attitude towards the Palestinians either. It is largely a rekindling of the often violent demonstrations early last year against a law that would strengthen the president's power. Now they are also about the fact that he did not get the hostages released, but they are not motivated by any outrage for the sake of the dead and displaced Palestinians.

The mass media in the West have unfortunately completely embraced a Zionist propaganda discourse. Variants of “Israel's war against Hamas” are usually the vignette when it is reported from Gaza on Swedish television. It is not “war”, in any reasonable sense, when one of the world's strongest military powers shoots and bombs to death tens of thousands of defenseless civilians, destroys hospitals, cuts water and electricity supplies, stops aid shipments, displaces basically an entire population of about two million residents from their homes with no prospect whatsoever of ever being able to return.

“Cease fire” is also used insidiously. It normally means an agreement between two warring parties, but the Palestinians have nothing to oppose the crushing Israeli supremacy, so in reality what is proposed is only a pause in the bloody displacement.

If ever such a concept as genocide or ethnic cleansing meant something they do in this case. It is taking place now, before the eyes of a fallen world that is a little embarrassed screwing itself up.

Two-state solution? No, that has never been Israel's goal. And they don't compromise. Not in the long term.

The West Bank next.

JONAS DE GEER

Jonas De Geer is a freelance writer