Sunanda K. Datta-Ray | Only US, not Israel, can ensure a Gaza solution

Poised on the brink of electoral uncertainty, India defended Palestine’s rights last week with a shade more confidence than before. Yet, by making the future dependent on “direct and meaningful” negotiations with Israel, India’s ambassador to the United Nations, Ruchira Kamboj, fell into the trap of making peace and justice hostage to the Israelis, who are the problem in West Asia rather than the solution. But then, she must be loyal to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s fervent declaration that “the people of India firmly stand with Israel”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recalcitrance makes it clear that if a solution does emerge, it will be not because -- but in spite of -- Israel.

Today’s fashionable phrase is again a “two-state solution” with secure borders for an independent Palestine as well as cast-iron guarantees of Israel’s security.

True, this is the only realistic answer to the problem created by Zionist land-grabbing camouflaged in myth and mysticism. But US secretary of state Antony Blinken is wrong to call Hamas (“human animals” for some Americans) and Iran its worst enemies. The real opponents are not Muslim terrorists but fanatical Jews who never stop reliving the Holocaust and seem determined to make Palestinians pay for Nazi sins.

Mr Blinken was reminded that Mr Netanyahu presents formidable objections to the two-state solution when he calls the West Bank, where the bulk of Palestinian refugees live, “Judea and Samaria”, the Jewish homeland of Biblical times. Even the language suggests eternal and inalienable possession.

With US President Joe Biden gushing that “if there were not an Israel, we would have to invent one to make sure our interests were preserved”, it is no surprise that the Zionists are confident of American backing. Bilateral talks, as demanded by the United States and repeated by Ms Kamboj at the UN, will only give them the power of veto over the future. President Biden’s latest proposal for a temporary six-week cease-fire leading to negotiations to end the war and rebuild Gaza must be scrutinised in that light.

Israeli propaganda suggests that the war began with the horrors which Hamas perpetrated on October 7, 2023. Even Ms Kamboj referred to a conflict of “over seven months”. At least 76 years would be nearer the mark for the October 7 terrorist raid into Israel marked only another milestone since the “Naqba” -- Catastrophe -- whose anniversary the Palestinians mourn every year on May 15. That was the day in 1948 when Palestine was ethnically cleansed of some 800,000 Palestinians so that Israel could be carved out of the ruins of a once flourishing community.

Actually, Zionist terrorists had launched the process of displacing Palestinians long before May 15, 1948. In fact, by then, half the total number of Palestinians had already been expelled. That process still continues in Mr Netanyahu’s “Judea” and “Samaria”.

Making a solution to this tragedy dependent on Israel’s goodwill is to equate murderer and murdered. An Israel that has already killed more than 36,000 Palestinians in Gaza cannot be the solution. The solution can only come from the US. It is clear too that Mr Netanyahu is battling as much to save his own career as to defeat Hamas. Adversaries like Benny Gantz, a member of Israel’s War Cabinet and touted as the next Prime Minister, will renew their attack over pending charges of corruption, breach of trust, bribery and fraud as soon as the crisis ends. President Biden’s invitation last month to Mr Gantz to Washington may have improved his prospects.

There is no legal reason why Israel, with its own smash-and-grab lineage, should have any say in Palestine’s future. But as the de facto occupying power, although without de jure sanction, Israel exercises the authority of legitimacy while dismissing the more than 140 governments that now recognise Palestine as irrelevant. But with Sweden, Norway, Ireland and Spain joining the list, and the European Union calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, cracks have appeared in the Western façade. Even the US is worried that post-war Gaza might be rudderless like Afghanistan after the American pullout, which is why Mr Blinken stresses that Israel must “focus on what the future can and must be” to avoid “anarchy and a vacuum that’s likely to be filled by chaos”.

He may also have in mind the duplicity of an Israel that financed Gaza’s Islamist movement to counter the Palestinian secularists led by Yasser Arafat’s Fatah, which dominated the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

An offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas was formally established with Israel’s support soon after the first Intifada in 1987 opposing the Israeli occupation. The twofold objective was to split the nationalist Palestinian movement and, more fundamentally, thwart the two-state proposal. Israel calculated that the rise of a rejectionist Islamist group would undermine the two-state formula and curb Western support for an independent Palestine.

Victor Ostrovsky, a Mossad whistleblower, revealed in The Other Side of Deception that this was part of “Mossad’s general plan” for an Arab world “run by fundamentalists” whose rejection of “any negotiations with the West” would leave Israel as “the only democratic, rational country in the region”.

The immediate question is: Who will rule Gaza now? Warning that he opposes Israeli control, Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defence minister, wants Mr Netanyahu to publicly rule out Israeli governance and to disclose his post-war plans. Only Palestinian entities under international supervision can provide an alternative to Hamas, he says, calling on Mr Netanyahu “⁠to declare that Israel will not establish civilian” or military control over the Gaza Strip.

Mr Gallant’s remarks came as questions were being asked about Israel’s long-term strategy with military officials warning that the lack of one would mean repeating the Gaza tragedy again and again. Mr Netanyahu says that neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority can provide acceptable governments, and that he will not “replace Hamastan with Fatahstan”, meaning Fatah. As for the US, Mr Blinken does “not support and will not support an Israeli occupation” but he doesn’t support Hamas either. “There needs to be a clear and concrete plan, and we look to Israel to come forward with its ideas.”

Israel is the tail that wags the American dog that has tied not just its security but its very existence to the Zionist state whose government is charged with genocide and crimes against humanity. Many more Palestinians will die as Israel continues to bomb indiscriminately and prevent adequate aid from entering the devastated enclave that is still home to more than two million victims of racist imperialism.