by Marwan Emil Toubasi (*)
With the continuation of the war of extermination against our people in Gaza and the failure of the international community to stop it, whether intentionally or weakly, and the escalation in the implementation of the vision of occupation in the West Bank, and recently the increase in the severity of the measures adopted by the Israeli Finance Minister Smotrich, the leader of the Religious Zionism Party and Netanyahu’s successor, and even all the pillars of the government and the Zionist opposition that have been there for a long time. They threaten and intimidate our people, and threaten to expand their war to the east and north, in light of their crises and competition over the extent of harm to our people and the peoples of the region, and their attempt to escape forward, without any of them thinking that their occupation is the source of their crises and that their stability is linked to the freedom and dignity of our Palestinian people. I refer to what my friend Nabil Amr said in his recent article: “There is a comprehensive madness in Israel that seems to have no escape in the foreseeable future.”
In view of this, questions arise about the ideological and political motives, in addition to the essence of Zionist thought, that stand behind these policies that find a warm embrace on the part of the extreme right forces around the world, which today have become influential and on a noticeable increase, especially in Europe, after the rise of the power of the extreme and populist right in most countries. Old Continent which was exhausted by its dependence on American policies and the proxy wars carried out there and their repercussions on the economic and social conditions of the European peoples.
Therefore, these additional motives can be attributed to the consensus and identification that is taking place today between the two parties regarding their common understanding and vision in light of the theories of the clash of civilizations and replacement, as well as the racial or religious supremacy, which has come to characterize the policies of Smotrich, Ben Gvir, and all the Zionists that are being implemented on the ground against our Palestinian people and their future. The supposed two-state solution and the right to self-determination on the one hand, and to the same theories that today influence the present thought of the European far-right on the other hand, despite the far-right’s anti-Semitic and populist past (if that is just a past according to historical accounts, despite the non-Semitism of European Jews and the agreement of the right. represented extremist. The Nazis agreed with the Zionist movement on part of the Holocausts to facilitate settlement migration to Palestine in exchange for Jewish money in the 1930s), and today this European extreme right is active in combating “anti-Semitism.”
While the Israeli occupation was slaughtering, destroying, burning and torturing in Gaza, the leaders of all the extreme and moderate right-wing political parties alike in France, which won the first-stage parliamentary elections yesterday with a large lead, and other European countries as well, took to the “battlefield” and in the streets not to demand an end to the massacres and the occupation, but rather to demand the end of “anti-Semitism” and to affirm Israel’s right to defend itself, without any criticism of the crimes of the occupying state against our people. A strange hysterical atmosphere has prevailed in those European countries against anyone who criticizes Israeli crimes, and in particular against Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the United French Left, and all the parties of the European left that had escalated their unprecedented demonstrations in solidarity with our Palestinian people and denouncing the crimes of the occupation. They have been accused of anti-Semitism, as happened previously with the leader of the British Labor Party, this European left that stood in the face of Hitler’s Nazi massacres and holocausts through national resistance and actually against anti-Semitism. Today, the verse has become inverted due to the common interests and vision that unites the European extreme right with the occupying state. And the determinants of the relationship between them and with the extreme right in Latin America.
Giving way to the activity and progress of the populist far-right in yesterday’s elections after the decision of French President Macron and his moderate right-wing party to hold early elections with their prior knowledge of the progress of the far-right is the first actual recognition of the far-right by the ruling movement as a legitimate partner in the history of France after World War II, which Europe was taken into the abyss by the extreme right-wing vision of the Nazis at the time, which considered Le Pen and her partner Bardella to be carrying the legacy of that past historical stage in which they participated in committing crimes against the European peoples, including the Jews.
Today, this support of the European extreme right for Israel has allowed its crimes and policies to be whitewashed, in France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Hungary and others, as well as in Britain. In return, the role of the European extreme right is being whitewashed due to its support for “Israel the victim.”
The vision and measures of Smotrich, which he announced a few days ago, represent the true face of Zionism with all its components in the West Bank. He is known for his extreme right-wing religious tendencies, which enjoy the support and supervision of the father of the extreme Zionist right, Netanyahu. It adopts policies aimed at strengthening Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank by imposing full control over Area B, similar to Area C, which was defined and separated by the Oslo Accords, and undermining the Palestinian presence there through multiple measures that have been announced and approved by the occupation government, and in a way that serves the idea of the Jewish state, which It also dependsTo believe in the same intellectual sources of the European extreme right, which are;
First: The theory of the clash of civilizations, developed by Samuel Huntington, which assumes that future conflicts will take place between different cultures and civilizations rather than nation-states. In the Palestinian context, most Zionist circles and their Israeli parties adopt this theory to justify their colonial policies, as they portray the conflict with our Palestinian people as part of a broader conflict between Western civilization (of which they consider Israel a part) and the Islamic civilization, of which Arab Christians are considered a part of the Arab Levant, toIn addition to their Talmudic Torah religious interpretations about the “state of Judea and Samaria,” as well as the political and economic motives of Zionist thought in serving the draft American plans for our region and the broader region included in their project about the new Middle East, as well as linking Asia to Europe through new commercial and maritime lines and issuesEnergy and gas, in attempts to hinder the changes in the international system to confront China, Russia, and the BRICS countries in general. It itself expresses the tendencies of the European right, which sees Israel as the line of defense for Europe from the encroachment of Eastern civilization towards them.
On the other hand, these theories are what guide the vision of the European extreme right regarding hostility to other ethnicities in European societies, including the anti-Islamic view of “Islamophobia,” and hostility to issues of immigration to Europe.
Second: The replacement theory, which promotes the idea that there is an organized attempt to replace the “indigenous population” with other communities, often immigrants, which is what the European extreme right believes in to confront the phenomenon of immigration to Europe to search for a better life from conflict zones in the world. In the Israeli context, this theory is used to portray the Palestinians as a demographic threat that must be addressed through forms of oppressive racism, including forced displacement projects and increases in the level of Jewish settlement immigration to Palestine in order to reach a demographic reality that ends the Palestinian majority in the land of Mandatory Palestine and achieves their superiority. Or even pure Jewish existence so that they do not remain under the charge of apartheid. Smotrich, his supporters, and all components of Zionist thought believe that the increase in the Palestinian population in the West Bank threatens the Jewish identity of Israel, and therefore strict measures must be taken to reduce this threat through the genocide and displacement taking place in Gaza and their vision of the West Bank, including Jerusalem, around which they have completed the settlement belt. And its Judaization even within the walls of the Old City, where Jewish settlers today constitute 60% of its population, and in the West Bank approximately 25% of the population, a number that is steadily increasing and may lead to a change in the demographic map even in the territories of the supposed State of Palestine.
Therefore, the risks for our Palestinian people today are increasing due to the consensus and identification that has taken place between the two sides after the repeated victory of the extreme right forces in Europe, and the rope seems to be on the tractor, which will perhaps lead in a short time to hostility to any trend in which the policies of the occupying state are criticized until they bring their peoples once again to peace. The conviction that they are JewishIsrael is the victim and our Palestinian people are the perpetrators of heinous crimes, as long as the European left does not work to unify itself and its various components, as happened in France recently, in a broader European way to confront these dangers and work to overthrow this ideology for the second time after eliminating Nazism previously for the first time.
This may push, if the success of the extreme right in the rest of European countries continues, to influence the principle of the two-state solution, even though it is the moderate right of Christian Democrats, social democrats, and European neoliberals who made it a slogan without coupling it with an executive mechanism, and thus it is not achievable due to the changes taking place. On the ground, without punitive measures that the European Union has failed to take, in agreement with the United States, it is possible to oblige the occupying state at least to comply with international law and UN resolutions, specifically regarding Jerusalem and settlements, and the additional failure that is taking place now regarding stopping the genocidal aggression in Gaza that targets all of our people, and even in Some were involvedwith it . This, if it continues, will lead to an increase in political and military tensions in the region and a decline in confidence in international action, which Israel does not respect by ignoring its decisions and even the decisions of the International Court. Which will pose, until recently, as long as this situation continues, risks to the right to self-determination for our people and the erosion of international support in the absence of any opportunities for a negotiating process, with the occupation insisting on targeting all components of our people and weakening the Palestinian leadership by besieging it, and the occupation’s keenness to obstruct broad national unity within the framework of the Liberation Organization.
If the most right-wing, populist, and most evil Trump wins, the policies of Smotrich and all of Netanyahu’s announced government in the West Bank, which intersect with the theories of the clash of civilizations, replacement, and racist supremacy, will form a complex reality that threatens the future of the Palestinian people and delays their historical rights, as these policies will depend on strengthening control. Israel and undermining the Palestinian presence through repressive measures aimed at changing the demographic and geographical composition of the region, which will receive greater support from the global extreme right, until the Israelis, by virtue of their crises, reach the conviction that their continued occupation is their source.
In the end, these developments and policies require a comprehensive and unified Palestinian review, which I have talked about in previous articles, and international intervention to guarantee the rights of the Palestinians and achieve a just and sustainable peace in the region, based on more humane and just approaches by the international community that can contribute to alleviating the severity of the conflict and strengthening the situation. Opportunities for peaceStability in the Middle East is based on freedom, justice, and equality, regardless of the form of the political solution, which must guarantee the right to self-determination for our Palestinian people on the basis of the two-state solution or the one-state solution that is democratic after overthrowing the occupation first, and apartheid and Jewish supremacy second as components of the Zionist racist movement
(*) Former Ambassador of Palestine to Greece
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