By Ben Chacko
LONDON: Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces critical elections next week. Entirely predictably he has announced the “closure” of the key Palestinian town of Hebron, and is preparing “a full lockdown” of the occupied West Bank. This follows the killing of two Palestinian combatants in a shootout in Hebron.
The Israeli Defence Forces report two soldiers were killed and three injured during the shooting. Palestinians firstly, Israelis, of course, and even the dogs in the street know that the West Bank is on the brink of an explosion.
Ramping up the prospects of a sharp collision between West Bank Palestinians and the poisonous provocations of violent settlers — invariably backed by the IDF in their staged conflicts with Palestinian farming communities — is in tune with the electoral strategy Netanyahu favours, one that he shares with his far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.
One feature of the blanket of mystification that the Western media lays down is in the denial to Palestinians of both their identity as combatants and agency as protagonists in this conflict.
We gained a brief window of insight when the Washington Post journalist, Heidi Levine, who was attacked by Israeli settlers last week, told US broadcaster CNN that what hurt her the most was that she could now “really understand what others have gone through, what Palestinian women, children, men have gone through.”
“I can’t imagine what it’s like for all the victims that have gone through the same ordeal and are living with the threat of this violence on a daily basis,” she said.
“There was tear gas, there was gunfire. I was thrown to the ground… They just kept kicking me and hitting me with sticks, and it just kept going on and on. And then I actually thought, OK, maybe I’ll just play dead and pretend I’m dead, and they’ll stop and they’ll leave me alone.”
We are rarely told the names of Palestinians but we are instantly given the details of the Israeli soldiers killed and injured in the firefight. The unspoken subtext is that of legitimate authority dealing with an illegitimate challenge. This is, in fact, a complete inversion of the truth and the reality. Resistance to occupation by an alien force, including armed resistance, is lawful and legitimate under international law.
The specific right of Palestinians to resist the illegal occupation of their land is enshrined in the 1990 United Nations resolution that deals with the granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples and dealt simultaneously with the dismantling of South African apartheid.
And for those who would criminalise the language Palestinians use to describe their struggle we can refer to the UN resolution which makes the legitimacy of their choices explicit: “Considering that the denial of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination, sovereignty, independence and return to Palestine and the brutal suppression by the Israeli forces of the heroic uprising, the intifada, of the Palestinian population in the occupied territories, as well as the repeated Israeli aggression against the population of the region, constitute a serious threat to international peace and security…”
We will doubtless hear, from NATO chancelleries, pious declarations against violence and in favour of negotiations. But while the oppressive violence of the Israeli occupation forces is morally and legally illegitimate, that of an oppressed people fighting for their sovereignty and freedom is entirely legitimate.
The Israeli nation will not know peace until the Palestinian nation lives in security and tranquillity. If this conflict is to be resolved, and this is only possible on the basis of the Palestinian demand for a sovereign state of their own, then our government, among others, must end its support for the Israeli killing machine. (IPA Service)
