Our Wednesday News Analysis | Israel cannot deny Palestinians their rights forever – there will be no peace till there is justice for Palestine

ACTIONS OF A ROGUE STATE: Indiscriminate bombing, yesterday, of the Gaza Strip by Israel

Source: The Morning Star
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/f/israel-cannot-deny-palestinians-their-rights-forever-there-will-be-no-peace-till-there-is-justice-for-palestine

By Kamal Hawwash
Published May 15, 2023

Ahead of leading today's march in London, Chair of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign KAMEL HAWWASH explains how all Palestinians, regardless of age, experience the Nakba

It is that time of the year when Palestinians all over the world commemorate another year since their Catastrophe, the Nakba, which hit them in 1948, when a state was created on their land for a people who did not come from the land and when 750,000 indigenous Palestinians were expelled to neighbouring countries.

"My mother who was born in Jerusalem and lives with me in Birmingham should be able to choose to return to live in her hometown.

When that happens, peace will have come to the holy land."

A peaceful people, that had endured an unwelcome and often violent British occupation under the UN mandate for Palestine awarded in 1920, were once again occupied by another group of foreigners.

During the mandate, the UK worked tirelessly to make good on its shameful promise to assist the zionist movement to create a homeland for Jews in Palestine. The Balfour Declaration in 1917 had complete disregard for the overwhelming existing Palestinian majority who inhabited historic Palestine, not consulting them and referring to them as simply “communities.”

Unlike the inhabitants of Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, they were the only inhabitants of an area created by the British and the French under the Sykes-Picot agreement that were not helped to gain independence...

Read more: Israel cannot deny Palestinians their rights forever – there will be no peace till there is justice for Palestine

THE US POLICY WORLD CAN’T IMAGINE PALESTINIANS AS EQUALS

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken gives a press statement in Jerusalem, January 31, 2023.

Source: Jews for Justice for Palestinians
https://jfjfp.com/the-us-policy-world-cant-imagine-palestinians-as-equals/

Tariq Kenney-Shawa writes in +972 Magazine
Published May 11, 2023

The refusal of American policy figures to consider alternatives to the two-state solution betrays the fact that they will always prioritize Israeli domination.

For years Palestinians have warned the international community that hopes for a two-state solution were crumbling under the internal contradictions that have afflicted the so-called “peace process” since its inception. Now, it appears that mainstream policymakers may finally be catching on.

“… Israel can either remain an apartheid state or become a real democracy, but it cannot be both.

“Once you have equal rights, it’s not a Jewish state anymore...”

In a recent essay in the prominent journal Foreign Affairs, scholars Shibley Telhami, Michael Barnett, Marc Lynch, and Nathan J. Brown make the case that “it is no longer possible to avoid confronting a one-state reality” in Israel-Palestine. They argue that this reality, characterized by Israel’s absolute dominance, shatters the illusion of a democratic Israel as somehow distinct from the territories it occupies — an illusion that served as the foundation of international peacemaking efforts. By acknowledging the apartheid regime that prevails, the authors urge American policymakers and thinkers to recognize that it is “time to give up on the two-state solution.” (The authors have recently published an edited volume on the same subject.)

While the argument is not new, the article is an important one. Its publication in a mainstream journal, known to be widely read in American political and policy circles, has catapulted what has been a peripheral discussion onto center stage. It also comes at a pivotal moment for the Palestinian struggle for liberation, as the election of Israel’s most far-right, extremist government yet, and rising tides of violence against Palestinians, shed new light upon the one-state condition that exists between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea...

Read more: The US policy world can’t imagine Palestinians as equals

THE CATASTROPHE IN PALESTINE AND CHRISTIAN ZIONISM

Pro-Israel Rally in Los Angeles. (Photo: via Wikimedia Commons)

Source: Palestine Chronicle
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/the-catastrophe-in-palestine-and-christian-zionism/

By Dr. M. Reza Behnam
Published May 9, 2023

No one should be shocked by the rightward drift of Israeli politics. The ultra-Orthodox extremist regime currently assembled in Tel Aviv is the end product of Israel’s systematic use of religion to uphold Jewish supremacy and legitimize its colonial rule over Palestine.

"By defining Palestine-Israel in explicitly mythical Bible stories, the religious right has abetted Israel’s racist and oppressive policies.

The Palestinian tragedy that has resulted is
completely excluded from Christian Zionist discourse and understanding."

The question of whether Israel is a nation or a religious community, solely for the Jewish people, has been intrinsic to its identity and future. Like their ultra-Orthodox Israeli counterparts, Christian Zionists unequivocally answer that it is a state only for Jews.

With over 40 million adherents, Christian Zionists in the United States have been influential in determining the formation of America’s Israel-first policy.

Christian Zionism is the political outgrowth of dispensationalism—a movement that originated with 19th-century Anglican priest, John Nelson Darby. Darby’s theology reached a vast American audience with the 1909 publication and widespread distribution of the Scofield Reference Bible. By the 1970s, Christian Zionism had become synonymous with American evangelicalism...

Read more: The Catastrophe in Palestine and Christian Zionism