Expulsion, Exile. and Redemption
The enduring leitmotif of Israel’s “forever war” against Palestine
Expulsion, Exile. and Redemption is the enduring leitmotif of Israel’s “forever war” against Palestine
The forcible removal of Gaza’s Palestinians – concentrating them in the south as a prelude to their transfer to Egypt and beyond is gathering steam.
Israel is the primary agent of the removal of Palestinians in Gaza, an objective now openly declared by Israel’s leadership and greeted with a yawn by a distracted Israeli public that lacks the energy or interest to protest. Even before the latest war, Israelis traumatized by the endemic conflict just wanted the Palestinians to disappear. For Israelis, Hamas’ rampage gives license and moral absolution to Israel’s ongoing campaign of destruction and death.
Elsewhere, Israel’s campaign against Palestinians is progressing today in the West Bank and Gaza Strip without significant, effective opposition.
The architects of Oslo and their policy technicians must acknowledge their part in this bloodbath. Oslo’s failure marked the end of modest efforts to accommodate clashing Israeli and Palestinian national interests. The extraordinary cost of this diplomatic malpractice is only now coming into view.
Sipping coffee in Dizengoff while Palestinians are being starved as a matter of policy has come to symbolize the disinterested complicity of Israelis in a policy that aims not merely at a political objective – the permanent destruction of the option of Palestinian self-determination west of the Jordan River -- but also reveals the extraordinary costs of the effort to destroy what Moshe Dayan eloquently described more than half century ago as the enduring, indeed legitimate hatred of Palestinians for the Jewish project in Palestine.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/moshe-dayan-s-eulogy-for-roi-rutenberg-april-19-1956
Israel’s destruction of a Palestinian presence in Gaza -- historically the engine of Palestinian nationalism in the modern era -- and by extension throughout the Land of Israel is a consequence of the refusal, notwithstanding the
Oslo precedent, to acknowledge the legitimacy of a Palestinian presence of any sort throughout the Land of Israel.
At its best, the diplomacy championed by Rabin and Arafat aimed at constructing a different, less murderous and more hopeful rapprochement on the basis of a mutual recognition of the legitimacy of conflicting claims. But this option was betrayed by those content with a “process” who did not reckon the costs of diplomacy’s failure, and the obstinate, increasing political power of Oslo’s opponents.
Palestinians, spectacularly but not solely, are now paying the price for these shortcomings.
The obliteration of Palestine in Gaza is trumpeted in Israel as the latest chapter in the Redemption of God’s promise to the Jewish people that commenced with the Balfour Declaration. In that context, US president Trump’s construction of a “Riviera on the Med” is considered not merely a fitting, if grotesque “Zionist response” but also a concrete expression of the illegitimacy of a Palestinian presence west of the Jordan.
It is not the least of ironies that the planned expulsion of Palestinians – physically and politically-- from Gaza is portrayed by its supporters as a benevolent interest in
ending a Palestinian exile that began with Israel’s establishment.
Israel has long considered Gaza an object of sovereignty and settlement. Ben Gurion seriously considered conquering Gaza during Israel’s War of Independence, but reconsidered after apprised of the large numbers of Palestinian refugees living there. Less than a decade later, Israel occupied Gaza along with Sinai, but it was forced by the Eisenhower administration to retreat, only to return in June 1967.
Occupation and Jewish settlement – “Redeeming the Land” -- in areas now being considered for settlement once again in Gaza and throughout the West Bank – proceed in tandem.
As an antidote to Oslo, Ariel Sharon implemented a policy of Gaza’s continuing occupation but without settlement – an effort that failed spectacularly on October 7.
In its place a new, yet old paradigm -- “Expulsion, Exile, and Redemption“ -- speaks for itself.
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