The United States Secretary of State, John Kerry, finally delivered the obituary notice of the peace process in a major address at the Brookings Institute in New York. He practically — though not officially — declared the death of the ‘two-state solution’ to the Palestinian-Israeli crisis.
It was reported that “US Secretary of State John Kerry has set off a furore in Israel by suggesting that Israel was destroying itself as a Jewish state”. Israeli columnist Rogel Alpher seconded Kerry’s motion and put it more bluntly in Israeli daily Haaretz saying: “If Israel were the Titanic and the bi-national apartheid state its iceberg, then the collision with iceberg has already happened and the ship of the state is sinking to the bottom of the ocean.” Israel will no longer be a Jewish-majority democracy, he said, “because half of its population, in effect, will be Palestinian without any democratic rights”. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his religious and ultra-nationalist right-wing government have all been identified by many in Israel and around the world as the killers of the peace process and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA).
The Israeli government has revealed its real agenda: To complete the Judaisation of historical Palestine by all ways and means of its military colonial occupation, which has been the one and only true Zionist doctrine from the beginning. British archives have kept a record of this agenda in a testimony by Dr David Montague Eder as early as 1921. Eder was the acting chairman of the Zionist Commission and a leader of the Zionist group Lehi. The same Zionist formula is being enacted once more by increasing the number of Jewish colonists in the West Bank in a prelude to drive out the Palestinians from their lands, using the so called “peace process” as a cover-up to complete the task.
According to Haaretz, Netanyahu is expecting “more than a million Jews from Europe running away from radical Islam”. He is trying to equate the carnage of Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) around the world with hopeless Palestinian teenagers driven to violence because the occupation is depriving them of a decent future and a life of dignity.
Opting for the Judaisation of historical Palestine, instead of the two-state solution, is threatening Israel’s survival as a politically viable state, according to Kerry and many others around the world. Tzipi Livni, the former foreign minister of Israel, who is also one of the leaders of ‘The Zionist Union’ (Hatnua) told the Israeli Wala website: “Netanyahu is trying to relieve himself of any responsibility of terminating the peace process with the Palestinian National Authority by accusing the world of being anti-Semitic. The German Commercial Centre’s removal of Israeli products from the shelves came as a direct result of Netanyahu’s policies.”
National security experts agree that Israel is facing a catastrophe of its own making. Israel’s internal security service, known as Shabak, is one of the three main organisations of Israeli intelligence agencies. In a statement recently to the Israeli news media, Shabak said that “Israel’s intelligence services are absolutely certain that Daesh is planning to attack Israel and it is only a matter of time. The Israeli army is fully capable of retaliating against Hezbollah and Hamas, but incapable of retaliation against any strike from Daesh for lack of fixed targets”. The statement implies, also, that Hamas and Hezbollah could never use the unconventional means of Daesh because of the fear of Israeli retaliation with “tactical atomic weapons”.
US President Barack Obama, addressing his nation last week, said: “We should not be drawn once more into a long and costly ground war in Iraq or Syria. The terrorists have evolved into a new phase as using the internet to poison minds.”
Israel’s addiction to confiscating more Palestinian lands has made it a large target for Daesh, to gain support in all Islamic countries. Gideon Levy wrote in Haaretz saying: “The Israeli government and society in their insistence upon executing the policy of [colonies], violating human rights and international law, is like a drug addict who would thank you for supplying him with drugs, but would attack you if you suggested to him to go to a clinic for a cure.” It looks like Daesh has the bitter ‘cure’ in this case.
The New York-based American Soufan Group is known for providing strategic security intelligence reports to governments and multinational organisations. Their assessment of Daesh is frightening to say the least. Soufan reports that foreign fighters in Syria alone numbered 12,000 in June, 2014, but last December, the number reached the 31,000-mark from 86 countries. “[Daesh] is attracting more recruits and is currently sitting on a $2 billion [Dh7.35 billion] treasury,” the assessment said.
Indeed, Israeli intelligence services fear Daesh the most and expect it to do something significant to gain support as well as more funds and recruits. But Shabak has ruled out Daesh seizing the West Bank because it does not intend to have “fixed targets” in the West Bank for Israel to retaliate.
By killing ‘the two-state solution’, Israel, in its drive towards a colonial/apartheid state, is killing itself and has become incapable of seriously working to attain a peaceful solution.
Professor As’ad Abdul Rahman is the chairman of the Palestinian Encyclopaedia.
