The concept of liberation as a fundamental goal of the international battle over Palestine Opinions

Gaza caused an international crisis and debate at various levels. On the political side, the duality of the Western position is evident in its most clear form since the end of the colonial era. On the media side, there is a scandalous revelation of the chaos of information and its use, and the inability of the media to keep up with the political position, in contrast to the simplicity of the truth. Economically, the entire region and the world are re-evaluating the feasibility of investing in the region without resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which is the essence of the recent normalization agreements whose dreams collapsed in an instant. Morally, traditional political parties, from right to left, are in a conflict between their commitment to the interests of the deep ruling establishment and their popular bases. Western liberalism is in its deepest troubles, with some international relations scholars speculating that it has entered a post-decline phase.

What was produced by Western political and media machines

The West is freed from its shackles regarding the Palestinian issue at every hint of the possibility of reproducing the struggle of the Palestinians, in that it is a national liberation struggle. This is evident in all forms of intimidation and phobia produced by Western political machines and media towards the discourse of Palestinian resistance. The idea of ​​liberation was ended with the end of the Palestine Liberation Organization through deceptive settlement paths, which gave the organization authority without sovereignty, and a people without land. Oslo created the Palestinian Authority to move the Palestinian struggle from being a liberation project to a project to build some kind of rule under the rules of Israeli-Western hegemony. For Israel’s international sponsors, the problem with this round of war on Gaza – and to a lesser extent previous rounds of fighting since 2008 – is that it returns the scene to a degree to before Oslo, to the stage of national liberation. It is a problem that stems from the fact that the idea of ​​armed action against Israel – regardless of agreement or disagreement with it, its feasibility, or whether it is against military personnel or civilians – is in itself a dilemma. It is not a concern about unequal power at all, but rather a fear of the possibility of moving beyond the packaging of the Palestinian issue as a humanitarian crisis and redefining it as a liberation movement.

Break the siege

The West did not have a major problem with the idea of ​​ships departing from Europe carrying aid under the title: “Breaking the Siege of Gaza.” He had no problem with the hundreds of charitable campaigns launched for Gaza. He has relatively little tolerance for the UN Human Rights Council’s repeated condemnations of Israel, with attempts to domesticate the council. He does not move forcefully to curb the escalation of reports of international condemnation by human rights organizations of the occupation’s practices, even though he does not like them. But he is aggressively recruiting his legal advisors to research the smallest details of the legal loopholes in his democratic system in order to prevent the raising of a Palestinian flag, or to prevent solidarity activists from chanting: “Free Palestine from the sea to the river.” The chant that has now occupied entire governments has turned into a discussion at the highest levels of decision-making and the media in Europe, in order to explain it and extract what can be extracted from the jurisprudence and principles of the aggression of words and its repercussions. He sees the Palestinian farmer’s keffiyeh – the cultural expression of identity – as a sign of hatred. Because it was linked to the era of the Palestinian revolution.

What is essential in the West’s aggression towards the Palestinians is that its war focuses on everything that refers to its cause as a national liberation project. There is nothing wrong with supporting anything that places it within the scope of a humanitarian crisis. You can talk until the morning about crimes against children, but never mention anything about a child who threw a stone at an occupation military vehicle. Some platforms may allow you to upload a picture of Palestinian children torn apart by the Israeli killing machine, but not a picture of Fares Odeh throwing a stone at an Israeli tank. Speak freely about international law that protects civilians and their rights, and about the law that criminalizes occupation and its practices, but beware of international law that allows resistance to occupation, or that gives an occupied people the right to self-defense. Within these frameworks, the global solidarity movement with Palestine is being restricted. With the aim of creating templates for solidarity discourse, very similar to the United Nations calls for solidarity with the victims of any earthquake or weather storm.

De-liberation

The mainstay of Western positions is to strip the character of liberation from the Palestinian people and their struggle, and to fight so that the narrative of the Palestinian tragedy does not turn into that. What happened on October 7 is terrifying for Israel and the West from this angle, more than it being an act that targeted certain civilian groups and causing human and material losses, or being a revelation of the failure of the Israeli security and military system, bringing it unprecedented and unexpected humiliation, despite the importance of that. It’s all in the interpretation of the scene. Therefore, decontextualizing the October 7 operation was an established rule in the determinants of Western political and media discourse.

The most famous British journalist, Andrew Marr – who was the political editor of the BBC and presenter of its most important political programmes – writes in his article on the News Stateman website verbatim: “…this is not the time for non-controversial journalism. We demand that history not be linked to “The Israeli occupation and the abhorrent terrorism waged by Hamas. But without context, without explanation, all we are left with is a mess of inexplicable human evil, for which there is no political way out.” The Western political and media elite are fully aware that what is happening today is the price of extended policies of ensuring complete immunity for Israel’s violations, and for depriving the Palestinians of their right to land, to struggle, and to express that. They are aware of the reality of the scene, its ugliness and its effects, but look to the post-war period, when the international community comes forward to propose political solution projects, which they want to be based on the humanitarian crisis of the Palestinians, not on the basis of liberation demands as a people with a presence and national demands in a land that they have owned for thousands of years. The West’s bias against the Palestinians is not only a disregard for their present and their tragedy, but also a theft of their history as a people marching for liberation from occupation and achieving their national independence. Likewise, the humanitarian support – without debate about its size and value, which the West provides to the residents of Gaza – will seem a reasonable response to a human tragedy in which it is complicit, while its humanitarian aid will not seem sufficient to respond to the demands of the right to national liberation.

The people need

In the eyes of the Western political and media elite, the Palestinian people need United Nations initiatives, UNRWA, charitable societies, reconstruction conferences, etc. But it does not need a national liberation movement at any level, neither peaceful nor armed. The best evidence of this is the occupation’s persistence in destroying even the structures of the Palestinian Authority and its status as a political entity, and maintaining its security and service role, which exempts Israel from the entitlements of its occupation. The authority became entrenched as a bureaucratic apparatus that worked to the extent that it obtained money from Western donor countries. The West contributed, along with the Israeli occupation, to preventing the establishment of economic or political sustainability of the authority. This has nothing to do with the dialectic of the national and representative role of the Palestinian Authority, and the fact that it no longer represents liberation hopes for the Palestinians, but its reality today is part of Israeli and Western Zionist extremism against the idea of ​​the existence of a group with national dignity and political aspirations.

This war is not only against the Palestinian people as a national group, but rather it is a war against their original idea of ​​liberation. The Western restriction on the discourse of the international solidarity movement with Palestine aims to prevent the narrative of Palestinian liberation from emerging again, while keeping it at best as a humanitarian crisis that requires a solution of its kind.