The Palestinian Nightmare Is About To Get Worse

Any peace agreement between Israel and Hamas that does not offer the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank a viable future is paving the way for the Palestinian holocaust in the next few years. That such a peace agreement is highly unlikely means saving the Palestinian people from annihilation as a people is now the responsibility of us all.

What has become crystal clear over the last month is that the US, the UK and other Western governments are unprepared to stand in the way of Israeli aggression towards Palestinians in the occupied territories. It would be nice to think that the western governments were shocked to realise the limit of their policy options, but it is probably less naive to assume that in practice the long term future of the Palestinians has already been sacrificed in the interests of strategy.

Israel is thoroughly intertwined with the Western powers, in a way that no other country in the world is, including the United States. Israel and its friends in the Jewish diaspora are highly involved with the politics of Western countries. The Israeli software industry is critical to the functioning of Western economies. Israeli military equipment companies provide critical components used by Western armed and security forces. Israel is a key part of Western military intelligence systems. Israel is a key part of the financial secrecy jurisdiction system and its financial institutions are closely integrated with the Western banking system. Israel has made itself such a useful friend, it is not an enemy any Western country is willing to make and they know it.

In this sense, the failure of Western governments to stand up for the Palestinians in Gaza as Israel commits what can only rightly be described as genocide, is just a reflection of the power reality in play. The easiest thing now is for the politicians in the US, the UK and in Europe to back whatever peace agreement Hamas and Israel are prepared to accept and just hope for a miracle. That miracle though is highly unlikely.

What is far more likely is that Israel will continue to leave the people of Gaza festering in impossible conditions, but will allow sufficient weapons into Gaza to enable some resistance next time they make a major provocation. This then will be the excuse to force the 1.8 million people of the Gaza strip into refugee camps in the Egyptian Sinai, followed by the total demolition of everything in the Gaza strip and its annexation into Israel. Any reaction in the West Bank will then be used as a justification to push the Palestinians there into Jordan, followed by the annexation of the West Bank. As a humanitarian gesture, sufficient Palestinians as Israel needs as cheap labour will be given Israeli citizenship on condition of complete servility.

When this happens, the West, with its relationships with Israel in their current form, will do absolutely nothing. Concurrently the Islamic State or its successor may have been used to redraw the map of the Middle East, opening the way to a carve up Jordan and the creation of Palestine on the East Bank. Lebanon may become part of Assyria with Iraq shrinking to its Shia south and Kurdistan expanding as an independent state. It is hard to guess the strategies being considered.

As tidy and as tempting as such a solution to current problems may be, what this actually contemplates is a humanitarian disaster, as awful and as dangerous as the grand plans of Nazi Germany. Millions of people have already been displaced and face an uncertain future. The future for the occupied territories described above adds millions more to the regional catastrophe.

At stake here is far more than the lives and welfare of the Palestinians; it is the integrity and values of our civilisation. If cynical expediency is our governing principle as we enter into the most dangerous period of human history, we can all expect to be crushed like ants by the tyranny of great power as we face existential constraints. Between us and that horror there is a thin line of mediocre politicians. If we can force them to stand up for Palestine, we might be able to hold back the growing tyranny. Should we lose this battle, it is uncertain where the forces of compassion will ever regroup.