{"id":262703,"date":"2024-05-20T12:01:16","date_gmt":"2024-05-20T11:01:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=262703"},"modified":"2024-07-02T08:49:20","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T07:49:20","slug":"greater-israel-the-maximal-zionist-imaginary-and-gaza-genocide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/05\/greater-israel-the-maximal-zionist-imaginary-and-gaza-genocide\/","title":{"rendered":"Greater Israel, the Maximal Zionist Imaginary, and Gaza Genocide"},"content":{"rendered":"

19 May 2024 – Interview conducted by Daniel Falcone on 13 May. The unabridged interview will be published here after editorial changes and updating.<\/em><\/p>\n

*******************************<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Israel Continues Unfettered Colonization of the West Bank amid Genocide in Gaza<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The West Bank has posed the biggest challenge to the Zionist settler movement\u2019s pursuit of a \u201cGreater Israel.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Amid the genocidal campaign in Gaza, Israel has\u00a0expanded<\/a>\u00a0its settlement project and markedly increased colonial violence and human rights abuses against Palestinians. \u201cKillings are taking place at a level without recent precedent\u201d in the occupied West Bank, according to a report by\u00a0Human Rights Watch<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In this exclusive interview for\u00a0Truthout<\/em>, international relations scholar Richard Falk reminds us of the reality and aims of Israel\u2019s occupation of the West Bank. Falk details the degradation, starvation, human rights abuses, unchecked political power and resource control in the occupied Palestinian territories. He also explains the U.S.\u2019s aims in the West Bank and how they differ from those in Gaza.<\/p>\n

Daniel Falcone: With a lot of the attention on Gaza due to the extremity of Israel\u2019s bombing in Rafah, the West Bank is sometimes overlooked in media reports and political discussions about the ongoing Palestinian struggle for survival. How can we understand the differences between Israel\u2019s strategic aims in Gaza and the West Bank?<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Richard Falk:<\/strong>\u00a0The three territories of East Jerusalem, West Bank and the Gaza Strip have experienced rather different conditions of occupation and governance during the 57 years of Israeli control, none of them positive.<\/p>\n

The whole of Jerusalem was officially declared by the Knesset in 2019 to be \u201cthe eternal capital of the Jewish state of Israel.\u201d Such a unilateral action on Israel\u2019s part was incompatible with international humanitarian law. It also violated the letter and spirit of unanimous\u00a0UN Security Council Resolution 242<\/a>, which looked toward the complete withdrawal of Israel\u2019s occupying armed forces in the near-term future with Israeli demands for \u201cminor border adjustments.\u201d It has always been a Palestinian demand and expectation that East Jerusalem would be the capital of any future Palestinian state, and this Palestinian position was generally treated as an integral element of the UN consensus that developed around persisting support for \u201ca two-state solution.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1967 Gaza was deemed the third and least important element in the administration of the occupied territories that came under Israel\u2019s control during the war. Its status was viewed ambivalently at first, mainly because it was deemed as remote from the Zionist project, being conceived as not part of \u201cthe promised land\u201d that formed the geographic contours of the Zionist vision of a Jewish supremacy state. It also seemed at first to possess little economic promise from Israel\u2019s point of view. Nevertheless, in the period of 1967 to 2005 Gaza was treated by Israel as part of\u00a0Occupied Palestine<\/a>, with an intrusive and abusive IDF [Israel Defense Forces] military presence, and the unlawful establishment of Jewish settlements along the Gaza coast. The administration of Gaza was long viewed by Tel Aviv as an economic burden and security challenge for Israel.<\/p>\n

The major resistance initiative directed at Israeli occupation known as the First Intifada originated in Gaza in 1987, challenging both Israel and the Palestinian leadership of Yasser Arafat and the coalition of secular Palestinian groups known under the rubric of the PLO [Palestinian Liberation Organization]. In 2005, Israel formally \u201cdisengaged<\/a>\u201d from Gaza, contending that the withdrawal of its armed forces and the dismantling of its settlements relieved Israel of further responsibilities as Occupier in Gaza, with possible future peace solutions consisting of some sort of federated arrangement with Jordan and\/or Egypt. This Israeli interpretation of disengagement was rejected by the UN and both Arab states. They considered Israel\u2019s revised approach to Gaza as nothing more substantive than a redeployment of ground forces to just across the Israeli border coupled with the maintenance of total control of Gaza\u2019s air space and offshore water. The approach also included a tight regulation of entry and exit to and from the strip. Despite this gesture of \u201cdisengagement<\/a>\u201d Israel never overcame the perception of Gaza as \u201cthe largest open-air prison<\/a>\u201d in the world, which for many in Gaza, including secular Palestinians, meant growing sympathy with and support for Hamas.<\/p>\n

The complex Gaza narrative after disengagement included the unexpected 2006 electoral victory of Hamas, previously listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. and EU, as well as Israel. Despite Hamas foregoing \u201carmed struggle,\u201d in 2007 Israel imposed a strict and economically punitive blockade of goods and persons seeking to leave or enter Gaza, engaged in periodic major military incursions and put the population on \u201ca diet<\/a>.\u201d Despite Israel\u2019s repressive moves and military incursions, Hamas put forward long-term ceasefire proposals that were ignored by Tel Aviv and Washington. A creative nonviolent campaign of resistance known as \u201cthe Great March of Return<\/a>\u201d attributed to Palestinian refugees and their descendants, as well as Hamas, was met with deadly Israeli sniper violence in 2018 at the border, including the lethal targeting of well-marked journalists.<\/p>\n

Finally, Israel\u2019s provocations and the Hamas-led attack of October 7 set the stage for the latest genocidal phase of Israel\u2019s presence, combining the wrongs of occupation with many crimes of oppression, dehumanization, devastation, starvation, ethnic cleansing and apartheid, culminating in genocide. It seemed that as of 2024, Gaza is strategically and economically far more important to the right-wing Benjamin Netanyahu government and its settler temperament than it was earlier. This is due to the discovery of extensive\u00a0offshore oil and gas deposits<\/a>, and a reported interest in a major engineering undertaking that involves the Israeli construction of a\u00a0Ben Gurion Canal<\/a>traversing part of Gazan territory, with the goal of creating an alternative to the Suez Canal. During all the devastation, Donald Trump\u2019s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, obscenely proposed luxury waterfront homes for settlers in a Gaza emptied of Palestinians.<\/p>\n

It is against this background that the West Bank has posed the biggest challenge to the pursuit of \u201cGreater Israel,\u201d which was the animating ideal of the settler movement. The settlers were closely allied with the extreme right Religious Zionism coalition partner of the Netanyahu-led government that took over the governance of Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories in January 2023. From its first days of governance, it became clear that Israel was preparing to push to completion a maximal version of the\u00a0Zionist Project<\/a>. Israeli radicalism along these lines was exhibited by the greenlighting of settler violence on the West Bank that involved a series of\u00a0inflammatory incidents<\/a>\u00a0intended to make the Palestinians feel unsafe and unwelcome in their own homeland. The occupying government in Tel Aviv revealed its orientation through tacitly approving settler violence rather than responsibly acting to protect Palestinian residents. Crimes against West Bank residents, including\u00a0land seizures<\/a>, were not only tolerated but applauded by rightist members of Netanyahu\u2019s inner circle.<\/p>\n

Of supplemental relevance was the official endorsement of increasing the settlement population in the West Bank by expanding building permits and territorial extensions to settlers and their settlements \u2014 already estimated to number 700,000 (500,000 in the West Bank, 200,000 in East Jerusalem<\/a>). This move to ensure Israeli permanence on the West Bank was combined with the acceleration of diplomacy that focused on forming a de facto alliance with Sunni-dominated Arab countries, especially Saudi Arabia, and the containment and destabilization of Shiite-dominated Iran. Further, Netanyahu\u2019s September 2023 performance at the UN General Assembly in which he arrogantly displayed a map of \u201cthe new Middle East<\/a>\u201d on which Palestine was erased \u2014 treated as nonexistent \u2014 must have made Palestinian resistance imperative.<\/p>\n

These elements are the background context preceding the Hamas-led attack of October 7. The true character of the attack itself needs to be internationally investigated, given the\u00a0extensive and credible warnings given to the Israeli government<\/a>, Israel\u2019s ultra-sophisticated surveillance capabilities, and the inflated initial accounts that blamed Hamas for all the most barbaric crimes allegedly committed during the attack. Some of the initial macabre claims of October 7 were later\u00a0discredited and even modified<\/a>\u00a0by Israel. The most suspicious element of the Israeli response was its readiness to embark upon a genocidal campaign, which, while concentrated on Hamas and Gaza, seems also intended to induce a second Nakba with major secondary impacts on the West Bank.<\/p>\n

In the months preceding the Hamas-led attack, the West Bank had been the scene of increased settler violence and a heightening of the IDF\u2019s repressive tactics. In the years before October 7, Israel was found guilty of the international crime of apartheid in a series of well-documented reports compiled by objective, expert sources (Special Rapporteurs of the\u00a0UN Human Rights Council<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0Economic and Social Commission for Western A<\/a>sia, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and\u00a0B\u2019tselem<\/em><\/a>). Liberal democracies and the mainstream media refused to acknowledge this damaging consensus bearing on the legitimacy of Israeli occupation of the West Bank, and instead smeared and blacklisted Israel\u2019s critics.<\/p>\n

In addition to the settlements, Palestinian property rights, mobility and security of residence were undermined and threatened in various ways in the West Bank. Palestinian land was further encroached upon at the end of the 20th century by the construction of a separation wall between pre-1967 Israel and the West Bank that expropriated additional Palestine-owned land and divided villages such as\u00a0Bil\u2019in<\/a>. Although this mode of constructing the wall on occupied Palestinian territory was found to be illegal by a near\u00a0unanimous majority<\/a>\u00a0of the judges of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2003, Israel defied the findings of the advisory opinion and continued its wall project without deference to international law or international procedures of accountability.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s rejection of attempts to establish Palestinian statehood with sovereign rights within delimited borders have long concentrated upon the West Bank. This pattern goes back as long ago as 1947, when the UN approved a plan for the\u00a0partition of Palestine<\/a>\u00a0relying on borders derived from the British mandate over Palestine. In the dark shadows cast by the Holocaust, there emerged a UN consensus that the only viable solution for the struggle of the two peoples claiming Palestine as their homeland was to split sovereign rights between two equal states, assumed to be named Israel and Palestine.<\/p>\n

Distinguished commentators from both peoples opposed such a territorial division for a variety of reasons, well summarized from a Jewish perspective in\u00a0Shaul Magid\u2019s\u00a0The Necessity of Exile<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and from a Palestinian perspective in the\u00a0later writings of Edward Said<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Always the central question, even if often left implicit, was the destiny of the West Bank and its residents, as well as whether Palestinian \u201csecurity\u201d would be restricted by demilitarization and dependence on Israeli forbearance in the two-state models, and whether the Zionist commitment to a Jewish supremacist state could be accommodated or needed to be modified in the one-state models.<\/p>\n

What are the U.S. goals in the West Bank and how do they differ from its Gaza policy?<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The U.S. has a strong reputational interest in retaining the identity of the West Bank as Occupied Palestinian Territory. If Israel extends its sovereignty over the West Bank, which it has long claimed should be classified as \u201cdisputed territory\u201d rather than \u201coccupied territory,\u201d it would bring to a screeching halt any further pretense by the U.S. government to be serious about the advocacy of a \u201ctwo-state solution.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s proposed \u201cdeal of the century<\/a>\u201d contained a nominal Palestinian mini state to sustain the illusion that the interests of both peoples were being considered, but it failed to fool any true two-state advocates.<\/p>\n

American credibility as an \u201chonest broke<\/a>r\u201d in the\u00a0Oslo Peace Process<\/a>, and elsewhere, was greatly eroded by its acquiescence in the establishment of Israeli settlements in the West Bank despite their\u00a0patent illegality<\/a>\u00a0and negative impacts on a meaningful political compromise on the final territorial allocation between the two peoples. The U.S.\u2019s mild reaction to settlement expansion was limited to the muffled whisper that such behavior \u201cwas not helpful<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

By now, given the bipartisan U.S. endorsement of Israel\u2019s genocide in Gaza and its repeated use of the veto to block a meaningful ceasefire directive and a widely supported initiative to treat Palestine as a full member of the UN, I believe that the U.S. could not any longer put itself forward as a trustworthy intermediary in any future bilateral negotiating process. It would overtly become Israel\u2019s international sword and shield, exhibiting its extreme partisanship while falsely claiming adherence to international law and diplomatic balance.<\/p>\n

With regard to the differing interests of the U.S. in the West Bank and Gaza, it comes down to two issues: first, supporting Israel\u2019s right to defend itself in Gaza, while maintaining Israel\u2019s legitimacy as an occupying power in the West Bank and insulating its violations of international humanitarian law from UN censure, boycotts and sanctions; and secondly, recognizing that the West Bank is the integral core of a Palestinian state.<\/p>\n

How does Israel complicate the work on the ground by scholars, activists and elected officials? The fact that the two regions are separate seems to make the problem even more insurmountable.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The differing character of Israel\u2019s approaches to the two areas creates many complications for those who seek normal operating conditions. Gaza is considered by Tel Aviv to be administered by Hamas, a terrorist entity in its view, whereas the West Bank is co-administered with the quasi-collaborationist Palestinian Authority to ensure that resistance activities are minimized. Even peaceful forms of resistance face harsh punishment, and since Israel came under more extremist leadership, the conditions of daily life have become so unpleasant and dangerous that Palestinians may be forced to leave for neighboring countries, and accept the loss of their homeland, becoming refugees or exiles.<\/p>\n

Until recently the balance of opinion in Israel was wary about any Israeli state that purported to include Gaza. This wariness was associated with Israeli concerns about an emergent \u201cdemographic bomb\u201d accompanying any attempt to absorb an additional 2.3 or 2.4 million Palestinians into Greater Israel.<\/p>\n

In the West Bank, Israel was nervous about the effect of civil society activism, and even scholarly work, generating unfavorable international publicity as to the nature of such a prolonged occupation. The Israeli occupation is currently being challenged at the ICJ following a General Assembly request to legally assess the continued validity of Israel\u2019s administrative role. This follows years without an implementation of the withdrawal envisioned by\u00a0UN Security Council Resolution 242 and numerous flagrant continuing violations of international humanitarian law.<\/p>\n

Even prior to the present Netanyahu government, Defense Minister\u00a0Benny Gantz<\/a>\u00a0issued decrees in 2021 banning the activities of respected West Bank NGOs and deeming them \u201cterrorist organizations<\/a>.\u201d Elected Palestinian leaders have been harassed and imprisoned despite Israel\u2019s collaboration on security and administrative funding over the years with the Palestinian Authority, which is distrusted by a growing number of Palestinians inside and outside of the Occupied Territories.<\/p>\n

What is the role of the West Bank in President Joe Biden\u2019s foreign policy?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The West Bank is an indispensable component of Biden\u2019s continued advocacy of a\u00a0two-state solution<\/a>. This advocacy was always half-hearted and never a persuasive expression of genuine U.S. policy intentions. The two-state mantra seems more and more like a public relations posture to satisfy world public opinion as time passes. If it had been a genuine goal, Biden would have challenged Israeli moves of recent years, which became more pronounced since the Netanyahu coalition took over in 2023. It was an open secret that this extremist coalition was committed to the unilateral completion of the Zionist Project by establishing Greater Israel in the shortest possible time even if it required brute force to get the job done. Extending Israeli sovereignty to the West Bank would have the consequence of making continued adherence to two-state advocacy a sign of geopolitical ignorance, so out of touch with the geographic contours of Palestinian statehood as to be in the category of a bad joke.<\/p>\n

A viable Palestinian state presupposes full sovereign rights over the West Bank, which must include territorial governance and the dismantlement of the settlements. Neither seems likely to happen if Zionist ideology continues to shape the policy of the Israeli state. It would be awkward for Biden to be asked what kind of Palestinian state does the U.S. favor. He likely would be inclined to answer evasively by saying that \u201cit is up to the parties.\u201d But if he was forthright, it would probably look like a permanently demilitarized Palestinian state with settlements governed according to Israeli law and exempted from territorial regulation. Such a Palestinian state might meet the formal requirements of statehood, but it would be a nonstarter for many Palestinians, who continue to insist on their inalienable right of\u00a0self-determination<\/a>. The long Palestinian ordeal, stretching over the course of more than a century, would not be ended by the willingness of Israel to allow the formation of a puppet state.<\/p>\n

__________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Prof. Richard Falk is a member of the <\/em>TRANSCEND Network<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University, Chair of Global Law, Faculty of Law, at Queen Mary University London, Research Associate the Orfalea Center of Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Fellow of the Tellus Institute. He directed the project on Global Climate Change, Human Security, and Democracy at UCSB and formerly served as director the North American group in the World Order Models Project. Between 2008 and 2014, Falk served as UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Occupied Palestine. His book,\u00a0<\/em>(Re)Imagining Humane Global Governance\u00a0(2014), proposes a value-oriented assessment of world order and future trends. His most recent books are\u00a0<\/em>Power Shift\u00a0(2016);\u00a0<\/em>Revisiting the Vietnam War\u00a0(2017);\u00a0<\/em>On Nuclear Weapons: Denuclearization, Demilitarization and Disarmament\u00a0(2019); and\u00a0<\/em>On Public Imagination: A Political & Ethical Imperative, ed. with Victor Faessel & Michael Curtin (2019).\u00a0He\u00a0is the author or coauthor of other books, including\u00a0<\/em>Religion and Humane Global Governance\u00a0(2001),\u00a0<\/em>Explorations at the Edge of Time\u00a0(1993),\u00a0<\/em>Revolutionaries and Functionaries\u00a0(1988),\u00a0<\/em>The Promise of World Order\u00a0(1988),\u00a0<\/em>Indefensible Weapons (with Robert Jay Lifton, 1983),\u00a0<\/em>A Study of Future Worlds\u00a0(1975), and\u00a0<\/em>This Endangered Planet\u00a0(1972).\u00a0His memoir,\u00a0<\/em>Public Intellectual: The Life of a Citizen Pilgrim\u00a0was published in March 2021 and received an award from Global Policy Institute at Loyala Marymount University as \u2018the best book of 2021.<\/strong>\u2019 He has been nominated frequently for the Nobel Peace Prize since 2009.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 richardfalk.org<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Join the<\/em><\/strong> BDS-BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT, SANCTIONS <\/em><\/strong>campaign<\/em><\/strong><\/span> to protest the Israeli barbaric siege of Gaza, illegal occupation of the Palestine nation\u2019s territory, the apartheid wall, its inhuman and degrading treatment of the Palestinian people, and the more than 7,000 Palestinian men, women, elderly and children arbitrarily locked up in Israeli prisons.<\/p>\n

DON’T BUY<\/strong> PRODUCTS WHOSE<\/strong> BARCODE<\/strong> STARTS WITH<\/strong> 729<\/strong>, which indicates that it is produced in Israel.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 DO YOUR PART! MAKE A DIFFERENCE!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

7 2 9: BOYCOTT FOR JUSTICE!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

19 May 2024 – Israel Continues Unfettered Colonization of the West Bank amid Genocide in Gaza – The WB has posed the biggest challenge to the Zionist settler movement\u2019s pursuit of a \u201cGreater Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":238099,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[867,532,1854,276,609,2898,1199,2242,2376,87,865,1643,1029,1966,1644,88,2416,715,427,1378,3237,3294,124,70,965,1025,886],"class_list":["post-262703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members","tag-anglo-america","tag-colonialism","tag-crimes-against-humanity","tag-democracy","tag-demonstrations","tag-ecocide","tag-ethnic-cleansing","tag-famine","tag-freedom-of-speech","tag-gaza","tag-genocide","tag-genocide-convention","tag-hamas","tag-hunger","tag-international-court-of-justice-icj","tag-israel","tag-israeli-occupation","tag-massacre","tag-palestine","tag-protests","tag-rafah","tag-students-anti-genocide-gaza","tag-united-nations","tag-usa","tag-war-crimes","tag-west-bank","tag-zionism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262703"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":262707,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262703\/revisions\/262707"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}