Baka Valley couple with home documents after demolition.
Israel's purpose in reshaping the Middle East is clear: after 130 years of Zionist colonization, it seeks to finally normalize its Judaization of Palestine. The Palestinians who remain in their country, half the Palestinian population but also half the population today in the country, have already been confined to small enclaves on 10% of their homeland. In this latest explosion of genocidal violence, Israel is attempting to eradicate the last vestiges of Palestinian resistance while consolidating its apartheid regime through massive settlement expansion, expropriation of land, house demolitions, and using the settlers and the army to drive farmers and shepherds off vast tracts of territory.
What remains is to normalize Israeli apartheid, normalization marking the irreversible culmination of all settler colonial projects.
Although the United States has been advancing such a process for years through diplomatic and military means, it needs the imprimatur of the Arab world - or more precisely, the "moderate" Sunni states who enjoy Western support, from Jordan and Egypt to those who joined the Abrahamic Accords brokered by Trump, the Gulf States most importantly.
Neither the genocide in Gaza nor the ethnic cleansing and military suppression in the West Bank have meaningfully affected relations between Israel and those Arab states who have already normalized with it. (Indeed, besides El Al, only Emirates Airlines has continued flights to Israel when all others foreign carriers have cancelled.) The jewel in in the crown, however, is Saudi Arabia, which was on the cusp of signing (as Netanyahu triumphantly announced from the podium of the UN’s General Assembly in 2023) when October 7th occurred. Something had to be done to convince it to return to the process.
That something else was the devastating Israeli attacks on Iran's proxies in the region, Hezbollah and the Houthis in particular, to which Iran had to respond. The failure of Iran to inflict significant damage has weakened its image as a major power able to confront Israel. It is likely to be further weakened if Israel’s anticipated counter-strike damages strategic targets in Iran itself, demonstrating its vulnerability. All this is to both diminish Iran's Shi'a challenge to Sunni dominance in the Arab world and show Arab states that normalizing with Israel will enhance their collective interests and security.
If, in fact, the process of normalization continues and Israeli apartheid becomes an accepted political fact by the US and its Arab allies, the Palestinians are liable to disappear as a political force despite the support they have from the Arab Street and millions around the world - erased as political actors just as Israel is attempting to erase them as the indigenous population of Palestine.
Most immediately and urgently, we all should join the campaigns to Stop Arming Israel that are being waged in countries around the world. Let your governments know they are complicit in genocide and demand they stop. Beyond that, we and the organizations we work with must monitor political events in order to prevent a normalization of Israel and its apartheid regime at the expense of Palestinian national rights and a genuine, just political resolution - which I believe, together with ICAHD, should take the form of one democratic state inclusive of all the peoples living between the River and the Sea.
ICAHD stands ready to take an active role. From October 10 -November 2, I will be in the UK, participating in two ICAHD UK conferences (Oct 19 – London and Oct 26 Edinburgh) on this very subject, a UK speaking tour and a preparatory meeting for convening an international Tribunal on Gaza.
For more information - and in general for a trove of useful analyses and resources - go to the ICAHD website. We must begin to focus our resistance activities, campaigning and lobbying on the urgency of where Israeli, American and pro-Western Arab governments push for normalization is leading.
Jeff Halper
3 October 2024
See Jeff Halper’s article written almost a year ago when Biden reaffirmed his commitment to normalization, set back by Oct. 7th at that time, but now advanced by the military destruction of Hamas and Hezbollah, and the weakening of Iran.