Dear Friends,                                                      Gaza is burning, Gaza is bleeding

1 the status quo

2 the two-state solution

3 a secular state in which Jews and Palestinians are equal citizens

3 seems impossible, though it may be the best. For the moment let’s stick with 1 and 2.

2, as it always has, faces daunting barriers, more daunting than ever with the annihilation of Gaza. But if 3 is beyond reach that leaves only the status quo.

So what happens if nothing happens, the “status quo” holds? Things have and will happen, it’s impossible that they will remain the same. The West Bank has not suffered as Gaza has, but it is clearly under assault in a new way. What are Netanyahu and his government planning? Who knows, do they know?

It’s hard to imagine that any possible plan by this government will do anything other than magnify the anger of Palestinians in the West Bank, in Gaza or anywhere else.

So what does “status quo” mean since the situation throughout the region is more volatile than it has ever been? It means absolute and final rejection not only of the two-state solution but of the idea of Palestinian self-determination itself.

And what does that mean? It means that the current government of Israel has committed itself explicitly and completely to rule by the right of conquest. It will be very hard for any subsequent government to withdraw from this position.

Israel is in a bad position for holding on to what it has conquered; a much worse position than that before 7 October 2023 for all its “triumphs” against Hezbollah, Iran, the Houthis, and, of course, Hamas. The destruction of Gaza will never go away, it will stand in the new millennium along with some of the worst horrors of my own terrible century.

Even when Netanyahu’s gone, what can any new Israeli government do? Gaza is close to uninhabitable, no amount of humanitarian aid will change that. Netanyahu and his cronies in the government and in the US speak as though the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank are simply an inconvenient mass of – of what? – of bare life, what else? that can be moved around at will.

Just logistically this is delusional. But far more important is the developing consciousness of the Palestinian people. The lie that they could have their place within Israel – including the illegally occupied territories – is now absolutely gone. There is no longer any possibility that Netanyahu’s government even holds to the idea of a permanent Palestinian population in Israel. What is happening in the West Bank demonstrates this.

So what are the Palestinians to do? The government of Israel does not even grant them bare life. The state of Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. What can the Palestinians do merely to stay alive? What would you do?

You may hold a land by conquest only for as long as you can hold it. This is the right of conquest’s iron law. Netanyahu has placed the whole of Israel under this law. The right of conquest makes the conquered a permanent enemy who must fight to overthrow the conquerors. The Crusader States are gone, every one, as though they had never been.

Love and solidarity,

            Bobby