Israel vs Palestine- The Genocide and Crimes against Humanity, but Where is The End of This?

“Sometimes I feel like reading fairy tales. Just like I had been reading the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for an hour”- Mohammad Afifi Matar, an Egyptian writer and historian.

The depth and intensity of the sarcasm that this statement holds can be deeply understood when we take a close look at the case of Palestine. It’s been over 60 years and the Palestinians have been fighting with the Israelis without any proper military force and the Israelis could not occupy it fully – means something superficial. Actually Allah is with them.

Now the question is where is the end of it? Does it require the two states solution? Does it not legitimate Israel’s existence? Does Israel have the right to exist to begin with?

We are going to find the answers with a brief background history of Palestine and Israel.

 Palestine was the Ottoman Empire until World War I and was mainly home for Arab and Christian people and a small Jewish population and after that it was captured by the British during the war. Then according to the Balfour declaration the Jewish got the support of the British for mass immigration in this historic land claiming it to be their homeland according to the Bible. In 1947, the United Nations proposed creating two separate states for Jewish and Arab people as the tensions and violences between them increased as more Jewish people were fleeing Europe and coming here. The Jewish leaders accepted the proposal while the Arabs rejected it. Then in 1948, Israel declared their independence. Neighboring Arab states went to war with Israel. Israel survived and expanded beyond the UN partition borders.

About 700,000 Palestinians became refugees or were displaced. Palestinians call this the Nakba (“catastrophe”). Fast-forwarding the incidents to 2005, Israel withdrew its settlements from Gaza and Hamas took control of it. The wars were going on between them meanwhile and they continued the violence until and beyond 2023 when a big incident took place. Hamas attacked Southern Israel killing nearly 1200 people and taking 250 hostages on 7th October 2023. Things took a bigger and worse turn this time. Israel started rather wiping out Palestinians from earth. They have killed roughly 10 times more people till now after this attack than before. Up until the present days in this Israel vs Palestine war, only 1670 Israelis were killed and 251 taken as hostages according to United Nations’ reports, whereas the number of deaths and hostages of Palestinians is over 62000 and 9243 respectively.

Israel forgets about proportionality here. They just want to wipe out Palestinians entirely in the name of ensuring their security and safety. They have already built Iron Domes and are working on Nuclear Power secretly using their high technology and just out of no logical and humane reason, they are killing thousands of innocent civilians especially the children and women.

Especially how this is so strange that they can pinpoint kill an Arab leader in a foreign country in his house and when it comes to Gaza, their technology cannot track Hamas and in the name of bombing them they are killing innocent civilians. They don’t even provide any explanation anywhere. The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netaniyahu is also a war criminal sentenced by the International Criminal Court (ICC), but is still roaming around free. They are occupying Gaza and oppressing the Palestinians and planning to wipe out the Palestinians entirely from the map.

Now there is a tricky question that you might get asked and it will put you in a moral dilemma. That is- Do you or do you not support Israel’s right to exist? This is the pro Israeli supporters’ way of getting a pass from you – a pass for their continuous war crimes and genocidal actions in Gaza.

Now how you can debunk their argument is by saying –

1. Do states really have any rights to exist? Because historically and legally states do not have any right to exist. The USSR broke down and turned into 14 different states. The Indian subcontinent was once under the same umbrella, but had different rules and now it has completely different states. So, historically it is the only usual that states get reshaped according to their territories under different rulers. It is the population that has the right to exist and no one is disapproving of the fact that Israelis should exist and the Palestinians also have the right to exist equally

2.If Israel has the right to exist, then Palestine should also have the right to exist. But is Israel okay with that? Because Israel is the only country in the world that refuses to define its border to the world as it is occupying the lands of Palestine and claiming it to be theirs. Also Israel has the full membership in the UN but Palestine does not and notably the USA is the one that vetoed Palestine’s right to be a full sovereign member state in the UN.

So the question of supporting or not supporting Israel’s existence in and of itself is nonsensical. It does not make any sense, according to a famous British-American journalist Mehdi Hasan who is also the founder of a media house, Zeteo.

Now having said all these, what is the ultimate solution then? 

The famously discussed two state solution is not applicable here as both the parties do not entirely agree with this idea, rather strongly negate it and do not believe in the other party’s existence.

The plausible thing that can be done now is to force Israel to stop its genocidal actions in Gaza. Israel not only commits killings but they also do not let the volunteer organisations enter Gaza and support the Palestinians with food and medical support which is their basic human right and they are the innocent civilians. Not only that they attack anybody that strongly supports Palestine, like Iran and Lebanon. They killed Iran’s top leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on 28th of February this year in his residence and the USA is their main supporter. Now the focus should be on cornering Israel and its allies in a way that they stop committing war crimes and genocide and let the innocent people have their basic right to exist and not destroy the world’s peace by constant attack everywhere. The world should come together to raise their voice for Palestinians and whoever in the world is in distress for wars and struggling to exist and enjoy basic human rights.