Looking towards the new year, 2025 and looking back at the time that passed since October 7, 2023, it is an appropriate time to re-evaluate the significance of that date and everything that followed it.
As an historian I would like to add to the discussion a wider historical context and locate these eventful months within twin long term processes that began in 1882 and are still with us today: the Zionist colonization of Palestine and the counter attempt to decolonize the country.
The Ongoing Colonization
Israeli actions both in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank since October 2023r gave new credence to the depiction of the Israeli action as part of a 21st century process of colonization; although many people will still associate colonialism as something of yester years that has ended long time ago. The reference to Israel as a colonial project, or more accurately as a settler colonial project, transited from the academic and activist worlds to the international tribunals such as the ICJ and ICC. Mainstream academia and media still refuse to define the Zionist project as such, but it seems quite likely to be a more common reference in the future.
The Hamas attack served as a pretext for Israel to intensify the colonization of historical Palestine; a project that even after 120 years has not been completed due to the anti-colonialist struggle of the Palestinians. The present political elite in Israel wishes to go further and colonize south Lebanon and part of western Syria. It also wants to deepen the existing colonization of the West Bank and renew the one in the Gaza Strip.
This is not a commentary you will get from the mainstream Western media. In their parlance the Israeli action are acts of self defence against Iran and its proxies. In the same vein, the “solution” offered, even by some alleged friends of the Palestinians, is taming Israel by allowing the Palestinians to have a small Bantustan in the West Bank. Such a substitute for self-determination and liberation had failed to satisfy all the anti-colonial movements in the past and will be rejected by most of the Palestinians. Moreover, the current Israel is not even willing to discuss even this solution and establishes facts on the ground that will defeat in the future.
The only reasonable approach left is to end colonialism by decolonization – not of part of the colonized land and not of part of the colonized people, but of all the land and all the people.
As long as this twin frames of colonization and decolonization are ignored by those who have the power to stop the genocide in Gaza and the Israeli adventurism elsewhere, there is a little hope for pacifying the area as a whole. And unfortunately, this obliviousness is not going to disappear very soon.
It is prevalent despite the horrific news coming daily from the Gaza Strip because of what one might call the global Israel alliance. It is an alliance that sustains it through a combination of capitalist interests, religious fanaticism and a huge number of timid or populist politicians in positions of power that can make change on the ground. The rise of right-wing fascism in the west and in some countries in the global South is also sustaining this shield of immunity for Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians.
Decolonization is Possible
But there is a counter alliance of millions of people who wish for a different kind of politics in their own countries and see their governments’ attitude towards the genocide as the most striking example of what is wrong with their political system.
It is a powerful alliance too. But it is not united, institutionalized or coordinated enough. That might take time and even the smallest victory of such an alliance locally, regionally or globally in any field be it fighting poverty, global warming or inhuman treatment of life seekers and refugees is a victory for Palestine and the Palestinians.
For it to be more effective the members of this alliance should adopt a less purist attitude when expanding it in the future. History taught us that too often the Left was far too involved in internal purist dissents that building effective alliance that could have made a difference.
This alliance has already transpired in the moving and massive demonstrations for Palestine and its potential to effect politics from above should bring hope in the long run for a world in which supporting the liberation of Palestine is a signifier of a healthy, democratic and just political system. Only such an alliance, together with Palestinian resilience can prevent the next genocide or ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.
Finally, there are process which are beyond the power of this alliance for justice and decolonization or the ability of the Palestinian resistance movement to liberate Palestine. These processes have already been detected by several observes and the most important of them is the implosion of the Israeli society from within. In the last few years, the Israeli Jewish society is involved in a cold civil war, occasionally erupting as a violent one. The old secular and liberal Israel is incrementally replaced by a new state, the state of Judea, committed to build a Jewish theocracy all over historical Palestine and beyond without any moral inhibitions.
But this new state will eventually find out it does not have the economic resources, the regional and global immunity, the faith of the Jewish communities around the world or the military invincibility to sustain this messianic project.
It will collapse which will open the way to decolonize historical Palestine and building a new regime based on rectifying past evils and equality for everyone who lives there or had been expelled from there.
Ilan Pappé is a historian, socialist activist, professor at the University of Exeter, and supporter of the Campaign for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS).