Ever since the inception of Zionism, Jabotinski made it clear that "a voluntary reconciliation with the Arabs is out of the question either now or in the future. If you wish to colonize a land in which people are already living, you must provide a garrison". When the time became ripe for the Nakba, David Ben Gurion explicitly stated that "a Jewish state on only part of the land is not the end but the beginning." Even "dovish" Oslo architect and signatory Yitzhak Rabin declared that he would grant the Palestinians "less than a state" and ensured that no reference was made to a Palestinian state in the accords he signed.
There is no way Israel can accept either the independence of millions of Palestinians on part of their land or the presence of millions of Palestinians as Israeli citizens. This leaves the Zionist settler-colonial enterprise with only one choice: To complete its ethnic cleansing of Palestine. How imminent is this threat? Are we ready for it? And what steps can we take to anticipate it?
Why is an upcoming Nakba a threat now?
Jewish religion claims to be closely tied to "Judea and Samaria". To the ultra-religious Israeli right, their annexation is thus more than a military necessity, but a religious and ideological imperative. Ramping up this religious rhetoric also serves the practical purpose of bringing in more settlers. The unprecedented rise of these ultra-religious political parties and its leaders in terms of popular support and reaching positions of power has dramatically accelerated the annexation process, as indicated by Israel's transfer of its control of the West Bank from the IOF to "civilian" control under its fascist minister Smotrich (indicating that it no longer views it as occupied territories but as an intrinsic part of Eretz Israel), by its decision to directly levy Palestinian taxes that hitherto used to be levied by the "Palestinian" authority, and by a growing number of official statements explicitly referring to the West Bank as part of Israel.
With the one-state reality now being more obvious and moving into de jure territory, the number of natives between the river and the sea is now equal to the number of settlers. As a matter of fact, Israel can not complete its annexation of the whole territory and mention its Jewish character without ethnically cleansing its Palestinian citizens and prospective citizens. This explains a number of decisions it has implemented over decades and ramped up this year: The annexation of East Jerusalem, more settlements and more settlers in the rest of West Bank, "Swiss cheese" isolation of Palestinians towns from each other, house demolitions, and control over infrastructure, sources of water, agricultural lands and transportation, to name but a few. Up until now, this fragmentation of Palestinian society and incapacitating of Palestinian economy served to make Palestinians emigrate "willingly". Yet these "soft" deportations are turning more violent with daily assassinations, random killings, and, recently, regular pogroms. The decades-old gradual genocidal process is approaching a potential genocidal moment.
Indeed, recent maps of Israel include South Lebanon, the Golan Heights and the East Bank. Netanyahu revealed that 10 battalions of the Israeli army are training to fight 48 Palestinians but that it wasn't enough. Smotrich declared that Ben Gurion made a mistake not to throw all Palestinians out of their lands in 48 and that they are citizens of Israel "only for now". Fleischman declared that Palestinians will be "loaded onto trucks and thrown out beyond the border. And this is how it will end." Yoav Galant and Ben Gvir declared that wavers of Palestinian flags will suffer another Nakba even if their number reaches the "hundreds of thousands". Former Shin Bet chief Avi Dichter and Uzi Dayan also explicitly announced that "another Nakba will happen". The looming threat of a second Nakba is not conjecture, but fact.
Are we ready for the threat of an upcoming Nakba?
Although the resistance has displayed increased capacities in Gaza, increased organization in the West Bank, and an increased number of "lone wolf" operations, it has proven unable to stop, or even react to, the Judaization of the West Bank, or to thwart regular Israeli incursions, arrests and assassinations of its leaders. The promised "unity of fields" that aimed at providing a certain level of deterrence has mostly failed to materialize, with even Hamas failing to significantly join the PIJ in retaliating to Israeli crimes. Ties to Qatar and Iran have apparently slowly turned into reliance on them that seems to have limited their margin of freedom. And indeed, the factions' resistance's rhetoric seems to have succumbed to the logic of retaliation: Over the past years, they have organized virtually no military operations that were not retaliatory in nature and have increasingly justified their resistance as being "in response to" specific Israeli crimes. Official Fatah, Hamas and PFLP documents openly support the two-state proposal and/or the "phased program". All of this is a far cry from its "river to the sea" slogans and from the PLO's early days, where the resistance was an ongoing right and duty tied to the end of the occupation and the establishment of a democratic Palestinian state from the river to the sea.
On the other hand, the "Palestinian" Authority has failed to provide any protection to Palestinians from the IOF's or Israeli settlers' attacks, even in Zone A territories. Quite the contrary, it has actively supported the occupation in leaving the scene before Israeli incursions, clearing the way for them by removing the resistance's barricades, and even arresting and torturing resistants on its behalf. It is no wonder, then, that Palestinian leaderships have failed to achieve any kind of national unity, not even rallying around the least of objectives such as "one Palestinian state from the river to the sea".
Regionally, seven Arab states have overtly started the normalization process with Israel. Others who still refuse to do so have nonetheless openly stated their willingness to recognize the legitimacy of the colony, such as Lebanon and Syria. These states further seem unable to defend even their own interests from Israel: Lebanon recently signed a maritime agreement with Israel that recognized Israeli "rights" to Lebanese oil, while pledging that it would not pump oil in the so-called Lebanese "Qana field" without Israel's authorization! Meanwhile, Syria is fragmented and is offering no resistance to several occupations of its territories, or even basic deterrence against weekly Israeli aggressions on it. Arab states are thus, at best, unreliable allies.
How, then, can we anticipate the threat of an upcoming Nakba?
Palestinians can anticipate the threat of an upcoming genocide by elaborating and implementing specific political, military, social, economic, mediatic, cultural and other mechanisms. These are some of the questions that should be addressed in such a program:
- What can be done to halt the "soft" deportation of Palestinians from their land?
- How can the armed resistance be organized effectively to deter and resist the upcoming threat?
- How can civil society be organized effectively to deter and resist the upcoming threat?
- Given the current reliance on the Israeli market on one hand, and foreign funding on the other, how can the Palestinian economy in the 67 territories allow for self-sufficiency and independence?
- What can Palestinians and allies in North America, Europe and other countries do, along with local progressive political forces, in order to make an ethnic cleansing of Palestinians politically impossible for Israel?
- What kind of discourse can be addressed to the Israeli public that would make ethnic cleansing more difficult to carry, perhaps by leveraging on their internal contradictions or by pointing to the cost they themselves would incur from such an endeavor? Who should carry this discourse?
- How can official renunciation of Oslo and of the two-state proposal and a return to the original Palestinian vision for the establishment of one secular, democratic state of Palestine from the river to the sea preclude any current or future concessions that facilitate the Judaization of Palestine?
As mentioned, the Palestinian leaderships have failed at achieving unity, rallying around a vision for one Palestinian state from the river to the sea and resisting the Judaization of the West Bank. Yet, will the threat of an upcoming Nakba urge the leading Palestinian factions to make the necessary changes to be up to the task of anticipating it? If not, will leaders within these factions be willing to make the necessary confrontations to prepare and implement such a program? Should the Palestinian leaderships refuse or fail to engage in this effort, it becomes the responsibility of all Palestinians to form an alternative, organized group to elaborate and implement such a program. The upcoming threat demands we live up to this responsibility.
