Benjamin Netanyahu has taken his place in history. He is Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, outlasting “founding father” David Ben-Gurion. He has killed more Palestinians than all generals of his army combined. It has been quite rare for an oppressor to kill such a massive number of children in this modern age. He retaliated to the Al-Aqsa Flood by dealing the Palestinians a new Nakba that is more painful than the first.
It would be no exaggeration to say that the Gaza massacre is more horrific than the one that took place in Yugoslavia. It is more dangerous than the massacres that took place in Rwanda because it is being carried out by a government and executed by a regular army.
We have never seen a war with this many bulldozers dropping this many small corpses in the ground to be buried. We have never seen this many children clamor for a piece of bread while their terrified mothers look on. Never since the Battle of Berlin during World War II have we seen such destruction.
Netanyahu will go down in history along with tens of thousands of corpses. He will not go away satisfied though. He did not complete his mission of annihilating the Palestinian people. This is an impossible mission. He could not carry with him the corpse of the dream of an independent Palestinian state. Joe Biden himself sees no other way out other than the two-state solution.
Let us set Netanyahu aside. The world is also a partner in this horrific crime. It has stood idle and watched the river of Palestinian pain. It made do with truces and sending tents, aid and bandages. It did not dare confront the real questions: Why do the Palestinian people continue to be deprived of a state on their land or part of their land?
I recalled that the question being posed today to Yehya al-Sinwar, Hamas’ leader in Gaza and “architect of the Al-Aqsa Flood”, is similar to the question that was asked a century ago to Dr. Wadie Haddad, the plane hijacker and leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – External Operations (PFLP-EO).
The visit was shrouded in complete secrecy. Haddad arrived at the building in a forest near Moscow. KGB officials asked the two-state solution question to Haddad, to which he replied that he will accept nothing less than the return of every inch of Palestinian territories. When his hosts reminded him that innocents where being killed in the Palestinian operations, he too reminded them to review what took place when the Red Army stormed Berlin.
At the end of his talks, Haddad met with KGB chief Yuri Andropov, who would later become the master of the Kremlin. By the end of the visit, Moscow had agreed to provide the PFLP-EO with sophisticated weapons that it would deliver to it off the coast of Aden, Yemen.
Haddad had a very hard time accepting the idea of giving up his town of Safed or any other inch of Palestinian land. Back then, it was difficult for any Palestinian leader to accept such a proposal because the people would accuse him of committing grand treason. The truth revealed by the current Gaza massacre is that it is impossible to eliminate the Palestinian people. It also revealed that the world will not allow the elimination of the state of Israel.
That is why deciding to back down from the current war has been compared to taking a bitter pill. The elimination of the other is impossible and a red line. The only way out lies in the two-state solution in the hopes that the current war would be the last of the Palestinian-Israeli conflicts.
How horrible it must be for the people of Gaza to feel that they are being attacked by hunger the same way they are being attacked by warplanes. How difficult it must be for children to look up at the sky in the hopes of seeing aid being dropped towards them. Every assistance is appreciated, but the images are not easy.
The master of the White House was unable to make Netanyahu accpet a truce or a permanent ceasefire. He decided to continue to coexist with the river of pains until the conditions become “ripe”. So he will make do with an American port in Gaza and a marine aid corridor from Cyprus when hopes were pinned on striking a truce before the holy month of Ramadan.
Israel will not get out of this war victorious, no matter how many Palestinians its military kills. It has become a burden on its supporters. Sympathizing with it has become a moral scandal that has shaken the image of the West. Moreover, the war will achieve the exact opposite of its objective because the world has grown more and more convinced that the two-state solution is the only way to reach security and stability and stop the killing.
In the end, Israel will take back its hostages and corpses. But the independent state is a nightmare that will continue to haunt it. Hamas will witness the release of some its fighters from Israeli jails, but the movement will not boast the same number of fighters it had before the war.
I think about Sinwar, the leader of the current battle. I don’t know what he must be feeling as he listens to Biden talk about tasking the US military with building a port off Gaza to deliver aid. What does he feel when he sees American aid being airdropped from the sky? What does he feel when he hears that the reconstruction of post-war Gaza will happen on condition that Hamas quit the enclave?
I paused at the comments of a number of prominent Palestinian leaders, including Yasser Abed Rabbo, who said “Sinwar had surprised even his allies on October 7 and he too was surprised by the extent of what the al-Qassam achieved on that day.” Did Sinwar really not expect such a breach during the Al-Aqsa Flood? Is it true that he really didn’t expect Israel’s response to lead to such a catastrophe in Gaza?
The fact is the same question that is being posed to Sinwar is the same one that was asked to Haddad in Moscow half a century ago: Will the Palestinians agree to some land on which to establish their independent state living side-by-side with Israel? Sinwar agrees to the idea of an independent state on condition that he is not asked to recognize the state of Israel, a condition that the West will not abandon.
The Nakba is terrible. Can Hamas make a quick return to the Palestinian fold by taking a stance that forces the world to approve a limited mechanism for the birth of an independent Palestinian state?
From the time it took to pose the first question to Haddad and again to Sinwar, the world wasted an opportunity presented by Yasser Arafat, who attempted to ease the suffering of his people, but was instead confronted by Israeli political blindness, American bias and western cowardice.
