Gaza’s Tragedy… and the Arab World’s Amusement

Author: Abdul Majid Suweilem

The truth is that the headline is incomplete unless we say: “The Tragedy of Palestine and the Farce of the Arabs and Muslims.”
The tragedy of Palestine refers to what has befallen it because of Arab humiliation and Muslim abandonment, and the farce means that if these Arabs and Muslims have not awakened since the aggression on Doha, their role has ended. Nothing remains for them but to await their turn to be targeted by the U.S.-Zionist assault that will come for them one by one and in groups, after the Palestinian tragedy has fully unfolded.
The bitter truth is that the tragedy of Palestine is not related to the Palestinians’ resistance to an occupier that stole their land, seized their homeland, displaced their people, and committed horrific killings and massacres over seven full decades — proudly announcing and boasting of its actions and threatening more with all its power and brutality, with all the alliances, support, and backing it “enjoys,” and with all the means and capabilities it possesses across all fields.
Yes, the Palestinian struggle — universally recognized as heroic, just and legitimate — is not the cause of the tragedy now, nor was it in the recent past, but rather since the earliest days of the Zionist project and from the first steps of its implementation on Palestinian soil.
The tragedy of Palestine began in the circumstances of its emergence and formation, and in the way it developed in connection with the Arab and Islamic realities, which at the time of its birth and formation were nothing but restraints on Palestinian resistance and a complete enabling environment for the Zionist project to succeed, incapable of confronting it. The harsh and clear truth is also that the Palestinian tragedy began and consolidated in successive stages from its inception, continuing and deepening due to the Palestinians’ inability to resist the Zionist project with the means and capabilities required to at least halt its expansion — knowing it was an immense project in capacity and resources and enjoyed comprehensive Western colonial support against a small people often lacking resources.
The organic and intrinsic link between the Arab-Islamic reality and the empowerment of the Palestinian people to confront the hostile project has always been the primary weakness in confronting the Zionist project on Palestinian soil, despite all attempts and the sacrifices made by Arab armies in all their wars with the colonial entity.
The reason this linkage is the greatest weakness in the entire conflict equation is that the Arab system between the two world wars, and after the Second World War, was a fragile system, governed by its basic ties to colonial interests. It was simply the product of traditional political structures and economic and social frameworks inherited from quasi-feudal relations, malformed emerging bourgeoisies, and extensions dominated by colonial control and hegemony.
Palestinian political and social structures were not qualitatively different from Arab and Islamic structures, which hindered, shackled, and sometimes prevented — or at least limited — the Palestinian people’s ability to organize an effective resistance against the Zionist project.
The heavy prices paid by the Palestinian people and the tremendous heroism they displayed under this bitter reality were unable to repel the aggressive onslaught, did not prevent the Nakba, its ensuing defeat, or the completion of the occupation of the entire Palestinian homeland. Had the Arab system not been weakened by the June 1967 defeat, the Palestinian people would not have been able to regroup and relaunch their resistance thereafter.
From all this we conclude that the Palestinian tragedy was caused by the insufficiency of effective national struggle and the ineffectiveness of resistance under the circumstances described, not by the struggle and resistance themselves.
So what price is the Palestinian people paying now compared with the price of the Nakba, the occupation and rape of all Palestine, the uprooting and expulsion of millions of Palestinians — more than half forced outside Palestine — the slaughter of those who remained, and the invocation of an “Al-Aqsa flood” to justify their annihilation in the Gaza Strip, the desecration and targeting of everything Palestinian in the West Bank, and the practice of the most brutal forms of racist national discrimination against those who remained inside historic Palestine?
What price is greater than rampant settlement, control of land and resources, what price exceeds the Nation-State Law, the prevention of a peaceful state on even 22% of historical Palestine, and what price exceeds the “annexation” of Jerusalem, creeping annexation everywhere, and the threats of death, submission or expulsion depending on the programs of a fascist government?
Was the Palestinian people, before this war, “enjoying” comfortable living in the West Bank and Gaza? Were they on the verge of gaining their right to self-determination and an independent national state, or were we facing organized programs to liquidate the national cause from its roots, to uproot it, and to methodically eliminate all its components?
Claims that try to portray Palestinian resistance today and in the past — and that will portray this national struggle and resistance — as the cause of the Palestinian tragedy are naive assertions, and perhaps more and far more dangerous than that.
The real farce in the face of this tragedy is the statements and denunciations, the repeats of condemnation and censure — sometimes in the strongest terms, other times in weaker language — in the face of ongoing genocidal and starvation wars, continuous massacres and slaughter.
Palestinian weakness in the conflict equation is not the direct cause of the Palestinians’ tragedy but a result of the reality that limits their ability to resist. The farce represented by the Arab and Muslim reality to date is the direct, greatest and most dangerous cause of this tragedy.
Can the Arab-Islamic system explain to us how it confronted the siege of starvation that continues to amplify their suffering to this day?
Does it have a clear explanation of what it means to stand against displacement when entire areas in Gaza have been displaced seven or eight times already within the Strip?
And what remains of the concept of displacement if families in Gaza cannot leave the ruins of their homes because there is no place safer than the rubble of their houses?
Should we understand, for example, that genocide inside the Strip is acceptable so long as displacement and uprooting outside it are avoided?
We ask these questions so that the Arab-Islamic system, which is convening its summit in Doha, understands that more rhetoric of condemnation and denunciation can no longer be tolerated. This is the last chance to escape this infernal whirlpool and this terrifying chapter of the Palestinian tragedy.
No one asks more than that the summit use the effective cards it possesses. It is not required to fight on our behalf or alongside us; rather, it must threaten to freeze relations if cutting them with the occupying state is impossible — a state that openly declares, and is not merely quoted, that it will strike whenever it wishes, however it wishes, wherever and whenever it chooses, that seeks and prepares to expand into Arab countries specifically and by name.
I mean that the matter is no longer solely about Palestine; it has become a matter concerning the existence, present and future of the Arab-Islamic system.
It would be enough to tell the United States of America: we Arabs, we Muslims, we Gulf states, will seek alliances that guarantee our protection from Zionist threats to our countries, our peoples, and the sovereignty of our states!
Warn the Zionist entity and give it one week to stop the brutal, savage war in the Strip. Otherwise you will move to freeze relations, and perhaps cut them entirely, and then terminate all agreements.
Try it — experiment — and you will see the result for yourselves.
And I will tell you what will happen if you resort to these decisions, and I think the vast majority of our Arab and Islamic peoples, and most of the Palestinian people, know as well as I do, perhaps better, what will happen.
Simply put, the genocidal war will stop before the deadline expires, and Donald Trump will call to end it by phone, and for the first time you will be assured of a security that truly protects you. The spell cast by Benjamin Netanyahu, the head of the fascist government wanted by the International Criminal Court, will be broken, and the region and the neighborhood will tremble without you firing a single shot or forming new armies, and you will have delivered to the peoples of these two civilizations the greatest achievement in your entire history.
This is neither political fortune-telling nor an exercise in Arab desert sand; it is simply the scientific and logical conclusion of the special importance of the region we live in — the region that constitutes the last bastion and the sole fortress for the entire “West” and its role in the equations of international conflict.
Try it once and you will see for yourselves.