Region suffers from a massive imbalance of power

During the First Intifada, occupied East Jerusalem’s leader Faisal Husseini told me Palestinians could not follow the example of India’s Mahatma Gandhi by adopting peaceful means for resisting Israel’s occupation. “Palestinians are not Indians, Israel is not Britain, and Palestine is not India.” He said Israel fired on Palestinians who attempted to demonstrate against the occupation and punished Palestinian institutions, businesses, towns and villages which refused to pay occupation taxes and exactions.

Husseini died in May 2001 and that August Israeli forces raided, stripped of national documents, and closed his Arab Studies Society at the 19th century Husseini mansion known as Orient House. The Arab Studies Society was the most prominent of the many institutions Israel shuttered.

Palestinians are not like Indians because Britain had no intention of taking over India and expropriating, expelling, and disappearing its population. Since 1917 when British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour issued his infamous declaration promising that Britain would facilitate a Jewish national home in Palestine, the country’s natives have been regarded as the “non-Jewish communities.” At that time, Palestinians constituted 90 per cent of the population of their country. Today Palestinians in Israel, East Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank constitute a narrow majority in the Israeli-occupied land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean.

While brutally putting down resistance to its occupation, colonial Britain was compelled to observe humanitarian law and norms — at least notionally. Britain was too small and possessed too few people to take over India which was too large and too heavily populated to absorb. This was not the case of Palestine, particularly since the colonising Zionist/Israeli movement has always enjoyed the uncritical support of the colonial and post-colonial West. To furnish Israel with the ultimate deterrent, the US and France aided Israel’s development of an arsenal of nuclear weapons, making Israel the sole regional power. Thanks to the US, Britain, France, Germany, and other Western powers Israel has never been forced to abide by the laws of war and rules of occupation set by the Fourth Geneva Convention in 1949.

Israel has, instead, been the spoiled child of the West and the region’s military superpower and hegemon. This process began during the 1936-1939 Palestinian revolt against the British mandate and Jewish immigration into Palestine. British officer Orde Wingate trained British-Israeli Special Night Squad commando units to mount attacks on Palestinian towns and villages. Among his pupils was Israeli general and politician Moshe Dayan. Jewish and non-Jewish US World War II veterans fought in Israel’s 1948-1949 war of establishment during which 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes. The then US president Harry Truman instantly recognised Israel at its mid-May proclamation. He warned its leaders that US soldiers would not fight for Israel but pledged that US would provide Israel with the means to protect itself. This has led to defending Israel’s 1948 and 1967 conquests.

This policy became a US commitment to establish and maintain Israeli military superiority over all and any combination of Arab antagonists. This has been stretched to include Iran.

The policy of maintaining Israel’s military “edge” while granting Israel immunity from accountability for its actions has dominated this region. This practice has enabled Israel to prosecute a 10-month war on Gaza, a brutal crackdown on Palestinians in the West Bank, and freely assassinate leading opponents of Israeli occupation who, as Faisal Husseini made clear, have been denied Gandhian methods of resistance.

This leaves Palestinians and their supporters with the option of armed struggle for which last week Israel assassinated Hizbollah military strategist Fuad Shukr and Hamas politburo chief Ismail Haniyeh who paid with their lives. These two men have joined a long line of prominent Palestinians struck down by Israel which has suffered no sanctions for assassinations even when innocent bystanders have been killed as well as targeted figures.

Hizbollah has threatened vengeance against Israel for killing Shukr, three women and two children in the movement’s east Beirut stronghold, risking full-scale Israeli war against crisis-ridden Lebanon. In 2006, a Hizbollah attack on an Israeli army patrol along the Israel-Lebanon border led to a 34-day war which devastated southern towns and villages and damaged the country’s infrastructure.

Since Hizbollah fighters fought the Israeli army to a standstill and forced Israeli troops to withdraw in 2006, the Israeli military has longed to have another opportunity to rain death and destruction on Lebanon. Over the past 18 years, Hizbollah has prepared by amassing tens of thousands of missiles and drones while its fighters have become battle hardened by fighting in the Syrian conflict. Currently, Hizbollah does not want to inflict fresh suffering on Lebanon by providing Israelis with a pretext to attack Lebanon.

Struggling against Israel’s overwhelming onslaught on Gaza, Hamas is in no position to wreak retribution for Israel’s assassination of Haniyeh and 14 members of his family, including his 80-year old sister.

The Iranian government has vowed to strike Israel since Haniyeh was murdered while in Tehran attending the inauguration of Iran’s new progressive president Masoud Pezeshkian. While five Iranian nuclear scientists have been killed in Iran by Israel, Haniyeh is the first major resistance leader to die in the Iranian capital. If Tehran makes good on its threat, Israel could respond with a major offensive against Iran with the aim of dragging the US into a regional war. This has long been a strategic objective of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu who has been given a short-term boost by the assassinations at a time 70 per cent of Israelis have demanded his resignation.

Israel has already responded with a major tactical strike on Yemen’s Hodeida port for the strike by a Houthi drone which killed an Israeli in Tel Aviv. Since Israel launched its Gaza war last October, the Houthis have mounted missile and drone attacks on ships in the Red Sea, which handles 11 per cent of world shipping. The Houthis’ aim is to put pressure on Western governments to demand Israel end the Gaza war.

Having supplied Israel with hundreds of billions worth of arms over the past 76 years, the US has created and maintained a massive imbalance of power in this region. Under Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel has become a rampaging rogue state out of control.