Israel May Prevail Now, But Eventually Will Be Doomed

By Khalid Amayreh
 
PIC, Al-Jazeerah, CCUN, May 12, 2014

The apparent collapse of the American-mediated peace process between Israel and the Palestinian Authority has generated a great deal of frustration in Washington and the capitals of Europe.
In the Middle East, however, the gigantic fiasco of Washington's efforts has raised few eyebrows. Observers in the region knew from the very inception that Israeli insolence and arrogance of power, all enabled by the United States, would easily scuttle any genuine American efforts aimed at ending decades of Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands.
 
It is true that the U.S. is Israel's guardian-ally without whose massive and unrestricted military and financial support; the Zionist entity wouldn't have reached such an exaggerated level of arrogance, recalcitrance and intransigence.  But it is also true that the balance of influence between Washington and Tel Aviv tilts in the latter's favor.
 
In the final analysis, it is Israel that calls the shots in the American capital especially in Congress where the bulk of Senators, Congressmen and Congresswomen are decidedly at Israel's beck and call.
 
Even high-ranking American officials, such as Secretary of State John Kerry, felt compelled to apologize to Jews for suggesting that Israel would become an apartheid state if it didn't allow for the establishment of a viable Palestinian state.
 
Well, we know and the world knows that Israel is already an apartheid state. Just ask the question to any conscientious Israeli academic and he or she would tell you that it is indeed an apartheid state.
 
Interestingly, the Israeli government is now taking legal measures to formally make Israel a racist Talmudic state which would formally and legally perpetuate the status of non-Jews as lesser citizens.
 
Israel claims it would consolidate its status as both Jewish and democratic state. But everyone knows that a Jewish (Talmudic) and democratic is an ultimate oxymoron.
 
Israeli leaders and intellectuals know deep in their hearts that the intrinsically racist measure is directed first and foremost against Israel's Palestinian citizens who constitute more than one fifth of Israel's inhabitants. Hence, the veracity of the apartheid epithet.
 
 Peace deal is too late

It is probably sufficiently safe to say that it is already too late for reaching an equitable and dignified peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. Israel has already killed whatever remaining prospects for the establishment of a truly viable and territorially contiguous Palestinian state worthy of the name. The virtually ubiquitous Jewish settlements simply have left no room for such a state.
 
More to the point, no Israeli government in the foreseeable future would be able let alone willing to dismantle these settlements.  More to the point, the Israeli Jewish society continues to decidedly move toward Jewish chauvinism and fascism and is unlikely to allow for the election of a peace government.
 
Moreover, the US political establishment is too cowardly and thoroughly fettered by the shackles of the Jewish lobby to exert any meaningful pressure on Israel. Indeed, any American administration contemplating the unthinkable feat would be effectively embarking on political suicide.
 
Hence, there is currently no power, apart from the improbable evolution of a strong international coalition against the Israeli apartheid that would force Israel to give up the spoils of the 1967 war.
 
I believe the Palestinian leaderships in both Ramallah and Gaza would be utterly stupid if they didn't understand this prognosis.
 
That is why counting on the U.S. to reach a real peace deal, which wouldn't succeed without exerting unprecedented pressure on Israel, is tantamount to indulging in day-dreaming.
 
The remaining alternatives
With the peace process virtually dead and awaiting a dignified or not so-dignified burial, two main alternatives are left:
 
First: the establishment of a bi-national state between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean where Jews and Palestinians can live in peace as equal citizens. But a bi-national state is anathema for Zionism which is about a Jewish state with a considerable Jewish majority.
 
But the demographic balance is clearly not working in favor of the Jews and Palestinians west of the River Jordan, including the nearly 2 million Israeli Palestinians- are fast approaching the 50%-figure. In fact, there are Israeli demographers and commentators of unimpeachable credential who have argued that the Palestinians have already crossed the fifty-percent pitch-mark.
 
For example, Ha'aretz Columnist Akiva Eldar wrote on 16 October, 2012 that “the Jewish majority is history."
 
Eldar learned the news not from a public pronouncement to that effect by the Israeli government, which naturally has little interest to disseminate information of such "unparalleled importance".
 
The new data, published in Ha'aretz economic magazine, the Marker, revealed that Jews now account for approximately 5.9 million out of the 12 million residents of Israel and the Occupied Territories. It is likely that the demographic balance has further tilted in the Palestinians' favor ever since.
 
This seemingly objective fact, irrespective of Israel's repetitive, highly propagandistic and heavily manipulated census reports, shows that while Israel may have won the battle for Jerusalem and the settlements, it is steadily losing the battle for Palestine.
 
None the less, the world community, especially Palestinians and their supporters must never take this for granted.
 
The second alternative is simply open-ended conflict, which is the more logical scenario given the naked facts on the ground.
 
Nothing is certain
In the final analysis, Israel is probably too nefarious and too genocidal to allow the Zionist enterprise to be thwarted by the forces of demography.
 
That is why the Arabs and Muslims of the region must speed up the process of possessing the wherewithal that would enable them to deter Israel.
 
Never the less, the existence of many millions of Palestinians on their ancestral homeland is a monumental fact per se, a fact that can't be ignored or overlooked. This is unless the world allows Israel to commit a real genocidal holocaust to wipe off the Palestinians from the face of earth.
 
That is why we probably should make Jews understand rather unmistakably that their very survival in this part of the world is inextricably entwined with our survival.  
 
 
Khalid Amayreh is a senior Palestinian journalist living in Occupied Palestine.