After Gaza, the West Bank Will Be Destroyed

PALESTINE - ISRAEL, 9 Sep 2024

Sakai Tanaka – TRANSCEND Media Service

1 Sep 2024 – The Israeli military (IDF) has launched a military operation in the West Bank of the Jordan River since 28 Aug, dramatically intensifying humanitarian crimes such as attacks, destruction, and abuse against Palestinians, as it has done since last fall in Gaza. The purpose of this operation is to destroy the West Bank, making it impossible for Palestinians to live there, and to turn West Bank citizens into refugees and drive them to the Kingdom of Jordan on the east bank of the Jordan River, thereby “erasing Palestine.” This is the same as the purpose of the Gaza war that began last fall, which was to completely destroy Gaza, making it uninhabitable, and eradicating the Palestinians in Gaza to Egypt.

The Kingdom of Jordan predicts and is concerned about an increase in the influx of refugees from the West Bank into its country. This is also a plan to use violence to realize the “Jordan Option” (an expansive or sophistic two-state solution using Jordan), which the Israeli right has been talking about for 15 years, which is that “the Palestinian state is not the PA (Palestinian Authority) in the West Bank, but the Kingdom of Jordan in the East Bank.”

The existing two-state solution excludes the East Bank of the Jordan River from Palestine in advance, and the Israeli right has said that this is a British plot, but the British establishment and liberals have said that the Jordan Option is the sophistication of the Israeli right.

On August 28, the IDF launched a new attack to destroy the West Bank, and at the same time created a new position of the humanitarian officer to look after the Palestinians remaining in Gaza. In my opinion, this move means that the IDF has finished destroying Gaza since last fall, and has entered a period in which it will monitor the remaining Gaza citizens while avoiding the international criticism of Israel for the humanitarian crimes.

The IDF has stated that it will “rebuild Gaza’s civilian infrastructure in cooperation with the international community,” but this is probably a lie to avoid criticism. The IDF has irreversibly destroyed and wiped out Gaza, expelled its citizens, and destroyed half of Palestine. Israel is trying to end the Palestinian issue by completely erasing Palestine. There is no way Israel will allow the city of Gaza to be rebuilt.

The IDF has mostly completed the destruction of Gaza, and will continue to monitor it for many years to prevent the citizens from returning to the destroyed Gaza. That is the meaning of the new humanitarian officer. At the same time, the IDF has begun the final destruction of the West Bank. These are linked. This move appears to be so.

From Israel’s perspective, the Palestinian issue is an issue in which the UK, which led the international community, did not allow Israel to own the territories (West Bank and Gaza) it gained in the War of Independence (Middle East War) in order to prevent Israel from becoming a powerful nation, and forced it to be handed over to the Palestinians. If the British had not interfered, Israel would have expelled the indigenous Arabs (Palestinians) from the West Bank and Gaza to Jordan and Egypt during the War of Independence (Nakba) and made them its own territory. In the early 1990s after the Cold War, when it seemed that the hegemony of the US and UK would continue forever, Israel once accepted the transfer (establishment of Palestine. Two-state peace) and concluded the Oslo Accords, but later changed its mind and took advantage of the post-9/11 terror war to treat Palestinians as terrorists and try to destroy the Palestinian state.

The more the IDF and settlers attacked and abused Palestinians, the more the people of Palestine and Arab countries became radicalized by their anger, and theyt Europe, and as a countermeasure, a mechanism was created to increase the military support for Israel from the US. Israel has secretly supported its enemy, Hamas. The Gaza War has been ongoing since last fall as a plan to further radicalize this movement and expel Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza and eliminate Palestine before the collapse of US-UK hegemony and the loss of Israel’s backing. Previously, the war on terror and the incitement of Arab radicalization were prepared to force the US to defend Israel, but in the future, the US hegemony will decline and it will no longer be relied upon, so the Gaza War is about Israel deciding to eliminate Palestine, something it wanted to do but was reluctant to do because it felt bad for the US.

From the perspective that the only way for Israel to stabilize and develop is through a two-state model in which it cooperates with the Palestinian state, this is a self-destructive act that will invite sanctions against Israel from the world. However, when Israel actually carries out the erasure, massive destruction, and crimes against humanity that it began last fall, it is not deterred by anyone, receives almost no sanctions, commits crimes against humanity, and has almost completed the erasure of Gaza, and is about to enter the massive destruction of the West Bank.

In the US, the election campaign is in full swing, and Trump has pledged to give Netanyahu full support and let him do as he pleases. In the Democratic Party, the left wing has strengthened its hostility towards Israel, but the Biden and Harris camps in power are acting as the mediators for a ceasefire and fully supporting Netanyahu militarily. Israel will be able to commit crimes against humanity as it pleases next year and beyond. In the US and Europe, the liberal (left) faction within the establishment is intensifying its criticism of Israel from the perspective of human rights diplomacy, and the media is publicizing the crimes against humanity in the Gaza war. At the same time, however, the political, intelligence, and military-industrial complexes of the US and Europe establishment are controlled by Israel and have become its puppets, forcing them to continue to issue pro-Israel policies.

This tendency for conflict and division has intensified since the start of the Gaza war. The upper echelons of the US and Europe are increasingly unable to make decisions as anti-Israel and Israeli puppets struggle with each other, and their hegemony is accelerating. Israel is taking advantage of the current power vacuum and proceeding with the erasure of Palestine through overwhelming violence without any punishment or sanctions. The guilty verdicts of the ICC, a British human rights and diplomatic body, have not hurt Israel.

Recently, EU Foreign Minister Borrell has been stepping up his criticism of Israel. The EU, led by Germany, the “perpetrator of the Holocaust,” has a weak stance on Israel, and Borrell has taken advantage of his term ending in October to criticize Israel as a last resort. However, he has little support within the EU and is backing away. Borrell may be labeled by the Israeli side as a “Semitic racist.”

In the Middle East, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have still not abandoned the idea of ​​reconciliation with Israel. If Israel were to erase Palestine, the division of Jerusalem, which Saudi Arabia has set as a condition for reconciliation, would not be realized, and Saudi Arabia would not be able to reconcile with Israel. Despite knowing this, Saudi Arabia maintains an implicit reconciliation with Israel. As if to upset Saudi Arabia’s feelings, Ben Gbir, the Minister of Internal Security of the Netanyahu administration, has recently rehashed the idea of ​​building a third Jewish temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Even with such provocations, Saudi Arabia only shows a little anger.

Some say that Saudi Arabia is only being nice to Israel on the surface because it doesn’t want the US to cut off its military support, but Saudi Arabia is now a BRICS country and can buy weapons from the non-US countries such as China and Russia. It seems that Saudi Arabia wants a realistic and early stability in the Middle East, rather than the Palestinian cause. As long as they are obsessed with a Palestinian state, the Middle East will not be stable.

This realistic approach can also be seen in Turkey and Iran. Turkey, under the populist President Erdogan, has criticized Israel since the start of the Gaza war, saying that it would impose economic sanctions to cut off trade relations, including oil exports. Some economic sanctions seem to have been implemented, but most of the trade suspension between Turkey and Israel has been set up with detours to reduce the blow to Israel. Turkey has been smuggling crude oil from the Kurdish region of Iraq, but it has also been pointed out that by exporting this smuggled oil to Israel, Turkey is sanctioning Israel on the surface while not actually being at odds. Like Saudi Arabia, Turkey also tacitly accepts Israel’s destruction of Palestine. This is probably because it is the quickest way to stabilize the Middle East. Even if they insist on a Palestinian state, it will never be realized, and the instability will only become permanent.

At the end of July, Iran lost face when Hamas’ Ismail Haniya was killed by Israel while in Tehran. Iran declared that it would retaliate against Israel, but has not yet done so. When the Iranian embassy in Damascus was bombed in April, Iran retaliated against Israel, but this time it has restrained itself. In the United States, it is said that Iran will retaliate against Israel in the near future, and that the US troops must be sent to the Middle East. However, this is an exaggeration to create a pretext for sending the US troops. Iran will not retaliate against Israel. Iran appears to be seeking to maintain a cold relationship of peace with Israel, rather than sticking to the Palestinian cause and fighting a war of destruction with Israel.

It has been reported that the Shiite armed groups under Iran’s umbrella, such as Hezbollah and Iraqi militias, are dissatisfied with Iran’s restraint. In the long term, the hegemony of the United States will decline, and Israel, which has the United States as its only backer, will also become weaker. Iranian factions such as Hezbollah will be able to defeat Israel. Will the Iranians eventually start a war against Israel and destroy it?

In my opinion, China and Russia, which lead BRICS, which will be the center of the future multipolar world, do not want such a development. Unlike the existing hegemons, the UK and the US, China and Russia do not think that Israel should be weakened by using the Palestinian issue. Rather, they hope that the instability surrounding Israel will be resolved in reality as soon as possible and the Middle East will stabilize as soon as possible. It is possible that China and Russia have appeased Iran and asked it to refrain from retaliating against Israel.

BRICS, which will lead the future multipolar, the non-American world, have diverse opinions on the Israeli and Palestinian issues, making it difficult to take the unified action. Among the original member states, South Africa and Brazil have criticized and sanctioned Israel. China is a little more neutral, sticking to the two-state model, and has not criticized Israel much, although it recently mediated a reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah, which have been in conflict and internal conflict on the Palestinian side for many years. China probably mediated the internal conflict in Palestine because it was requested by the Arab countries. The internal conflict in Palestine was instigated and provoked by the United States (at the request of Israel) in 2008. In the past, when the US hegemony was strong, the Arab countries tolerated the US policy of weakening Palestine. However, as the US hegemony declined, the non-US sides such as China rose to prominence. It is believed that the Arab countries asked China to mediate for Palestine. The two-state approach will not move forward unless Israel accepts it again. Israel will never accept the two-state approach again. The reconciliation within Palestine has only resulted in strengthening the legitimacy of Hamas.

Russia, which has many Jews in its business circles, is even more tolerant and neutral toward Israel than China. India has a strong anti-Islamic tendency due to the current administration’s populism that discriminates against Muslims in the country, and is the most pro-Israel of the original BRICS member countries. The Middle Eastern countries joined BRICS last year. Among them, the UAE and Egypt have the formal diplomatic relations with Israel. Saudi Arabia has also quietly reconciled with Israel, but Iran is in a sharp conflict with Israel. As such, BRICS has a diverse stance toward Israel and Palestine, and is unable to decide on a unified policy and force it on Israel. As already mentioned, the US and Europe are also in conflict at the top, and they cannot force Israel to do anything. Israel is free to wage war.

I have speculated that Israel is trying to promote an expanded version of the Jordan Option, which would see Israel overthrow the existing US puppet governments of Egypt and Jordan to Hamas by expelling Gaza citizens to Egypt and West Bank citizens to Jordan, while infuriating the people (turning them pro-Hamas) through its enormous humanitarian crimes, and making Egypt and Jordan “Palestinian states” instead of Gaza and the West Bank. In fact, the governments of Egypt and Jordan are quite unstable due to the growing domestic support for Hamas (the Brotherhood). It may be that the “Arab Spring” will reoccur in the future, and the governments of both countries will be overthrown and turned down by Hamas.

In 2018, when Donald Trump was the US President, he was asked by Israel to propose the “Jordan Option” to the King of Jordan to take care of the West Bank, but was turned down. Israel is now trying to destroy the Biden administration, re-elect Trump, and realize the Jordan option.

But before even thinking about such a move, Israel continues to use overwhelming violence to drive Palestinians to Egypt and Jordan, and is realizing the erasure of Palestine regardless of Hamasification.

Both Hamasification and the Jordan option are political strategies to achieve a two-state solution to the Palestinian problem by expanding the definition. In reality, Israel does not rely on these political strategies, but is instead using only the military force to drive out the Palestinians, and is proceeding with the erasure of Palestine itself. Palestinians are being forcibly turned into Egyptians and Jordanians. If Palestine is erased by this violence and war, the political talk about the two-state approach will disappear.

If Hamas were to seize the governments of Egypt and Jordan, the Egyptian and Jordanian armies would become Hamas’, and Hamas would have the military power that is not inferior to Israel’s. Israel could be considered as deterring Hamas from becoming Hamas. Israel’s overwhelming violence, oppression, plundering, and humanitarian crimes. However, none of the world’s great powers are deterring it. And they either stand by and watch or become Israel’s puppets. Palestine is being wiped out.

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After graduating from university, Sakai Tanaka started working at the Kyodo News Agency in 1986. From 1997 he joined Microsoft Network (MSN) and in 1999, due to change of policy at Microsoft, he became an independent journalist. Tanaka has published more than twenty books on international affairs, some translated and published in China, South Korea and Taiwan. He studied at Harvard University from 2000 to 2001 and in 2005 was invited to serve as a senior researcher at the Royal Faisal Institute in Saudi Arabia. Website: tanakanews.com

Satoshi Ashikaga is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment. Having worked as researcher, development program/project officer, legal protection/humanitarian assistance officer, human rights monitor-negotiator, managing-editor, and more, he prefers a peaceful and prudent life.  His previous work experiences, including those in war zones and war-torn zones, constantly remind him of the invaluableness of peace.

Original in Japanese: ガザの次は西岸潰し – tanakanews.com

Translation: Satoshi Ashikaga – Google Translate

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This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 9 Sep 2024.

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