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Palestinians were forgotten, erased from the memory, their plight ignored as if a trivial matter. Although these conditions have been in place for two decades, Biden’s emphasis on Israel-Saudi normalization might just have lit a match. It took Hamas’s deadly attack to remind Israel, the United States, and the world that Palestine still matters.
The Palestinian resistant group on Saturday breached the world largest open air prison in Gaza by launching aerial attacks and broke through the heavily secured fence into the occupied territories.This comes after almost two decades of US and international leaders ignoring the plight of more than two million people living in Gaza who experience a humanitarian nightmare because Israel controls its airspace, borders, and sea. The attack took place in the midst of an ongoing failure to address the perilous situation for Palestinians in the West Bank, where Israel’s far-right government has increased the already excruciating daily misery of occupation over the past year.
Israeli security forces and Israeli settlers are increasingly using violence to enrage Palestinians, as evidenced by the pogrom in Huwara and the recent escalation of deadly raids on Jenin. For the past year, the most racist, fundamentalist, far-right government in Israeli history has ruthlessly escalated its military occupation over Palestinians in the name of Jewish supremacy with violent expulsions and home demolitions, mass killings and military raids on refugee camps. Israeli Jews are now frequently seen praying at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, one of Islam’s holiest sites, adding to the tension. A Hamas commander cited many of these factors in his statement after the attack.
Israel may have just declared war on Palestinians, but it has been at war with them for almost 75 years. All of this bloodshed is a result of Israeli occupation and apartheid, as well as US complicity.Two million Palestinians have been imprisoned, starved, and denied access to medical care for 16 years as a result of the Israeli government’s brutal air, sea, and land military siege of Gaza. Israeli forces routinely slaughter Palestinians in Gaza.
As conditions for Palestinians have gotten worse, the bitter truth is that the ongoing reality of the occupation has not featured prominently during the engagment of US or Arab leaders in recent years. Therefore, the question needs to be asked of the Israeli government, the Biden administration, and the Arab leaders is: how can they have so willfully ignore Gaza?
The United States’ complicity in the oppression and horror brought on by Israel’s armed occupation is directly responsible for the slaughter over the last 75 years and even now. The blame solely lies with the US government that consistently enables Israeli violence. Israel’s apartheid state is enabled and strengthened by unrestricted military support, diplomatic protection, and billions of dollars in private finance coming from the United States. Those who continue to demand “ironclad” American support for the Israeli military are only creating the conditions for more bloodshed.
The world needs to call on the US to stop supporting Israel’s military immediately and make Israel’s leadership accountable for its egregious human rights abuses and war crimes against Palestinians. Oppressed and downtrodden inevitably seek their freedom everywhere. We all deserve liberation, safety, and equality. Only by eliminating the causes of the violence and redressing the injustice done to the Palestinian people can we achieve peace globally.
