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As we prepare this 12th FPA statement, more than 697 Palestinians have been murdered and at least 3,075 have been injured, with many with very serious conditions. The majority of the casualty continues to be children and their mothers and fathers. Many elders have also been killed as they attempted to take refuge with their children and grandchildren. Medics, rescue workers, and journalists are also repeatedly targeted, causing the death and injury of many. All the Palestinian political parties have reported that very few Palestinian fighters have been killed, and that the overwhelming majority of the targets have consistently been residential neighborhoods, including schools, mosques, churches, and clinics. This was evident in the repeated outrageous shelling of schools, as was the case yesterday, killing more than 43 in one single bombing of the UN-run Jabalya school.
The FPA continues to renew its call to sustain a widespread popular protest, and to heed a call for a National Emergency Plan of Action issued by the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition, MAS Freedom, the Free Palestine Alliance, the National Council of Arab Americans, and Al-Awda. We call on our community to join the National March on Washington on January 10, as we have an obligation to send a loud and clear message of condemnation and outrage to the Bush administration and to the incoming president, Barack Obama, who has arrived to Washington awaiting his inauguration.
Zionist Options are Slim:
As casualties increase in the ranks of the Zionist army, it is now facing a major decision indicative of their impending defeat: to stop where they are or move forward deeper on the ground to a third and more engaged phase. Regardless of the decision, the outcome is dire for the Zionist leadership. If they stop and withdraw, their plan would be faced with a clear political defeat. If they move forward, they will essentially have to stop at some point and withdraw; and this will be at a higher political and military price. Their available option at this point is to attempt to maximize damage while simultaneously finding ways for political cover.
As the Israeli elections come closer, there are many unanswered questions that the Zionist leadership cannot handle. For example, will this slaughter achieve the declared goals, let alone the undeclared? Will it have to be repeated, as was the case in Lebanon? What will the political, military, economic, and diplomatic costs be? Has the Zionist army lost its presumed supremacy as a military force, once and for all and that they are simply regarded worldwide as killers of children? How does the Israeli polity reconcile the massive Palestinian resistance within the 1948 borders with the concept of a unified polity? How long will the Israeli polity be able to sustain its colonial Apartheid character, especially when exacerbated with military conquest?
Effectively, the Israeli Zionist establishment is at a point where it has to search very hard for a political cover, internally and externally. This provides great difficulties for its allies, such as the US and Arab regimes, as they too have to search for their own interests in the region. At what point do these interests diverge, is a question that faces the axis of colonists and their proxy functionaries. To be sure, the intensity of the Zionist onslaught only aggravates the answers to this and similar questions, and makes the alliance that much more difficult to sustain, particularly for the weak Arab despots who are despised by the Arab people.
Diplomatic and Political Status:
In the most principled and practical position yet taken by a head of state, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez expelled the Israeli Ambassador from Venezuela in an act of solidarity with the Palestinian people. President Chavez’s action is in sync with previous solidarity positions taken by him when the same Zionist army attacked Lebanon in 2006. Simultaneously as we salute this principled position by President Chavez, we reiterate our strongest condemnation of positions adopted by the US, the European Union, and Arab regimes. The UN Security Council once again failed to take an appropriate position, and continued the charade of condemning “both side”, hence equating the colonists with the colonized.
The Egyptian regime, supported by the PA’s Mahmud Abbas and Nicolas Sarkozy of France, put forth an initiative for a “temporary cease fire”. The Israelis announced that they will halt the bombardment everyday for 3 hours to allow for “humanitarian support”. Both of these positions are transparent for what they are, a fig leaf to cover the murderous onslaught. The real purpose is to realign the political and military configuration to gain control over a runaway situation headed for Zionist defeat.
As we have indicated before, and as is being reiterated by many, including Zionist military experts, there are no Israeli options for political or military victory in this situation. Israel’s defined goals are flat out unattainable. They are only capable of inflicting damage on the Palestinian population with the false hope that the Palestinians will opt to surrender the resistance.
Clearly, one of their major goals is to replace the current political formation in Gaza with a more obedient functionary polity, to be headed by Mahmud Abbas. This option is now nearly impossible to attain since the Palestinians will not accept a replacement that would come on an Israeli tank. Recognizing this reality, Abu Mazen’s PA yesterday announced that they would not seek or participate in a regime change in Gaza under these conditions. In reality, Abbas could stop the negotiations, terminate all agreements, announce that the Palestinians everywhere would mobilize in every manner to support the Gaza Strip, and send all possible aid/support through Egypt. This is what any respectable leader would have done in this case, unless that presumed leader is complicit in the attack.
As for Egypt, it is not at all difficult to understand what the appropriate response should be: Open the Rafah crossing, allow all support to enter, terminate all relationships with the Zionist polity, stop the supply of natural gas, and provide the Palestinians with a support base. This is just the minimum. Of course, the remaining Arab regimes are no exceptions.
In the Context of History and Geopolitics:
We here would like to refute the claim that the Arab nation does not possess enough power to affect change. We believe that we do. We are the owners and producers of the majority of the world’s oil. We control the intersection of three continents (Asia, Africa, and Europe). We are major trade partners with Asian, African and European nation. We control maritime, land and air trade routes. We are the custodians of the birth place of the three monotheistic religions (Christianity, Islam, and Judaism). We span a land mass from the Arabian Gulf to the Atlantic Ocean that borders many significant powers in the world. Currently, Arab regimes act as hosts to various western bases and hubs for a variety of purposes. Therefore the Arab people have the ability to exert massive economic, diplomatic, and political pressure in a very effective manner. What is needed, however, is a clear political will.
Effectively, this is what this entire onslaught is about: control over the Arab nation and the placement of obedient functionaries as the effective powers over millions of impoverished Arabs. In this context, consider the position of Hugo Chavez. A similar position would not be possible by the Arab regimes due to their servitude to their colonial and neo-colonial powers. The real independence of Venezuela allows not only principled positions, but also the appropriate use of its wealth in the service of its own people and the people of the world.
Such was the essence of the conflict during the decolonization era of the fifties, sixties, and seventies, when the primary struggle was between colonists attempting to control wealth and resources and the colonized struggling to assert power over their own destiny. In 1956, the Tripartite attack on Egypt was in response to a Pan-Arabist perspective championed by Gamal Abdel-Nasser that Arab wealth belongs to the Arab people, and hence nationalized the Suez Canal to secure funds to build the Aswan dam and rebuild Egypt. France, Britain and Israel found that unacceptable and attacked, including attacking Gaza. The international solidarity that existed at that time, and the steadfast of the Egyptian leadership and people, secured a victory in the face of the onslaught. In the same context, consider the CIA coup in Guatemala in 1954 against Jacobo Arbenz, who dared to challenge the robbery of United Fruit Company and the impoverishment of the Guatemalan people. Such were, and continue to be, the same pretexts used against the people of Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and other Latin American countries to destabilize liberation movements and sovereign nations in favor of colonial or neo-colonial control. On the African continent, Amilcar Cabral, Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, and many similar unique leaders for national liberation were targeted for attempting to secure freedom for colonized people.
Essentially, the wrath of colonists is aimed not only at destroying the lives of people and the robbery of nations, but also at the cumulative reservoir of the culture of resistance that humanity continuously achieves. The assault on Gaza, futile and horrendous as it maybe, could and has destroyed many lives. But certainly, it will be defeated in its attempt to destroy the Palestinian resistance movement to colonial control.
The Free Palestine Alliance
January 7, 2009
4 6 minutes read
