07.12.2023

Zionist drives and divisions

Eradicating Hamas provides a useful cover, but everything points to ethnic cleansing, says Moshé Machover

Although it is painful to see the darkest predictions that I had made materialising, I am going to discuss what we can expect will occur in Gaza. Obviously, this is partly speculation - we can only predict the future, even the near future, with a degree of probability.

I am going to discuss the aims of this war as far as Israel is concerned. It is only Israel that is now the proactive agent in the current conflict and the Israeli leaders have made it clear that they are aiming for the war to be long, in order to achieve their goals. Apart from these goals, there is also a personal interest of the political leadership - primarily Benjamin Netanyahu - and the military top brass. Both have been exposed before Israeli public opinion.

The latter are very unpopular in Israel because they failed to prevent something that was predicted by their own on-the-ground observers: that Hamas was preparing a major attack. The (mainly female) soldiers who constantly viewed what is happening across the fence in Gaza had noticed for a long time what seemed to be preparations for such an attack. These were reported, but were dismissed because the military and intelligence leadership did not believe that Hamas was really serious and technically capable of doing what was predicted.

As far as Netanyahu is concerned, it is common knowledge that he had helped foster Hamas in the Gaza Strip for quite a long time in order to divide the Palestinian leadership and prevent even talk of a two-state so-called solution. Of course, that was only talk, because, as I pointed out long ago, it is a mere illusion, which people in the know realise is not going to happen. But Netanyahu wanted to prevent even talk of it within the American administration.

Military and political

This explains why both the military and political leadership are keen to delay as far as possible the day of reckoning, when a serious investigation into the lead-up to October 7 is launched. It is improbable that a commission of inquiry will be set up during the war, so it is in their interest that the conflict should last quite a long time.

As far as Israeli public opinion is concerned, the aim of the war is simply to satisfy the lust for revenge. Israel has been humiliated. The atrocities are bad enough, but have been magnified even more by propaganda, as happens in every war. A big section of the Israeli Jewish population is calling for the whole of Gaza to be annihilated - everybody there is responsible and there are no innocent people.

That is, of course, propaganda for internal consumption. But for international consumption the declared aim of the war is to eradicate Hamas. This is parroted by the mainstream media here in Britain, and elsewhere in the ‘international community’ led by the United States. This declared aim has several advantages: first of all, it is plausible - at least for people who do not look too carefully into the whole question. After all, Hamas is designated a ‘terrorist organisation’ by Israel’s allies, which makes the aim of eradicating it acceptable. That is why the mainstream media, including the BBC, use the label ‘Israel-Hamas war’, as if it was really a conflict between these two parties. However, if you look beyond the mainstream media - for example, Al Jazeera - it is described more widely (and more correctly) as Israel’s war on Gaza and the Palestinians.

An added advantage of Israel’s declared war aim is that it is open-ended. For example, how can you tell when Hamas has been destroyed or completely annihilated? After all, it is not just a military organisation: it is a major political movement - one which heads a civilian government in the Gaza Strip. While a military organisation can be defeated, at least temporarily, it is questionable whether an entire movement and ideology can be eradicated. Moreover, Hamas is not only a major force in the Gaza Strip: there are plenty of Hamas supporters in the West Bank, throughout the Middle East and around the world. So it will require a very long war indeed to achieve this declared aim.

But soon after October 7 the Israeli leadership - the government, along with the main opposition party (there is now in reality a kind of ‘national unity government’) - seized the opportunity for what has become in my view the real main aim of the war: not simply to eradicate Hamas and certainly not just to exact revenge (although that would gratify a lot of public opinion); and not just to save their own skin in view of the impending investigation. That real aim is ethnic cleansing.

Predictions

As you may recall, I have been predicting that the escalating repression of Palestinians in the occupied territories would provoke growing resistance - which in turn would eventually lead to an Israeli way out of the spiral in the form of ethnic cleansing. This is predictable as a long-term aim of Zionism: to complete the Zionist project of a Jewish state across the whole of Palestine - from the (Jordan) river to the (Mediterranean) sea. This long-term aim of the Zionist project requires a stable and secure Jewish majority and this, of course, means that ethnic cleansing will be on the Zionist wish list.

However, as I have previously argued, ethnic cleansing can only take place at an opportune moment (she’at kosher, in Zionist parlance): in an international context which allows Israel to perpetrate this crime. This opportunity has presented itself at a time and place which nobody could predict: namely in Gaza in October. I did not expect (and I do not think anybody else did) that ethnic cleansing would start at this time and in this place, but here it is - it is impossible to deny that it is actually taking place.

If you watch the reports, even on the BBC, it is clear that ethnic cleansing is in operation. Military action against Hamas does not really require carpet-bombing huge parts of inhabited areas; it does not justify forcing a million people from the north of Gaza to the south, promising that they would be safe there; and then, when they are bombed in the south of Gaza, they are told to move from one place to another. They are destitute - without food or a supply of drinkable water, without medicine, without sufficient clothes and shelter, and with zero possibility of leading any kind of decent life. So what is this, if not ethnic cleansing?

But ethnic cleansing requires not just the pushing of people to the border: it requires expelling them across the border. This does not necessarily involve providing them with forced transport. It can be done by leaving people no other choice but to escape, by creating conditions whereby they must either run for their lives or die of hunger and destitution (not to mention the epidemics that are threatening to spread). This is what I predict is going to happen if Israel is allowed to continue this strategy (I do not think there is sufficient US pressure which might be able to prevent it, if it wanted to do so). It is likely that Palestinians will not wait to be forcibly transported out of Gaza: they will break out of their own accord.

This is in fact what happened in the nakba in 1947-49. True, there were occasions then when Palestinians were transported by Israel across the border, but for the most part they just faced conditions which made them choose to flee. That was later used by Israel to justify its claim that ‘We didn’t do it; they decided to leave themselves’. But, of course, Israel created the conditions during the nakba, just as it is creating the conditions now for the two and a quarter million Palestinians to ‘voluntarily’ leave the Gaza Strip. And they will not be allowed to return. This is the ‘ratchet principle’ of Israeli expansion and ethnic cleansing.

No-one will flee unless they are compelled to, which is why Israel is creating the conditions where Palestinians will have no alternative. Some of them will no doubt try to get into Egypt and the regime there will be faced with a dilemma: prevent them by brute force from getting across to the Sinai desert or allow them to do so. The Gaza Strip is literally squeezed ‘between the devil and the deep blue sea’. If you look at the map, you will see that there is only one exit by land that is feasible for the population, which is precisely through Rafah to the Sinai desert.

But will Egypt prevent this by force? It may even massacre those who try to come across. Either way, it will be fine by Israel. Whether the Egyptians are forced into accepting hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees or use mass violence against them, Israel will have got rid of them. And who knows? Some may try the sea route of escape. The Israeli navy may oblige by lifting its blockade of Gaza’s coast, and we may then witness Palestinian refugees trying to cross the Mediterranean in fishing boats (if they are lucky) or unseaworthy rafts.

But what lies beyond all this? I think it is becoming ever more clear that in the longer term Israel is aiming to recolonise Gaza with its own settlers. Forget about the two-state illusion, which the Americans keep putting forward as their preferred outcome of the war: this is not going to happen. Once the Gaza Strip has been vacated - either totally or almost entirely - it can be reoccupied by Israel.

In addition to gaining the territory of the ‘promised land’, there would be economic advantages to be gained from incorporating the Gaza area into greater Israel: the land is fertile and it is an ideal place for tourism, with a beautiful coast. On top of this there are considerable deposits of natural gas in the sea just adjacent to the Gaza Strip. All this means that Israel has many reasons for wanting to incorporate Gaza - apart from that being part of the ultimate aim of Zionism.

As I have stated, nothing is certain, but I predict that this will be the probable outcome of the present war, as far as Gaza is concerned. However, although Israel may or may not overcome Hamas militarily, it is not going to put an end to the (so-called or real) terrorism against the Zionist regime. What is certain is that the present kind of operation will create greater and greater resistance. True, some people will be cowed into submission, but you can be sure that there will be enough people who will be infuriated by what is happening and resort to various forms of resistance, including terroristic activities. In particular, it is almost certain to increase both resistance and oppression in the West Bank, leading to the next phase of ethnic cleansing sooner or later - if Israel is not prevented by outside forces from carrying this out.

Internal contradictions

I want to end by making a speculative prediction regarding Israel itself. It is very probable that internal conflicts will intensify. Normally wars are presented as being fought in the ‘national interest’, which has an effect of unifying the people and at least temporarily overcoming internal contradictions and conflicts. However, in this case Israeli public opinion remains deeply divided - not so much by opposition to the war versus support for it, but by widespread anger at the huge failure of the leadership to prevent this traumatic event from occurring.

The divisions within Jewish Israeli society that were evident in the period preceding this war will definitely re-emerge in some form. Essentially, this will intensify the contradiction between two camps within Israeli Jewish society - on the one hand, the messianic wing and, on the other, the modern, secular business section of the Israeli bourgeoisie. There will be moves by the messianic Zionists to annex the West Bank to Israel. But in terms of the regime that this will create, it will annex Israel to the regime of the West Bank: this repressive, authoritarian, theocratic regime would be extended in one form or another to the whole of Israel. But that would be inimical to the interests of the secular bourgeoisie, whose activities are essential for making Israel one of the world’s modern, developed capitalist countries.

How this will be resolved is, of course, a matter for conjecture. I cannot predict what will happen, but there will be trouble ahead and I think this internal contradiction will be very difficult to paper over.

This article is based on Moshé Machover’s address to the December 3 aggregate of CPGB comrades