For 76 years, Israel’s racist-colonial regime has retained a vice-like grip of dominance and tyranny over Palestine through a policy consisting in forced displacement and transfer, colonisation and apartheid. These practices have created ever-worsening trauma for the longest standing displaced population in the world.
In real terms this amounts to 9.17 million Palestinian refugees and internally displaced persons whose rights are snatched away. They continue to be deprived of their rights to reparations, including return, properties restitution and compensation.
Israel has callously cocked a snook at the international community and various UN resolutions as protected under UNGA Resolution 194 of 1948. Israel has, instead, busied itself with vengeful acquisition of Palestinian lands and dispossessed hundreds and thousands of people with a multiplicity of human rights aberrations.
In 1947, when the United Kingdom concluded its Palestine mandate, the United Nations partitioned Palestine into two independent States, one Palestinian Arab, and the other Jewish, with Jerusalem internationalised.
The Arab state was awarded territory of 11,100 square kilometres or 42%, the Jewish state a territory of 14,100 square kilometres or 56%. The remaining 2%, comprising the cities of Jerusalem, Bethlehem and the adjoining area would stay as an international zone.
This was viewed by Arabs as an unjust defrayal, and rejected by Palestinians and Arab countries. The Jewish claim that Palestine was a ‘land without people for a people without land’ was false and untenable.
Throughout history, Palestine was a melting pot of pluralistic cultures and civilizations. It was part of the broader area known as the Levant, which was in the intersection of various civilizations throughout history.
Before 1948, Palestine was home to a diverse population of Arabs, Jews, and Christians, as all groups had religious ties to the area, principally the city of Jerusalem.
Military conflicts fought between various Arab forces and Israel, most notably in 1948–49, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, 2006, and 2023 until this day. The Six-Day War (1967) referred to euphemistically as 'The Setback' was defining because it altered the landscape of the region forever. Israel launched its occupation of Palestinian lands.
During the Six-Day war, Israel was always in control with superior military power built around support from the USA and Western Europe. To Western Europe, support to Israel was also rooted in their guilt for the mass killing and evacuation of Jews during the holocaust.
These military hostilities arose in the context of unmerited gains for Israel in contrast to its Arab neighbours who, until then, strictly observed the 1949 Armistice agreements signed at the end of the First Arab–Israeli War. The West Bank, including East Jerusalem, has been under military occupation by Israel since 7 June 1967, when Israeli forces captured the territory, then ruled by Jordan, during the Six-Day War.
More than seven months after of Israel’s current genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, Palestinians remain unprotected and are indiscriminately killed, starved, tortured, besieged and forcibly displaced. Israel is operating on two punitive tracks: brutalising and dehumanising Gaza by destroying the Palestinian population; ongoing and deliberate weaponisation of aid. Large numbers of people undergo malnutrition and famine, and the denial of essential healthcare services.
Supported by its Western-colonial allies, Israel stubbornly desists from a let-up on its absolute control in its genocidal war on Gaza. Today, there is barely a single international agency that is capable of meeting the humanitarian needs of hungry, severely ill and injured populations.
Hospitals and schools that can, otherwise, shield and protect the vulnerable have been bombed and destroyed to make them dysfunctional. The work of UNRWA has all but shut down. These cruelties render Israel complicit as a war criminal which kills, maims, and renders people without a roof over their heads. That any state would use politics as a war-tactic is unimaginable.
A stunning 81 percent of the population in Gaza is severely displaced and in an incapacitated state. Some 1.7 million Palestinians out of 2.3 million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip are routinely being internally displaced. The genocide in Gaza is not an isolated event.
It demonstrates one incontrovertible fact. The Nakba has never ended. Everything in the seven wars Israel has fought against the Arab population is merely an extension of the ongoing Nakba, fulfilling Israel’s ultimate goal to control the maximum amount of Palestinian land, with the minimum number of Palestinians. So Gaza always has the right to reclaim its lands which had been taken away by Israel under duress.
Under the unending genocidal war on Gaza, Israel has escalated its suppression of Palestinians in the West Bank, including Jerusalem, and in 1948 Palestine. Israel’s goal is to mute the voice of Palestinians as well as to immobilise them through army and coloniser attacks resulting in the forcible dislocation of hundreds and killing thousands of Palestinians.
Night time incursions end in demolishing Palestinian cities across the West Bank too and refugee camps, murder innocents, and destroy public infrastructure and homes.
As recently as May 21, Israel launched a two-day military punitive offensive in Jenin with intent to destabilise the city of 300,000 people. Twelve Palestinians were killed and more than 20 injured.
The assault left a trail of destruction, severely damaging roads, electrical and water networks, sewage systems, commercial properties, vehicles, and vegetable stalls. These losses are incalculable by any humanitarian standards. Jenin, renowned for its abundant fruits and vegetables, has a valley rich with plains of fertile soil.
But the Palestinian spirit is driven by the notion of, Sumud – a Palestinian cultural value, ideological theme and political strategy that emerged in the wake of the 1967 Six-Day War among the Palestinian people as a consequence of their oppression and the resistance it stirred.
After 76 years of the ongoing Nakba, Western colonial states continue to provide support and impunity to the Israeli colonial-apartheid regime despite its glaring crimes. They conveniently disregard Israel’s legal and moral obligations under international law.
They eye wash their compliance with muffled protests over the “humanitarian crisis”. They are backdoor instruments of Israel’s genocide. It becomes obvious because it is they who subtly weaponize aid, and work behind the scenes to nullify UNRWA by defunding, eliminating and replace UNRWA with an instrument which will satisfy Europe’s interests.
Israel still hasn't provided an iota of evidence of its allegation that 12 of UNRWA's 13,000 staff in Gaza were involved in Hamas' 7 October attacks on Israel. Israeli politicians see UNRWA as an instrument of Palestinian refugees' right to return and therefore a threat to the maintenance of the Jewish majority in Israel.
Rafah is now a focal point of massacres by the Israeli army of Palestinians in the besieged coastal enclave. The disquieting situation has prompted South Africa to file an “urgent request” with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for additional measures amid Israel’s attacks on Gaza, particularly in the city of Rafah, where more than 1.4 is taking shelter.
South Africa return to the Court in light of drastic changes in the situation in Gaza, particularly the situation of widespread starvation, brought about by the continuing egregious breaches of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. South Africa asserted: “(The) situation brought about by the Israeli assault on Rafah, and the extreme risk it poses to humanitarian supplies and basic services into Gaza, to the survival of the Palestinian medical system, and to the very survival of Palestinians in Gaza as a group, is not only an escalation of the prevailing situation, but gives rise to new facts that are causing irreparable harm to the rights of the Palestinian people in Gaza.”
The number of deaths is bound to increase exponentially unless military assaults cease and the blockade is lifted. Earlier on, the Court ruled that South Africa’s claim met the standard of plausibility and, on the request of South Africa, ordered Israel inter alia, to prevent and punish genocide, incitement to genocide, and immediately enable the effective provision of basic services and humanitarian assistance to besieged Gaza.
Israel is unmoved by the threats and has, instead, engaged in blatant escalation. Palestinian health workers claim that Israeli airstrikes killed at least 35 people and hit tents for displaced people in the southern Gaza city of Rafah.
Numerous others were trapped in flaming debris. This was just two days after the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to end its military offensive in Rafa. Palestinian Red Crescent Society conjectured that the death toll was likely to rise as search and rescue efforts continued in Rafah.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Israel on May 24 to immediately halt its military offensive in Rafah. In its ruling, the court stated it was “not convinced” that the evacuation of Rafah and other measures by Israel are sufficient to “alleviate the suffering of Palestinians”.
The ICJ also ordered that evidence be preserved. Israel must take measures to “ensure unimpeded access into the Gaza Strip for inquirers”. More and more countries have now announced their intention to support South Africa’s lawsuit in the genocide case against Israel in the ICJ.
It is important to acknowledge that the rulings and orders of the ICJ are binding and cannot be appealed, although the court has no enforcement mechanism. The global mobilisation of civil society and of an increasing number of governments from different continents is evidence that the world views Israel’s actions as badly chosen and hence, it should be treated as a pariah state.
More recently, South Africa has welcomed what it calls a “groundbreaking” ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for Israel to immediately halt its military offensive in the southern Gazan city of Rafah. The ICC is ordering Israel to suspend its aggressive actions against the people of Palestine. Israel was also ordered to submit a report to the Court on all measures taken to give effect to the ruling, within one month of the date of the Order.
Israel’s self-image as the superpower of the region with unqualified support of the United States and several powerful European countries has been shattered. Seven months after Israel’s invasion of Gaza, the resistance stands unyielding and resolute regardless of restricted resources and limited space of movement.
They are convinced that October 7 was not a mere militant fight-back and revenge for 57 years of occupation, and 76 years of evil colonialist-racist-apartheid power. They are convinced that it was a moment of truth and a turning point in the history of this struggle for the Palestinians and humankind as a whole.
Israel’s self image is conceited. It deems its adversary as militarily inferior. Since 2023-2024 heightened Israeli protests and civil unrest define the political impasse sparked by the Israeli Prime Minister’s corrupt misrule.
The people want Netanyahu to accept a ceasefire and hostage deal. Prominent journalist, Gideon Levy construes that for the Israeli leadership “The future of Israel is hidden… shrouded in mist. They talk in religious terms about eternity, ‘a united Jerusalem for eternity’ and ‘God’s eternal promise to Israel’… Israel’s rulers do not look ahead, not even by half a generation”.
Political analysts and justice-peace movements are clear that there is, but one, solution to the ongoing struggle: a just peace. That entails a comprehensive rights-based decolonisation framework which guarantees the Palestinian people’s inalienable rights to self-determination and return.
Palestinian resistance, combined with the sustained and strategic efforts of the global solidarity movement, is the only way through which the Israeli genocidal war on the Gaza Strip will end. The efforts of the global solidarity movement standing in stark contrast with clear moral and legal bankruptcy of colonial states and their leaders.
Ranjan Solomon is a writer and human rights activist who has worked in Palestine, Central America during the civil wars, in Sri Lanka, and South Africa. Views expressed are the writer’s own.