Palestine is Breaking Out of Prison

Opinion, Shilyn Shekhar | On the morning of Saturday, October 7th, 2023, Gaza's Hamas forces launched an unexpected attack on Israel, firing thousands of rockets at prominent Israeli cities. Meanwhile, Palestinian combatants infiltrated Israeli territories, gaining ground as far as Sderot. Their surprise manoeuvre resulted in numerous captive Israeli soldiers, including several high-ranking IDF officers, as well as the unfortunate demise of Ofir Libstien, mayor of Sha’ar Hanegev region.

Numerous leaders all around the world including our prime minister released statements supporting Israel and going as far as to call the attack Unprovoked. But was it really an unprovoked act of violence? Does Palestine deserve an independent state? Even if they do, is violence justified?

Before we get to the immediate causes of the rebellion, we must first know the history of Palestine, especially of the Gaza Strip. The Gaza Strip has a land area of just 45 km² while having a population of over 2 million people making it one of the most dense places on earth. Half of these residents are children and unemployment among youth is a staggering 70%. More than 80% of the population is dependent on foreign aid just to survive. Most people live in refugee camps. Gaza is aptly called an open prison. It has a heavily fortified perimeter on the Israeli and Egyptian border and Israeli warships guarding the coast with orders to blow up any fishermen's boats that cross a certain distance off the shore. Thousands of Palestinians have been shot because they went too close to the border just in 2018.

The violence we’re witnessing today is a response to years of daily Israeli military invasions into Palestinian towns, the killing of Palestinians and the very fact that millions of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are besieged under Israeli blockade. It is these material conditions that have led to the formation of violent resistance in Palestine.

We must also be aware of how Gaza came to be. 247 villages in Southern Palestine were ethnically cleansed by Zionist forces in 1948 and the refugees of these villages were then forced into the confined walls of Gaza. The 2 million prisoners of Gaza have been subjected to 17 years of war levels of land siege and 4 large-scale invasions. When we say that it is still wrong for them to pick up arms, we are expecting them to die in silence.

Israel is a settler-colonial apartheid state. Its entire inception was based on the fascist ideology of Zionism which aimed at the genocide of millions of Palestinians and Arabs to settle in their homes. It is not anti-Semitic to be anti-Zionist. We cannot excuse the actions of the Israeli state because of what Jews were put through by Nazi Germany when they were doing very similar things in Palestine. This ideology has captured people’s minds in a horrific manner, it has led to incidents where people are celebrating the death of a Palestinian baby while holding a knife through a picture and a lot more horrifying things. The Zionist ideology is nothing worse than that of Nazism and apologists of this ideology are indeed justifying fascism.

There can be no “But both sides are violent so there is no objectively wrong side” argument here as well because only Palestine has lived under military occupation for decades, not Israel. Only Palestinians are actively facing Apartheid and being genocided every single day, not Israelis. Only Palestinians have had their homes and land stolen for Israeli settlement; which, by the way, is a war crime according to the 4th Geneva Convention: Article 49. I’d also like to display the death toll of the “conflict” from both sides.

There has been countless evidence to prove that Israel was set up as a colonial state to serve Western interests in the Middle East, the current President of the United States has said so when he was a senator.

The Palestinian resistance is not fighting against democracy and Jews, it is fighting against colonialism. It is fighting against the violence and oppression inflicted upon Palestinians by colonialism. So this is not an unprovoked attack, they have ample reason to pick up arms and should’ve done so years ago. To Israeli apologists, civilian deaths only become significant when it’s the Israelis that are being killed. I am in no way glorifying the deaths of innocent people (which is few on the Israeli side) but realistically, it is the only way of fighting against fascism and imperialism. Call it a flaw of democracy, but for some reason, the Palestinians aren’t able to vote their oppression away. When Palestine tried to protest non-violently, the Israeli state responded by killing over 150 protesters (including 31 children) and injuring over 10,000 children, including 1,849 children, 424 women, 115 paramedics and 115 journalists all in the span of 6 months. They simply have no other choice than to pick up arms.

If you wish an end to this violence, you stand for the abolition of the Israeli state.

I also wonder why people who support Ukraine don’t also support Palestine. It’s normal citizens of a smaller country taking up arms against a much more powerful state right? Then why is it that the former are “heroes” and the latter are “terrorists”? Race definitely plays a part; the former consists of pure-blooded-blue-eyed-aryans while the former consists of “sand ni*gers” (a slur used for browns and Arabs created by American soldiers deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan).

Race is also the reason why conservatives in Europe start getting strokes when African and West Asian refugees seek immigration but happily accept Ukrainian refugees and now Israeli settlers fleeing Palestine. They’re all fleeing because of the same reason- war, so why else would there be discrimination on who gets accepted? Turns out Ukraine supporters don’t necessarily stand against imperialism, they stand against enemies of NATO and that’s it.

A Two-State solution is also just rhetoric which is a result of either a very shallow understanding of history at best or an attempt to preserve the status quo at worst. The 2 state solution was implemented in 1947 and still exists today but there is a huge difference between then and now (refer to the image below). The end of Israeli occupation and the abolition of the Apartheid Israeli state is the only solution. However, proposing the abolition of Israel does not mean genocide of Jews whatsoever. We wish for the region to finally witness peace, which it has not since 1948. This can only be achieved if NATO interests and Zionist ideology are taken out of the equation.

There is a lot of confusion and misinformation on the internet as the situation is still developing. Israel has also declared war on the Palestine rebellion and has announced “Operation Iron Swords”. They’ve started their indiscriminate bombing of Palestine quite similar to that in Ukraine, most targets are civilian buildings. But a proper counterattack would take several days to be launched. The United States has also announced a 6 billion dollar emergency package to Israel which makes things much harder for the Palestinian freedom movement.

To conclude, Palestine is simply fighting for freedom, human rights and dignity. They have picked up arms because they simply have no other option, violence is the only way the oppressed can fight against their oppression. Being an anti-zionist is not being an anti-semite. I’d like to end with a very famous quote from Noam Chomsky.

“You take my water, burn my olive trees, destroy my house, take my job, steal my land, imprison my father, kill my mother, bombard my country, starve us all, humiliate us all but I am to blame: I shot a rocket back.”

Noam Chomsky

Written by Shilyn Shekhar, he is a student of class 9th at Delhi Public School, Neelbad, Bhopal. He has an interest in contemporary international relations, climate change, and environment and urban planning.

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