Presentation at the 5th International Seminar for Peace and the Abolition of Foreign Military Bases in Guantanamo Cuba
*By Bassel Ismail Salem on May 6, 2017
Bassel Ismail Salem, Photo: Bill Hackwell
The illegal and deceitful Balfour Declaration will soon be 100 years old. This imperial agreement made by the British government ceded Palestine to become a Jewish national homeland with total disregard to the will of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living there.
The colonization process of Palestine was not characterized by military occupation of an imperialist country as the French did in Algeria. It was also not the European model used to colonize the U.S. and Australia that committed genocide against indigenous people in the nation building process.
Palestine, which was colonized by the Zionist project, was a model more like what happened in Latin America where national independence struggles fought back against racist regimes and did not accept the colonial nature of the conquering nations. These struggles have taken on different forms but continue to this day. Cuba for example fought 2 wars of independence against Spain and then went on to defeat the United States in the great victory of the Cuban Socialist Revolution. Under the most severe form of apartheid oppression the Palestinian people have never given up or accepted the conditions of the Balfour Declaration. What makes the Palestinian struggle even more complex is that it is fighting against a regime that is supported and operates on the behalf of the U.S. in the Middle East.
The essence of the Balfour Declaration in all its arrogant content contradicted and violated the Charter of the League of Nations, making it false and illegal for the following reasons.
The history of foreign military bases has always been a direct form of intervention of foreign powers into the internal affairs of other States and the usurpation of sovereignty and national independence, as well as the dignity of the people.
It is a way of enforcing colonization and occupation to maintain a military and or economic condition favorable to the imperial powers. In other cases military bases occur at the request of governments who for reasons of military and economic dependence submit to this condition.
However there is an extremely serious form of installation of foreign military bases, with catastrophic consequences for the geography, demography, history and the very existence of the people of the region and that is the case of the Zionist State of Israel, artificially created in 1948 in the historic land of Palestine.
In the period of 1917 – 1947 there was a process of gradual multiplication of the installations of settlers that went from 50 thousand to 650 thousand. It was an invading army aided by mercenaries from 37 countries occupying 78% or the greater part of the territory of Palestine. What followed was a reign of terror of Nazi style ethnic cleansing. Tens of thousands of Palestinians were massacred, another 850 thousand were expelled from their homeland, 532 cities and villages were either burned or bulldozed. Later in the war of expansion that began on June 5, 1967 Israel seized the rest of historic Palestine and Arab territories in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.
In 1948, the Zionist entity was formed primarily by Ashkenazi Jews from various European groups, primarily Polish and Russian. But the project has never been about religion but rather culture and geographic location. Since the beginning Israel has been a political, economic, ideological project, complex and globalized, inseparably organic and functional to imperialism and capitalism in its different phases that has gone from mercantilism to neoliberal globalization.
The militarization of the Israeli state with the help of regional powers created a country that in itself is essentially an occupying military base that has served the interest of U.S. Imperialism by participating in endless wars in the region with the most modern of weaponry.
This reality has been the decisive factor in the destabilization of peace and security in the area. In nearly seven decades of its spurious and illegal existence Israel has waged at least 11 wars against Palestinians and Arabs. From its position of quantitative and qualitative military supremacy, backed by U.S. imperialism, this rogue state has become a nuclear power without declaring it.
Israel has been a conventional and nuclear military base of the U.S. without any control or supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (AIEA) since it has refused to sign their Protocols, alleging lacking foreign policy, according to Henry Kissinger, “Israel has no foreign policy; only domestic politics”.
The racist mindset of the founders of Israel can be seen in David Ben Gurion when he said, “We can only become Arabs as much as the Americans became Redskins.. Our war against the Arabs is to be or not to be; it is not for borders; Israel lives with war and dies with peace.”
Paul Findley took it further when he said, “The doctrine of Christian fundamentalists stipulates that the existence of a strong Israel is a necessity for the designs of God in Palestine. The United States has the duty to make Israel very strong until the last day of the judgment.”
More recent Zionist leaders are no less fanatical. On 13 March 1992, the Israeli newspaper Haartz, echoed a statement from the former NATO Secretary, Joseph Linz when he said, “Israel is the least expensive mercenary in our era”. Meanwhile, Simón Pérez said that “Israel could not survive without the help of the United States”. Since 1973 the U.S. has been the real guarantor of the existence and technology-military superiority of Israel.”
Currently there are no tensions in bilateral diplomatic and political relations and the Presidents of the United States and Israel, at the economic-military level have grown and has experienced improvement especially since the W. Bush administration. The U.S. has command has posts and military warehouses, including nuclear weapons in Israel – there are at least 150 nuclear weapons according to former President Carter – at the service of the war fighting needs of both powers in the Middle East. Billions of U.S. tax dollars has propped up the Israeli infrastructure and build up the largest military force in the Middle East. Each consecutive president since 1950 has followed suit including Obama who, on his way out the door, signed an agreement with Israeli that would include $38 billion in military aid over the next decade.
The current situation in the Palestinian territories occupied in the West Bank continues to deteriorate. The Jewish settlements continue to escalate and push Palestinians off their land to the point that they only control 15% of it and movement is extremely restricted. In the West Bank there are some 700,000 settlers in more than 600 Zionist colonies. These are militarized areas controlled by state sanctioned paramilitary groups. There are also more than 1000 military check points along the 720 km. wall.
Conclusion
The Zionist entity of the State of Israel with its racist colonial role against the Palestinian people and all Arab people is a major threat to global peace. It constitutes the largest undeclared military base in the world. Israel is a constant violator of all human rights agreements and continues to mock all UN resolutions. Today the 1975 UN resolution declaring Zionism as form of racism and racial discrimination is truer than ever before.
To do any justice for the cause of the Palestinian people this artificial entity has to be dismantled. Today there are 7 million Palestinians who are either refugees or exiled. We demand the right of return for all Palestinians to their homeland and an end to occupation, looting, prison, torture and death.
While preparing this presentation I thought of the seven thousand Palestinian prisoners who remain in Israeli jails under administrative detention without any legal protection. Many of them are children, young people and women.
On April 17 over 1,500 of these political prisoners began an open ended collective hunger strike. The demands are basic; an end to administrative detentions, solitary confinement and torture, the right to receive medicines and medical care and to install public telephones for maintaining contact with their families.
The Zionist response to the strike is alarming. Israeli Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz, urged on his Twitter account the “necessity” that the Parliament of Israel, as soon as possible, pass a bill authorizing the death penalty of Palestinian prisoners being held. This is the same Israeli Parliament, which adopted a resolution to legalize all the colonies that they occupy and currently usurp the land of Palestine.
The question for all justice loving people is how can we build peace with an occupant of this nature?
* Bassel Ismail Salem, is a Palestinian journalist and member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) living in Cuba
Source: Resumen Latinoamericano
Israel: The Zionist Outpost for Imperialism in Occupied Palestine