A year has passed since October 7, 2023, and it’s time to explore whether we better understand this monumental event and all that followed.
For historians like me, a year is usually not enough time to draw meaningful conclusions. However, what has happened over the past 12 months is part of a much broader historical context, dating back at least to 1948, and I would argue even to the beginnings of Zionist colonization in Palestine in the late 19th century. .
Therefore, what we can do as historians is situate the past year within the long-term processes that have taken place in historic Palestine since 1882. I will explore two of the most important.
Colonization and decolonization
The first process is colonization and its opposite is decolonization. Israeli actions in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank over the past year have given new credence to the use of these two terms. They have moved from the vocabulary of activists and academics in the pro-Palestinian movement to the work of international courts like the International Court of Justice.
Academia and mainstream media still refuse to define the Zionist project as a colonial project or, as it is more accurately called, a colonial project. However, as Israel intensifies its colonization of Palestine over the next year, it may prompt more individuals and institutions to present the Palestinian reality as colonial and the Palestinian struggle as anti-colonial and to abandon clichés on terrorism and peace negotiations.
Indeed, it is time to stop using misleading terms peddled by the American and Western media, such as “the Iranian-backed Hamas terrorist group” or the “peace process”, and instead talk about the resistance Palestinian and the decolonization of Palestine from the river to the sea.
What will contribute to this effort is the growing discredit of Western mainstream media as a credible source of analysis and information. Today, media executives are fighting tooth and nail against any change in language, but they will eventually regret its place on the wrong side of history.
This change in discourse is important because it can potentially affect politics, specifically that of the Democratic Party in the United States. The most progressive Democrats have already adopted more precise language and description of what is happening in Palestine.
It remains to be seen whether this will be enough to bring about change in a Democratic administration if Kamala Harris wins the election. But I am not optimistic about such change unless Israel’s processes of social implosion, its growing economic vulnerability, and its international isolation put an end to the Democrats’ hollow efforts to resurrect the dead “peace process.”
If Donald Trump wins, the next US administration will at best be the same as the current one, or at worst it will openly grant Israel carte blanche.
Regardless of what happens in next month’s US elections, one thing will remain true: as long as these two frameworks of colonization and decolonization are ignored by those with the power to end the genocide in Gaza and Israeli adventurism elsewhere there will be a problem. little hope of pacifying the region as a whole.
The disintegration of Israel
The second process that has surfaced forcefully over the past year has been the disintegration of Israel and the possible collapse of the Zionist project.
The original Zionist idea of establishing a European Jewish state in the heart of the Arab world through the dispossession of the Palestinians was illogical, immoral and impractical from the start.
It stood firm for so many years because it served a very powerful alliance which, for religious, imperialistic and economic reasons, viewed such a state as fulfilling the ideological or strategic goals of those in that alliance, even if sometimes these interests contradicted each other.
The alliance’s project to resolve the European problem of racism through colonization and imperialism within the Arab world is entering its moment of truth.
Economically, an Israel engaged not in a successful short war as in the past, but in a long war with little chance of total victory, is not conducive to international investment and economic windfalls.
Politically, an Israel that commits genocide is no longer as attractive to Jews, especially to those who believe that their future as a faith or cultural group does not depend on a Jewish state and that, in fact, it could be safer without him.
Incumbent governments are still part of the alliance, but their membership depends on the future of politics as a whole. By this I mean that the catastrophic events of the last year in Palestine, alongside global warming, the immigration crisis, growing poverty and instability in many parts of the world, have revealed how Many political elites are far removed from the aspirations and basic concerns of their people. and needs.
This indifference and distance will be challenged and each time it is successfully confronted, the coalition that supports Israeli colonization of Palestine will be weakened.
What we have not seen over the past year is the emergence of a Palestinian leadership that reflects the impressive unity of the people inside and outside Palestine and the solidarity of the global movement of support for it. It may be too much to ask at such a dark moment in Palestinian history, but it will have to happen, and I am convinced of it.
The next 12 months will be a worse aftershock of last year in terms of Israel’s genocidal policies, the escalation of violence in the region and the continued support of governments, supported by their media, for this destructive trajectory. But history tells us that this is how a horrific chapter in a country’s timeline ends; this is not how a new one begins.
Historians should not predict the future, but they can at least develop a reasonable scenario. In this sense, I think it is reasonable to say that the question of “if” the oppression of Palestinians will end can now be replaced by “when.” We don’t know “when”, but we can all strive to make it happen as soon as possible.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Tel Aviv Tribune.
