Normalizing settler-colonialism and ethnic cleansing
Stepping back from Trump’s crude and stupid remarks, they reflect the thrust of Israeli/American policy that has been clear for years, but is now reaching its culmination in the “normalization” process
By Jeff Halper
There was little that was actually shocking about Trump and Netanyahu’s press conference. Nothing new was said. What is shocking is only how the ideas and policies fed into Trump’s simplistic and narcissistic mind by more sophisticated advisors come out so starkly honest and straightforward. Biden said much of the same, but couched in obfuscating diplo-speech that Trump could never master.
Stepping back from Trump’s crude and stupid remarks, they reflect the thrust of Israeli/American policy that has been clear for years, but is now reaching its culmination in the “normalization” process.
Saudi Arabia, the Jewel in the Crown for completing the Abraham Accords, has conditioned normalization with Israel on a vague, never-to-be-implemented commitment to a “pathway” to a Palestinian state at some indeterminate future date. No details or conditions necessary; for example, would the Palestinian state be territorially contiguous, genuinely sovereign and economically viable? Why spend the political capital to get into controversial details over an eventuality that “everyone knows” (to quote Leonard Cohen) will never materialize? The other Arab states that have already normalized with Israel — Egypt, Jordan, the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco — haven’t even made that symbolic demand.
Arab government collusion with Netanyahu and Trump (& Biden, this is not just a Republican plan) empowers Israel to define less what the Palestinian Bantustan-”state” would look like (who cares?) and more the expanded Israel they would be normalizing. The parameters are clear: they were set out in detailed maps back in 2020 (see below). “Israel” is defined as the state of Israel in its 1967 borders PLUS its settlements. Israel thus expands to 85% of historic Palestine while the Palestinian “state” is reduced to three enclaves in the West Bank and an uninhabitable Gaza. For “security” reasons Israel also controls the borders (Palestine will not have a border with an Arab country), the airspace and even internal movement between the enclaves. No territorial contiguity, no sovereignty, no economic viability, and no capacity to bring the refugees home. A Palestinian Bantustan within an all-encompassing Israeli apartheid regime.
The fact that the normalization process is nearing its completion explains Israel’s push to ethnically cleanse Area C , the 62% of the West Bank where its settlements are located, and which is planned to be annexed. The most violent Israeli settler youth have been unleashed on Palestinian communities; indeed, they have been recruited into a special IDF unit called Desert Frontier where they join other army units in driving Palestinian farmers and shepherds from their villages and lands. More than 50 rural communities have been abandoned since October 7th; more than 40 new settlement “outposts” established to replace them. All to establish the “facts on the ground” that will then be normalized.
The only actual condition imposed on Israel by the US and Saudi Arabia for the normalization process to go ahead is industrial quiet, quietizing the Palestinian issue so that it simply drops out of sight. Thus Israel’s intense campaign of pacification, beginning with eliminating Hamas in Gaza, the last bastion of effective resistance, but now spilling over into the West Bank where Israel is “Gaza-fying” the Jenin, Tulkarm and Nablus refugee camps as well as other pockets of resistance. (With, sickeningly, the active support of its collaborationist Palestinian Authority, desperate to “prove” to Israel that it is capable of taking control of Gaza.)
Then, with all this in place, normalization. A “Greater” Israel is recognized by Saudi Arabia, much of the Arab and Muslim world and the United States, the Palestinians regulated to “a problem” that demands little more than periodic lip-service. To be sure, this will be sold as the “two-state solution” the international community has long supported, but let’s call it by its real name: two-state apartheid.
In my view, normalization represents the greatest threat to the Palestinians since the 1948 Nakba. For normalization means closure. Once an expanded Israel and its apartheid regime is recognized by the international community — if not formally by much of Europe, the BRICS Bloc and the Global South, then certainly de facto, which for Israel is good enough — there is little political space for the Palestinians to continue pushing their cause.
Settler colonialism ends not with victory but by being normalized. Opposing a normalization process that does not restore to the Palestinians their rights should be the priority of all of us. Unfortunately, a key political piece to effective campaigning is lacking. Human rights organizations and some governments (such as those supporting South Africa’s ICJ case against genocide in Gaza) are engaged in strategic activities. The BDS movement is leading an effective campaign of economic boycotts of Israel. Both are exposing Israeli crimes, gross violations of international law.
But the third crucial piece in the struggle is lacking. While pro-Israel proponents are organized into professional, coordinated, strategic and well-financed lobby and public campaign groups, there is little political organization, no broad coalition of organizations, engaged in effective political campaigning for Palestinian rights. We have known for years where Israel, the US and Saudi Arabia are going. Where is the campaign against normalizing apartheid? Or against two-state apartheid? Or for a single democratic state between the River and the Sea, the only genuine and just resolution?
Until there is greater coordination and joint campaigning on a political level, including stronger partnerships between organizations and activists in Palestine/Israel and their colleagues abroad, we will continue to be outraged, we will continue to expose and analyze, but we will not be players at the political table.
