Israel’s starvation of Gaza has reached a new horrific stage.
Israeli government agency Cogat completely controls aid shipments into Gaza. Its own data shows that between March and June, it allowed in less than a quarter of the minimum amount needed to feed Gaza’s population.
The starvation has been a deliberate, genocidal policy. Alongside this Israel has killed almost 1500 Palestinians waiting for aid at the death trap distribution sites run by the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” since the end of May. And its continues to bomb Gaza, often killing 100 people in a day.
The level of outrage and demands for action globally have become impossible to ignore.
In response the UK, France and Canada have all announced plans to recognise a Palestinian state in September at a meeting of the UN General Assembly.
These are among the complicit Western governments that continue to arm Israel. Instead of imposing the sanctions that could force Israel to end its genocide, they see recognising a Palestinian state as an easier gesture.
Anthony Albanese, however, will not even do this. He says he supports the idea but won’t act until conditions are met and the announcement is able to work as “a positive step towards the realisation of the two-state goal”. This is despite it being Labor party policy since 2018.
Recognising a Palestinian state is, however, part of the push for a two state solution. For decades Western leaders have presented this as the way to deliver peace. Anthony Albanese is still arguing this.
But it has always been a fraud. The promise of a Palestinian state has been used to demand concession after concession from the Palestinians while Israel has continued their dispossession.
This continues to be true. French President Emmanuel Macron says for a Palestinian state to happen Hamas must disarm to create a demilitarised state without armed forces. Israel, however, is not expected to disarm.
Labor MP Ed Husic, who is calling for immediate recognition, describes it as “the fastest way to de-legitimise and see the end of Hamas”.
This is because they prefer to see control of the Palestinian Territories in the hands of the Palestinian Authority (PA), which collaborates with Israel to repress any resistance to the Israeli occupation in the West Bank.
As a result it has little credibility left among Palestinians. Just 19 per cent of Palestinians in the West Bank approve of the PA’s performance, according to a May poll for the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research.
Israeli apartheid state
Israel runs an apartheid regime in the West Bank where Palestinians live under military occupation and are denied basic legal rights, as it continues to drive them from their homes and to steal more land.
Since the genocide in Gaza began in October 2023, violent Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians have escalated, vandalising and setting fire to businesses, homes and fields. Almost 1000 Palestinians have been murdered in near daily attacks.
There are 750,000 Israelis living in settlements all across the supposed area of a Palestinian state in the West Bank that Israel is continuing to expand.
This means a Palestinian state would not deliver peace but only continued Israeli domination and oppression.
It would do nothing to challenge Israel’s position as a watchdog state for Western imperialist interests in the Middle East, armed to the teeth by the US and its allies like Australia.
Israel will continue its murderous campaign against the Palestinians.
The possibility of any Palestinian state alongside Israel is virtually zero.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is stridently opposed to it. Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, overwhelmingly voted a year ago to oppose any Palestinian state, declaring it “an existential danger”. All the major parties supported this and there were only a handful of votes against.
And a Palestinian state is also no longer an aim of US policy, its Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said in June.
Support for a separate Palestinian state is one sign of Israel’s growing pariah status globally. But justice for Palestine requires an end to the West’s arming of Israel and serious sanctions.
It means an end to the apartheid state of Israel. It is a single democratic secular state from the river to the sea, with equal rights for all, that holds the hope to free Palestine.
By James Supple
