Ding dong - you're wrong!
The Knesset’s decision is an attempt to legalize a de facto annexation, says Omar Assaf
Peoples Dispatch spoke to Palestinian political activist, analyst, and writer Mr. Omar Assaf to discuss more about the repercussions of the Knesset’s decision on the political situation in the West Bank.
Assaf argues that the endorsement of the annexation by Israeli lawmakers is part of the age-old Zionist colonial project, which is based on the concept of “a land without a people for a people without a land”, and therefore entails the extermination of the Palestinian people to seize their homeland.
The Palestinian political writer, indicated that Theodor Herzl, who is widely recognized as the founder of political Zionism, entrenched this concept by linking it to biblical narratives, which promotes Joshua’s perpetual servitude of the Indigenous people of Canaan, who chose to stay in their lands as “hewers of wood and carriers of water”, in order not to be otherwise “banished or exterminated”.
“Israeli historians Ilan Pappé and Tom Segev also suggested that forced displacement and ethnic cleansing represent the essence of the Zionist Project,” Assaf added.
He added that the forced displacement of the people of his home village Bayt Nabala by the Israeli military on July 13, 1948, is a clear example of the ethnic cleansing policy, which Israel has implemented since it was established. The entire population of his village was forcibly displaced, although Bayt Nabala was under the sovereign control of the Arab State in accordance with the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine (known as Resolution 181) adopted in 1947.
This in turn, confirms that the Knesset’s resolution is nothing more than a procedure to legalize actions that have already been implemented on the ground including settlement projects, and isolating the areas of the occupied West Bank from each other by setting up gates and checkpoints, turning them into cantons.
“The Knesset’s approval of the motion would further undermine any efforts towards the two-states solution or the establishment of a Palestinian state,” Assaf affirmed.
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