Palestine on the Eve of Further Annexation

By Dominique Ferré

[reprinted from issue No. 246 (July 1) of Tribune des Travailleurs / Workers Tribune, the weekly newspaper of the Democratic Independent Workers Party (POID) of France]

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is slated to announce soon his plan to annex part of the West Bank in the framework of Donald Trump’s “Deal of the Century,” which was presented in January 2020 in Washington. The exact details have yet to be announced, but one thing is certain: The annexation marks a new stage in the expulsion of the Palestinian people from their land.

The Trump “Deal” is a continuation of the plans implemented by the major capitalist powers that have led to the continued expulsion of the Palestinian people from their villages and homes. The rich agricultural lands in the Jordan Valley that the State of Israel seeks to annex have been located since the Oslo Agreements (1993-1995) in Area C — that is, in the 61 percent of the West Bank territory officially under the responsability of the Palestinian Authority, but whose civil and military administration is in the hands of the Israeli Army.

It is a fact that since the UN Resolution on the Partition of Palestine (November 1947), the Camp David Accords (1978), and the Oslo Accords (1993), the Palestinian people have never been allowed to decide their own fate.

Whatever their verbal protestations, the United Nations, the European Union, the Macron government in France, the Arab League, and all the Arab regimes in the region, without exception, are complicit in this annexation. All have subordinated themselves to the dictates of U.S. imperialism.

The leaders of the Arab regimes are all prisoners, to quote Le Monde on June 25, of “their military and financial dependence on the United States; some of them, such as the monarchs of the Gulf, have growing overlapping interests with the government of Benjamin Netanyahu.”

The annexation project is provoking a crisis in the summits of the State of Israel. Three hundred former army officers, including former generals, have condemned publicly the annexation project. One of these 300, Ami Ayalon, former director of Shabak (internal intelligence services) is worried: “The situation is going to become very dangerous. … Mahmoud Abbas [president of the Palestinian Authority] is overwhelmed by events, and some of his people consider him a collaborator of Israel. … These people have been caged in, humiliated; what do they have left if they are dispossessed unilaterally of more of their lands?” (Le Journal du Dimanche, June 28)

In recent weeks, mass demonstrations have taken place throughout the West Bank as well as in Gaza, which is still strangled by 13 years of criminal blockade. The protests have spread to Palestinian districts inside the State of Israel and as far as Tel Aviv, where several thousand Arab and Jewish demonstrators joined together to denounce the annexation.

“The annexation will have dire consequences,” stated Ami Ayalon, “It will establish a single Apartheid state, which, in turn, will lead to an endless cycle of violence.”

What Ayalon does not say, however, is what could be the alternative to this single Apartheid state, between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, resulting from the annexation plan.

Isn’t the only possible solution to put a stop to the “endless cycle of violence” the establishment of a single democratic and secular state throughout the territory of Palestine, recognizing equal rights for all its citizens, regardless of their religion and origin?