Gardian Opinion
Newrine Mali. March 15
Awar spiralling in the Middle East. A death toll now in the thousands across Iran and Lebanon. Energy prices soaring. The Gulf seized up with Iranian strikes. It’s one of those eras that feels bewildering, incomprehensible, out of control. But there is, at the heart of it, a simple logic: everything that is unfolding is a result of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians.
As the conflagration spreads, the connection to Palestine becomes obscured. But it is clear how much of the stability of the Middle East was secured at the expense of the Palestinians. Look at the region before 7 October 2023. US policy on the Middle East focused on “integration’’: containment of Iran, signing up more Arab countries to normalise relations with Israel and the creation, therefore, of a bloc of economic and security interests under the US military umbrella.
Iran would be isolated by this Israeli-Arab alliance, and the Palestinians’ file would be closed. Arab countries would pay lip service to them, through demanding guarantees that there would be efforts towards the creation of a Palestinian state, or that the West Bank should not be annexed. But in reality what was on the cards was a continuation of the occupation of Palestinian territories in perpetuity.
Faith in the durability of that status quo was always wishful thinking: a form of denial about how volatile, unpredictable and explosive the situation will always remain if you occupy and settle the lands of 3 million people in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and blockade and isolate another 2 million or so in Gaza. All while not working towards any meaningful prospect of self-determination.