Tag: PLO

This is not a Religious Conflict

~ The Koboi Project

This is the Palestinian flag used in 1938 during the revolt against the British Mandate. As evident in the design, Christians and Muslims were represented equally in this movement. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), formed in 1964, was also very much a secular resistance movement and remains so to this day. It was only after the Iranian revolution in the 1980s, that Islamic groups like Hezbollah, and Hamas began to take the lead in the Palestinian resistance. Even today Christian Palestinians identify with their fellow Muslim Palestinians in the struggle against occupation. Framing the struggle in religious terms, as a struggle between Jews and Muslims is at best a misunderstanding, and at worst, it serves to divide Palestinian identity, rendering Palestinians more vulnerable to Israeli subjugation.

Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_flags

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/tricontinental-revolution/plo-and-the-limits-of-secular-revolution-19751982/8C0DC0B35609FF5F646B5B3037F262F1

https://www.deseret.com/faith/2021/5/20/22442290/dont-forget-palestinian-christians-israel-palestine-conflict-escalation-protests-bethlehem-jerusalem

Terrorism and Genocidal Revenge

~ The Koboi Project

On 7th October HAMAS fighters broke out of the blockaded Gaza strip the executed a devastating military operation deep within Israel. They captured 11 military bases and inflicted indiscriminate acts of terror on Israeli settlements, killing over 1,200 people, including women and children.

Exiled Israeli historian Ilan Pape gives his views on the impending Israeli response to this devastating HAMAS incursion. He characterizes the ongoing siege and impending invasion of Gaza as being based on an impulse for revenge set within an ongoing policy of genocide involving settler colonialism, occupation, and ethnic cleansing. He suggests that the objective of this invasion can be conceived of in terms of two possible models:
1) The moderate Beirut 1982 model, wherein Israel forced the PLO out of Lebanon – which he characterizes as expulsion and interprets as the permanent ejection of HAMAS from Gaza and
2) The extreme Afghanistan 2003 model wherein the USA invaded to eradicate the Taliban – which he extrapolates as the mass killing of all those whom Israel believes are associated with HAMAS.

Whichever model prevails, Pape believes that Israel will succeed militarily but that it may lose politically, particularly if HAMAS’ strategy triggers such a massive response from Israel as to provoke an attack from Hezbollah in Lebanon and an uprising in the West Bank, amounting to a third Intifada.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog-october-7-2023/

https://www.jta.org/2023/10/11/israel/death-toll-in-israel-attack-soars-past-1200-as-catalog-of-hamas-horrors-is-revealed

https://www.britannica.com/topic/intifada