Of ballots and bullets

Time to let Palestinians choose their future

THERE are 13 million Palestinians around the world but they do not get to decide their future as others around the world do. Instead, their future is determined by elections in the United States and Israel. The outcome of the former in November has not been good. So will be the one in Israel scheduled for tomorrow. Take the US elections first. If sighs of relief could be polled, there must have been 13 million Palestinian ones when the world first got to know that president Donald Trump was trounced. To the long-persecuted Palestinians, it didn’t matter who won. All that mattered was that Trump was trumped. Until they realised that President Joe Biden was no better. Perhaps they forgot that this was the man who, as senator in 1986, said of the US military funding of the Zionist regime of US$3 billion as the best US$3 billion investment America was making. Salem Barahmeh, the executive director of the Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy, writing in the Foreign Policy website, reminds the Palestinians of something far more ominous Biden said then: “Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect its interests.”

So the US did in 1946, on stolen Palestinian territory, with lots of help from Britain. Under Trump, it became “The Steal of the Century”, as The Economist rightly labels Israel’s land grab. Expect the stealing to continue. Only now it will bear the name of Biden-Kamala Harris as the new Middle East property developers. As Barahmeh says, “if the past is any indication, the Biden-Harris administration will seek to bolster the US relationship with Israel rather than challenge it.” He is right. Not even 100 days into his presidency, Biden has bent over backwards to please the Zionists. Nowhere is this more evident in the administration’s condemnation of the International Criminal Court’s decision to open investigation on war crimes against Israel. This from a nation that parades its pride of following the rule of law to the letter. Now for the legislative election in Israel. Like the ones in the US, elections in Israel will bring no good news to the Palestinians. Because whoever wins, it will be a life of occupation under Israeli military control for the five million Palestinians in occupied West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. So it has been for 54 years. Instead of being given ballots to decide their future, they have to constantly learn how to dodge Israeli bullets. Made in the US and paid for by Biden’s US$3 billion, no doubt.

Unlike the disenfranchised Palestinians, the estimated 750,000 illegal Israeli settlers in the West Bank get to vote in a prime minister who lets them keep the stolen land. As Barahmeh says, this is not only illegal occupation but also a war crime under the Rome Treaty that established the International Criminal Court. Little wonder, the Biden-Harris administration tells the ICC to keep off Israel. Trump imposed sanctions on the ICC. Biden refuses to lift them. Can’t expect much from a man who wanted to invent Israel. Israel and the US think that they have the most moral armies in the world. If this is really so, Israel and the US shouldn’t have any fear of being found out by the ICC. ICC phobia of the US and Israel says something else. If the rest of the world cannot choose not to be investigated by the ICC, so mustn’t Israel and the US.

Instead of being given ballots to decide their future, they have to constantly learn how to dodge Israeli bullets.