Ramona Wadi
Middle East Monitor / October 29, 2024
After the Israeli military killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell outlined the reasons why peace should be given a chance. Not only was genocide completely missing from his narrative, it was also said that Sinwar’s killing “should mark a turning point at a moment when a new cycle of violence is engulfing the entire Middle East.”
Sinwar’s killing is relevant to Gaza, Palestine and Hamas, not to the entire Middle East.
If Hamas didn’t internationalise its resistance — and it has never carried out any resistance operation beyond the borders of historic Palestine — then resistance remains confined to Palestine. The spill-over into the Middle East happened as a result of Israel’s aggression against Lebanon and Iran, as well as its targeted assassinations, aka political murders, of Hamas leaders in the region.
When Borrell described Sinwar as an “EU-listed terrorist” and “one of the obstacles” to ceasefire negotiations, he was merely giving voice to the EU-Israeli narrative. Despite his killing, though, for which Borrell implied the EU’s gratitude, no ceasefire deal has been agreed. Borrell’s “five-dimension” plan, which he outlined after Israel killed Sinwar, is not only a rehash of the usual diplomatic gibberish, but also furthers Israel’s interests and aligns the EU’s interests with Israel’s.
Having said that Israel killed an “EU-listed terrorist”, Borrell explained that the EU’s work needs to depart from Israel’s so-called “right and duty to protect its citizens”. Citing former Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz, Borrell refers to the repercussions of settler-colonialism as “Israel’s trauma”. Before 7 October, however, there was the 1948 Nakba and many other Israeli massacres of Palestinians (in 2008/9, 2012 and 2014, for example, and Tantura, Kafr Qasem and Jenin), displacements, land grabs and brutal military occupation. But mentioning such things, as well as Israel’s creation on the terrorism of the Irgun, Stern Gang and Haganah would erode Borrell’s insistence on the strength of the genocidal entity’s security narrative.
Israel, Borrell pointed out, has no right to revenge. Revenge is personal.
Genocide is political, and that is the term Borrell should have used to describe what Palestinians in Gaza are suffering. Protecting UNRWA and ensuring the delivery of humanitarian aid for Palestinians was next on the five-dimension plan, while keeping silent about Israel’s attacks on UNRWA which finally led to a bill being approved by the Knesset, which will ban the “terror” organisation from colonised Palestine within 90 days.
Borrell also insisted on launching the Global Alliance for the Implementation of the Two-State Solution, which is basically another sham organisation that will rehash the illusion of Palestinian state-building despite the fact that there is almost no territory left on which to build a viable state. To prove his “peace” point, Borrell quoted the former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhar Rabin: “You don’t make peace with your friends. You make it with your enemies.”
The EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs is designating Palestinians as the enemy in any diplomatic process, therefore the global alliance which Borrell launched will probably also depart from the same starting point: Israel good, Palestine bad.
Finally, for Israel’s security in relation to a very hypothetical Palestinian state, Borrell referred to the Zionist peace agreements with Jordan and Egypt. He made not one single mention of Israel as a genocidal colonial entity that rooted itself on Palestinian blood in 1948 and continues to do so as I write. Palestinians are the enemy that might, begrudgingly, be granted a semblance of a state, in Borrell’s rhetoric. If Israel deals with the colonised people through genocide, though, is Borrell accepting mass murder as a way forward for peace, since the perpetual collusion between Israel and the EU is ensuring the supremacy of Israel’s security narrative? We have a right to know.
Ramona Wadi is an independent researcher, freelance journalist, book reviewer and blogger; her writing covers a range of themes in relation to Palestine, Chile and Latin America
