The end of Palestine

Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives The Palestinian issue is a subject where the truth often disappears buried by mountains of ideology. The Western media, Italians in particular, have long had a strongly pro-Israel stance that in practice hides all the news regarding the difficulties and sufferings of the Palestinians. The Islamic media, and some western political areas, do the opposite and blame everything on Israel.

The truth of course is different. It is incorrect to say that the truth lies somewhere in between, because it means nothing. Simply the truth is not simple as ideologies, good and bad, black and white. The truth is that the Palestinians have been crushed into a complex political game and are now completely defeated. Gaza and the West Bank have been locked behind insurmountable walls, controlled by the Israeli army, which will never trial its generals and its soldiers for war crimes committed in Gaza. The press freedom in the Palestinian territories has been very limited. Israel controls access to water, the passage of goods and persons, in the case of Gaza with Egyptian backing, and decide on the building permits. And this means that the Israeli settlers can build in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, but Palestinians cannot. Israel plans to practically starve the Gaza Strip until the collapse of Hamas. And in the West Bank the goal is to make the Palestinians a minority. Any political autonomy may have in the future will come as a concession to Israel, and will be the least concession possible.
But how did they come to this tragic situation? With a series of bad strategic choices made by the leadership, the Palestinians committed suicide. In 1948, the Palestinians, supported by all Arab states rejected the UN resolution, accepted by the Jews, who planned to create a Jewish state much smaller than the current extension of Israel, with Jerusalem as a city open and shared. The Palestinians considered unjust the division, because they were the majority of the population, and Arab states, sure to win, anyway intended to wage war and "kill all the Jews" (as declared the secretary of the Arab League, which included comandants who had fought for the Nazis). Instead, the Arab states suffered a devastating defeat, and were again defeated in 1967 and 1973, despite the support of the USSR. Over the years, one after the other the Arab states made an agreement with Israel and abandoned the Palestinian cause. In 1989 even the Soviet Union fell. Terrorism, both the international one and the attacks inside Israel, got nothing. The first and second intifada have not obtained anything but a worsening of the conditions for the Palestinians. Meanwhile, the 700,000 Palestinian refugees who fled Israel in 1948 are now more than 4 million, but their hopes to return or at least to have their own state with the 3.7 million living in the territories seem virtually nil. Jews that in 1948 were 600,000 are now 6 million, and about 500,000 live in East Jerusalem or the West Bank, in theory Palestinian territories, while 1 million and a half Arabs, Christians and Muslims, live in Israel. The expansion of the Jewish population, in addition to natural growth, was also caused by the persecution of the 850,000 Jewish citizens who once lived in Muslim countries, and from 1948 onwards were forced to flee en masse to Israel. The Islamic world in practice has harmed the Palestinian cause more than aiding it, because the Arab states have always used it for domestic political purposes and then they actually dropped it when no longer needed.
The Palestinians themselves were once convinced that they could defeat Israel by force and instead have been repeatedly defeated. The truth is that without violence, the Palestinians could have achieved much more than they have now, almost nothing. If they had accepted the compromise of 1948, as flawed and unfair it was, now they would have their own independent state. The justification has always been that armed struggle and terrorism were the inevitable response to Israeli violence. But in fact, when one is much weaker violence is always a losing strategy. Today, thanks to the combined action of Palestinian terrorism and Israeli hawks, the left and pacifism within Israel have been virtually erased from politics. The extremists on both sides have always done everything possible to intensify the confrontation, but only the Israeli right has obtained a real, enduring advantage and came out the winner. While the Palestinians, repeatedly beaten, now they are all, extremists and moderates, at the mercy of the victors.