A few short weeks after EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wished Israel a “happy birthday”, and repeated the racist trope that Israel “made the desert bloom”, it is Nakba Day.
The Nakba, or ‘catastrophe’, began on 15 May 1948, a day after Zionists secured a guarantee of a Jewish state from the British government. Zionist militias proceeded to violently expel 750,000 Palestinians in a vicious act of ethnic cleansing.
This was the bloody birth of the Israeli settler colonial state. But the Nakba is not simply a single historical event to be commemorated – it is a brutal, ongoing assault by Israel.
Palestinians live under a brutal occupation and an apartheid regime. Settlers continue to expel people from their homes under the protection of the Israeli police and army. Israel continues to uphold a blockade on Gaza, periodically bombing the population, who have little means of defending themselves. And there are over 7 million Palestinians worldwide who are prevented from returning to their homeland.
Every day, Palestinians continue their courageous resistance and their fight for liberation.
The Israeli settler colonial project and its ongoing violence and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians is made possible by the support of the United States and the European Union. US and European leaders have hid behind talk of “peace”, “dialogue”, and a “two-state solution”, all while funding Israel’s military and facilitating its crimes.
The two-state solution was never acceptable – it was always based on the dispossession of Palestinians and the creation of a Zionist ethno-state. But now, because of Israel’s continued ethnic cleansing and annexation of Palestinian land, the two-state solution is dead in the water. It is now being used as a cover to facilitate the Israeli Occupation and Zionist expansion.
There is no justice in the Zionist project. There is no democracy in an ethno-state. The only just solution is a single state of Palestine, with equal rights for all its citizens, and where the Palestinian Right of Return is upheld.
To win this, we need a global movement of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions on the state of Israel. By breaking international support for Israel, we can create the conditions for the Palestinians to win their own freedom, as was done in apartheid South Africa.
People Before Profit is committed to working with others to build this movement, both in Ireland and internationally. stands in solidarity with the Palestinian people, whose spirit of resistance is an inspiration for the world.
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
