Maurizio Criscione of 9MQ interviews Fulvio Grimaldi
On the occasion of a beautiful initiative in Reggio Emilia, Circolo ARCI Fenulli, on Gaza and Palestine, the vexed question was discussed, the most “vexed” (long debated) of all: How do we get out of this? How do we get out of a colonialist, racist, predatory and oppressive state of a people, which has been carrying out a genocide for more than 80 years, in a creeping form that gradually becomes more acute, to the point of aiming today at the “final solution” of total elimination.
Having discarded the hypothesis of two states, one large and powerful, the other weak, fragmented and devoid of sovereignty and usability, which has always been sabotaged and now officially destroyed by the Zionist regime, the coexistence in a single state of executioner and victim is evidently unrealistic, the answer that would prevail is: there is no way out. This is also what a distinguished speaker expressed himself in Reggio.
Instead there is a way out, the only realistic one, the only possible one, the only right one. It is imposed by geopolitical, economic and, above all, demographic criteria. For the Zionist state there is no future. Also because History confirms that there is no colonialism that has not been defeated.
In Israel and in the occupied and seized territories there are 7.45 million Jews, 90% immigrants, compared to 7.53 million Palestinians, including Arab citizens of Israel, who make up 21% of its population. Jews are already a minority of between 46 and 47% and their reproduction rate is significantly lower than that of the Palestinians. The abominable humiliation of the male civilians of Gaza, stripped, blindfolded, tied and exhibited on their knees for the cameras, bears the mark of this Israeli weakness. Scattered in refugee camps across Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, another 5 million Palestinians are determined, no less than when they were expelled, to exercise the right of return, sanctioned by the UN.
We add that Israel, with its 7,450,000 Jewish inhabitants, is surrounded, besieged if desired, by 450 million Arabs who, thanks to the political wisdom of the Resistance and the immense sacrifice of the Palestinian people of Gaza, have become decisively aware of the colonialist carcinoma. On those 450 million it is problematic to exercise blackmail, or possibly retaliation, for the Israeli atomic bomb. Israel itself would be contaminated to death.
The numerical balance of power is taking a further turn for the worse for Israel in light of the constant and increased exodus of its more educated young people, especially towards Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. Just under a million moved to the United States, 20,000 to Germany in the first twenty years of this century. 470,000 Israelis fled the country after October 7 and the “Al Aqsa Flood” operation. The drivers are the insufficient availability of high-level employment, the perennial insecurity, the disgust, now accentuated, for what the Israeli army is willing to do, with the consequent desire to escape conscription and reserve service. And to avoid the possible outcomes: as of December 28, there were over 500 Israeli casualties (admitted by the very reticent government). And what will the 80 thousand evacuated from the northern area of Israel due to the conflict with Hezbollah cost? How long will they last in hotels, or other emergency solutions, before deciding to emigrate? All that remains, probable, possible, necessary, is the way out, not seen by my friend the speaker in Reggio Emilia.
the second Intifada, 2000-2005, the one led by the six-time life prisoner Marwan Barghouti, still at the top of the preferences in the case of those elections in the occupied territories that the collaborationist Abu Mazen has denied since 2006 (when Hamas won them). That mass uprising caused Israel’s first major crisis since the 2003 war, which was almost lost. An economic and social crisis, caused by widespread insecurity, darkened the horizon of Greater Israel. The flow of immigration was reversed, arrivals stopped completely and departures became massive. Tourism, an important component of GDP, had vanished. Just like in these months. Foreign investments had dwindled to a trickle. Let’s add the unprecedented laceration within Jewish society, due both to the autocratic project, with the war on the judiciary, of a corrupt executive, and to the monstrous cynicism of the abandonment of the hostages, abandonment more to its own bombings than to Hamas
A remedy for this collapse was sought by encouraging the settlement, in the territories nominally assigned by Oslo to the Palestinians, of settlers attracted by conditions of extreme fiscal favor and availability of territory. The 800,000 settled and armed people, today committed to terrorizing and devastating Palestinian population centers and crops, have not compensated for the flight of residents.
Today the situation has worsened enormously. The blockade imposed by the Houthis on ships bound for Israeli ports, or in some way connected to this state, and the disruption caused to the world economy have resulted in Israel’s further vulnerability. Between possible total war with Lebanon, the total inefficiency and chaos recorded on 7 October, with armed forces shooting at their own citizens, the losses and horror of Gaza which psychologically destabilize society, the awareness that any consultation with the Arab States (the Abraham Accords) faded in the fire started in Gaza and that, indeed, the vote at the UN shows that Israel has 153 countries out of 193 against it, any settlement of scores favorable to Israel in the long term has turned into utopia . The entire imperialist and neocolonialist design of the Middle East has been called into question by the political intelligence of Hamas.
The option of two unequal states is definitively excluded by Israel, but probably by all parties involved, beyond hypocritical hopes. The single binational state appears to be made impossible not only by the absolute unavailability of the “State of the Jews”, as established by law in 2018, but also by the abyss dug by the subsequent Zionist regimes of apartheid, hatred and repressive violence. Israel could postpone the end of the Zionist state by deporting millions of Palestinians to Arab countries, starting from the Egyptian Sinai. Representatives of the Egyptian political leadership assured me that it would be a red line capable of triggering a war, in which it is not difficult to calculate how many other enemies of Israel, in addition to the Houthi Yemen, would enter the field. And after the debacles of Afghanistan and Ukraine, would a failing empire be willing to risk a further, costly conflict to which four-fifths of the world opposes?
Global isolation, which undermines Israel’s ability to maneuver and, equally, that of an empire in profound economic, social and geopolitical crisis, will lead to the downsizing of the Zionist entity. This will occur on the level of international complicity, as well as on that of its military potential (without US supplies, Israel is a paper tiger), which is moreover instrumentally overestimated. As demonstrated by the two lost wars in Lebanon and the inability, in three months, to neutralize a strip of land 40 km long and 10 km wide, although decimated and flattened by bombing. Isolation which will have the most incisive consequences in terms of economic relations, trade and investments with those who are universally considered a pariah state. The BDS campaign, Boycott, Divest, Sanction, should gather ever wider support.
The settlers, a violent group, clearly fascist in nature, will have to return to their countries of origin. All those who believe we cannot live with “Palestinian animals” will imitate them. It will be the beginning of decolonization. The respectable Jews will remain to live together with the Palestinians. As it happened before the advent of Zionism.