Before the Zionist project and the state of Israel placed their boots on the neck of Palestine, this region was a multicultural, multi-religious land, where Christians, Jews, and Muslims lived side-by-side in relative peace and harmony.
And despite what Israeli forces propagandize, this so-called “conflict” in the Middle East is not some millennia-old, intractable holy war between two religions. It's quite simply and very classically a case of settler-colonialism. When we see what's happening in Palestine from this perspective, the solution becomes quite clear: end the occupation.
But despite this clarity, ending the occupation is no simple feat. Not only is there little appetite for this in Israel, of course, but with the entire cavalry of US military, financial, and PR support behind it, an end to the zionist colonization and occupation of Palestine feels, well, to put it gently, perhaps not feasible in the short term.
Of course, this doesn't mean that the fight for Palestinian liberation is a lost cause — far from it. Not only are there many battles to be fought which will bring liberation just that much closer, and which can improve conditions drastically, but the ultimate aim of ending the occupation of Palestine is a goal that the left can never abandon. As Noura Erakat reminded us in the second episode in our series on Palestine: we are, in many ways, all Palestinians.
In this episode we're going to explore how to end the occupation and the colonization of Palestine. We’ll explore some of the steps to get there, some of the barriers, some of the false solutions, and what a liberated Palestine might look like.
To guide us on this journey we’ve brought back onto the show Sumaya Awad. Sumaya is a Palestinian writer, analyst, and socialist organizer based in New York City. She’s the Director of Strategy and Communications at the Adalah Justice Project and a contributor to and co-editor, along with brian bean, of Palestine: A Socialist Introduction, published by Haymarket Books.
Our first conversation with Sumaya a few weeks ago is what kicked off our ongoing series on Palestine. And although you can certainly listen to each episode separately and in any order, they do all build on one another to set up helpful context as we move forward.
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