Peace and Justice Post

By Ali Hamza Chaudhry

The News International, August 09, 2025

Twenty-one months into the protracted conflict, the Gaza massacre is marked by an ever-increasing number of innocent civilian casualties, with the death toll having surpassed 60,000, according to Reuters.

Calling it “genocide”, the former Israeli prime minister wrote a piece in Haaretz, a leftist Israeli mainstream newspaper, outlining the war crimes Israel is committing in Gaza. Now, a highly plausible threat of famine looms over innocent Gazans, with a large number being children. As the situation worsens manifold, people, both in the US and around the globe, are perplexed at the unstinted US support for Israel even when the genocide of the 21st century plays out on their TV screens.

Recently, the Trump administration announced that, in case of a natural disaster, the federal government would not assist US cities and states that boycott Israeli companies. This has led the core base of the Republican Party to question the veracity of Trump’s ‘America First’ slogan.

It is certainly difficult for Mr Trump to balance the factions within his party surrounding the issue; on the one hand, hawkish members of the administration, such as Senator Ted Cruz, routinely advocate for US involvement. On the other hand, some conservative voices in the Republican Party strongly oppose direct US interference in yet another conflict. For instance, Republican lawmaker and an influential voice in the party, Marjorie Taylor Greene, is among the very few who openly oppose Israel’s heinous actions.

It is, however, important to note that multiple US presidents, regardless of the party, have done Israel’s bidding. For instance, under the Biden administration, according to The Guardian, the US vetoed five UNSC resolutions calling for a ceasefire in Gaza since the beginning of the conflict in October 2023, thus effectively allowing Israel to carry out genocidal actions without any ramifications and international accountability.

It is, therefore, a worthy question to ask: Why is the US blind to Israel’s genocidal policies that threaten regional peace and stability? Well, the answer to such a question is rather intricate and multifaceted: there are cultural, economic and political factors behind the US’s unconditional and sustained support for Israel.

First, elite Christian Zionism is one of the driving factors. Christian Zionism is the ancient belief among Christians, especially evangelical Protestants, that the modern state of Israel fulfilled biblical prophecy and that standing up for the state of Israel is a religious duty. It refers to the historical return of the Jewish people to the holy land.

Some of the key tenets of the ideology include: the establishment of the Temple in Jerusalem, which is a prerequisite to the arrival of Jesus; Israeli sovereignty over all of historic Palestine, including the West Bank.

With roots entrenched in ancient biblical narrative, evangelical Zionism has an overarching influence on American foreign policy, especially in the Middle East: it is mainly promulgated by conservative think tanks and right-wing political figures.

According to Dr Noam Chomsky, the extremist Zionism of the vast evangelical movement has now become “a substantial part of the Republican Party’s base”.

For instance, in a recent podcast with Tucker Carlson, a conservative media figure and former Fox News host, Ted Cruz, a Republican Senator from Texas and a former presidential candidate, stated: “Growing up in Sunday school, I was taught, from the bible, that those who bless Israel will be blessed and those who curse Israel will be cursed, and from my perspective, I want to be on the blessing side of things”.

Consequently, evangelical Zionists have become a major political force in the American political landscape, playing a pivotal role behind the US’s unwavering support for Israel. Through effective lobbying, they have influenced significant US policy decisions: the relocation of the embassy to Jerusalem – a region of profound cultural and religious significance claimed by both Israel and Palestine.

This religious fervour of evangelical Zionists has helped lay the foundation, but it is lobbying groups that turn this sentiment into legislative action. Chief among them is the American–Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which has been instrumental in shaping both Republicans’ and Democrats’ positions on Israel.

Established in 1951, AIPAC began as a small advocacy group. However, since then, it has evolved into one of the most well-funded and powerful lobbies in Washington DC. While it claims to be bipartisan and focused on strengthening the US-Israel relationship, its influence often skews US foreign policy in favour of Israel – regardless of human rights or the concerns surrounding the violations of international law.

AIPAC lobbies Congress aggressively to ensure continued military aid, fiercely opposes any legislation critical of Israeli actions and promotes policies that shield Israel from accountability. For instance, it plays a key role in ensuring that Israel receives $3.8 billion in military aid. It also opposed the No Way to Treat a Child Act, which aimed to restrict US funding from being used to detain or abuse Palestinian children. Also, AIPAC supported legislation that penalised individuals and companies that boycott and condemn Israel.

In election cycles, AIPAC has funnelled millions of dollars through its affiliated Super PACs like United Democracy Project, targeting lawmakers critical of Israeli policies. In 2022, it spent heavily to defeat progressive candidates such as Rep Donna Edwards and Rep Andy Levin, both of whom supported conditioning aid to Israel. Meanwhile, it has helped elect more compliant figures by boosting their campaigns financially.

By exerting pressure through substantial campaign contributions, high-profile conferences, and mobilisation of pro-Israel political networks, AIPAC has ensured that challenging Israel’s policies comes at a heavy cost that few are willing to pay. AIPAC’s pervasive influence has led to dire consequences for the Jewish community as well. When Israel’s war crimes are justified as ‘Jewish self-defence’ – as AIPAC routinely does – it inevitably ties Judaism to the bombing of children.

The US’s unconditional support of Israel has fueled anti-American sentiment all around the world. Ignoring Israel’s ongoing atrocities in Gaza, turning a blind eye to the expansion of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank, and the US’s perpetual opposition to peace calls by the international community undermines the very principles the US has advocated for.

While Washington lectures Russia and China on human rights, its blanket defence of Israel’s atrocities exposes a moral bankruptcy that undermines US credibility worldwide.

If the US seeks to restore its global credibility and allow the true voice of its people to shape foreign policy, it must begin by curbing the disproportionate influence of lobbies that act in the interests of foreign governments – often at the expense of justice, democracy, and the public will.

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The writer lives in New York and aspires to be a legal scholar. He can be reached at:  alibilal4471@gmail.com

Soumaya Ghannoushi

MEE, 6 August 2025

Western leaders offering recognition of Palestine instead of consequences as Gaza is obliterated is symbolism, not sovereignty

Protesters rally outside the White House against Israeli bombing of Gaza on 18 March 2025 in Washington (AFP)

Recognising the State of Palestine may seem, at first glance, like a moral turning point – a sign of western conscience reawakened amid the devastation of Gaza.

France took the lead, hosting an international conference with Saudi Arabia under the UN banner.

Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer soon followed, pledging conditional recognition. His foreign secretary, David Lammy, spoke of Britain’s “special burden of responsibility” – a nod to the Balfour Declaration, which enabled Zionist colonisation of Palestine under British protection.

But peel back the optics, and this gesture is exposed for what it is: a facade, a diplomatic performance masking business as usual.

What’s being offered isn’t statehood. It’s a demilitarised, non-contiguous pseudo-entity with no control over borders, airspace, resources, or movement. It is a ghost administration under Israeli command, tasked with managing a shattered, occupied population. Less than the Oslo Accords and more like a glorified municipality dressed up as liberation.

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And yet, Western leaders present it as bold, visionary. Why? Because this isn’t about Palestinian rights – it’s about political cover.

Absurd contradiction

France, under President Emmanuel Macron, sees the Palestinian cause as a diplomatic bridge back into the Arab and Muslim worlds, after its decline across Africa.

Macron postures as a new Charles de Gaulle, despite France’s legacy of aiding Israel’s nuclear ambitions.

Gaza, Lebanon and Yemen have exposed the cracks in the Arab facade

Read More »

Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, is leveraging the recognition initiative to justify normalisation with Israel. It offers the illusion of progress while pulling Arab and Muslim countries deeper into the Abraham Accords.

Starmer’s motives are more immediate. With rising public anger over his unwavering support for Israeli aggression – and a new left-wing challenge emerging from Jeremy Corbyn and Zahra Sultana leading a new political party – he’s using recognition as a diversion.

It is not a commitment, but a tactic. He’s offered it conditionally – as leverage to coax Israel back to the “peace process”. If Israel cooperates, recognition is shelved. Palestinian statehood becomes a bargaining chip to be played – not a right to be affirmed.

It’s an absurd contradiction: if Starmer truly supported a two-state solution, recognising the second state would be the first logical step. But in the West, even symbolic gestures towards Palestine must pass through Tel Aviv.

And yet, even these hollow gestures have rattled Israel’s far-right coalition.

Foreign Minister Israel Katz scoffed that a Palestinian state should be built in Paris or London. US President Donald Trump threatened Canada with trade retaliation for considering recognition.

But that fury shouldn’t distract from the deeper truth: this initiative is a mirage, a tranquiliser for international conscience.

Gaza, meanwhile, is being obliterated.

Entire neighbourhoods flattened. Hospitals, schools, homes reduced to dust. Israeli ministers say it openly: “All of Gaza will be Jewish” and “We must find ways more painful than death” for its population.

These are not rogue extremists – they are ministers of state, shaping official policy. And the West watches in silence, offering “recognition” instead of consequences.

Empty diplomacy

In the occupied West Bank, settler violence intensifies and military raids escalate. Between 1993 and 2023, the settler population grew from 250,000 to over 700,000 – despite the Oslo Accords’ promise to freeze expansion.

A state that exists only on paper, that must be approved by its occupier, is not a state. It’s a lie and recognition without action is not diplomacy – it’s complicity

Checkpoint by checkpoint, hilltop by hilltop, the land for a viable Palestinian state has been erased.

This is not a policy failure – it is policy.

It began in Madrid in 1991, and was formalised in Oslo in 1993. That so-called “peace process” replaced international law with endless negotiations, and justice with delay.

The Palestine Liberation Organisation, under pressure, recognised Israel and relinquished claim to 78 percent of historic Palestine, agreeing to negotiate over the remaining 22 percent – the West Bank, Gaza and occupied East Jerusalem.

In return, they were promised a state. But the core issues – refugees, Jerusalem, settlements, borders – were deferred indefinitely as “final status” matters. And in the meantime, Israel deepened its control.

Settlements multiplied. The apartheid wall was built. The West Bank was carved into a patchwork of isolated cantons. Gaza was blockaded, then bombed. The Palestinian Authority, born out of Oslo, became a subcontractor for Israeli security – tasked with suppressing dissent and policing its own people.

Instead of liberation, Palestinians got lockdown.

Instead of sovereignty, they got surveillance.

This wasn’t a peace process – it was pacification. And every time the Palestinian struggle gains momentum – whether during the First Intifada, the Second, or now with worldwide outrage over Gaza  – the same script returns: revive talk of the “two-state solution”.

Not to realise it, but to bury the movement beneath another round of empty diplomacy. It’s a strategy of containment disguised as concern.

That’s what we’re witnessing now.

A virtual state

Gaza faces a manufactured famine, yet instead of halting the siege or sanctioning the siege-masters, the West retreats into the fantasy of a “virtual state”.  Words replace pressure. Gestures replace justice.

France, Britain, and Germany continue to supply weapons to Israel. Political support remains ironclad – defended under the banner of Israel’s “right to exist”, even as Palestinians’ right to live is extinguished.

Instead of recognising ‘Palestine’, countries should withdraw recognition of Israel

Read More »

Nothing fundamental has changed. Only the rhetoric.

The flow of arms continues.

The flow of funds continues.

The flow of lies continues.

If the West truly believed in Palestinian statehood, it would start by ending the military, financial and diplomatic support that fuels apartheid and occupation.

Recognition without consequences is not a step forward – it’s a step around the truth.

We’ve seen this game before. An endless “process” that leads nowhere – by design. Even now, in Gaza, negotiations are cover. A ceasefire was within reach last January. Israel shattered it in March. No consequences. Just a return to “talks”,  while ethnic cleansing continues and officials speak of a “Jewish Gaza”.

Macron and Starmer talk of a Palestinian state while funding its erasure. They offer “recognition” that means nothing – except delay. What they propose isn’t sovereignty – it’s symbolism, a convenient fiction to pacify public outrage while cementing occupation.

But a state that exists only on paper, that must be approved by its occupier, is not a state. It’s a lie and recognition without action is not diplomacy – it’s complicity.

If the West won’t stop the genocide – if it won’t cut the weapons, halt the funding, or impose a single cost on Israeli war crimes – then its declarations are worse than meaningless. They are part of the killing machine.

So, for those pushing this fiction, let’s ask a simple question: Where exactly will this Palestinian state hold sway?

In Gaza, reduced to ashes? In the West Bank, carved up by walls and settlements? In Jerusalem, annexed and ethnically cleansed? In Jordan? In Sinai? In Saudi Arabia, as Netanyahu had mockingly suggested?

On Mars?

If it’s meant to exist on land occupied in 1967, then sanction the occupier.

If it’s to be built anywhere else, then call it what it is: a euphemism for ethnic cleansing, the crowning of genocide.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

Soumaya Ghannoushi is a British Tunisian writer and expert in Middle East politics. Her journalistic work has appeared in The Guardian, The Independent, Corriere della Sera, aljazeera.net and Al Quds. A selection of her writings may be found at: soumayaghannoushi.com and she tweets @SMGhannoushi.

Keir Starmer is under mounting pressure to finally recognise Palestinian statehood, but is a two-state solution still viable?

ILAN PAPPÉ
23 July 2025

Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. (Photo: Alamy)

Many Palestinians, as well as many people within the solidarity movement for Palestine, have little faith in the current state of Palestine, as it is defined by Palestinian Authority (PA). 

The geographical space of this state of Palestine is not entirely clear, given the fact it is bisected by the partition offered by the Oslo Accord: to area A (which allegedly it controls), area B, (which it co-rules with Israel) and area C (ruled directly by Israel and constitutes 60% of the West Bank). 

Hence geographically recognising such a state, is tantamount to recognising a disempowered political entity stretching over less than 20 percent of the West Bank (as its role in area B is almost insignificant). 

No wonder, civil societies in the world have an issue with their governments’ position on Palestine, even if they decide to recognise Palestine; deeming that the Palestine the governments will recognise is the current state of Palestine. 

It should be noted that the PA demands recognition of a Palestinian state that stretches over the whole of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip; a demand that is supported by those governments that had already promised to recognise the Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital. 

From this perspective, the recognition of Palestine is of a state that is not there yet, and its foundation depends on Israel’s position, the international reaction to it and the validity of the two states solution. 

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Nail in the coffin

Most of the political parties in Israel today are loyal to the constitutional nationality law of 2018 that stipulates clearly that there can be only one nation, the Jewish nation, and for that reason only one nation state, between the river Jordan and the Mediterranean. 

In many ways this was the last nail driven into the coffin of the two states solution; a solution that has already been dead for a while. 

The presence of more than 800,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank, the total destruction of Gaza (with a real possibility of annexation of part of it to Israel) and the political trends in Israel, leave very little hope for such a solution to be seriously discussed by Israel. 

Hence, those who believe that recognising Palestine will bring nearer the two states solution are unfortunately out of touch with the reality on the ground. 

And it does seem that for most of the governments which have already taken this move, the recognition is part of their unconditional support for the two states’ solution. 

History, however, might be kinder to them. It could record them not as supporters of the two states solution necessarily but as standing against the current Israeli wish to expunge Palestine as a nation, a homeland and as a people. 

Therefore, the timing here is crucial. Since November 2022, Israel has been ruled by a very extreme rightwing government. 

Its election reflected the fundamental changes that Israeli Jewish society has undergone in the 21st century. 

The move to the right of the whole society meant that a new ideological and political elite are now ruling Israel.  

This new elite is messianic, some parts of it prefer Israel to be a theocracy, and all its members share deep racism towards the Arabs in general and the Palestinians in particular.

If there were any signs, and there hardly were any, of a significant alternative force challenging this new Israeli orientation, they disappeared after 7 October 2023. 

The vast majority of Israeli Jews condone the genocide in Gaza, the ethnic cleansing operations in the West Bank, and the increased discrimination against the Palestinian minority inside Israel. 

Fresh approach

The recognition of Palestine as a state is still seen by European governments as a positive contribution to future diplomacy of peace. 

However, the inevitable dynamics inside Israel, and more importantly the continued genocide in the Gaza Strip, and the ethnic cleansing operations in the West Bank, call upon Europe to play a different role, and therefore in return recognise Palestine within a fresh and new approach to the Israel/Palestine question. 

The fresh approach requires the European political elite to accept the historical context of the developments on the ground. 

By this I mean to acknowledge that Zionism from the outset was a European project, born out of Europe’s inability to deal with its own antisemitism and opting instead for imposing a European Jewish state on the Arab world and the Palestinians. 

Israelis deem themselves as part of Europe and so does Europe. Given that the current Israel openly declares a war of destruction and elimination against the Palestinian people, it enjoys so far Europe’s indifference at best and its complicity at worst. 

This destructive Israeli campaign will have far reaching implications for European society itself as well as for Europe’s relationship with the Arab and Muslim worlds. 

Recognising Palestine in this context, is first and foremost acknowledging Europe’s complicity in the inception of the Zionist project and its disastrous impact on the Palestinians. 

Secondly, it has to be read as a commitment to defend the Palestinians, rather than involved in a diplomacy meant to “solve the conflict”. 

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Moral courage

This is a huge challenge to the political elites of Europe, which at best are not keen to confront Israel or the pro-Israeli lobby, knowing how easily the allegation of antisemitism and holocaust denial would be thrown at them. 

Therefore, to expect these politicians to commit to such a moral posture, necessitates a similar moral commitment in other areas where the political elites face strong lobbies: military expenditure, fossil energy, neo-capitalism and multinational corporations.  

One cannot be too sanguine about such a prospect, but one can always hope that one day politicians will show moral courage and not regard politics as a profession but rather as a vocation. 

To sum up, even those among us who are not enthusiastic supporters of the Palestine Authority campaign to elicit recognition of Palestine as a state, should differentiate between the current Palestinian state (a Bantustan) and Palestine the country (which stretches from the river to the sea). 

Until now the decision of how much the state will be part of the country was exclusively entrusted in the hands of the Israelis.

It is time for the Palestinians, the indigenous people of the country, and victims of more than a century of colonialism, to lead the way in determining the future of both Israelis and Palestinians in the land of Palestine. 

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ilan Pappé is professor of history and director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter in the UK. He is the author of numerous books and articles on Israel and Palestine. VIEW MORE ARTICLES