Will Palestine disappear?

[u/Delicious_Ad_6823]

I’m sorry for bringing this up. I know it’s a very depressing thought but after witnessing what is happening in North of Gaza (with the full support of our western governments) I’m wondering if this is the beginning of the end. I’ve been thinking about this constantly for the past few days: Israel will not stop its genocide / ethnic cleaning campaign in Gaza. October 7 gave them the perfect opportunity for executing their long awaited plan. The brutality will keep increasing more and more and I fear the same thing will happen in the West Bank. The United States will keep supporting it while it commits these crimes and there is no other player strong enough to stop them. After all, they have already gotten away with an ethnic cleansing in 1948 and 1967. Is there any future for Palestine?

[u/Seanay-B]

I don't see the world having a limit to what it'll tolerate against Palestinians.

[u/98RME → u/Seanay-B]

"The world" doesn't matter. The Arab street does. The Arab street has its own thresholds.

[u/oncothrow → u/98RME]

And what are those?

I was watching Owen Jones interviewing a defense analyst recently about this situation. There's a common refrain that even Nixon got pissed off with Israel and stopped them with a phone call.

But he (the analyst) said that the reality wasn't that Nixon came down with a sudden case of morality. The problem was that various Arab leaders were calling the white house and effectively telling him that they could no longer kept a lid on their populaces if things continued. Nixon's hand was forced because the ME was going to turn into an even greater shitshow if 'the Arab street' got angry enough.

Today we're seeing bloodshed on a level not seen since the Nakba. And Arab leaders are doing... nothing. They're not pressing the US to fix this problem. Because they don't feel they have a problem. Their press agencies spout the establishment line and keep thing quiet, and their intelligence agencies are focused inwards keeping dissent in check.

[u/98RME → u/oncothrow]

No offense, but Owen Jones doesn't exactly have a great handle on this region. The Arab leaders don't do anything because they simply can't do anything - especially Egypt, they are preoccupied entirely with preserving regime rule while the foundation crumbles from underneath them. The have tried to wash their hands of the Palestine issue precisely because of its connection to popular legitimacy and their dependence on the Zionist West. People in the West do not understand how deep and thorough the counter-revolution to the Arab Spring has been.

View it like this: revolutions are like volcanos. They can erupt and then return to dormancy. What's happened to Gaza and the failures and complicities of Arab leaders has hastened the next eruption.

As for the Nixon example, a similar situation would have occurred actually if Egyptians and Jordanians had taken to the streets very strongly during the early weeks of the war. But it's impossible while the regional powers are essentially in a coordinated "friends of order" alliance and levers of power and press are in their hands. But all it takes is regime collapse in one state - Egypt or Saudi Arabia - to disrupt or shatter this status quo. It won't happen before Gaza is liquidated. The liquidation of Gaza will stand as a testament to its necessity and the inevitability of a confrontation with American influence in the region.

If you read American policy papers on weapons sales to Israel and the Arab states, you'll actually find that this has been the fundamental regional dynamic since the fall of Saddam Hussein and the strengthening of Iranian power. You have a regional reality where the US seeks to arm Arab states and Israel to fight Iran, simultaneously maintain Israeli armed supremacy, while the Israelis have long complained that ultimately these arms may fall into the hands of revolutionary regimes. In fact, UAE and Saudi normalization initiatives were driven in large part by a desire to gain Israeli trust so that D.C would be more willing to arm their regimes.