Don't Give Me that 'Two States' Shit...

Extracts from an interview with Jamal Juma', coordinator of the Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, about the popular resistance in Gaza, the Trump administration's policy toward the question of Palestine, and Palestinian options to chart a new course ('A watershed moment in Palestinian history': interview with Jamal Juma', mondoweiss.net, 29/6/18):

"It is clear that the Wall was designed to isolate and lay siege to Palestinians... It closed off all the dynamic areas that Israel considered necessary to isolate various areas. 80% of the Wall is within the West Bank.

"The second part of the siege is reinforcement of the settlements. Each settlement has what Israel calls a buffer zone - a security apparatus consisting of barbed wire and roads that Palestinians are not allowed to use...Today, there are two road networks. One is for Israeli settlers, about 1,400 kms long, and its purpose is to connect all settlements to one another and to Israel in a kind of network... The other network, the alternative roads, is for Palestinians to use... The two road systems are separate. This is the basis of the racist, discriminatory system we talk about: isolating Palestinians and confining them in limited spaces, and controlling their resources through settlements, the road network, military installations, and the Wall, [all of] which takes up about 62% of the West Bank.

"With the extension of the settlements, we no longer talk about the Palestinians ghettoized in the north, south, and central region. There is more fragmentation of Palestinian residential areas. New settlement outposts are not being discussed in terms of whether they should be removed or not. They are being transformed into settlements. When you see 150 outposts, you are really talking about 150 new settlements. This project is intensifying, especially since Trump took office... This is a watershed moment in Palestinian history. Since Trump took office, US policy has fully adopted the Zionist project and embarked on a process of liquidating the Palestinian cause... It is a clear program. It began with the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of the Zionist entity, the transfer of the embassy, and the targeting of the refugees by cutting aid to UNRWA... In addition, there is the use of Arab countries that are ready for normalization with Israel and eager to be aligned with the American project - Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE and Egypt [are] pressuring the Palestinians to accept the US liquidation project.

"This has complicated things and taken [the Palestine cause] out of the sphere of international law and the UN... the US has dealt a blow to international law...

"On the formal political level, the Palestinian Authority is in crisis. It had placed its faith in the US, but the US is now clearly determined to liquidate the Palestinian cause. The only real option remaining to the PA is to cast its lot with the Palestinian people and on free people around the world, international solidarity and movements that support us...

"On the popular level, we see serious activity in search of an alternative to the status quo, the largest and most important of which is taking place now in Gaza with the Great March of Return... This has changed stereotypes about Gaza as a launchpad for rockets, a place of terrorism, hijacked by Hamas... Just as the first intifada emerged from Jabaliya in the Gaza Strip, today we have the beginnings of a mass civil disobedience movement. Gaza has a population that is resisting, and Hamas does not control this resistance... The Great March has returned focus on the refugee issue... despite all efforts to ignore and erase it. More than 70% of Gazans are refugees, and they are demanding the right to return to their homes...