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When Oppression Meets Resistance: The Palestinian Struggle
In a world of complex geopolitical conflicts, few have endured with such persistent intensity as the Israeli-Palestinian struggle. "On Palestine," a collaboration between renowned intellectuals Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappe, cuts through decades of obfuscation to deliver piercing clarity on one of history's most misrepresented conflicts. Since its publication, this work has become required reading in progressive political circles, with figures from Roger Waters to Angela Davis citing its influence. The book's unflinching examination of power dynamics has made it both celebrated and controversial, appearing on university syllabi worldwide while simultaneously drawing criticism from pro-Israeli groups. What makes this work particularly significant is its timing-published amid shifting global perspectives on Israel's policies and growing support for Palestinian rights, it captures a pivotal moment when the conversation about Palestine began transforming from a regional dispute into a global human rights concern.
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Reframing Palestine: Beyond the "Peace Process" Illusion
The traditional framing of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been dominated by what Pappe calls the "Dictionary of Peace Orthodoxy"-a collection of terms and concepts that present the situation as uniquely complex while masking its colonial nature. This orthodox view promotes a two-state solution allocating 80% of historical Palestine to Israel and 20% to Palestinians, combining humanitarian concern with realpolitik considerations that show excessive sensitivity to Israeli wishes.
This framing employs Orwellian language like "peace process" and "land for two people" that obscures ongoing oppression. The "complexity" narrative serves to discourage outsiders from understanding or intervening in what is, at its core, a straightforward case of settler colonialism. As Chomsky notes, "When people in power want to prevent understanding of something simple, they insist it's incredibly complex and you couldn't possibly understand."
The new conversation emerging from activist circles challenges this orthodoxy by placing Israel/Palestine within the framework of settler colonialism, viewing the entire historical Palestine as colonized territory where Palestinians face various forms of oppression stemming from Zionist ideology. This approach targets not just policies but the ideology itself, supporting Palestinian refugees' right of return and proposing decolonization rather than a "peace process."
Reframing Zionism as colonialism is critical both because it accurately explains Israeli policies of Judaization and settlement-building, and because it aligns with early Zionists' own terminology. The Hebrew verbs and nouns used since 1882 by the Zionist movement directly translate to "colonize" and "colonization"-terms once proudly embraced when colonialism was positively viewed. Only after World War II, when colonialism gained negative connotations, did Israel attempt to dissociate from this terminology.
This paradigm shift draws on ideas from the PLO's 1968 charter and various activist groups, creating a new framework to analyze the situation and envision a different future-one based on decolonization rather than endless negotiations that serve only to perpetuate the status quo.
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The Apartheid Reality: Beyond Occupation
Scholarly literature comparing Israeli and South African apartheid systems has grown substantially in recent years, with pioneering analysis by Uri Davis meticulously documenting Israel's discriminatory land regime and legal practices. His groundbreaking work in the 1980s detailed how Israeli land laws systematically excluded Palestinian citizens from accessing state lands. Post-apartheid South African visitors, including prominent figures like Desmond Tutu and former US president Jimmy Carter, have frequently used the term "apartheid," often noting that conditions in the West Bank and Gaza are more severe than South African apartheid ever was, particularly regarding movement restrictions and territorial fragmentation.
"When I visited the West Bank," Pappe recounts, "a South African anti-apartheid activist told me, 'This is worse than what we experienced. At least we could move around.'" This observation highlights the extensive system of checkpoints, permits, and physical barriers that severely restrict Palestinian movement. Recent research documents increasingly uniform Israeli discriminatory policies on both sides of the Green Line, with de facto apartheid now replaced by explicitly discriminatory legislation like the Nation-State Law of 2018. The widespread adoption of "Israel Apartheid Week" on university campuses worldwide, from North America to Europe and South Africa, reflects growing recognition of these systemic inequalities.
The apartheid analysis suggests meaningful change won't emerge from within Israel but requires external pressure, inspiring the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign launched in 2005. Despite leadership challenges and intense opposition, BDS has successfully drawn global attention to Palestine amid regional turmoil. Major companies like Veolia and G4S have reconsidered their investments, while prominent artists and academics increasingly cancel appearances in Israel. The movement has gained particular traction among younger generations and progressive organizations worldwide.
While the academic boycott remains contentious, it's increasingly accepted in academic circles, even spawning an Israeli "committee of boycott from within" - a significant development showing growing internal criticism. This represents a fundamental shift in discourse-moving from viewing Israel's actions as temporary "occupation" to recognizing them as part of a systematic apartheid regime that extends throughout historic Palestine, affecting both occupied territories and Israel proper.
The shift in terminology from "occupation" to "apartheid" is not merely semantic but reflects a fundamental reframing of the conflict with far-reaching implications. Occupation suggests a temporary military presence that will eventually end through negotiation, while apartheid accurately describes a permanent system of racial discrimination and segregation embedded in the state's structure through laws, policies, and practices. This reframing has profound implications for solution-seeking, as it shifts focus from territorial compromise to fundamental transformation of the state's character, challenging the very nature of Israel as an ethnically exclusive state. The apartheid framework also internationalizes the conflict, drawing parallels with other historical struggles against institutional racism and colonialism.
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The Ethnic Cleansing Framework: Understanding Historical Continuity
Framing what happened to Palestinians since 1948 as ethnic cleansing rather than merely a tragedy identifies clear victims, perpetrators, and paths to reconciliation. This paradigm reveals the fundamental connection between Zionist ideology and Israeli policies: establishing a Jewish state by maximizing control of historical Palestine while minimizing Palestinian presence. This framework moves beyond viewing events as isolated incidents and instead reveals a systematic pattern of displacement and control.
The initial implementation of this ideology led to the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians and the destruction of over 500 villages in 1948, known as the Nakba ("catastrophe"). International silence and tacit acceptance transformed ethnic cleansing from a wartime event into the ideological foundation of the Jewish state-becoming its operational DNA and daily preoccupation. When direct expulsion later proved politically impossible or too costly in terms of international opinion, Israel developed alternative methods, including sophisticated legal mechanisms, urban planning restrictions, and administrative procedures designed to prevent Palestinian spatial expansion while allowing Jewish settlements to spread comfortably across the landscape.
The ethnic cleansing framework preserves the refugees' right of return as essential for genuine reconciliation, rather than treating it as a negotiable political demand. This ideological structure explains the systematic dehumanization of Palestinians that enables military operations and atrocities like those in Gaza in 2009, 2014, and subsequent years, where entire civilian populations were treated as legitimate military targets rather than human beings deserving protection. The deep militarization of Israeli society has produced what Pappe describes as moral corruption, where young Israelis are systematically indoctrinated through education and military service to see Palestinians not as fellow humans but as existential enemies-a perspective that extends even to Palestinian children and infants.
Pappe argues that ethnic cleansing in Israel isn't merely a series of policies but has become an ingrained way of life that fundamentally criminalizes the state itself. Such a system, he contends, only ends in one of two ways: either when completed successfully or when stopped by a more powerful external force-not through conventional peace processes that merely attempt to limit its implementation to pre-1967 borders. The recognition of this historical continuity between 1948 and present policies is crucial for understanding why traditional peace processes have consistently failed-they address symptoms while ignoring the underlying ideological framework driving the conflict.
This analytical framework also helps explain Israel's persistent obsession with the "demographic threat" posed by Palestinian population growth, leading to policies ranging from family reunification restrictions to differential birth rates monitoring. As Noam Chomsky notably observed, "Unlike South Africa, which needed its Black population as workers, Israel has no use for Palestinians." This fundamental difference explains why Israel pursues policies of separation and exclusion rather than exploitation, creating what Pappe characterizes as "the mega-prison of Palestine," complete with physical barriers, checkpoints, and sophisticated surveillance systems. The result is a complex system of control that maintains demographic dominance while managing, rather than resolving, the underlying conflict.
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Inside Israeli Society: Indoctrination and Resistance
Pappe describes his transformation from Zionist to critic as "a long journey" rather than a sudden change. He identifies Israel's 1982 attack on Lebanon as a formative event-"the first non-consensus war" that was clearly a war of choice. The first Intifada further opened his eyes. Challenging Zionism meant confronting not just Israeli society but his own family, creating difficult personal circumstances in what he describes as "an intimate and vibrant society."
He characterizes Israel as "a very indoctrinated society, probably more than most Western societies." This indoctrination operates not through coercion but through powerful cultural immersion "from the moment you are born to the moment you die." He compares becoming anti-Zionist to a religious person becoming atheist-one must "clean yourself up to the bottom" to overcome lingering doubts.
Pappe explains that Israelis struggle to separate cause from effect regarding Palestinian violence. The "permanent violence" makes it difficult for Israelis to question their worldview when they see "suicide bombers, violence, missiles sent from Gaza." One of the most challenging aspects is helping Israelis understand "what is the cause and what is the effect" rather than viewing violence as coming "out of the blue"-a perception that reinforces their existing beliefs.
The dehumanization of Palestinians began in the late nineteenth century when Zionist settlers arrived and viewed the indigenous population as "violent aliens who took over their land." This perception continues to feed Israeli views today. One of the greatest challenges is helping Israelis understand they are "products of this alienation"-a crucial task for alternative education.
Pappe admits the task of changing Jewish Israeli society from within is "formidable" as it becomes "more chauvinistic, ethnocentric, intransigent." Yet he sees hope in a small but growing number of young Israelis who "grasp reality in a different way." While internal change seems distant, external pressure combined with better Palestinian representation and internal education could create conditions for transformation.
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The Myth of the Two-State Solution
Chomsky argues the real choice isn't between one state and two states, but between Greater Israel and two states. While Pappe believes the two-state solution is no longer viable, Chomsky suggests it might still be possible if US policies shifted, perhaps resembling the Geneva proposals which would exclude the Jordan Valley from Israeli control, shrink Jerusalem with Palestinian institutions there, and provide Gaza with fertile land.
Both agree the standard one-state/two-state discourse obscures Israel's true aim: to create a Greater Israel with minimal Palestinian population. Chomsky outlines Israel's apparent plan for "Greater Israel"-incorporating the Golan Heights, separating Gaza from the West Bank (violating Oslo), and taking everything within the "Separation Wall." This includes an expanded "Greater Jerusalem" (five times its historical size) with few Palestinian institutions, corridors like Maale Adumim that bisect the West Bank, control of Area C, and annexation of the Jordan Valley.
This arrangement would minimize the "demographic problem" by excluding most Palestinians. Israel might offer "land swaps" in the northern Galilee's Arab-majority areas, presented to the West as generosity while actually removing unwanted Arab populations. For Palestinians outside this Greater Israel, Chomsky predicts "a standard neocolonial structure" with elite centers like Ramallah ("nice houses, theaters, bars where Westerners can come") surrounded by impoverished areas-what Israeli industrialists called shifting from a "colonial program to a neocolonial program."
The peace process in Palestine, with its two-state solution concept, has been a futile search in the wrong place-like looking for a lost key under a streetlamp rather than where it was actually lost. The conflict must be framed as a struggle between settler-colonialism and indigenous population, raging since the late nineteenth century. The Zionist movement sought to take over as much of Palestine as possible while leaving few Palestinians, creating a Jewish democracy in the Arab world.
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The Mega-Prison of Palestine
After the 1967 war, Israel's thirteenth government, led by Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, made three pivotal decisions that would fundamentally shape the future of the occupied territories and condemn West Bank and Gaza Palestinians to life in what effectively became a mega-prison. This government, representing the widest possible Zionist consensus including both Labor and right-wing parties, faced a complex demographic and territorial challenge. Their crucial decisions were: first, not to conduct another mass expulsion of Palestinians as had occurred in 1948; second, to permanently exclude these territories from any future land-for-peace negotiations; and third, to deny full citizenship and equal rights to the occupied Palestinian population. These contradictory impulses-wanting the land without incorporating its inhabitants-created an impossible situation that could only be managed through an elaborate system of control and containment.
The open-air prison model was carefully repackaged and marketed internationally as a series of peace initiatives, first appearing as "autonomy" in the 1979 Camp David agreement between Israel and Egypt, and later evolving into the concept of an "independent Palestinian state" during the Oslo Accords of the 1990s. When implemented on the ground, this framework created a complex matrix of control resembling a sophisticated prison system. The West Bank was divided into Areas A (under Palestinian Authority administrative control), B (mixed control), and C (full Israeli control), while Israel maintained overarching security authority throughout. A carefully crafted diplomatic vocabulary emerged, employing terms like "autonomy," "self-determination," "state-building," and "independence" to obscure the fundamental reality of mass incarceration and systematic control.
Despite receiving international legitimization through various peace processes and agreements, conscientious observers across all societies could recognize the underlying dynamics at play. Human rights organizations, academic researchers, and even former Israeli security officials increasingly documented how this system functioned as a form of collective containment. Israel consistently presented the occupation as "temporary" and the population's status as something to be resolved "with the coming of peace," allowing it to maintain its democratic credentials while simultaneously entrenching and normalizing the status quo.
The Palestinian leadership, along with numerous peace activists and organizations worldwide, inadvertently provided legitimacy to this process while Israel systematically expanded its control over vital resources. This included land appropriation, water resource management, economic dependencies, and increasingly sophisticated systems of surveillance and movement control. Breaking this deadlock, according to growing numbers of analysts and activists, requires fundamentally reframing the conflict by exposing Zionism's colonial nature and Israel's apartheid practices. This recognition must be followed by inclusive discussions among all stakeholders-including current residents and refugees-about creating a single state characterized by full rights, equality, and genuine partnership for all inhabitants between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
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Gaza: Laboratory of Incremental Genocide
Pappe defined Israel's policy toward Gaza as "incremental genocide" in 2006, and subsequent assaults - including Operations Cast Lead (2008-09), Pillar of Defense (2012), and Protective Edge (2014) - have confirmed this continues unabated. International reaction to the carnage remains disappointingly muted, with mainstream Western media largely accepting Israel's narrative that this is self-defense against unprovoked Hamas attacks, despite mounting civilian casualties and destruction of critical infrastructure.
This Israeli framing-portraying each assault as an isolated response rather than part of a systematic strategy-has been used since the beginning of Zionist presence in Palestine. The underlying goal has remained constant: creating a Jewish state with minimal Palestinian presence. After occupying territories in 1967, Israel has sought ways to control these lands without incorporating Palestinians as citizens, implementing a complex system of military orders, settlements, and movement restrictions that fragment Palestinian communities.
Gaza, with its 1.8 million people concentrated in just 365 square kilometers, couldn't be managed through bantustanization like the West Bank. Instead, Israel ghettoized it, implementing a suffocating blockade that controls everything from fishing rights to building materials. When Gaza resisted this strangulation and isolation through both peaceful and militant means, Israel responded with overwhelming force, targeting not just military installations but civilian infrastructure including schools, hospitals, and water treatment facilities. The timing of each genocidal wave has additional motivations-often destroying Palestinian unity efforts, such as the Hamas-Fatah reconciliation attempts, and distracting from domestic social unrest like the 2011 housing protests.
Israeli society shows disturbing consensus supporting these actions, with polls consistently showing over 90% support for military operations in Gaza. Universities have established "civilian headquarters" for propaganda, while media outlets loyally parrot government lines while showing no images of human suffering. Dissenting voices face intense social pressure and accusations of treason. Western governments continue providing immunity to Israel while condemning similar atrocities elsewhere, exemplified by the US repeatedly blocking UN Security Council resolutions critical of Israeli actions. This double standard undermines global human rights enforcement and international law.
Israel's goal in its Gaza offensives is simple: return to the "norm"-where Israel continues illegal West Bank settlement construction while subjecting Palestinians to repression, and Gaza exists under a cruel siege allowing bare survival but nothing more. This siege restricts basic necessities like medicine, construction materials, and even calories, calculated to keep the population just above malnutrition. For fourteen years, this norm has meant Israel kills more than two Palestinian children weekly, with fatalities particularly concentrated during major military operations. This institutionalized disregard for Palestinian life, evidenced in military doctrines like the "Dahiya Doctrine" advocating disproportionate force, helps explain both Palestinian resistance and Israel's increasingly destructive assaults on Gaza.
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America's Decisive Role: Enabler and Potential Change Agent
Unlike many intractable global problems, the Israel-Palestine conflict has clear diplomatic solutions that have been available for decades. A two-state settlement along internationally recognized borders has been consistently blocked by Israel with decisive US support through vetoes at the UN Security Council and other means.
Chomsky identifies a consistent pattern: Israel disregards ceasefires while continuing its assault on Gaza through siege and intermittent violence; Hamas generally observes ceasefires until Israeli escalation provokes a response, leading to another round of "mowing the lawn." He details how the 2005 disengagement from Gaza, far from being a peace initiative, was described by Israeli official Dov Weissglass as intended to "freeze the peace process" and "prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state."
When Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections-recognized internationally as free and fair-the US and Israel punished Palestinians through harsh siege and increased violence. When Hamas preempted a US-planned military coup in 2007 by taking over Gaza, Israel intensified its attacks.
Chomsky emphasizes that solidarity activists must balance ethical positions with pragmatic effectiveness, prioritizing what actually helps Palestinians rather than what makes activists feel good. He cites examples where well-intentioned but poorly designed protests backfired, creating harmful backlash.
He points to the South African anti-apartheid movement as an effective model, with its concrete targeting of specific racist policies. He emphasizes that a crucial weakness of the BDS movement is its focus on Israel rather than the United States, whose backing is essential to Israel's policies. Both Chomsky and Pappe agree that pressure from the bottom up through civil society is necessary to change US foreign policy, as happened with South Africa, where popular pressure eventually forced Congress to override Reagan's veto of sanctions.
Chomsky highlights the significant progress made on college campuses, where the atmosphere around Israel/Palestine discussions has dramatically shifted, causing concern among Zionist organizations who recognize they're "losing the youth." If the US withdrew its decisive support for Israeli crimes, it would be possible to move toward an "enduring solution" in Gaza and beyond.
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Paths Forward: Decolonization and Equal Rights
Breaking the deadlock requires exposing Zionism as a colonialist movement and Israel as an apartheid state, followed by inclusive discussions among all residents and refugees about creating one state with full rights, equality and partnership for all. Counter-education, active resistance, and external pressure are needed to transform Israeli society, but these are long-term processes facing immediate dangers.
The resistance movement remains fragmented across five different Palestinian groups, each with distinct national agendas. Despite BDS movement achievements, Western political elites continue providing Israel immunity. Meanwhile, a Greater Israeli state has effectively been born, having nearly completed annexation of Area C in the West Bank while offering Palestinians in Areas A and B either incarceration in development-restricted "cages" or Gaza-like treatment if they resist.
Israel's racism index shows alarming increases in discriminatory legislation, Judaization projects, and "Price Tag" attacks on Palestinian property and holy places, while organized crime flourishes in impoverished Palestinian areas. This reality persists partly due to energy wasted on futile peace processes and power struggles.
A new conversation must address three areas: Israel's policy treating all Palestinians similarly regardless of citizenship status; the refugee question, including both historical refugees and new Palestinian-Syrian refugees; and the absence of socialist discourse that would challenge neoliberal economic oppression.
The path forward requires acknowledging hard truths: Israelis must recognize they've lived with the West Bank longer than without it, while Palestinians must accept they missed opportunities to prevent Israeli settlement. The key dynamic is Israel's desire to maintain the status quo versus Palestinians' need to change it.
Only by ending Gaza's incremental genocide and restoring Palestinian rights everywhere can we open new possibilities for productive intervention in the Middle East. The Palestine question exemplifies global injustice-Western states' complicity, Israel's impunity, and the export of repressive tactics worldwide. Finding a solution could open doors to a new vision for all of us. Palestine is becoming a global social justice issue, and connecting these struggles could create a truly united front for justice worldwide.
