Homeland Insecurity: Palestine’s Refusal to Die Haunts Israeli Colonial Celebrations by Elliott Gabriel

“The Zionist movement was a European-backed colonial movement whose goal was not to coexist with the Palestinian people, but to take their land and to expel them and replace them.”.. On November 29, 1947, the U.N. voted to create separate, independent Arab and Jewish states. “That resolution marked an international blessing for the destruction of Palestine and the expulsion of the Palestinian people,” Abunimah said.

… “Ethnic cleansing can seem abstract, but it functions on the ground through basic Israeli policies,” Carmel said… “This directly translates into human suffering in the form of constant house demolitions, which can happen to a family even for expanding their kitchen… The Nakba is ongoing for these families; they simply lack legal recourse,” Carmel said.

… Palestinians also face denial of their participation in the Israeli economy. Increasingly, local Arabs are no longer sought out, even as a permanent source of cheap and highly exploitable labor. According to William Robinson, the problem poses an ominous dilemma for impoverished Palestinians. “With the globalization of Israel and the Middle East, there has been a mass influx of transnational migrant labor into Israel and the surrounding countries. Filipinos, Sri Lankans, Africans and others work in Israeli agriculture, industry, and services. Palestinian labor is no longer needed, which makes them surplus humanity,” Robinson said. “The only thing Israel needs from them is their land. This subjects the Palestinians to the specter of genocide and constitutes a structural underpinning to the intensification of Israeli apartheid.”