How is the siege going to end?

When trying to make sense of current events, we often look to history. What is currently happening in Gaza is shocking to people in every corner of the world inasmuch as they have not yet traded their humanity for life’s limited comforts, yet they feel powerless in the face of the magnitude of the brutality and merciless violence unleashed against the inhabitants of Gaza. The Gaza genocide is not the first of its kind and its perpetrators and supporters are guilty of innumerous crimes against humanity across the globe. What makes Gaza different is – besides Palestine being the Holy Land and all that this implies – that firstly, it is happening with active Western support at a time where Western populations had been brought up on the notion of the benign civilisational influence of democracy and alleged freedom of choice and human rights, secondly, it is happening at a time where traditional gatekeeper media have lost their monopoly on information to the fast moving flow of live images via social media and, thirdly, it exposes the ugly face both of Jewish supremacy and its parasitic state (Israel) in Palestine and the fact that after colonialism and post-colonialism the Anglo-American empire has dropped the mask of legitimacy and returned to neo-colonialism: direct oppressive rule instead of indirect rule by proxy. This shift shows both their desperation and their inevitable collapse.

During the very early years of Islam in Makkah, once the ruling elites of this city state had realised that Islam was more than a private belief and spiritual gathering of like-minded individuals but, through its attack on injustice and false dogma began developing a political dimension which threatened their temporal power and trade, the clans of Makkah, a tribal society, resolved to boycott the Banu Hashim, the tribe to which the prophet Muhammad, peace be with him, belonged, and whose then leader, Abu Talib provided him with protection and immunity. Since an open attack would lead to a cycle of vendettas between tribes and destabilise Makkan society, negatively affecting the pilgrimage, on whose trade benefits they relied, the tribal leaders instead chose to exile the Banu Hashim to a valley of theirs and then cut off all ties with them, preventing travel and contact with the outside world, blocking the entry of goods and effectively hoping to starve them into submission.

This siege lasted three years during which life had become unbearable for the besieged who did not have the means to defend themselves and break out of their imposed exile. It finally came to an end through increasing humanitarian concern by members of Makkan society who could no longer bear to witness the suffering of those whom they had ostracised. Following this, there was a year of respite and, after the death of Abu Talib, who was succeeded by Abu Lahab as tribal leader, more persecution. The awareness that Muhammad had completely lost the protection of his tribe and that the tribes had conspired to assassinate him, ultimately led to the Muslims actively seeking alliances outside Makkah and eventually migrating to Yathrib (Madinah). Thus, one of the greatest civilisations ever came to conquer the world!

More recently, the Germans (who remain good at supporting genocide, including the one in Namibia, which the German government admitted finally ten years ago but still refuses to pay reparations) laid siege for three years to Leningrad (now again St. Petersburg) during the final stages of the second world war. Here, they did not just starve and isolate the population but also bombed them from the air. Half the city’s population perished before the siege was broken from outside by the advancing Russian army.

The siege of Gaza did, of course not start on October 7, 2023. Rather, that is the date when Palestinian resistance groups tried to break out and take prisoners of war as collateral for negotiations to end the siege. Instead, Israel decided that it would be better to exterminate them altogether (unless they could be expelled to Egypt) and settle the land themselves. They succeeded in making the entire area uninhabitable. The limited support Palestinian fighters received from external resistance groups died when supply routes dried up after Israel took advantage of the Lebanon ceasefire to topple the Syrian government with the help of their ISIS-asset and Theodor-Herzl-lookalike Jolani (now al-Sharrah) and his band of Jewhadists armed and bankrolled by the United States of America. All the more reason for ignorant, naïve or sectarian Muslims to celebrate this masterstroke of a coup as the “Blessed Revolution”.

The fall of Syria was the first time modern Russia betrayed its allies. The second time was more recently after America had secured an abstention of Russia and China in the vote for Trump’s Gaza peace plan by offering them meaningful backhanders and concessions in order to allow the United Nations to keep playing the role intended for it from the outset: to legitimise Israeli land theft and colonisation. In exchange for its service to Israel, Russia now gets to keep large parts of Ukraine, although Europe will try to keep the war going for as long as it takes to bleed itself to death.

The Syrian government of Assad may not have been popular but it held the country together which is now being partitioned, with Israel, Turkey, America, France, Russia and Britain competing over the spoils. Their plan to weaken the resistance to the Greater Israel project seems to have initially borne fruit. Hamas (as the representative of the Gaza resistance factions) had to sign up to a so-called ceasefire which in reality is a negotiated surrender. With the “hostages” released (except for that one cursed skeleton still lost somewhere under the rubble caused by Israeli bombs, the recovery of which is given more resources than many searches for survivors after a major natural disaster), the American/Israeli focus is now on “disarmament” prior to the final expulsion of a population which can no longer resist. Those “disarmament” efforts are also the only aspect of the so-called ceasefire with Hezbollah that Israel and America are interested in. It is an illusion, of course, but for the time being, any arms still held by the resistance cannot practically be deployed.

As an aside, the only disarmament which would bring peace to the region would be the total disarmament of Israel.

However, sometimes success (and more often the arrogance associated with it) gives birth to the ultimate failure. And Syria is likely where the whole plot will unravel. Because there is no longer a single strong government, chaos takes its place and competing armed groups and gangs proliferate. Some of these will obviously tun on each other, but others might well look beyond the mayhem and turn on the sponsors of this humiliating disgrace of a once proud Arab nation. Those who live by the sword shall die by the sword, and that must be the inevitable fate of Israel and American imperialism with it.

Meanwhile, for Gaza (and the remainder of Palestine) - those people who cling to their land in spite of all the odds, making the ultimate sacrifice in the hope that humanity will eventually get the better of people who (disarmed long ago) feel they have no say in the matter, so that they force their own governments to take action – the siege can only be broken from without. Since we neither expect Iran nor Pakistan nor any other militarily advanced Muslim nation to come to their rescue like the Russian army did for Leningrad, the siege has to be broken, like back then in Makkah, through increasing humanitarian concern. Mass demonstrations, boycotts, flotillas, strike action, and other direct and indirect action are the means by which people can embarrass their leaders and remove the fig leaf of legitimacy and pretence, forcing them eventually to put a stop to the most shameful collective crime of the self-styled international community this century.