Quelques considérations conjoncturelles sur le mot d’ordre « cessez-le-feu immédiat »

Les enjeux immédiats et différés liés à l’épuration ethnique

Si l’incertitude porte sur son moment, il est certain qu’il aura bien lieu, de même qu’il sera assurément assorti de conditions défendues, tant par l’État colonial d’Israël et son allié décisif, les Etats-Unis, que par la Résistance palestinienne. Bien entendu, un certain nombre de considérations immédiates vont peser sur eux : les contraintes et les pressions venant de l’intérieur, (émanant des deux sociétés comme de leurs forces militaires) et de l’extérieur (exercées aussi bien par les Etats alliés qu’adversaires). Mais encore une fois, le moment comme les conditions obtenues doivent être appréhendés, des deux côtés, comme tributaires de l’avancée du génocide et de la tentative d’expulsions massives de Palestiniens de Gaza vers l’Égypte. De cette dépendance découle un certain nombre de scenarii qu’il s’agit de déplier en vue d’anticiper ce qui pourrait avoir lieu, en ne perdant pas de vue que les enjeux du cessez-le-feu sont indissociablement immédiats et différés.

Les tâches sont plurielles et complémentaires. La première est de continuer à amplifier le rapport de forces installé contre l’État français, en dépit précisément de ses intimidations et de sa répression, afin d’obtenir un cessez-le-feu le plus rapide possible, tout en exigeant qu’il ne puisse reposer sur des conditions désastreuses, au-delà de ses apports immédiats. Les Palestiniens et sa Résistance ne l’accepteraient pas pour tous les risques déjà pointés et qui affecteraient sévèrement l’avenir de ce peuple. Il s’agit de penser les moyens de l’obtenir de l’État français et des autres États occidentaux, en synergie avec les mouvements de soutien qui luttent dans les autres pays.

Une deuxième tâche oblige à refonder intellectuellement et politiquement un antisionisme qui met en son centre la libération de la Palestine alors qu’elle est confrontée au projet de son éradication sur les terres historiques, projet qui est inhérent à l’État colonial d’Israël et non exclusivement à une faction suprématiste juive qui a accédé au pouvoir. La carte d’Israël occupant toutes les terres de la Palestine brandie par le chef de son gouvernement en septembre dernier devant l’Assemblée générale de l’ONU, a servi de très bonne illustration. Mais sans doute que ce travail idéologique sera « aidé » par la démesure haineuse de la violence à l’œuvre dans les massacres qui se succèdent les uns après les autres depuis plus d’un mois et la déshumanisation en actes et en mots des Palestiniens.

Une troisième tâche, liée aux deux premières, est de défendre les conditions qui seront posées par la Résistance palestinienne dans son ensemble. Il est à penser que les discussions de ces conditions au sein même de ses instances reposent sur de nombreux critères de jugement, mais rappelons ici quelques objectifs de Déluge d’Al Aqsa qui peuvent constituer une partie ces conditions : levée du blocus de Gaza de manière inconditionnelle car l’enjeu sera de soigner et de reconstruire l’ensemble des infrastructures essentielles ; libération de tous les prisonniers, y compris ceux qui ont été arrêtés en si grand nombre ces dernières semaines. Ces exigences qui entendaient freiner la Nakba continue deviennent encore plus urgentes face à la perspective d’une Nakba qui s’accélérerait dramatiquement à Gaza, à Jérusalem et en Cisjordanie où le nombre de Palestiniens assassinés et enlevés par l’armée ne cesse d’augmenter.

[[2]](https://indigenes-republique.fr/quelques-considerations-conjoncturelles-sur-le-mot-dordre-cessez-le-feu-immediat/#ftnref2) Principalement en région parisienne pour commencer.

[[3]](https://indigenes-republique.fr/quelques-considerations-conjoncturelles-sur-le-mot-dordre-cessez-le-feu-immediat/#ftnref3) Avec une présence substantielle de manifestants issus des immigrations postcoloniales.

[[4]](https://indigenes-republique.fr/quelques-considerations-conjoncturelles-sur-le-mot-dordre-cessez-le-feu-immediat/#ftnref4) Sans qu’aucune issue certaine ne puisse être entraperçue pour l’heure.

[[5]](https://indigenes-republique.fr/quelques-considerations-conjoncturelles-sur-le-mot-dordre-cessez-le-feu-immediat/#ftnref5) Il faudrait revenir bien entendu sur toute l’histoire de dépossession depuis le 19e siècle par le sionisme.

[[6]](https://indigenes-republique.fr/quelques-considerations-conjoncturelles-sur-le-mot-dordre-cessez-le-feu-immediat/#ftnref6) Et sans doute reconstruite selon des normes architecturales et urbanistiques compatibles au système de surveillance et de contrôle militaire colonial.

[[7]](https://indigenes-republique.fr/quelques-considerations-conjoncturelles-sur-le-mot-dordre-cessez-le-feu-immediat/#ftnref7) Deuxième ou troisième si l’on compte les déportations de 1967

[[8]](https://indigenes-republique.fr/quelques-considerations-conjoncturelles-sur-le-mot-dordre-cessez-le-feu-immediat/#ftnref8) Répression qui n’est pas propre à la France, qui s’est distinguée seulement par l’interdiction des premières manifestations. L’attention doit être portée particulièrement aux Etats-Unis où un mouvement très fort a lieu en dépit d’une répression tout aussi forte.

[[9]](https://indigenes-republique.fr/quelques-considerations-conjoncturelles-sur-le-mot-dordre-cessez-le-feu-immediat/#ftnref9) Qui n’avait pas cours jusque dans les années 1980 en France et dans une partie du monde.

A few short-term considerations on the « immediate ceasefire » slogan

The time has come to organise urgent, multi-faceted support for the struggle of the Palestinian people, who are simultaneously being bombed and invaded by the Israeli army with unprecedented intensity. The creation of the Urgence Palestine collective[1], the day after the first attacks, and its mobilisation work[2], led by Palestinians in France, is one of the most remarkable initiatives. However, it does not exclude political and strategic analysis of this popular and organisational support. This text aims to contribute to that analysis by focusing on one of the watchwords chanted unanimously in all the demonstrations taking place in towns and cities in Arab and Muslim countries, in formerly colonised countries and in (ex)colonialist/imperialist countries[3] such as France: « Immediate Ceasefire ».

Rarely has this watchword been so politically and historically charged as it is today in relation to the colonial war against Palestine. Its serious and far-reaching implications go far beyond its primary human dimension: that of demanding an end to the bombing and military presence in and on Gaza, and consequently the safeguarding of tens of thousands of lives, if not many more. Of course it responds to the desire that burns inside at the sight of images of lifeless bodies and shrouds of all sizes, of the wounded and mutilated, of the destruction of entire neighbourhoods. The same desire that burns when listening to the testimonies of survivors (for how long) who describe the lack of drinking water and food, condemning them to another death that is almost as certain as the one inflicted directly by the weapons, or describing the operations and amputations carried out in the open and on the ground in hospitals that have become precarious shelters for both the living and the dead.

But the ceasefire would not just put a stop to the massacres and clashes between Israeli units and armed Resistance fighters[4]. As soon as the first bombardments began, Palestinians understood intellectually, physically and emotionally that the main, if not the sole, aim of the murderous and terrorising violence was to pursue the objective inherent in the creation and future of the colonial state of Israel: to wipe out the Palestinian people as such from the whole of the land of Palestine, and ultimately the very idea that Palestine ever existed. This understanding spread fairly quickly to every continent, including France, where demonstrations demanded an end to the genocide and ethnic cleansing orchestrated in such a timely fashion during this military attack on a scale unprecedented since 1948. Fortunately, the call for a ceasefire was not made in isolation. It is simply that the juxtaposition of these three slogans, which might have been justified at first, is perhaps no longer tenable because it is potentially confusing, and even generates historical blindness as to the acceptable conditions for a ceasefire. A clear understanding of its links with the dual opposition to genocide and to a new deportation of Palestinians enables us to place it firmly within a timeframe that is not only immediate but also longer-term, because it relates to the conditions that make it possible for Palestine to remain on its historic lands and, ultimately, for it to be liberated.

The immediate and deferred stakes of ethnic cleansing

Although the timing is uncertain, it is certain that ethnic cleansing will take place, and that it will be carried out under conditions set by both the colonial state of Israel and its decisive ally, the United States, and the Palestinian Resistance. Of course, a number of immediate considerations will weigh on them: constraints and pressures from within (emanating from both societies as well as their military forces) and from without (exerted by both allied and adversary states). But once again, both the timing and the conditions obtained must be seen, on both sides, as dependent on the progress of the genocide and the attempted mass expulsions of Palestinians from Gaza to Egypt. This dependence gives rise to a number of scenarios that need to be unfolded in order to anticipate what might happen, bearing in mind that the stakes of the ceasefire are inextricably immediate and deferred.

As far as Israel is concerned – supported by the United States, which not only defends but also arms the genocidal project and ethnic cleansing – this ceasefire is not at all on the agenda, signalling, without the slightest doubt, the determination to take advantage of the unconditional support of the major Western powers and the passive complicity of the majority of Arab states to push as far as possible the project to annihilate Palestine on its historic lands. Specifically, the settlement colonisation that is the basis of the State of Israel is practising « spatialised » genocide in the sense that its aim is not to eradicate the Palestinian people but to eradicate their presence and/or identity on the historic lands of Palestine. Thus, this project accommodates different strategies and modalities which may succeed one another, coexist or even amalgamate. The latest policy in force until 7 October 2023 is based on a continuous Nakba in the Negev, the West Bank, Jerusalem and the whole of Palestine, and beyond, in all the refugee camps in the diaspora. It is coupled with a system of apartheid imposed on the « 1948 » Palestinians, as well as a regime of blockades and « low-intensity » violence – to use an established military expression, but which must not obscure the large number of direct or delayed deaths each year – against Gaza. Other strategies and procedures for the ethnic cleansing carried out in 1948[5] have remained under consideration ever since, to the point of being regularly the subject of updated plans. To mention only those that have resurfaced in this sequence through official declarations or revelations of diplomatic exchanges: deportation of Palestinians to Egypt and/or Jordan, or even beyond; « ceding » of Gaza to Egypt or establishment of a puppet state, to which, in both cases, Palestinians from the West Bank and Jerusalem could be deported. The current determination of the State of Israel and its general staff to reject any ceasefire can be seen in the light of the desire to take advantage of the stupefaction and fear caused by the failure of the military-security system and the number of Israelis killed as a result. Depending on the strength of internal and external pressure and the course of the fighting, the colonial state could seek to bring this project to fruition immediately, or at least so much further ahead than it was before October 2023.

In this case, even if the bombing stops and the Israeli army withdraws now, and no significant deportation of Palestinians is organised in the short term, we must seriously consider that it could happen in the longer term. Firstly, because the colonial war aims to destroy the conditions for a sustainable life in Gaza. And these conditions have already been seriously undermined by the destruction of housing and the minimum infrastructure needed to sustain life. Not to mention the future illnesses caused by the weakening of bodies and souls, malnutrition and the toxicity of the bombs contaminating the air, water and land. Faced with Israel’s determination to postpone the ceasefire and to agree only to possible humanitarian « truces » or « pauses » – which would serve just as well to strengthen the military and to demoralise the Palestinians throughout Gaza – it would be understandable and responsible to oppose the priority demand for an immediate ceasefire, because the longer the destruction continues, the greater the risks of a mass deportation.

The challenges of maintaining the Resistance in Gaza

But this spontaneous popular impulse could paradoxically contribute to this by obliterating the other major objective of the bombing and invasion of Gaza: to wipe out the Palestinian Resistance in Gaza, by targeting its military, political and social structures. Yet this eradication would constitute the preliminary and essential stage in any deportation, whether of Palestinians from Gaza to Egypt – as destination or stage -, or of Palestinians from the West Bank and Jerusalem to a Gaza under indirect colonial domination via the Palestinian Authority or another structure[6]. The warning must be given on the following equation: to evacuate the Resistance is to condemn Palestine. As it happens, this aim of the war is considered to be largely impracticable, if not at the cost of an accomplished genocide in Gaza. Indeed, the Resistance cannot be separated from society, even now, to speak only of the present moment, because they are united, even under the bombs and in the face of the tanks, by the common project of opposing a new Nakba[7]. This impossibility means that we have to seriously consider the hypothesis that the colonial state will end up making a ceasefire conditional, not on the total destruction of the Resistance, but on the deportation of all its political cadres and fighters, counting on the Palestinians becoming so demoralised that they will agree to this separation, and above all on criminalising, even dehumanising the Resistance, elevating it to the status of absolute enemy, as is the case in almost all Western states, starting with France.

Israel’s current refusal to agree to a ceasefire must be understood in the light of this objective of destroying the political and military Resistance in Gaza. In Israel’s eyes, not only would a ceasefire make it possible to limit the losses suffered by the fighters and their weapons, but above all it would be an admission of defeat in the face of the Resistance, which has succeeded in breaking through the image of the invincibility of the colonial state of Israel in the eyes of its population, its allies and adversaries, the Arab peoples and above all the Palestinians.

The movement in support of Palestine cannot accept the negotiation of the eradication of the organised Resistance, because it would be the key to the eventual disappearance of the Palestinian people from their historic homeland. It must therefore consider the very delicate, and perhaps inextricable, question of what is at stake in the ceasefire, both now and in the future. Even in the face of such urgency, and in parallel with thinking about the tactical means to achieve it, it is important to grasp the historical coordinates of the problem, which have been partly unfolded here.

The tasks of the movement in support of Palestine

How can we defend acceptable conditions from here? This is an extremely delicate task, requiring us to forge a very tortuous and « mined » path, since it is being carried out not only in the emergency situation already highlighted, but also in the face of repression that restricts the expression of any support for the Palestinian people, not hesitating to prosecute for « apology for terrorism » and anti-Semitism[8].

The tasks are many and complementary. The first is to continue to build up the balance of power against the French state, despite its intimidation and repression, in order to obtain a ceasefire as quickly as possible, while ensuring that it cannot be based on disastrous conditions, beyond its immediate benefits. The Palestinians and their Resistance would not accept this because of all the risks that have already been pointed out and which would severely affect the future of this people. We need to think of ways of obtaining this from the French state and other Western states, in synergy with the solidarity movements mobilized in other countries.

A second task is to refound intellectually and politically an anti-Zionism that places at its centre the liberation of Palestine, while it is confronted with the project of its eradication on its historic lands, a project that is inherent in the colonial state of Israel and not exclusive to a Jewish supremacist faction that has come to power. The map of Israel occupying all the land in Palestine, brandished by the head of his government last September before the UN General Assembly, served as a very good illustration. But there is no doubt that this ideological work will be « helped » by the hateful excessiveness of the violence at work in the massacres that have followed one another for over a month and the dehumanisation of the Palestinians in deed and word.

A third task, linked to the first two, is to defend the conditions that will be set by the Palestinian Resistance as a whole. It is likely that discussions of these conditions within its own bodies will be based on many different criteria, but let us recall here some of the objectives of the Al-Aqsa Flood operation which may constitute some of these conditions: unconditional lifting of the blockade of Gaza, because the challenge will be to heal and rebuild all the essential infrastructure; release of all prisoners, including those who have been arrested in such large numbers in recent weeks. These demands, which were intended to put the brakes on the continuing Nakba, are becoming even more urgent in the face of the prospect of a Nakba that would dramatically accelerate in Gaza, Jerusalem and the West Bank, where the number of Palestinians murdered and abducted by the army continues to rise.

The major difficulty in this task undoubtedly lies in the arguments to be developed, given that the Palestinian Resistance can be the subject of ignorance, misunderstanding, criticism and even condemnation in countries such as France. These attitudes are amply fuelled by a delegitimisation[9] of the use of violence in the struggle for liberation against colonialism, and by Islamophobia, which makes an absolute enemy of any force of resistance emanating from Muslim peoples, while criminalising its supporters as accomplices to « terrorism ». To get round this difficulty, it would be necessary, in conjunction with the ideological consolidation of anti-Zionism, to legitimise the idea that no anti-colonial liberation can be achieved without politico-military forces, and to uncouple this historical principle from the question of explicit support for this or that organisation.

And to return to the problem posed initially, the watchword in the present moment could be formulated as follows: An immediate ceasefire with no deportations of Palestinians or of the Resistance, either today or tomorrow.

This tomorrow must already feature in our analysis, without waiting for the long-awaited ceasefire, which we know with certainty will mark a fundamental break with the last three decades. As a result of the uprisings in Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Galilee and the Negev over the last three years, the Resistance has shattered the system of colonial domination based on a continuous Nakba and an Israeli armed commitment based on maximum avoidance of soldier casualties. It has succeeded in profoundly undermining the « normalisation » of the colonial state that is so necessary to it, not only in the region but on every continent. It succeeded in making the struggle of the Palestinian people central in the eyes of the world. We need to prepare for this historic event, as part of a united front called for by the Palestinians, while working today to create the best possible conditions for it.

Samia

12 november

[1] Urgence-palestine.com

[2] Mainly in the Paris region to begin with.

[3] With a substantial presence of demonstrators from post-colonial immigrant backgrounds.

[4] With no certain outcome in sight for the time being.

[5] Of course, we would have to go back over the whole history of dispossession since the 19th century by Zionism.

[6] And no doubt rebuilt according to architectural and urban planning standards compatible with the colonial military surveillance and control system.

[7] Second or third if the 1967 deportations are counted.

[8] This repression was not unique to France, which only distinguished itself by banning the first demonstrations. Particular attention should be paid to the United States, where a very strong movement took place despite equally strong repression.

[9] Which was not the case until the 1980s in France and in other parts of the world.