As Israel prepares for a major ground assault on the besieged Gaza Strip, ostensibly to destroy the weapons caches of the resistance movement Hamas, the most tragic aspect of the episode is the near total silence from the international community and the Arab and Muslim worlds — so called defenders of Palestine — in the face of this genocidal massacre. Israel’s aim is not simply to destroy Hamas’ military capability to resist, but to bludgeon the Palestinians into submission to their fate as second-class citizens in a vast ghetto, to decapitate and destroy the Palestinian national movement and consequently the independent Palestinian identity created in the aftermath of the Naqba (Catastrophe) of 1948, which crystallised incipient Palestinian nationalism into a cohesive framework. Former Israeli Prime Minister (PM) Golda Meier once said, “How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to.” This encapsulates the Israeli state’s goal since the Palestinian people found a voice for their national aspirations in Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO): divide and undermine the Palestinian national narrative to make it seem like the Palestinians are not a people with the right to self determination. It is terra nullis all over again. The attack on Gaza should be seen in this light coming as it does on the heels of a declaration by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (PA) of Hamas’ inclusion in a PA-led unity government. The announcement was made last month in Ramallah by PA President Mahmoud Abbas and the leader of Hamas’ political wing Ismail Haniyeh, who would have been head of a democratically elected Palestinian parliament after the PA elections in 2006, but was rejected and hunted by Israel and the US. That led to a bloody conflict between Hamas and Abbas’ Fatah faction, only healed when the unity government was announced. Almost immediately Israel rejected a role for Hamas in PA affairs and stepped up missile attacks on Gaza as well as search and abduction raids by commandos after the tragic deaths of three Israeli and one Palestinian teenagers. Hamas responded with rockets that achieved little more than scaring pets in southern Israeli towns. Since Israel began attacking Gaza in earnest, more than 800 airstrikes have left 172 people dead including 30 children, with 1,250 injured. Israeli politicians recognise that Hamas has political, social and militant arms and that attacking it ruthlessly only strengthens the movement’s hardliners. This is purely Machiavellian since Israel supported Hamas when it was established in 1984 as a counter to the PLO. Israeli-promoted revisionist history buries the fact that in 2006 Hamas offered a long term truce leading to a two-state solution and pledged to rewrite its charter that called for eliminating Israel. By linking Hamas with other Islamist movements, Israel can effectively portray itself as a state surrounded by hostile Muslim extremist enemies. One of the reasons for the weakening of the Palestinian movement in recent years has been its hijacking by Islamists and totalitarian leaders of Arab and Muslim countries for their own purposes, and restricting it to a cause for the Muslim world, or the Arab world, rather than the whole world. The issue is not the murder of Muslims but the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people and denial of their legitimate right to self-determination. Many Palestinians are not Muslim, but Christian or Druze. Before 1948, many residents of Palestine were Arabic-speaking Jews who lived with Muslim and Christian neighbours for centuries. Framing the conflict in terms of Muslims or Arabs versus Jews allows Israel to present itself as the weaker side struggling for survival, playing on European guilt about their historical mistreatment of Jewish people. The Arab world’s hijacking of Palestine allows Israel to claim that all Arabs are the same, again denying the unique nationhood of Palestinians. Meanwhile anti-Semitic individuals find cover for their hatred in the Palestinian cause, undermining it from within. In Pakistan, the abundance of pro-Nazi or fascist sentiments in the wake of this assault reminds us that a good cause can be ruined by misguided people. Repeatedly betrayed by Arab and Muslim countries, the Palestinians are now alone, facing annihilation, but they continue to stand against a genocidal state. *