Mustafa Barghouti reflects on the Palestinian struggle in a time of genocide and ethnic cleansing
Mustafa Barghouti, General Secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative, Al Mubadara
Mondoweiss editors interview Mustafa Barghhouti on 7 October 2024:
Mondoweiss: It has been an entire year since the Israeli genocide in Gaza began, and it has now expanded into a regional war involving Hezbollah and, potentially, Iran. When Hamas launched its surprise attack a year ago, what went through your mind? Did you expect that the Israeli response would be a genocide like the one you have witnessed?
Mustafa Barghouti: Nobody expected that the second largest and strongest Israeli command brigade, [the Israeli army’s Gaza Brigade] would collapse as it did. That led to many things that, in my opinion, were never planned, such as taking civilians prisoners. There was a certain level of chaos. I didn’t, of course, know that there would be such an attack, but I did expect some sort of explosion [from Gaza], because of the fact that Israel was ignoring any demand to end this state of siege. We witnessed a situation where the Israeli occupation had continued for 57 years. Ethnic cleansing continued for 76 years. The siege on Gaza was becoming unbearable. You’re talking about 17 years of siege on Gaza that led to a situation where people had almost no electricity, only a few hours a day, where 24 percent of the water was either polluted or saltwater, where 80 percent of young graduates were unemployed, and where there was not only a complete economic disaster but a total loss of hope. I think when we reached that moment on October 7, it became clear to all Palestinians that Israel had no plan whatsoever for a peaceful resolution of this situation.
The new Israeli government is a fascist government with people in it like [Finance Minister Bezalel] Smotrich and [National Security Minister Itamar] Ben-Gvir, who are themselves settlers and were previously accused by the Israeli judicial system of being members of terrorist groups. They declared clearly that the Israeli plan is to fill the West Bank with settlers and settlements so that Palestinians would lose any hope for a state of their own, and they would have to choose between leaving, which is ethnic cleansing, living a life of subjugation, which is apartheid, or dying, which is genocide. In reality, this is an officially declared Israeli policy. So, of course, people were expecting some sort of reaction to get us out of a terrible situation in which Israel was literally eliminating the Palestinian cause. Netanyahu was very clear about his plans. He declared that the goal of normalization with Arab countries was to liquidate the Palestinian cause.
And if you want another reason, just two weeks before October 7, Netanyahu appeared before the United Nations General Assembly and showed a map of Israel that included all of the West Bank, all of the Gaza Strip, all of the Golan Heights, and a map of the new Middle East, which he is trying to construct, as he said, for 50 years to come.
Let’s fast forward to today. Israel has announced that it has launched a “limited” ground invasion of southern Lebanon. At the same time, the fighting in Gaza has for now subsided, but airstrikes and massacres against the civilian population continue regularly, and the likelihood of a ceasefire now seems farther than ever. Where do you think things are going, both in Gaza and in terms of a regional escalation?
First of all, you have to understand that Israel did not really scale back its operations in Gaza. It continues, maybe to a lesser degree than before, but they’ve already destroyed almost 80 percent of all homes in Gaza, partially or completely. They’ve destroyed all universities. They’ve destroyed most schools. They’ve destroyed 34 hospitals out of 36. They’ve squeezed more than 1.7 million people into an area that is no more than 12 square miles. On average we see 50 to 100 people killed every day.
And at the same time, they are now invading Lebanon. I don’t believe what they say, that Israel is going to have a limited operation in Lebanon. In my opinion, they will try to conduct a military ground operation that will go in from two directions; one in the direction of the Litani River, trying to push everybody from the south to north of the river, and maybe beyond it, and at the same time, another flank of the Israeli military operation will go into the Beqaa Valley, trying to cut off any contact between Syria and Lebanon.
In my opinion, Israel is planning to occupy the south of Lebanon completely, and maybe more, for a very long time and in a permanent fashion. The only thing that will stop them is the amount of losses they will incur because of the fighting of Hezbollah. Nothing else will stop them.
This raises the question; when Biden, the president of France, and other Western leaders come out and say Israel has the right to defend itself, does that mean that the right of self-defense includes invading other countries, bombarding other capitals, and occupying the land of other people? And if Israel has the right to defend itself, do Palestinians also have the right to defend themselves, especially since they are under occupation? What we see here is a horrible double standard. It is shocking when you see France declaring that it participated in defending Israel from Iranian rockets, alongside the United States and some other regional countries. Did any of them even consider participating in protecting innocent Palestinian civilians, where 51,000 Palestinians have already been killed, including the 10,000 that are still missing under the rubble? The number of Palestinians killed after this war in Gaza will probably exceed 100,000 if we include those who will die from diseases and the injured who will die due to lack of medical treatment.
Iran has already launched an unprecedented missile attack against Israel, but they attacked only military installations. What is interesting here is that both Hezbollah and Hamas are only attacking military installations, while Israel is bombarding a civilian population.
And do you think, then, that this situation might escalate into a regional war if Israel is unwilling to withdraw from southern Lebanon, if it’s indeed going to occupy it?
Absolutely. I think that’s exactly what Netanyahu wants. He wants to drag the region into a war. He wants to drag the United States into it, or maybe he already has a joint plan with the United States — because I don’t think Biden needs to be dragged. He’s already in this. He is complicit in this genocide. I think he’s trying to bring the United States into the war so that it will attack or participate in attacking Iran. I think this is one of his main goals, to destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities.
And so where is the place of Gaza in all of this?
In my opinion, Netanyahu’s original plan was to ethnically cleanse Gaza. And he didn’t hide that. He said it on the second day of the war on October 8. His military spokesperson, Richard Hecht, declared that all Gazans have to be evicted to the Sinai. They failed. They failed because of the steadfastness and heroism of the Palestinian people in Gaza, but also because Egypt did not cooperate. Egypt realized that if Palestinians were pushed into the Sinai, it would be a major security disaster for Egypt and would threaten its national security. Since Netanyahu couldn’t conduct complete ethnic cleansing, he’s conducting genocide in Gaza.
But his ultimate goal, I think, once he’s done with Lebanon, will be to try to evict everybody from northern Gaza and annex it to Israel. This would be the Plan B to completely annexing the Strip or the total ethnic cleansing of the population of Gaza. But that doesn’t mean that he will necessarily succeed.