Israel wants to erase Palestine not only from the land but also from history

What happened yesterday at Al-Aqsa Mosque was neither an ordinary provocation nor a customary settler raid. Led by Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, 4,248 settlers entered the courtyard of Al-Aqsa Mosque under heavy police protection. Among them were ministers, members of parliament, rabbis and leaders of "Temple" organizations. They performed Talmudic rites, prostrated themselves and sang hymns. In a statement made in the Al-Aqsa courtyard, Ben Gvir said, "Jews now worship on the Temple Mount much more comfortably than before," and thus openly proclaimed, accompanied by a display of power and crime, the strategy Israel has long been implementing step by step.

It would be incomplete to read this event merely as a new and one-step-further act of disrespect toward Al-Aqsa Mosque. Because what is happening in Palestine today is not three separate crises. Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem are three fronts of the same strategy. In Gaza, human beings are being destroyed; in the West Bank, land is being emptied; in Jerusalem, history and identity are being rewritten.

What is happening in Gaza is not a war, and what is happening in the West Bank is certainly not isolated security incidents. But genocidal Zionist Israel wants them to look that way, and until now it had drilled this image into all the official institutions of the world. Now, however, it can no longer make anyone swallow this image. The latest reports of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) show that it is now clearly visible that what is happening in the occupied Palestinian territories consists of different fronts of a single strategy.

According to the latest UN assessments, millions of people in Gaza are being forced to displace again and again. Constant evacuation orders, neighborhoods razed to the ground, hospitals rendered unable to function, collapsing water and sewage infrastructure, and the threat of hunger and epidemics have now made a normal life impossible for people. OCHA reports reveal that access to food and clean water has fallen to a critical level, that the health system has largely collapsed, and that the living conditions of the civilian population are growing worse with each passing day.

In the West Bank, on the other hand, a quieter but equally destructive process is under way. Of course, its being quieter again has to do with the world's threshold of hearing; otherwise the sound of the violations committed there has become a public scandal. Escalating military operations, checkpoints, house demolitions, the confiscation of agricultural land, settler attacks and the gradual narrowing of freedom of movement are making life unsustainable for Palestinians on the land where they live, rather than expelling them directly. What international law defines as "forcible displacement" is no longer only a matter of coming to the door with weapons; it is compelling people to migrate by creating conditions in which they cannot live. This is exactly the most important danger OCHA draws attention to.

What differs here from earlier violations is that this initiative has ceased to be an isolated provocation. This is now a display of raging and spoiled insolence by bigoted Zionists who no longer even feel the need to offer a whitewashing explanation for their crimes. According to the assessment of the Jerusalem Governorate, the Israeli government is now trying to create new political and legal facts on the ground at Al-Aqsa Mosque. Settlers have been allowed to perform Talmudic rites, to prostrate themselves and to sing hymns loudly; Muslims' entry has been largely blocked; and for the first time a permanent canopy has even been erected in the eastern courtyard for settlers. The Temple groups openly declare that they aim to raise these raids to 5,000 settlers and more in the coming years.

All this shows that Israel, no longer feeling the need even for security-policy rhetoric, is trying to transform directly the religious and historical identity. The target, of course, is not merely to visit Al-Aqsa Mosque; it is to de facto abolish the historical status that has been recognized for centuries by international law, to establish temporal and spatial division, and finally to build a new order in which sovereignty belongs indisputably to Israel.

At this point Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem become parts of the same picture. In Gaza people are being killed with bombs; in the West Bank people are being forced to migrate through the destruction of their living conditions; in Jerusalem memory, history and holy sites are being transformed. In one place demography is changed, in another geography, and in the third history is rewritten.

This is no longer merely occupation. It is a comprehensive strategy of liquidation aimed at eliminating all the conditions of existence of a people. Genocide does not take place only through the killing of people; uprooting a society from the land it lives on, destroying its cultural and religious heritage, and leaving it without a future are also parts of the same process.

Unfortunately, the stance of the international community also contributes to the deepening of this tragedy. The UN finally publishes reports, international courts issue rulings, human rights organizations document violations; but none of this suffices to change the reality on the ground. Where law is not enforced, power takes the place of justice. Today Palestine has become a test of conscience not only for Israel but also for the international system.

In essence, these initiatives are an open challenge not only to Palestinians but to the entire Islamic world. Because Al-Aqsa Mosque is the first qibla and the common trust not only of Palestinians but of all Muslims.