Post-Genocide Thinking: From Victim Discourse to Liberation Project

The Israeli war on the Gaza Strip has shown that the Israeli colonial system has shifted from the physical destruction of the Palestinian people to complete extermination, breaking the will of the Palestinian people and reconstructing Palestinian society to dismantle its ability to endure, while accumulating economic and social pressure tools aimed at making the Palestinian people hostages to a situation in which they have no choice but to submit or surrender. Viewing what is happening not as an incidental event or a local tactical impasse, but as a comprehensive historical ideological project, is a necessary gateway to understanding the current Palestinian reality.

First: We must reframe the "main issue" from the perspective of dismantling the ideology that underpins genocide, not only as a result of the Zionist movement reaching the peak of its influence, but as an institutional international-capitalist partnership. At a time when the world has been unable, despite broadcasting the massacres on its screens, to stop the crime of extermination, this means that there is more than just a will to aggression; rather, there exists a system of interests that has entered into a decade of complicity with the occupation. This complicity is not only field-based but also includes texts and international agreements that justify or cloak violations in the name of ceasefires or reconstruction, while what is happening is the re-engineering of Palestinian society within the logic of post-extermination.

From here, any approach that does not raise accountability for genocide is not suitable for addressing the Palestinian issue. We must read the texts (agreements, resolutions, statements) as tools in the arsenal of extermination, not as summaries that justify coexistence or waiting.

Second: It is not enough to view the reconstruction in Gaza or the West Bank as humanitarian efforts or aid for survivors; it must be presented as part of the requirements of justice and accountability for the occupation. Reconstruction without accountability becomes a convincing settlement that cloaks the symbolic victory of the occupation and diminishes the strength of popular and political resistance. Therefore, progress in rebuilding the Palestinian political system can only begin from the roots of justice and accountability, continuing the Palestinian struggle internally, and shifting towards greater networking with the global struggle against racism and apartheid, and building international public opinion that treats Palestine as a complete national sovereignty issue and a people entitled to self-determination.

Third: The Palestinian unity movement and partnerships among women, youth, and local institutions are an important strategic entry point for dealing with this comprehensive scene. Youth and women are not merely subjects of a post-trauma phase; they are the cornerstone of rebuilding a resistant national will capable of forming a social base that transcends the transformations of surveillance and trauma into a state of producing the national alternative "producing decisions and positions," placing them at the heart of the equation and granting them the ability to invest this approach in building the Palestinian political system from within.

Fourth: The approach to political struggle must take into account that the international scene is not incidental or surprising, but is interconnected with the global solidarity movement and with the model of qualitative justice that emerged from the rejection of extermination. The state of solidarity with the Palestinian people today is not only a rejection of the occupation or aggression, but a rejection of genocide as a methodology. From here, forming international alliances based on both human and political justice becomes central; these alliances elevate Palestine not as a victim, but as a critical actor, not as one waiting for an international decision, but as one that shapes a decision at the international level tailored on the basis of the principle of Palestinian sovereignty and its soft powers.

Fifth and finally: The national challenge within Palestine is to invest this approach in achieving specific accomplishments: (1) Liberating the national discourse from the logic of donations or "aid" to the logic of rights and duties. (2) Rebuilding the Palestinian political system and the political alternative not as an extension of an existing situation, but as a transcendence of it based on the components of true institutional and popular sovereignty. (3) Transforming justice and accountability into political and legal pressure tools, both internally and externally, targeting the accountability of the occupation and dismantling its economic and social relations with the structures of the Palestinian state and the capitalist world.