From Basel to Gaza... The Catastrophe of Humanity

Catastrophes do not arise suddenly, and disasters do not befall nations out of nowhere; rather, they are meticulously crafted over time, as ideas transform into programs, programs into policies, and policies into a geography of blood and displacement. Such was Palestine; the Nakba that befell the Palestinian people in 1948 was not merely the result of a fleeting war or an unforeseen political upheaval, but rather the culmination of a long process shaped within the Western colonial mind, when Zionism, as a replacement project, met with European empires as tools of domination and world reshaping. From that moment, Palestine was no longer just a land under occupation, but became an arena for a deeper conflict between two narratives: the narrative of a people who have lived on their land for centuries, and a colonial narrative that re-employed religion through the idea of the "chosen people," and sought to re-engineer history and geography according to an expansionist vision extending from the Nile to the Euphrates, affecting both land and people. In 19th-century Europe, where nationalisms were forming amidst imperial superiority and racist tendencies, Zionism began to crystallize not as a purely religious expression, but as a modern, racist political project that benefited from the colonial climate that viewed the peoples of the East as mere human masses to be managed or displaced. At that historical moment, Zionist Judaism met Christian Zionism, and the West, politically, intellectually, and religiously, began to view Palestine as a space that could be reshaped to serve its strategic interests and ideological fantasies simultaneously. It was not merely sympathy for European Jews or a response to their historical suffering, but rather the utilization of that suffering within a larger colonial project. Therefore, Zionism did not come to Palestine as a refugee movement, but as a colonial replacement project supported by international power. From the early stages, European attempts emerged to pave the way for this ideology, starting with Napoleon Bonaparte's campaign against Palestine in 1799, which was not just a military adventure, but an early symbolic moment for the idea of European control over the Levant and its political re-engineering. Despite the military failure of the campaign before the walls of Acre, the idea remained alive within the Western mind: Palestine could be transformed into an advanced base for the colonial project in the heart of the East. With the convening of the First Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897, the Zionist project moved from scattered ideas to an organized political framework. There, the talk began clearly about establishing a national home for Jews in Palestine, but this project could not survive on its own; it needed an empire to adopt it, protect it, and grant it legitimacy and power. Here, Britain found in Zionism an ideal partner for its interests in the region, especially with the approaching collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the escalating competition for the division of the Arab Levant. At that stage, Zionism was no longer just an idea, but became part of the Western imperial strategy. Between the Sykes-Picot Agreement and the Balfour Declaration, the region was being reshaped at the table of colonial powers. The Balfour Declaration was not a fleeting letter written by a British foreign minister, but an announcement of a historical alliance between an emerging settlement project and an empire seeking to consolidate its influence in the East. Therefore, it was not surprising that names like Herbert Samuel, Mark Sykes, and David Lloyd George, along with leaders of the Zionist movement such as Chaim Weizmann and Nahum Sokolow, were involved in the making of the declaration, in a scene that revealed how the colonial interests of Britain, France, and the United States of America converged with Zionist ambition to produce a new reality in Palestine. The most dangerous aspect of the Zionist project was that it did not content itself with controlling the land, but sought to control the narrative itself. Palestine was presented to the world as if it were "a land without a people," in one of the most influential political lies of the modern era. Thus, the Palestinian people, who constituted (97%), the overwhelming majority of the country's inhabitants, were transformed into mere "non-Jewish communities" in British texts, as if their historical and political existence could be erased by a cold legal phrase. The process of uprooting Palestinians began in language before their uprooting from the land. With the British Mandate, Zionism transformed from a political project into an armed material reality. Britain opened the doors to immigration, facilitated the establishment of Zionist institutions, and granted the Zionist movement something akin to a state structure before its establishment, through the creation of the Jewish Legion during World War I, which formed the nucleus of what was later formed as the Israeli army, in addition to supporting the establishment of the Jewish Agency, which became the institutional and political framework upon which the state was later built. In contrast, the Palestinian political structure was dismantled and any nascent national resistance was suppressed. In those years, Palestine was not just facing waves of immigration, but was facing an international alliance that possessed money, weapons, media, legal cover, and imperial support. Then came the Nakba in 1948 as the moment when the Zionist project moved from the stage of establishment to the stage of complete replacement, when Zionist ideology met British will in Palestine, leading to the emptying of the country of its inhabitants. This was accompanied by the use of multiple means, including spreading fear and threats among Arab Jewish residents in neighboring Arab countries, and pushing some of them to leave their countries under claims and fears of being exposed to dangers or persecution if they remained. It was not just a war, but an organized process of forcibly reshaping geography and demography to achieve their program, where hundreds of Palestinian villages were destroyed, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were displaced, and the place was rebuilt with new names and new narratives, in an attempt to transform colonialism into a "historical right." From that moment, the Palestinian no longer fought only to regain his land, but to regain his narrative, his existence, and his right to be recognized as a people. In the heart of these transformations, I was born, not just as a witness to the Nakba, but as a living part of the Palestinian, Arab, Islamic, and international consciousness that was formed under the weight of displacement. In my childhood, from the first grade when I was eight years old, and through the conversations of my teacher Ragheb Malhas, I first heard about the Balfour Declaration and its repercussions, leading to an early conviction that what was happening in Palestine was not an ordinary conflict, but a comprehensive colonial project based on a Zionist ideology aimed at uprooting an entire people from history. When I saw refugees pouring into Nablus in 1948, I did not see mere displaced people fleeing war, but I saw the final result of a path that began decades ago within European capitals and Western political chambers. With the development of my political and intellectual experience, I realized that Zionism was not an event that ended with the establishment of "Israel," but a continuous colonial structure that reproduces itself in different forms. From the Iron Wall theorized by Vladimir Jabotinsky, to the repeated aggressive wars on the Gaza Strip, the same logic remained: subjugating Palestinians by force, denying their political existence, and normalizing colonialism in global consciousness. That is why I always insisted on distinguishing between Judaism as a religion we respect, and Jewish and Christian Zionism as a political replacement project that used religion to justify control and expansion. Hence, my criticism of Zionism was not just a political stance, but an attempt to understand the intellectual structure that produced the Nakba and continues to produce it to this day. I saw that the West not only supported Israel with weapons, but also with meaning, narrative, and justification, when colonialism was presented as self-defense, the victim as a threat, and gradual extermination as a "security right." Thus, the same project continued, from Basel to Balfour, and from Balfour to Gaza, southern Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, and Iraq, and from the Mandate to the siege, and from the Nakba to a permanent colonial reality that attempts to reshape Palestine and Mesopotamia by force, through crimes of genocide, forced displacement, and apartheid. But the paradox that the Zionist project could not resolve is that Palestine, despite everything, remained alive. Its people remained, its narrative remained, and memory remained stronger than attempts at erasure. Therefore, the Palestinian struggle was not just a military or political resistance, but a battle over history itself; a battle to prove that peoples do not disappear because empires decided so, and that right does not fall because colonialism and Jewish and Christian Zionist thought possessed power. From this conviction, my vision of the world was formed: that confronting Zionism is not only by resisting occupation, but also by building an opposing moral and humanitarian project, a project based on right and justice, not replacement, on partnership, not exclusion, and on human liberation, not the reproduction of hegemony. That is why I believe that Palestine is not just the cause of a people seeking a state, but the cause of a world seeking the meaning of right and justice in the face of the most enduring colonial projects in the modern era. Therefore, the Nakba cannot be viewed as an event of the past that can be overcome by obsolescence or adaptation to its results, because its effects are still present in geography, consciousness, refuge, displacement, siege, and deprivation of the most basic human and national rights. Peoples are not healed from catastrophes by managing pain, but by removing its causes and achieving historical justice that restores to man his right, dignity, and homeland. Hence, any talk of true peace remains empty unless it is coupled with full recognition of the Palestinian people's right to return and self-determination based on Security Council Resolution 194, which was called for by international diplomat Folke Bernadotte, who was later assassinated by Zionist gangs. The historical context also refers to former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who believed in the possibility of an independent Palestinian state and political rights for Palestinians before he was assassinated. This also requires an end to threats against other Arab peoples, and the rejection of any projects based on displacing populations or replacing peoples with others, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explicitly spoke about in his speeches before the United Nations in 2023 and 2024. However, confronting the Zionist project is not limited to resisting occupation alone, but also requires rebuilding the Palestinian self on stronger, more unified, clearer, and more solid foundations. After long decades of division, political erosion, and the decline of the comprehensive national project, it has become necessary to restore the national Palestinian idea as a comprehensive framework for all Palestinians, inside the homeland and in the diaspora, based on renewing legitimacies, rebuilding institutions, restoring trust between the people and their leaders through ballot boxes, and agreeing on a unified national vision stemming from historical constants and inalienable rights. What is required today is not just a new political discourse, but the reproduction of a comprehensive national thought that redefines priorities, and transforms the Palestinian issue from a state of division and crisis management into a comprehensive liberation project, starting with a clear idea, transforming into a political and national program, and then into a realistic action plan capable of uniting Palestinian, Arab, and international energies in confronting occupation, colonialism, and exclusion. Peoples who struggle for freedom do not only need to possess the justice of their cause, but also need unity of will, clarity of project, and the ability to transform consciousness into effective historical action. At the core of this vision, Palestine does not appear to be merely a matter of borders, authority, or a fleeting political conflict, but part of a broader human battle against injustice, colonialism, racism, and wars. This is what the free world adopted after the war of genocide and the great sacrifices made by the Palestinian people, where the blood of Gaza's children and all the injustice and suffering our people endured transformed global public opinion and consciousness, making Palestine the central issue worldwide, and the cause of all humanity, solidifying the Palestinians' right to live in freedom, security, and peace as a right inseparable from the right of all humanity to build a more just world, a world where peoples are not governed by the logic of power and dominance, and where human rights are not reduced to calculations of interests, but a world governed by right and justice, free from wars, epidemics, and borders created by hegemony, fear, and hatred. In this sense, Palestine, with all its pain and steadfastness, is not only the cause of a people resisting for their homeland, but a moral test for the future of the world itself. Thus, the path that began at the First Zionist Congress as a political idea supported by colonial power, ended after more than a century in scenes of genocide and destruction in Gaza, and forced displacement and apartheid in the West Bank, revealing that a project based on replacement and the negation of the other cannot produce peace, security, or stability, but continuously reproduces violence and tragedies. Hence, humanity's responsibility today is not limited to stopping the war, but to ending the intellectual and political roots that led to it, and triumphing for the values of right, justice, and freedom, so that the Palestinian, Arab, Islamic, and international people do not continue to pay the price of a colonial project that began in Basel and whose bloody effects continue to this day.