The Zionist is “Sugar-Coating the Pill”; Regarding Sheikh Jarrah and Other Dimensions

There is no doubt about the tremendous importance of Jerusalem within the Palestinian cause as a whole, its symbolism, its geographic location, and its central position at the heart of the demands of the Palestinian people and their identity. Within this heart, the location of Sheikh Jarrah, which is in the middle of East Jerusalem, gives it additional momentum and importance and to the steadfastness of the land’s owners. This is so because complete Zionist control of the neighborhood means dismembering the part of Jerusalem inhabited by Palestinians, which is a step that the Zionist deems necessary to break the will of the city and its people.
This dimension alone in understanding the issue may be sufficient for many, but it is not sufficient to understand what is actually going on, as there are several frameworks and contexts within which this uprising is taking place.

A Local Dimension

None of those who offer an analysis of the uprising can jump over the fact that Zionist arrogance, Judaization attempts, and the constant accumulation of injustice and brutality are at the heart of this uprising. This goes in parallel with the determination and resolve of the Palestinians, who are relentless in their struggle for their freedom.
We hear this reverberate even in the analyses of Zionist newspapers and research centers, some of which have come to criticize the actions of the “Israeli government” that “implicated” itself and implicated “Israel” with its foolish behavior towards Jerusalem.
Some also add, in their reading of the moment, that postponing the Palestinian elections has a role in what is happening, as this postponement was the straw that tipped the balance. Although the hopes in the West Bank, the occupied territories, and Gaza were not very high for the elections, there were undoubtedly hopes that were reflected in the number of lists submitted for the elections, which stand at 36, compared to 11 in the last elections. Hopes were further boosted with Barghouti and Al-Qudwa forming an independent list from within Fatah.
Postponing the elections took place through the invocation of the Israeli ban on elections in East Jerusalem in particular, and this ban was described by Zionist writer Yoni Ben-Menachem in an article of his published in Hebrew on the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs website, on May 5th, as “the peace that Israel granted to Abbas to come down the tree”.
The disappointment generated by the decision to postpone the elections indefinitely is certainly one of the factors that reinforced the sense among Jerusalemites of the need to move swiftly, not wait for anyone, and impose again their calculations.
Of course, there are those who try to portray the matter as if it is a Hamas vs. Fatah action. However, this is too ridiculous to be seriously debated, and usually those who make this argument try to circumvent the fact that the Palestinian people do not give much weight to the factional division and have not for many years. The reality is that the different factions are the ones trying to adopt the positions of the Palestinian people, not the other way around.

A Regional and International Dimension

Equally absurd are those analyses looking for some role for Iran in moving matters inside the occupied Palestinian territories, linking that to the ongoing conflict over the Iranian nuclear file and the Zionist position therefrom.
What should be understood in this context is that the ability of the Palestinian people, and especially in the occupied territories, to sense the political moment for the region and the world, is a high ability and has become closer to being intuition and instinct. This the result when a people that is living politics and political struggle on a daily basis for many decades, they end up in a situation in which their understanding of international shifts and alignments becomes a highly intuitive one.
Within this same intuition, the Palestinians will not lose sight of the fact that there is an ongoing process in which Israel is taking a beating in the context of the Iranian nuclear file, and that there is an emerging contradiction that has begun to quickly widen and surface between “Israel” as an entity or as a project and between the US and the global elite. In other words, the possibility of partially sacrificing “Israel” is a possibility the chances of which are rising day after day. At the issue’s core is the inability of the US and its camp to continue in the same previous positions in the international conflict, as the battle with the rising powers requires a redistribution and repositioning of the already diminishing Western capabilities. This is indirectly expressed by American politicians from all sides of the aisle when they say that they want to end the “forever wars”.
The series of research and studies laden with horror and fear that have been published over the last two years by many Israeli research centers, which research the future of the Zionist entity and the existential threat to it, and which Kassioun has previously touched on in several issues (e.g., pieces authored by Yuval Diskin, a former director of Shabak, as well as by Dan Ben David, an economist and head of the Zionist Shoresh Institution for Socioeconomic Research, and many others), is an additional indication of their understanding of the stormy international transformations, in which the Deal of the Century and the normalization accords are nothing but a ridiculous joke that can be best described as “sugar-coating the pill”.

The Outlook

There is no doubt that a stormy struggle is still ahead of the Palestinians and the peoples of the entire region against the Zionist entity, and against the normalizers and those dealing with the Zionist entity blatantly and secretly. However, it is also certain that what is happening in Jerusalem today is not a passing event, but rather a signal of the start of a new wave of popular movement that will deepen in Palestine and find its way to most of the countries in which it previously took place. Nevertheless, this time it will be clearer, more organized, more experienced, and more mature.
Within the Palestinian particularity, this movement can turn into a starting point for rebuilding the Palestinian political movement as a whole. Those currently on the political scene who are able to adapt to the people’s will, they will remain, and those who are unable will be left behind.