Let Palestine live

Pic Credit: Jerusalem Story

States’ Obligations and Avenues of Action

by Zukiswa Wanner

We arrive at the home of 25 year old twins and activists Mohammed and Muna el-Kurd. Mohammed, a writer and a poet, is on hand to give us a background of their home, neighbours, a small tour of the neighbourhood, and the protests that have made Sheikh Jarrah famous.
After the Nakba of 1948, the el-Kurds and others became refugees in Jerusalem because their land had been taken by Israeli settlers. The United Nations built homes for these refugees in the 1960s, giving them a few years to pay for the homes so they could get title deeds. The el-Kurds and their Palestinian neighbours did just that. But East Jerusalem has become prime real estate with some embassies and international organisations located there. Zionists have thus decided, they want this land too. To this end, Zionists have moved into Palestinian homes, arriving with guns and settling in. Most often, with protection from Israeli government institutions, Israeli police and government-funded private security.

These words are from a long-form essay I wrote immediately after my visit to Palestine with Palestine Festival of Literature in May 2023. I start with them to highlight why any talk of a two-state solution is meaningless. The Palestinians tried it and tried to adhere to that lame document that was the Oslo Accord, and still settlements continue in the Occupied Territories with no repercussions despite international law stating that settlements are illegal. In any case, during South African apartheid, the world considered Bantustans a joke, so why do we find the idea of Palestinians adhering to two states comfortable? ‘Palestinian-governed’ West Bank is pretty much the same as the Bantustans in apartheid South Africa. In order to access them, one needs permission from the Zionist state whether one is getting there by land or air.

Rather, and this is my first suggestion on avenues of action, we should be advocating for one secular Palestinian state from the river to the sea. Palestinians, like black South Africans, have constantly proven to the world over and over and over again that they negotiate in good faith, even when they did not need to prove themselves because it’s their land and the only home they have. South Africa was never for the apartheid regime to partition and create Bantustans. Senegal was never for the French to give and certainly, Palestine was never for the British to give to European refugees after the Holocaust. If anything, we should be asking why Palestinians have had to pay a price for Germany’s actions. Why Europe did not feel that a Bavaria would make for great reparations for their atrocities against the Jews during Holocaust. Proof, if any were needed, that Zionism is not Judaism but colonialism. A single state, from the river to the sea. That is what we should advocate for.

It is disingenuous that for all that the Palestinians have suffered, not only do we keep talking of a ‘two-state solution’ but we find a way of demonising states that stand with them. It’s insane that there is even a discussion on uranium enrichment in Iran. Iran? Why are we not questioning that the countries that have made themselves police of the world are responsible for over 400 years of terror and genocide in the rest of the world? The question shouldn’t be Iran. The question should be why we all feel comfortable trusting nuclear energy to the United States of America, to the United Kingdom, to Germany (Germany! That genocided Namibians and Tanzanians on this continent too?), France, Canada, any of the Global North countries and their little Zionist state of the south, India (given what India, a former colonised nation turned ally of colonisers) has done and continues doing in Kashmir.

What are we to do?

I appreciate that there are so many ambassadors of states that claim ally-ship with Palestine here. I would ask that you go to your governments and ask them that they act on a few basics so that the Palestinian question can be solved:

• Turkiye has highlighted that they cancelled trade with Israel. We thank them for that. But Turkiye cannot do it on their own. All our governments need to do this.
• Maldives has told us that they do not permit Israeli passports in their countries and we thank them for that. But Maldives cannot do it on their own. We all need to stop allowing Israelis in our countries. It’s imperative that we make them uncomfortable so that they do not feel that they can kill and run elsewhere as they have been doing.
• Senegal, Malaysia, Colombia, South Africa, Namibia, Cuba, Bolivia, Belize, Honduras are part of the Hague group but they cannot do it on their own.

We all need to be part of this in order for anything we are pushing to be effective.
When our governments are led by colonial clerks of empire, we need to make them so uncomfortable that doing what’s right for Palestinians becomes the only way they know they can have a political legacy.
Today is 20 years since the formation of BDS for Palestine. If our governments decide to boycott trade, not just with Israel, but with its allies in the Global North and United Arab Emirates, we can win this.

• Let’s push our governments to shut down embassies with the Zionist state.
• Let’s demand that they de-register companies in their countries still doing business with the Zionist state.
• Let’s push that they dump the idea of a two-state solution and rather demand a return to 1948 borders and a right of return for 1948 refugees.
• Let’s refuse to participate in sports with Israel. #KickOutIsrael not only from FIFA but from all sports engagement. Sports boycotts worked for apartheid South Africa and they can certainly work for apartheid Israel.
• Let’s push for academic and artistic boycotts across the world to all people of good conscience (meaning obviously that those who continue doing business with Isntreal and its allies are not people of good conscience)
• Most importantly, let’s demand a reform of the United Nations. If we are truly united nations, each and every life should matter. It cannot be that one of five nations can override the will of the majority of nations when those same five nations have been trying to sell us the idea of a democracy where majority rules. How? Why?

Today, 9 July 2025) is 641 days since 7 October 2023.
And there are those who will tell you, if 7 October 2023 had not happened, Gaza would not be where it is at now.
Do not believe them.
Even as the genocide in Gaza continues with both guns and food as weapons of oppression (I will never call it war because the terrain is uneven and defending your very existence from colonisers should never be called war), the displacements and killings in Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank, horror in Palestine continues.

So when they tell you that if 7 October, 2023 had not happened, the dystopian world we are living would not be happening, do not believe them.
It did not start on 7 October, 2023.
Because we know of the Arab revolt of 1936 – 1939 where Zionists killed Palestinians with the aid of the British. We know of the Nakba of 1948. We know of the Six Day War in 1967. We know of the 1982 siege of Beirut. We know of the massacres of Sabra and Shatila. We know the Zionist state has imprisoned men, women and children without charge. We know too that those who support the Zionist state with weapons and funding and their proxies are responsible for:
the killing of Lumumba in the Congo;
the trumped up charges against Lula and the killing of Marielle Franco in Brazil;
the death of Allende in Chile;
the killing of Sankara in Burkina Faso;
the overthrow of Aristide in Haiti;
the killing of Gadaffi in Libya;
the killing of Haniyeh in Iran;
the killing of Nasrallah in Lebanon;
the heroic death of Yahya Sinwar in Gaza;
For the multiple attempts on the life of our young brother, Ibrahim Traore in Burkina Faso;
For the coup d’etats of any progressive leader in the Global South who puts the interest of the majority of the economically less well-off, who form the majority of their citizens, at the expense of ‘external investors’ (read: capitalism and profits of the One Per cent).

We know these Zionists and their proxies are responsible for the killings of many in the Congo, in Sudan, in Lebanon, in Haiti, in Myanmar, in Somalia, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Marikana, in Stilfontein because a peaceful, free and just world is not one where they can maximise profits so they need the wars.
We saw, during the 30th memorial of the Rwandan genocide, an African President inviting the President of the Zionist state as this same state genocided Palestinians and we know the bones of the children, women and men who were genocided in Rwanda rattled at this disrespect.
This irony.
We know their spirits could not rest in peace.
And so.
Our support for Palestine is meaningless if we are not disengaging with Zionist entities and their proxies.
Our support is meaningless if we are cheerleaders of the Rwandan state ‘for clean roads and supposed functionality of the country’ while we ignore how that government is complicit in the killings in Congo and the looting of its resources.
Our support for Palestine is meaningless if we are excited about holidays to the United Arab Emirates, another Zionist proxy government that’s arming the war in Sudan.
Our support for Palestinian freedom means nothing if we are not boycotting businesses that support a genocide.
Our support for Palestinian freedom means nothing if we are not demanding that our governments hold companies that they are excited to call ‘external investors’ who mine our diamonds and have them polished in the Zionist state of Isntreal, and companies who are exporting coal to light up a genocide to either disinvest in the Zionist state or face the full extent of the law for complicity in a genocide.
Our support for Palestinian freedom is questionable if we are silent on support for Congo, Sudan,Haiti, Lebanon, Yemen. It’s meaningless if we are not showing support for all nations and all people who are threatened by Zionism.
We may as well be mute if our support does not condemn the killings of civilians in India-occupied Kashmir, the ethnic pogroms against the Tamil in Sri Lanka.
Our support is doubtful if we have forgotten people who were gunned down, disappeared or imprisoned for political activism in Mozambique; in Kenya; in Nigeria; in Uganda; in
Zimbabwe; in Zambia; in Germany; in the United Kingdom; in Canada.
Our support is irrelevant if we cannot condemn the murder of civilians, often black and brown in Brazil by police, similar murders in the United States of America and kidnappings and deportations without due process in the United States.
The time we live in is dark.
Very dark.
We continue to see killings, displacements, oppression by a demonic and unfeeling enemy that has little regard for human lives that are not their own or do not look like them. All of us with an ounce of humanity have, at some point or other, felt that it’s all so very hopeless. But to lose hope is to make Zionism, capitalism and the military industrial complex win.
To lose hope is to let down every person who has been killed by our collective enemy and not being around to hold the enemy and their proxies to account when the day of justice comes.
It is a very long hour before dawn but dawn is coming.
And when it comes, it will end with justice and freedom for the people of Palestine, of Congo, of Sudan, of Lebanon, of Haiti, of Kashmir.
It shall end with justice and freedom for 99 percent of us all and just deserts for the one percent.
In speaking up for Palestine, we are fighting, not just for the survival of Palestinians but for the survival of humanity.

Something in each of us dies every time a Palestinian man, woman or child is killed.
That something is our humanity.
Let humanity live.
Let Gaza live.
Let Jerusalem, not just East Jerusalem but all of Jerusalem, live.
Let Palestine live.
And let’s continue to boycott, divest, sanction people and companies and countries dealing with Isntreal.
Let’s never ever stop demanding for a free Palestine from the river to the sea until Palestine and we, are all free.