Julia Kassem
More than just virtue signaling, the latest calls to ‘establish a Palestinian state’ are a call to disarm the Palestinian and Lebanese Resistance.
Top European capitals, including the E3, are now calling for the establishment of a Palestinian state by September. Macron, in a letter to the PA’s Mahmoud Abbas, Macron called for an “immediate ceasefire, the release of all hostages, “massive humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza,” “the demilitarization of Hamas,” and a so-called Palestinian state that fully recognizes “Israel.”
Abbas responded in kind by insisting, first and foremost, that a future Palestinian state must be disarmed, which makes no sense considering unarmed states don’t even exist.
Likewise, Starmer in his statement also called for “the removal of Hamas leadership,” and Canadian Prime Minister Carney called for the Palestinian Authority, in his Western-fashioned vision for “peace,” to hold elections that exclude Hamas.
This occurs at the helm of the US, Europe, and regional allies, heightening the call for the disarmament of the Palestinian Resistance. Joining in on the treacherous call to demilitarize Gaza are Qatar, Egypt, and (unsurprisingly) Saudi Arabia.
At the same time, the pressure mounts in Lebanon to similarly disarm the Lebanese Resistance, an objective of the US for at least 3 decades. It confirms the open secret – from the time of the so-called ‘ceasefire’ – that “Israel’s” occupation of an aspirational “buffer zone” in south Lebanon is reinforced by US pressure.
Since February 18, the Zionist entity has begun constructing a buffer zone, divided into five key points in the South: Al-Labounneh near the Naqoura outskirts, near Jal al-Deir in Aitaroun, near Hamames Hill opposite Metulla, Jabal Blat in Marwahin, and Remyeh, as well as the outskirts between Markaba and Houla.
“Israel’s” aspirations for reprising a 1978 buffer zone in Lebanon, as well as its illegal attacks on the country, routine murders of Lebanese citizens, act as convenient leverage by the US to establish its consensus over Lebanon’s configuration in the “New Middle East”. The 4,000+ ceasefire violations are the US’s ‘stick’ and asset in pressuring the country to submission; with conditional ‘economic relief,’ (i.e., for disarming Resistance), the proverbial carrot.
In Lebanon, the UN’s latest mandate for administering South Lebanon – Resolution 2749, adopted in 2024, which stresses the implementation of Resolution 1701, expires on August 31. Though Lebanon requested a formal renewal of the mandate, the August deadline raises questions as to the fate of the country – and the Resistance as “Israel” escalates its aggression in light of US pressure and Lebanese government ‘talks’ demanding the disarmament of the Lebanese Resistance. Meanwhile, the latest US envoy, Thomas Barrack, said that the US can ‘no longer’ ask ‘Israel’ for more concessions – despite the US benefiting from the Zionist entity’s free range to attack Lebanon and unsuccessfully utilizing it as leverage to demand the elimination of the Resistance – meaning the US will now turn “Israel” to loose and return to wide scale attacks on the Resistance.
Some sources report the distribution of relief equipment across Lebanon in preparation for another war and subsequent waves of displaced people. The little patience the US feigned over Lebanon is running thin as both sides prepare to gear up for war and the latest future campaign of stoking internal strife. There is a possibility that Sunni sectarian militant groups will be deployed as agents to fight the Lebanese Resistance, per the US’s demands of al-Jolani to act as a counterinsurgent player against Hezbollah and Iran.
Likewise, “Israel’s” starvation of Gaza is leverage for the Americans and Europeans, as disparate as they act in political theatrics, to pressure Gaza into accepting a toothless PA-style run reservation where the Zionist entity’s objectives align with crocodile teary-eyed EU states: the disarmament of Hamas.
In the humiliating discourse of the collective West, Palestinians must be greatful for being “given” a fraction of their historical homeland as “Israel” is rewarded with the diplomatic cover of eliminating the Palestinian Resistance, keeping most of Palestine’s stolen territory, and retaining its full recognition – imposing it on Palestinians themselves – after a “final solution-esque” genocide aimed at wiping them out.
This objective balances the worst of both tendencies of hegemonic governments masquerading as ‘democracies’: “Israel” and America’s violent coercion and the European strategy of feigning appeals to consent, instilled in it an element of salvaging their domestic opinion lost to their programmed servitude towards America and “Israel.”
No one should be too surprised at Europe’s empty virtue signaling performed on the heels of its continued sabre-rattling against Iran. The US, France, and Germany – in a joint statement along with a cohort of other NATO and EU underlings – have, as of most recently, accused Iran of plotting to kidnap, harass, and attack Western citizens and journalists.
The return of issuing ridiculous, unfounded, and hostile accusations against Tehran – following an atmosphere signaling the return of potential talks, no less – is every bit of a means to justify continued aggression against the Islamic Republic, especially where no threat exists.
Last time E3 Iran, it was followed by unprecedented threatening – and untrue – statements by IAEA that greenlit the US-” Israeli” war on Tehran, enabling the harshest overt warfare and aggression against the Islamic Republic since the 1980-1988 war.
Again, as European leaders are dabbing away crocodile tears over Gaza with one hand, they’re sabre-rattling at Iran with the other for the crime of exercising its energy sovereignty – within very tight limits set by the so-called international community itself – and for defending itself.
Another added dimension of EU aggression against Iran is the unspoken understanding of Tehran as the representative of not only itself, but of the entire Resistance Axis. By opening up the door to aggression against Iran, the collective West signals its urgent pursuit to attack the only state and lifeline of regional Resistance collectively – the only forces worldwide materially and meaningfully standing up and responding to “Israel’s” genocidal campaign against the Palestinians.
The isolated campaigns of aggression against Hezbollah in Lebanon or the unified Palestinian Resistance in Gaza are part and parcel of the collective West and “Israel’s” push to eliminate the Resistance and any sense of meaningful Palestinian statehood once and for all. For “Israel,” genocide is the existential route; for the collective West, some powers couched in deceptive language, a means to an end.
The US and “Israel” have not been able to make any progress in their decades-long aim of defanging the region from Resistance. The collective West’s frustration with Netanyahu and the Zionist entity begins and ends with their inability to effectively carry out this mission. Moves like annexation, mass starvation, and moving to settle Gaza do little more than upset the very ‘liberal peace’ and hegemonic international order the West uses to keep the region under control.
European powers and liberal American leaders do not issue routine condemnations of “Israeli” settlement expansion in the West Bank, for example, because they care about the sovereignty of Palestinians, but because it violates the de jure political constraints constructed to de-legitimize Resistance in the Oslo accords model. Germany’s latest condemnation of the entity’s West Bank settler aggression – despite being 2nd to the US in its overt material and diplomatic support of the genocide and outright rejecting any potential recognition of a Palestinian state – echoes this anxiety over the upending of the very PA-run model the collective West is trying to impose upon Gaza as well.
Western powers impose upon the Lebanese and Palestinians an ultimatum that mandates they become subjects of “Israeli” vassal states. As Sheikh Naim Qassem recently said, ‘anyone who today calls for disarming the resistance is essentially calling for handing weapons over to “Israel.”‘ This is a consensus adamantly rejected by Hezbollah – the only force left that comes between Lebanon and normalization – Hamas – the Resistance group with some governing authority in Palestine, the Ansarallah, the Iraqi Islamic Resistance, and Iran – the only sovereign state actor in the region. In Hamas’s latest statement, the resistance group clarified that disarmament of the group itself comes after building a sovereign state, not before; as long as the occupation continues, Resistance is necessitated.
Perhaps “Israel” temporarily claimed a tactical victory post-Syria, but is strategically as blindsided as ever. The European latest move in deceptive diplomacy confirms the successes of the Resistance against. We must honestly evaluate such moves less as vaguely well-intentioned acts of political virtue signaling and more as active campaigns of counterinsurgency designed only to save “Israel” from itself.
Julia Kassem is a writer published in Al-Akhbar, PressTV, Al-Mayadeen English & Arabic and various other outlets
