Demilitarisation, genocide and the two-state paradigm

The call to demilitarise Gaza is not new. The absurdity of demilitarising an anti-colonial resistance struggle in the face of hi-tech, imperialist supported Israeli genocide “under the supervision of independent monitors”, as the US plan states, only proves who defines the narratives and who controls the ongoing annihilation of Palestinians from their land. Israel, alongside all the countries that have expressed their approval to purportedly stop genocide, have only affirmed their support for genocide.

While calling for demilitarising Gaza to render the Palestinians people completely helpless against Israel’s latest military technology, impunity for Israel’s genocide is sealed. Demilitarisation will justify Israel’s security narrative. And in the context of all other coercive measures included in US President Donald Trump’s plan for Gaza, demilitarisation also justifies the absence of a Palestinian state, which is already enshrined in the defunct two-state paradigm.

No wonder so many Western and Arab leaders were quick to endorse a plan that builds upon the previous oppressive measures and plans that culminated in the current, ongoing genocide. Trump’s 20-point plan does not conceal the intention to separate Gaza from the Palestinian people, and demilitarisation will be a key component to this narrative if it is implemented.

Israel’s genocide in Gaza is proof that anti-colonial resistance is legitimate. Yet world leaders speak of negotiations – the type that allows the West to direct its colonial legacy against the Palestinian people. Only Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro challenged the intentional international apathy when he spoke of an international army “of nations that do not accept genocide” to liberate Palestine. In the face of calls for demilitarising Gaza, Petro called for internationalist resistance against colonialism and genocide. And the unlikelihood of this happening only highlights all that is wrong with the Western concepts of justice and human rights, which have been rendered null.

When countries can recognise a non-existent Palestinian state and support the demilitarisation of Gaza while arming Israel to continue its genocide, it is logical that Palestinians need to defend themselves against this latest phase of colonial violence by all means possible. The West, however, as Trump’s plan clearly shows, wants to entrench the discrepancies between the coloniser and the colonised, where only the former is worthy of, and therefore right, to possess and use weapons. The Palestinian people, on the other hand, are mere recipients of humanitarian aid, fodder for the humanitarian paradigm. The Western concept of Palestine does not even envisage autonomous food security for Palestinians who had an abundant land before Zionist colonisation, because the satisfaction of basic necessities among the colonised allows more space for resistance against colonialism to grow.

The two-state paradigm supports demilitarisation. Demilitarisation ensures there is no emergence of a Palestinian state. Currently, demilitarisation also ensures that Palestinians will have no protection against genocide. The world’s insistence on rendering the Palestinian people even more vulnerable against Israeli colonialism melts the veneer shielding Israel’s international backers. Among all backers of the two-state paradigm, who has spoken out against demilitarisation if only to ensure the establishment of a Palestinian state?

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20251002-demilitarisation-genocide-and-the-two-state-paradigm/