A serviceman of the US Air Force named Aaron Bushnell epitomises the ultimate protest against the Biden administration's role in the Israeli war in the Palestinian enclave Gaza. The 25-year airman did not endorse the US support for the genocide Israel has been committing over the past four months. The sensitive young man knew he could not legally protest US government's questionable and at times blatant role and maintenance of double standard in the case of indiscriminate and insane but systematic mass murder of innocent Palestinians. So, he set himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington on Sunday, February 25 last.
His self-immolation is unlikely to make Biden see through the smokescreen of politics the US-led West has spun over the Palestinian people's right to self-determination on their own soil. In the name of protection of the Jews in the artificially created state of Israel out of Palestinian land, Britain, the US and their cohorts have denied the Palestinian people to live in peace in a truncated but independent state of their own. The conspiratorial legacy now extends up to 75 years.
On February 20 last, the US vetoed for the third time a UN Security Council draft resolution calling for immediate ceasefire in Israel's war on Gaza. This might have been highly frustrating for the young soldier who grew up in a religious family and was once associated with a religious sect, both of which taught him to be compassionate and support the weak and needy. Disillusioned, the senior airman opted for the self-immolation perhaps in the tenuous hope that his ultimate sacrifice would make an appeal to the conscience of policymakers in Washington. No, his sacrifice did not prove to be a mover and shaker either to the US administration or to the US citizens in general now more interested in the prospect of a Trump-Biden election contest.
Although the UN General Assembly recognised the Palestinian people's right to self-rule as early as November 22, 1974 and accepted Palestine as an observer state in November 2012, it is yet to be recognised as an independent and sovereign state. Following the Oslo Accords after the six-day Arab-Israel war in 1967, the PLO officially proclaimed the State of Palestine on November 15, 1988 demanding sovereignty over the internationally recognised Palestinian territories. As many as 78 countries recognised Palestine soon. By June 2, 2023, a total of 139 of the 193 member states have recognised the State of Palestine. Incidentally, Israel enjoys recognition from 165 members. What is intriguing is that the US, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Australia, Japan, South Korea and Mexico have not so far recognised Palestine. Not only has the US refused to recognise Palestine but also intimidated and threatened to withdraw its contribution to UN agencies if they admitted the observer state as a member. The American staunch opposition to Palestinian independence could not be more blatant when the US threatened withdrawal of funding from the World Health Organisation (WHO) to which the PLO applied for membership in April, 1989. The US threat to other UN member states making use of aid and assistance as a weapon also refrained countries in the Third World from recognising the State of Palestine. Canada, Germany and Italy toed the US line openly.
Against this perspective, the exercise of veto by the Biden administration is a continuation of the US hard-line policy against the Palestinians. This is why Israel can carry out the genocide with impunity and no wonder a few brave African leaders have compared it with Hitler's devilish holocaust. True, Hamas is to blame for triggering the mutual massacres of civilians on both sides. But had Ariel Sharon's ---the first Israeli premier to have proclaimed the possibility of a two-state solution--- policy been advanced as the earlier legwork done by Yitzhak Rabin, Menachem Begin and later on by Shimon Peres without Netanyahu's return to power, the militant group would not even emerge as a representative force of Palestine.
Now the world has become a witness to one of the modern civilisation's worst crimes against humanity. It is unbelievable that the UN can be rendered so ineffectual in the face of humanitarian crises such as in Gaza and Ukraine where the instigator behind the scene was none other than Joe Biden. Since October 7 last, as many as 100,000 Palestinians have been killed, wounded or reported missing. Of the nearly 30,000 killed so far, one in each 100, about 12,000 are children.
Now Biden is playing his last trick by salvaging a temporary ceasefire before the holy month of Ramadan. In fact, he stands by Israel to use this occasion for release of Israelis taken as hostages and at the same time giving an impression of doing favour to the Palestinian Muslims for observing siam and Eid-ul-Fitr. What is missing is a sincere effort to stop the horrific genocide and bring the two sides to the negotiating table for a permanent solution to the 75-year old protracted conflict in the Middle East. Let the basis of the two-state solution be the Oslo Accords under which an internationally accepted land demarcation was made.
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