Reflections on the geopolitics of Palestine must, of course, come from the perception of geomorphology of this space.
First, we have a coastal lowland on which historically wealthy cities located, serving east-west trade specified as ancient Gaza, Ashkelon, or Ashdod. This is besides actual of Israel, which is north of present - day Israel and more mountainous Lebanon, where centres specified as Tyr, Byblos, and Sidon have historically functioned. In today's Israel, coastal plains are the center of the cosmopolitan and liberal population to the top degree identified with Western civilization. It is simply a country of traders, bankers, civilian bureaucracy and media, extending from Tel Aviv north to Haifa.
Eastern perimeter
In the east there is simply a advanced mountain range, then a deep Jordan Row with Tiberias Lake and Dead Sea. On the foothills is the West Bank of Jordan and the Palestinian “state” structures there. These regions, with the mountain ranges of Lebanon and Antiliban and the deep tectonic valley of Bekaa in the north, were historically centres of the civilization of warriors-farmers. During the Biblical period the Kingdom of Israel under the Omrid and Jehu dynasty occupied the site of the present - day West Bank. At present, military structures and armed settlers trying to balance the pressures of Syria and Palestinians hold the advantage between Jerusalem and the Jordan River.
To the east of the Jordan ditch there are local Arabic strains, but besides weak to endanger the forces controlling Judea and Samaria (south Israel and the West Bank). About 30-50 km east of Jordan begins the desert, a geopolitical buffer between Palestine and the Mesopotamus Lowland and its centres of force. The east bank of Jordan, after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, was separated by the English in the name of Transjordania by a separate protectorate with the capital in Amman, where an allied with the English were set up and exiled from Hijaz by the Saudi Hashemite dynasty. After the withdrawal of the English from the region in 1948, this creation was renamed Jordan. The Hashemites besides received from the English on the another side of the desert the Kingdom of Iraq in 1921, but lost it in 1958 to Republican military troupers.
The Hashemite dynasty, married to representatives of English and nipponese military spheres, by many in Jordan, including Palestinians, is considered a abroad body. Since 1916, Hashemites have positioned themselves as an object of the protectorate of England, while the judaic state sees themselves as an ally balancing the Palestinian threat. Formally ruling the West Bank from 1948 to 1967, they did not lead to the creation of a Palestinian state. In September 1970, they fought a bloody war with the Palestine Liberation Organization, with the aid of London forcing the Palestinian national movement to decision their seats to Lebanon.
The West Bank, which now houses structures controlled by the Palestinian administration based in Ramallah, is so geo-economically sealed between hostile Israel and Jordan, being able to operate only on the basis of a more dynamic economy of neighbouring Israel. As in the hilly ancient kingdom of Judah in constant conflict with the coastal states-towns of Philistia, today's “Palestinian State” besides depends economically on access to ports located in the coastal lowlands of Israel.
On the another hand, the threat to the Palestinian centre of force is caused by external force centres, from Mesopotamia and the Iranian Upland, crossing the Syrian Desert. From 746 to 609 B.C., Palestine was under the regulation of Mesopotam Assyrians. From 609 to 539 B.C.E., the Babylonians besides succeeded them. The Babylonians then took the place of the Iranian Persians (550-330 B.C.E.), who yet surrendered to Alexander the large until 330 B.C.E. It was besides the Persian ruler of Kambyzes II in 525 B.C.E. that conquered Egypt by reaching it through Sinai, in 340 B.C. his feat was repeated by Artaxerxes III.
The succession of the Hegemons besides marks the rhythm of successive ancient Israeli states: the demolition of the kingdom of Judah by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E. and the deportation of the Jews to Babylon by the rulers of Nebuchadnezzar II there, and then the edict of the Persian ruler Cyrus II beginning the way for the Jews to “return to Zion”, which marks the beginning of the Persian protectorate of Palestine—changed to Macedonian after the conquests of Alexander the large in the 4th century B.C.E. and then to Roman in the 1st century B.C.E.
Southern perimetre
Subsequent historical incarnations of the judaic state in Palestine in the south usually ruled the coast between Tel Aviv and Sinai and the full or part of the Negev Desert. Thus, in the southwest, the Sinai Desert provides an effective geopolitical buffer for Palestine. Both Palestinian and Egyptian forces can transcend it with a chance to replenish resources on the another side. In the 17th century B.C.E., Egypt was conquered by those from Palestine through the Sinai Hyxos Desert, yet defeated by native forces about a century later erstwhile Egypt extended its reign to the Levantine coast.
In 640 the attackers from Damascus Arabs reached Al-Fustat and 2 years later besides to Alexandria. In 1174, the founder of the Ajibid dynasty later ruled Egypt until 1250, Sultan Saladin was taken over by Damascus and Homs. Another specified expansion was only undertaken from Egypt in the first half of the 19th century by the Ottoman Empire. Muhammad Ali Pasha.
Sinai can so be the way of expansion, but the costs of keeping the military garrisons on the peninsula are high, so Israel has never ruled Sinai for long, and Egypt's military presence is inactive symbolic and the region is simply a kind of political "black hole", serving as a hiding place for smugglers, bandits and militants. The invasion by Sinai is possible in the case of political-military decomposition of the opponent on the another side of the desert ("second transitional period" in Egypt in the 17th century BC, the defeat of the Hyxos in the fight against the 18th dynasty in the 16th century BC, the decomposition of the Ottoman Empire after the Revolution in Greece in the 1820s) or the support of the attacking entity by an external power (UK and France supporting Israel in 1956 and the USSR supporting Egypt in 1973).
It is besides worth mentioning the ideological threat to the independency of the Palestinian force center flowing from the Egyptian force centre. In the period of the monarchy until 1952, Egypt manifested the desire to destruct the then formed Israeli state. As a consequence of the 1948 war, the Gaza Strip became under his military administration, which he controlled until 1967. Prior to the 1952 military coup, Cairo saw the Gaza Strip and Negev Desert as a natural extension of the Sinai Peninsula, not the national territory of the Palestinian state.
After the overturn Gamal Abdel Naser Egypt adopted the ideology of arabian nationalism in 1952. His highest accomplishment was the United arabian Republic of the United arabian Republic of 1958-1961 encompassing Egypt and Syria, remaining in a nominal confederation with Northern Yemen. Gamal Abdel Naser opposed arabian nationalism and socialism to judaic Zionism, the primary strategical goal of destroying Israel and including Palestinian lands in the United arabian Republic, which would let the arabian state to gain territorial continuity. Cairo's attitude towards Palestinian nationalism was so rather ambivalent.
Let us besides add that in the second half of the 20th century the father of Palestinian nationalism Jaser Arafat and founded by him al-Fatah (1958) and the Palestine Liberation Organization (1968) were seen by conservative arabian monarchs as Naser's tool and subversive force, threatening monarchy regimes. Hence the bloody Palestinian-Hashyid War in Jordan in September 1970. There is so tension not only between Palestinian nationalism and Syrian nationalism and Panarabian nationalism radiating from Egypt until 1970, but besides between Palestinian aspirations and the safety policy of another arabian states.
In the southeast, the Arabian and Nefud deserts are an effective geopolitical barrier against the Hijaz tribes' invasions, which are besides fewer and weak to endanger Palestinian central forces. Success can only be achieved in conditions of demographic explosion, as in the 7th century, erstwhile the muslim Arabs began their expansion by gaining and then making their capital Damascus.
North perimetre
To the northeast of the Palestinian Force Center is simply a Syrian force centre with the capital in Damascus. It has a large population, but is cut off from the sea, which makes it poor. From the east it is covered by a desert reaching to Euphrates. To the north of the Syrian force centre is the mountainous Anatolia, where expansion from the south is highly difficult, but from where external forces centres exert force on the region. In the absence of a threat from the north and interior stabilisation, the Syrian force centre is attempting to gain access to the sea, subjugating the cities of the northern Levant with which it is engaged intensively. This was the case, for example, between 1976 and 2005, erstwhile Syria became active in the Lebanese civilian war, invading the country and then controlling more of it.
The ports of the northern Levant themselves do not constitute a crucial land force. Historically there was Phoenicia with cities specified as Dor, Accra, Tyr, Serepta, Sidon, Berytos, Byblos, Tripoli, or Arwad. For most of their existence, they did not form a single state organism, competing with each another and subject to dependence on external centres of force. In the period from the 12th century B.C.E., the Phoenicians replaced the Cretans as the main maritime and commercial power in the east Mediterranean. In the mediate of the 9th century B.C.E., however, most Phoenic cities became dependent on the expanding land power of Assyria.
The mountain scope of Lebanon in the northern part of the Levant reaches almost sea coasts and is only seldom crossed by fertile valleys. For this reason, the centres of strength in this part of the Levant deficiency geopolitical background. Phoenicia was most likely not a densely populated country and functioned primarily as a naval power and as a trade broker between Mesopotamia, Egypt and the western part of the Mediterranean basin, from where, among others, the silver sought at the time was imported.
The Palestinian force centre is so not importantly threatened by the current Lebanese force centre. Modern Lebanon was separated from the Ottoman state of Syria by the French after defeating the Ottoman Empire in planet War I. The basis for his separation was the predominance of Maronite Christians there, with whom France was allied during the civilian war in the Ottoman Empire in the 1860s.
Lebanon took its name from its topographical characteristics, that is, from the mountainous mountainous Lebanon. However, he lacks an organic geographical or cultural distinction, as the only discrimination here was historically the dominance of the allies of France. The strategical buffer for present-day Israel is the River of Litania, the area south of which Israel sought to control straight or through satellite local forces from 1978 to 2000, or in any event to purify the opposing forces as during the July War of 2006.
Northeastern perimeter
In the north-east direction, account should be taken of both the geostrategic characteristics and the historical threat to the Palestinian Force Centre from the Syrian Force Centre. The Syrian force centre may attack Palestine through a 40-kilometre corridor between Mount Hermon in the Antiliban and Lake Tiberias band. In order to get to the coastal plain of Palestine, Syrian forces must defeat the Golan Hills and the mountainous region of Galilee, keeping supply lines passing through those that are a good support for the partisan land. An alternate road of attack leads south of Lake Tiberias, but besides requires the maintenance of stretched supply lines.
The strategical point in this region has been the Neolithic hill of Megiddo, besides known under the Greek name Armageddon. In ancient times there were the Canaanic centers and the capital of the Kingdom of Israel, but in modern times there were Israeli kibbutz of that name. The hill is located at the northern end of the Carmel Valley of Wadi Ara, rising above the Jezreel Valley, besides known as Armageddon Valley or Megiddo Valley. The forces coming from the north east through Golan Hill would gotta collide here with local forces operating on the basis of short supply lines, while having themselves stretched and exposed to mountain partisan supply lines.
The historical characteristics of the Syrian threat must appear from the division of the arabian possessions of the Ottoman Empire between England and France under the Sices-Picot Treaty of May 1916. The territories of the erstwhile Ottoman state of Syria, covering the territories of present-day Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine, were divided along a line moving from Mount Hermon to the Mediterranean coast into the northern part which fell to France and the confederate part which fell to England. As a result, many Arabs who have adopted Syrian national identity deny the distinctness of Palestine, Lebanon and Jordan, considering their inhabitants as Syrians. The Syrian arabian Republic intervention in Lebanon in 1976 was conducted, among others, under the slogans of the reconstruction of "Great Syria" and was aimed at the Palestinian national movement.
Pressure vectors from outside the region
The threat to the Palestinian force center from the north has its source, not so much in local forces as in external forces. The Seljuks captured Palestine on the Byzantines after the conflict of Manzikert in 1071, advancing along the Levantine coast from the north and capturing Jerusalem in 1073. besides the first 2 crusades reached the coastal plains of Palestine in the ages XI and XII respectively, heading from Antioch, through Tripoli, south along the Levantine coast. The Mameluks who then ruled Palestine defeated the troops Timura Chromego Approaching from 1399 to 1401 from Aleppo south to Damascus and then returning to Baghdad. The Ottoman Sultan Selim I ended Mameluk's regulation over Egypt, defeating their troops in 1516, moving south along the Levantine coast.
In all these cases, Palestine was invaded from the north not by force centres from the northern part of the Levant, but by centres outside the region, capable of concentrating an unattainable force for the deprived geopolitical facilities, as if ‘pressed’ to coastal mountain ranges, cities north of the river Litania.
For Western strength centers seeking to control the Mediterranean basin, The Levant is crucial as a land bridge, allowing – in the case of large quantities of troops and large cargo loads – transport cheaper, more technically and free of threat by attacks at sea. The Western power, aspiring to control both the northern and confederate Mediterranean coasts, but not controlling the Levant, would greatly increase the cost of interior transport in the empire. This should be explained to the interest of Rome, Byzantium, Venice and Crusaders, England and France by the Levantine coast – after crossing Hellespont the road to the south was open to them all.
The competition for western force centers, erstwhile they do not control the Levant, is the force centres from the north (Greek-Antolian force centre, Eurasian force centre) and from the east (Mesopotamus force centre, Persian force centre). They aim to safe their confederate flank by controlling the Levantine ports. The stableness of any empire increasing between Hindukush and the Mediterranean depends on the safety of the Levantine ports against the attack by Western force centers.
The east power can then usage transport routes from the mediate East to the Mediterranean; the last example is developed after overthrow. Saddam's 2003 Iranian transport corridor task from Western Iran centres, via Iraqi Kurdistan, to Syria and Lebanon ports – possibly the post-2011 war in Syria and the abrupt expansion of the muslim State in Iraq in 2014 were to paralyze these projects.
On a akin rule of northern power, specified as Macedonia, Byzantium, the Ottoman Empire, Russia, they tried (or effort to modernly) to master the Levantine coast to safe their western flank against expansion to the east; the northern force center over the Bosphorus can freely decision forces engaged to the Indus Valley, but leaving itself outside its control Levant, exposes itself to attacks by western force centers.
Israeli Tellurocracy
The location of the Palestinian centre of force complicates its Tellurocratic nature. Sticked to mountains reaching almost the coast of the town of northern Levant, they produce a thalassocrat civilization – based on trade and directed towards the sea. With more extended geopolitical facilities in a wider coastal plain than in the north and not so steep hills, Palestinian centres make a tellurocratic civilization.
Not by accident, modern Israel was a socialist state in its beginnings, and to this day, a crucial socialist sector in the form of any kibbutzes has been preserved in its economy. The economy of modern Israel is based on agriculture and modern technologies, i.e. it meets the characteristics of a land-based force centre, alternatively directed "on the inside". This is simply a completely different kind of civilization than the judaic diaspora, based on capitalism and commerce alternatively than on manufacturing and not bound to the ground. The presence of a colony of armed settlers in Samaria is the quintessential of a "military" terrestrial civilization. The formal declaration of designation by Israel of Inland Jerusalem in 1980 and not the coastal Tel Aviv capital of the state is symbolic. Unlike the cities of North-Levantine, the Palestinian centre of force has never been a naval power, nor is modern Israel.
Due to its tellurocratic nature, modern Israel is poorly connected with the outside planet and is limitedly "needed" to planet powers; as in the late 1940s. The wider and more crucial arabian countries are more important. Israel tries to rise its importance through the actions of the judaic diaspora and by developing the start-ups sector in the area of artificial intelligence and cybersecurity, which is to make it an essential component of the global capitalist system. The initiative, however, belongs to the US and China, which act as investors towards Israel. Israel's importance to its current protector, the United States of America, is based on being an ally of the United States against Iran.. However, this convergence of interests is not structural, it is excident, and does not warrant the permanent protectorate of Washington over the judaic state (this protectorate dates not earlier than 1967, before the protector of Zionism was England, the statehood of Israel and successively the USSR and France).
Two Palestinian countries
Palestinians live in 2 separate geopolitical entities. The West Bank is simply a mediocre tellurocratic country located in semi-desert hills, which can only function on the basis of a more dynamic economy of the judaic state. The Palestinian territory there is constantly enclosed and shredded into isolated enclaves, proclaimed in January 2013. However, the State of Palestine can in rule be considered a Palestinian national state – although in practice its authorities behave alternatively like judenrats in judaic ghettos during planet War II.
The Gaza Strip, on the another hand, is more like a thalassocrat state-town than a national state. Unlike the past of the Levantine cities, however, it is not a cosmopolitan center of commerce, banking and shipping, as it is subjected to hostile isolation of the co-operators against the Palestinians of Israel and Egypt – the thalassoccratic nature of the Gaza Strip has been "orbited" by its hostile neighbours.
The Gaza Strip has 365 sq mi and is inhabited by 2.4 million people. West Bank, inhabited by 3 million people, counts 5,655 km?. The population density in the Gaza Strip is 6.5 1000 people per square mile, while the West Bank is 466 people per square mile. The Gaza Strip is 41 km wide from the south to the north and from 6 km to 12 km wide from the east to the west. The dimension of the border with Egypt is 11 km.
The figures mentioned above clearly illustrate that the Gaza Strip is incapable to function in its current form in social, economical and civilisational terms. In fresh decades, its inhabitants have vegetated through the humanitarian aid of the European Union and the UN agendas. The situation could change the beginning up of Israel's labour marketplace or the emigration of a large part of the Gaza population. In the event of the creation of a genuine independent Palestinian state including the Gaza Strip, it would be expected that the exodus of at least a fewer 100 1000 people in the Gaza Strip in the West Bank would not be able to assimilate specified a number of migrants.
Both parts of the current "Palestinian State" (Gaza and the West Bank) so have a completely different geopolitical characterisation and it is hard for their inhabitants to talk of a coherent "nation". The current “Palestine State” is more like Pakistan in the era of Bangladesh's secession in 1971. Parts of Pakistan over Indus and at the mouth of the Ganges were divided into a stronger and hostile Pakistan state of India. Similarly, both parts of the Palestinian State are divided into a hostile and stronger Israeli state. The actual breakdown of the "Palestine State" in 2007 was akin to that of Pakistan in 1971.
The Palestinian National Authorities in the West Bank are engaged in a policy of collaboration with the Israeli occupier, due to the fact that the geopolitical characterization of the West Bank makes the situation thus created very annoying, but nevertheless giving the Palestinians a field for a minimum of existence. This is not the case in the Gaza Strip, which has been ruling since 2007. Hamas advocates the liquidation of the Israeli state and the removal of judaic colonists for 75 years inhabiting Palestine, due to the fact that for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, it is simply a condition for their own functioning to grow their surviving space. This geopolitical fact seems to be misunderstood by the current Israeli authorities, as the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanjahu announced on 3 November the expulsion of 18,000 seasonal workers from the Gaza Strip from the judaic state and the complete break of any relations with the Palestinian exclave.
The complete separation of the judaic state and the Palestinian territories makes a common conflict a "zero-one" existential conflict—especially for residents of the "open-air zone", a characteristic adopted for the Gaza Strip by any global organisations) for whom further isolation from the remainder of the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel present means "suffocation" and gradual death as a people—like the ghetto residents established during planet War II for the Jews by Germany and reserves established for the American indigenous population.
There seems besides to be an indication of the Israeli inspiration of the Hamas uprising, to which the Israeli organization admitted openly. Similarly, India inspired the separatist movement in East Pakistan and supported Mukti Bahini. However, it should not be hasty to conclude that Hamas' further actions, including its current actions, are a "operation of the false flag", as evidenced by his war with the judaic state from the turn of 2008/2009 and the seven-week war of 2014 as well as the protests of 2018-2019.
The surviving conditions and the deficiency of developmental prospects in the "Hospital Prison" of the Gaza Strip and the indifference of the Palestinian National Authorities in the West Bank (which cooperate closely with Israel already at the level of safety cameras) force extremist revisionist forces to appear in the Gaza Strip. Thus, if Hamas had not appeared, there would most likely have been another “Hamas” group.
We do not measure this fact from a moral point of view, but simply state its existence: in the current situation, the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians from Gaza is an existential conflict. This must be explained by Hamas’ killing of 1,500 Jews in the areas covered by the 7 October rally and Israel's failure to account for humanitarian costs among the Palestinians during the later offensive as well as by the authorities in Tel Aviv encouraging the people of Gaza to leave. Both sides aim clearly for ethnocyd or even for the genome of their opponent.
Perspectives
The exit for Palestinians from the geopolitical wedge in which they found themselves would be to increase the external Eurasian or Central Asian power, which would support an Egyptian or Syrian centre of force from outside, oriented to the pro-Palestinian course. It was close to that between June 2012 and July 2013, erstwhile the president of Egypt was from the Muslim Brotherhood Muhammad Mursi. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood supported Hamas from the Gaza Strip and itself was supported by Turkey's leader Recepa Tayyipa Erdooana. However, M. Mursi was yet overthrown by the coup d'état enjoying the support of the West Gen. Abd al-Fattha as-Sisi, which appears to have determined the negative destiny of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in the foreseeable future.
Israel's prospects for the possible growth of a fresh regional or global hegemon can be illustrated symbolically by mention to its ancient history: for Israel it is possible to model the “David” (full sovereignty and regional dominance), the “Babylon” model (disposal of the state and exile or execution of Jews), and the “Persian” model ("satrapia", or protectorate within the external empire). The "David" model is implemented under Pax Americana, but, as mentioned above, the US protection over Israel has a situational alternatively than structural basis. In the event of Pax American's decay or collapse, the implementation of the “Babylon” or “Persian” model depends on the conceptual viability and diplomatic efficiency of Jews.
As we have illustrated above, crucial risks to the Palestinian centre of force may come from outside the region, so their neutralisation exceeds Israel's strategical capabilities, depending on factors specified as diplomacy and ideology. Under the Persian model (e.g. under the hypothetical Pax Sinica) Israel could no longer be an ethnocracy as it is today. In the face of the judaic colonization of the West Bank and the economical dependence of the territories granted to the Palestinians on the economy of Israel, a two-state solution is unrealistic. So possibly the solution would be an internally integrated Palestinian "semitic" political-territorial unit with a mixed arabian population and an unsionisticly-oriented judaic population.
Ronald Lasecki
photo of the West Bank (Betlejem), public domain
Think Poland, No. 47-48 (19-26.11.2023)
