Author: Richard Falk
Affiliation: Princeton University
Organization/Publisher: Aljazeera
Date/Place: May 13, 2020/ Doha, Qatar
Type of Literature: Article
Word Count: 1601
Keywords: Israel, US, Annexation.
Brief:
The author illustrates the inevitability of geopolitical games being played as the world goes through socio-economic disabilities amidst the Covid-19 pandemic. The US continues to intensify its sanctions against nations worst hit by the pandemic, Iran and Venezuela. In these painful times when everyone expects empathy, the gangster geopolitics has turned Washington deaf. Another adamant instance is of Israel, which plans to annex parts of the occupied West Bank as promised by Netanyahu. Israel has acted unilaterally, defying all UN norms, and is least bothered to provide any justifications for these disruptive acts of lawlessness. However, Israel’s internal agencies are considering this move as a threat to its security and are thus opposing annexation. At the heart of their concerns lies the fact that this move can damage Israel’s relations with the Arab neighbours and may turn public opinion against them. However, US-Israel relations are moving ahead in line with the gangster geopolitics, showing no respect whatsoever to the UN norms, openly violating international laws and sweeping morality aside. A pattern has been adopted, where Israel proposes and the US seconds the proposition, as though nobody else in the world matters. This annexation politics portrays those actually affected by this as irrelevant to the whole debate. Neither the Palestinians’ resistance nor the movements worldwide are able to make an impact, thereby creating a kind of internal Orientalism. Such defiant approaches to politics and unilateralism is transforming the nature of geopolitics for the worse.
By: Usman Khan Pathan, CIGA Research Associate
