By Ahmet Gencturk
ATHENS (AA) — As the first year of its genocidal war in Gaza comes to an end, Israel seeks to progress its solution to the long-standing Israeli-Palestinian conflict by expelling or exterminating Palestinians from their native lands, according to a prominent Greek social anthropologist.
Since Oct. 7 last year, the Israeli offensive on the enclave has killed over 41,000 Palestinians and injured nearly 97, 000. Amid the mass expulsions and widespread destruction that has leveled entire neighborhoods roughly 1.9 million are now displaced.
For Fotini Tsibiridou, a faculty member of the University of Macedonia in the city of Thessaloniki, this, along with growing pressure on the occupied West Bank, is evidence of Israel’s future plans for the Palestinian territories.
Discussing the 19th-century origins of the dispute, Tsibiridou emphasized the key role of British colonialism and the legacy of the Holocaust in Israel’s establishment on Palestinian ancestral lands.
This coincided with the “heyday” of imperialism and the birth of many European nation-states, she said, explaining:
“Inspired by these trends, European Jews first constructed their national project of Zionism and then fixed their eyes on Palestine to build their nation-state on.”
- Colonialist violence
After World War II, Europe sought to alleviate its guilt and shame over the Holocaust by offering Palestine to the Jews, who declared the formation of Israel in 1948. Tsibiridou remarked, “So, it is not a conflict. It is occupation.”
According to her, Israel justifies its presence, and the ongoing occupation of Palestine by instilling in its Jewish citizens a sense of superiority over Palestinians, entitling them to treat Palestinians as they choose.
“Israeli people feel the same way the European Western colonial powers felt about their colonies during the 19th century. As such, they have employed similar methods of violence used by Western colonialist powers in Africa, including massacres and forced displacement.” Tsibiridou said.
“So, it is not only violence for (the sake of) violence. It is a specific type of violence: colonialist violence,” she added.
Tsibiridou explained that Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have dehumanized Palestinians to justify Israeli colonialism, describing the war in Gaza in racial, civilizational, or religious terms.
She argued that this mindset reflects a Western European belief in purity, which focuses on dividing people into categories rather than promoting inclusiveness.
“This is the modern Western perspective that started with the development of Western capitalism, applied through colonial, imperial occupation of the lands of the other, and that started with these big discoveries.
“So, like them, Israel thinks it has the right to create categories and material means, including military technologies and knowledge, to apply these visions and perceptions,” she said.
Given this context, Tsibiridou pointed out that Israel, with the full and unconditional support of the US, is not interested in a two-state solution. Instead, it seeks to exterminate as many Palestinians as possible and push the rest into neighboring Arab countries to take over the entire region of Palestine.
Under such conditions, Tsibiridou explained, Hamas emerged as a response from people trying to survive and organize within their communities. “Hamas is a product of this situation. It is a reply to violence, to the colonial power,” she said.
When asked why many Western countries, though at varied magnitude, still support Israel despite the economic and strategic risks, she said the answer goes beyond Western arrogance.
“It is also fear. Supremacy of the Western world, as we know it, is coming to an end,” she said.
“They're afraid they are losing everything in the face of emerging periphery power and Global South.”