Israel Took Advantage of 9/11 to Wage War on Palestine
Israel’s leaders exploited the US reaction to 9/11 to demonize Palestinian resistance to the occupation. They have used the discourse of “counterterrorism” to entrench a system of apartheid, while exporting repressive methods and weapons around the world.
A member of the Israeli Defense Forces points his gun at a Palestinian protester in the occupied West Bank, 2021. (Jaafar Ashtiyeh / AFP via Getty Images)
The impact of the US-led “war on terror” on the Palestinian people, their movement, and its leadership has been far-reaching and devastating. The aftermath of the 9/11 attacks provided Israel with ideal political and diplomatic conditions to achieve long-standing goals.
The ensuing developments resulted in no fewer than ten thousand Palestinian deaths, the imprisonment or assassination of hundreds of key leaders, and the fundamental restructuring of Israeli-Palestinian relations on geostrategic, political, and institutional levels — all to Israel’s advantage.
Israel also greatly expanded its construction of Jewish-only colonies throughout the 1967 Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), erected a seven-hundred kilometer “separation wall” both around and within the West Bank, and imposed a de facto apartheid regime across historical Palestine that incorporates the five million Palestinians of the OPT and the two million Palestinian citizens of Israel.
This article is for subscribers only. Please login or subscribe to access our full archives and beautiful print and digital magazine starting at just $3 a month.