Since the Jewish occupation of the West Bank in 1967, two projects, or plans, have been vying for control of the issue of Palestine. The first is the American plan to establish a Palestinian state within the framework of international law and its institutions. The second is the Jewish project, which aims to seize the lands of the West Bank.

While the first plan has languished for decades, existing only in the realm of media, political initiatives, and conference halls, the second, Jewish, plan is being implemented on the ground daily and relentlessly. The Jewish seek to seize the West Bank and alter its status from occupied territory under international law to an integral part of their territory. Their goal is to create a “Jewish state” from the river to the sea, excluding all others and preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state. This has become a point of agreement among the Jewish political forces and their public.

To achieve this, the Jewish entity has sought from an early stage to change the geography and demography in the West Bank, where it has sought to create a parallel presence to the presence of the people of Palestine through settlement, that is, by creating cities and population centers, and a counter-people consisting of the total number of settlers who are striving hard to increase their numbers and strengthen their presence.

On the other hand, because the people of Palestine are the main obstacle to the Jewish entity project, with their presence, their steadfastness and resilience on their land, and because they constitute a demographic dilemma for it in terms of numbers, and because it wants the land without its people, its policies have also focused, from another angle, in addition to strengthening settlement, on trying to uproot the people of Palestine from their homes by making their lives extremely difficult and pushing them towards emigration, through restrictions, siege, suffocation, killing, insecurity, abuse, and the demolition of homes and camps. Although displacement is the latent element that resides in all its plans historically, the dose, pace, and crime have increased in the recent period, which is represented in the recent “Cabinet” decisions regarding the lands.

As for the Palestinian Authority, which clung to the fringes of the American project for a Palestinian state, which it marketed as its “national project,” and through which it sold illusions to the people, the Jewish entity never saw it, nor the Oslo Accords that gave birth to it, as anything but a vassal entity. The Jewish entity dealt with the Palestinian Authority (PA) only on this basis, as it exploited it and it exploited itself to preserve its security as a primary function. The entity also exploited the authority to bear the burden of the people of Palestine on its behalf as an occupation, and it placed it as a buffer and a tool for containment on the one hand, and as a conduit for its pressures on the people on the other hand. This is so that the authority’s laws, procedures, and treacherous practices, which reached the point of killing its own people, were only from this perspective, until it became a burden under which the people of Palestine groan, just as the burdens of the occupation are, which seeks to displace them. This is all whilst the PA sees its existence and survival as linked to that function, and perhaps this is what explains its continuation in that dirty function, in a state of madness, despite what the Jews practice against the people of Palestine daily, and even despite what they have done over thirty years of changes on the ground, under its cover.

In this changing global climate, nothing in international relations is constant. Amid the disintegration of the international order, the disregard for, and even violation of, so-called international law, and America’s blatant disregard for international norms, replaced by the logic of force and deals, the Palestinian State project, while not entirely abandoned, is no longer certain, at least in terms of its nature, character, geography, and even its location. This is especially true given the actions taken by the Jewish entity to undermine its viability and its continued treatment of the Palestinian state, which further diminishes and distorts its authority, reducing it to a mere, insignificant role.

Perhaps part of the reason the Western project to liquidate the issue of Palestine, embodied in the Palestinian mini-state, remains on the table, is to protect the Jewish entity from itself. While the Jewish entity insists, with utter arrogance and insolence, on swallowing up all the land and erasing what is known as the issue of Palestine, this is not an easy goal, and it may well be its undoing.

However, there is no doubt that difficult days lie ahead for Palestine and its people, as long as their cause remains in the clutches of their enemies, and as long as the Ummah’s project for Palestine has not taken its course amidst the ruins of the projects of the Jewish entity and the United States.

This Ummah’s project is based on the complete liberation of Palestine and the removal of this illegitimate Jewish entity, for this is the solution that Islam requires and that its Shariah rulings impose upon the Ummah, leaving it with no other option. Palestine is the cause of the entire Ummah, not just the cause of the Palestinians alone.

However, while the project of the Ummah exists theoretically, and is inherent in its people, it remains practically absent due to the lack of an executive body to implement and act upon it —namely, the Islamic State — which would transform this project into reality. In truth, the establishment of the Khilafah (Caliphate) is the Ummah’s greatest project, to which all solutions and issues are linked, including the liberation of Palestine. Although the liberation of Palestine is possible given the Ummah’s inherent strength, recent events in Palestine have revealed the Ummah’s state of helplessness, paralysis, and hopelessness under these conspiring regimes, that are agents for colonialism. These events have also underscored the Ummah’s need for this greater project, the Islamic State, which would liberate the Ummah from the grip of colonialism, liberate its latent energies, its shackled armies, its usurped will. Without this, the Ummah will remain in a state of misery and helplessness, living in one calamity and awaiting the next!

Recent events have also confirmed that this solution, which is the complete liberation of Palestine and the removal of the usurping Jewish entity, is much closer than the Western projects that have been proposed for decades, as the two-state solution, without any benefit or even implementation, due to the weakness, fragility, and falseness of this entity’s power. What is closer than both of these is the demise of the agent rulers and the tyrannical regimes, if the Ummah and its armed forces move in the right way towards removing them. These people have no roots in the Ummah, their thrones have become empty, and their seats are about to fall. Contrary to what the oppressors always portray, the Ummah must always remember the words of Allah (swt), Who said,

[أَلَا إِنَّ نَصْرَ اللَّهِ قَرِيبٌ]

“Indeed, the victory of Allah is near” [TMQ Surah Al-Baqarah: 214].