By Haidar Eid – Gaza

US president Donald Trump has taken a decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Forget about international law, UN and Security Council Resolutions, Arab and Muslim reaction! The President of the United of Sates of America does not give a damn. If the world doesn’t like it, it can bang its head against the “wailing wall!”

What is Jerusalem?

Jerusalem is Zarnouqa, the village from which my family together with thousands of villagers, were ethnically cleansed in 1948 in order to make room for Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe, a pure Jewish state, similar to Apartheid South Africa and other settler-colonies, one that does not grant you citizenship unless you are born to a Jewish mother.

Alas, my mother was not Jewish and, therefore, I am expected to live in a refugee camp, accept my low status, and never think of praying in one of the holiest sites of Islam, Christianity and Judaism.

President Trump, with all sincerity, believes that we are biologically born different and, therefore, some of us have no right to exist and survive on this piece of land unless we choose to be slaves and be grateful for that!

What should we do?

First, we must not seek the consent of Zionist Israelis. More than 23 years of negotiations, ala Oslo, have led us nowhere. Rather, these so-called negotiations have prolonged the occupation and given Israel every opportunity to make the establishment of even a semi-Bantustan an impossibility.

In fact, we want to work hard to isolate Israel through resistance and the demand that the international community implement the resolutions of international legitimacy, and force Israel to respond to these international decisions. Therefore, we must not take into account the demands of the colonizer because, unfortunately, they are even more than the white demands of South Africa during the Apartheid era. They ultimately will lead to the total elimination of the indigenous population in Palestine. This is a systematic ethnic cleansing process that has been taking place since 1948.

So, we must work on making this moment our South African turning point by intensifying #BDS. We must translate all this anger worldwide into a plan of action that takes Boycott, Divestment and sanctions as its leading torch towards peace with justice in Palestine.

It is time to get rid of the racist two state solution, renounce the Oslo Accords, and come up with a democratic alternative, one that does not deny the humanity of the inhabitants of historic Palestine regardless of their religion, race and gender!

President Trump is not expected to agree with those democratic ideals, but who cares? Weren’t those the ideals for which Nelson Mandela was prepared to die, as he made it absolutely clear at the Rivonia trial? We have 12 million Mandelas in Palestine.

– Dr. Haidar Eid is an Associate Professor at the Department of English Literature, Al-Aqsa University, Gaza Strip, Palestine. He is also a one-state activist and a member of Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI). He contributed this article this article to PalestineChronicle.com.