The war in Gaza since October 2023, which has killed more than 73,000 Palestinians according to the base article, has marked what the piece calls a historic turning point in the Palestinian struggle and in the nature of the conflict with Israel. The article argues that what unfolded went far beyond another war or another episode of Israeli violence and exposed what it calls the true nature of the Zionist project as a settler-colonial enterprise built upon ethnic cleansing, apartheid and the systematic erasure of the indigenous Palestinian people.
The Oslo Framework's Failure
The piece says the Oslo process tried to transform the Palestinian question from a struggle for national liberation into a project for managing occupation, and says its failure is beyond dispute. Israeli settlements expanded dramatically, Palestinian land steadily diminished, and the Palestinian Authority evolved into a fragmented entity with severely limited authority under occupation. The Zionist state continued creating irreversible realities on the ground that rendered the establishment of an independent Palestinian state virtually impossible, according to the article.
The author says the Zionist movement emerged in the late 19th century and sought to establish a settler-colonial state in Palestine through the mobilisation of western imperialist powers. The piece says Zionism was never an indigenous movement of the Middle East, but a European colonial solution to what Europeans called the Jewish Question, imposed upon the Palestinian people.
Regional Strategic Shifts
The article says the events of 7 October 2023 fundamentally shattered the political status quo and exposed the bankruptcy of the assumptions that had governed regional politics for more than three decades. The genocide that followed brought the moral and political end of the Oslo paradigm and the illusion that the conflict could be resolved through endless negotiations under overwhelming asymmetry. The myth of the two-state solution finally collapsed under the weight of political reality, and Israeli claims to western liberal democracy and the rule of law suffered perhaps their greatest crisis of credibility since the establishment of the state, the piece argues.
The piece says the genocide dealt a devastating blow to Benjamin Netanyahu's vision of a "New Middle East" and to projects such as the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor, or IMEC. Gaza restored Palestine to the centre of regional and international politics, disrupted normalisation and demonstrated that no regional order can achieve lasting legitimacy while excluding the Palestinian people and denying their inalienable rights, according to the article.
Global Solidarity Movement
The article says the world witnessed the emergence of the largest global solidarity movement for Palestine in modern history, with millions marching in capitals across East and West. Universities, labour unions and grassroots civil society organisations became arenas of political and moral confrontation with the Zionist state and its global networks of support. Palestine once again became one of the defining questions in contemporary debates over colonialism, racism, international law, human rights and national liberation.
The piece says Gaza exposed the deep moral crisis within the western political establishment and highlighted the declining ability of the United States and its allies to impose their preferred narratives or translate overwhelming military superiority into enduring political outcomes. Despite unprecedented western diplomatic, military and financial backing for Israel, Washington proved unable to restore Israel's international legitimacy, isolate the Palestinian resistance or stem the tide of global solidarity, the article argues.
The Demographic Reality
The article says about half of the 15.5 million Palestinian people live outside historic Palestine and that the political, economic, financial, academic and media centres that shape international opinion and policy lie beyond Palestine. It says more than 125 years after the emergence of political Zionism and nearly eight decades after the Nakba, Palestinians remain rooted in their homeland and steadfastly committed to their identity, their historical rights and the right of return. Less than half of the world's Jews have resettled in Palestine and demographic trends suggest Palestinians in historic Palestine now equal or exceed the Jewish population, according to the piece.
The Twelve Pillars Theory
The article lays out what it calls the Theory of the Twelve Pillars, identifying the principal sources of Zionist strength. The first set of pillars concerns demographic and territorial control, including Jewish exclusivity as the governing principle of the state, the exclusion and displacement of Palestinians, continuous settlement expansion and the methodical creation of irreversible facts on the ground. The second set maintains Israel's military, intelligence and technological supremacy. The direct military confrontation with the Islamic Republic of Iran demonstrated that overwhelming technological superiority, even when combined with American military support, cannot by itself compel political capitulation or restore unquestioned strategic deterrence, the article says.
The third set of pillars concerns Israel's international and regional positioning, including dependence upon western political support, the mobilisation of world Jewry in service of the Zionist project, preserving regional fragmentation and cultivating alliances with minorities, separatist movements and authoritarian regimes in pursuit of regional hegemony. Gaza altered international public opinion, particularly among younger generations, universities, labour unions, professional associations and social movements, and important sectors of western societies increasingly distinguish between support for Jewish communities and unconditional support for Zionist state policies, according to the piece.
The article says legal scrutiny before the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court and domestic courts across several jurisdictions has eroded that support, but that legal institutions alone won't transform political realities. Independent journalism, digital media, social networking platforms and unprecedented documentation of the Gaza genocide have weakened Zionist control over narrative. Every step toward greater cooperation within the Arab and Muslim worlds, every effort toward regional integration and every expansion of ties among anti-colonial movements across the Global South directly challenges Zionism's longstanding strategic assumption that permanent regional fragmentation is both desirable and sustainable, the piece says.
Why This Matters:
The article frames the Gaza war as a watershed moment that exposed the structural impossibility of the two-state solution under current conditions and the failure of the Oslo framework to produce anything but deeper Palestinian fragmentation and Israeli settlement expansion. Whether one accepts the piece's framing of Israel as a settler-colonial project or views it as a democracy defending itself against terrorism, the demographic and political realities it describes are facts on the ground: Palestinian populations inside and outside historic Palestine total 15.5 million, settlements have expanded dramatically since Oslo, the Palestinian Authority governs only fragments of the West Bank, and international legal scrutiny of Israeli actions has intensified. The article's core argument—that the conflict has shifted from a question of Palestinian statehood to a broader challenge to the regional order—reflects a strategic shift among Palestinian advocates away from negotiations and toward international pressure, legal action and grassroots mobilisation. The piece's call for dismantling what it terms the twelve pillars of Zionist power signals a long-term strategy that no longer accepts Israel's permanence as a given, a position that makes any negotiated settlement vastly more difficult and ensures the conflict will remain a defining feature of Middle Eastern politics for the foreseeable future.