The International Coalition: From Palestinianization of the Conflict to Internationalization

At the moment of the international conference for "implementing the two-state solution" in New York, as a first step taken by Saudi Arabia leading the "international coalition" in partnership with the French Republic, the central question that comes to the Arab and Palestinian mind is: Will this coalition be able to internationalize the Palestinian issue? And strategically speaking, will this coalition represent the necessary and significant turnaround in defining the conflict?

To understand better, we must remember what the year of the "setback," the June 1967 defeat, constituted as a fundamental pivot in the structural transformation that affected the political and strategic definition of the Palestinian cause; where the gradual Arab withdrawal was not only from military confrontation but from the meaning as well. The slogan "removing the effects of aggression," as declared by Abdel Nasser, was the clearest indication of the retreat of the nationalist project from a liberation strategy to a restoration policy.

This shift in meaning redefined the conflict in a practical and gradual manner, peaking in the mid-1970s, specifically on the eve of the October War of 1973, changing from describing it as an Arab-Israeli conflict to a Palestinian-Israeli conflict; which later came to be known as the "Palestinianization of the conflict"; a situation that was welcomed by the leadership of the contemporary Palestinian revolution, which was at the height of its rise at that time, claiming to cut off any interference from some poles of the Arab regime in the internal Palestinian political scene, and even using the cause as a bargaining chip in regional files, which led the revolution's leadership at the time to emphasize the independence of the Palestinian decision-making.

Thus, without a conscious reading of the dimensions of this transformation, "Palestinianization" became not just a political description, but a founding moment for a new chapter of Arab retreat, lifting the responsibility from the shoulders of the nationalist system regarding its historical commitments not only concerning the Palestinian cause but also regarding its shared fate connected to its civilizational and geographical unity, which automatically lifted the collective cover from the most sensitive files in modern Arab history; in addition to what this "Palestinianization" left as a barrier that separated Arab audiences from engaging in liberation efforts, but the more dangerous aspect manifested in the retreat of Palestine's centrality in Arab consciousness, after it had been a defining aspect of the collective political and emotional identity of the Arab and Islamic nations.

Yes, we may understand the validity of Palestinian decision-making independence, in terms of the cohesion of the internal Palestinian front, but if we try to deconstruct this vision in the strategic sense, we must first reconsider the fundamental function of the "Israeli state" which was not planted in the region to resolve the Jewish question or as a refuge for the Jews of the world, as claimed by colonial Western powers, but as a functional colonial state, whose main goal lies in the Western center's need to prevent the development of the Arab homeland and its peoples, especially as it becomes culturally and civilizationally capable, relying on shared religion, language, and geography, to pose, by historical measure, the most significant threat to Western civilization.

This shift in the definition of the cause contributed, intentionally or unintentionally, to creating several deep and complex intellectual and political issues, leading to catastrophic results at the level of concept and practice, which is the natural outcome of what this new perspective generated from perceptions that consider the intervention of the Arab regime a burden on the Palestinian revolution, not a support for it, which entrenched the "Palestinianization" process and served the imperial colonial project in the East, effectively connected to the reality that the essence of the conflict is not merely a struggle over Palestinian land, but over the meaning and identity of the East and its future, hence the Western-centric discourse about a new Middle East became a determined and declared discourse.

From here, we must see the importance of the Saudi-French coalition initiative as an opportunity to restore the centrality of the cause within a new international system, taking into account the major transformations that have affected and continue to affect the bipolarity of the American state, and consequently Israel's status in the region; this coalition, which combines the diplomatic weight of the Arab represented by Saudi Arabia and the legal and political European presence represented by the French Republic, seeks to redefine the conflict according to international law rules, and to resist the project of imposing Israel by force as a dominant regional actor through the security and economic normalization driven and fought for by Washington.

This movement may express, in one sense, the urgent necessity for a theoretical review, not only on the Palestinian front but in the entire Arab political space; a review that could serve as a lever for the Arab retreat that led to a shift in meanings, not only regarding the Arab-Zionist conflict but also about the organic relationship that connects the national to the national, the thought of liberation to sovereignty, stability and development to dignity and freedom. Thus, it is no longer sufficient to merely return Palestine to its Arab centrality, at the level of consciousness and practice, but we aspire to the return of an Arab active agent capable of internationalizing the cause based on the interactions of what has happened and continues to happen in terms of major and exceptional transformations at the level of radical changes in global public opinion regarding what is occurring throughout the Palestinian territories, transitioning from a consumer of the false Zionist narrative to a bearer of the legitimate Palestinian narrative, thus providing a suitable political and moral ground for the international coalition to drive the conflict from "Palestinianization" to internationalization; for meaning cannot be restored without action being restored.