New book, published just before the ceasefire deal, describes in granular detail the conditions for dismantling apartheid in Israel-Palestine
W
hile languishing in prison during Benito Mussolini’s fascist reign in Italy, Antonio Gramsci wrote in his Prison Notebooks about an “interregnum”, a transition between the old order that was dying and a new order that had yet to be born. That in-between time was, he wrote, “a time of monsters”.
Those words, a “time of monsters”, could be used to describe the period of death and destruction unleashed in the two years since 7 October 2023, in the narrow strip of land comprising the Gaza Strip. If the deal reached between Israel and Hamas that was brokered by Donald Trump continues to hold, it raises questions about what type of future awaits the lands between the river and the sea – an Israeli-government and settler-controlled land mass that both Israelis and Palestinians inhabit, which represents Israel’s apartheid-based one-state reality.
So what is next? The continuation of the apartheid regime? A two-state solution where one state has no or limited capacity to function? More Israeli military occupation? An accelerated Nakba that more methodically expels Palestinians from the land? A new colonial presence where some foreign entity or individuals are the de facto interim rulers?
