The Trap Is Sprung: Why “Victory” for Palestine May Be Your Defeat

Or: What I Learned When I Stopped Asking the Empire to Be Nice

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Photo by Ahmed Abu Hameeda on Unsplash

There is a nightmare coming, and most of the anti-Zionist movement is going to celebrate it as a dream come true.

I need you to hear this. Not because I enjoy delivering bad news. Because if you don’t see the trap now, you will walk into it cheering.

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The Assumption That Will Destroy Us

Here is what most Palestine solidarity work assumes:

The Western powers – the United States, the European Union, the United Nations – are neutral arbiters who have been temporarily captured by Zionist lobbying, propaganda, and guilt. If we can break that capture – if we can persuade enough politicians, sanction enough settlements, generate enough public pressure – the apparatus will finally act justly. Israel will be restrained. Palestine will be recognized. The occupation will end. Freedom will arrive.

This assumption is not wrong about the facts. It is wrong about who is holding the pen.

The Western powers are not neutral. They are not captured. They are not waiting to be persuaded.

They are the authors of the catastrophe.

The same sovereignty that issued the Balfour Declaration in 1917 arms the IDF in 2026. The same legal architecture that partitioned Palestine in 1947 protects settlements in 2024. The same Christian-imperial logic that declared Palestine “a country without a people” in 1843 now funds “humanitarian aid” to Gaza while refusing to stop the bombs.

You are not petitioning a neutral judge. You are petitioning the sovereign whose charter created the franchise you call Israel.

And the sovereign is not going to dissolve itself. It is going to replace the franchise.

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The Apparatus, Briefly Named

I know the word “Constantinian” sounds academic. Let me translate:

Seventeen hundred years ago, the Roman Empire adopted Christianity. Not by conversion – by conquest. The cross moved from execution to standard. Christians stopped being killed and started killing. A poor man’s messiah became the patron of armies, empires, and eventually, global expansion.

That sovereignty never ended. It just rebranded.

· It became the Doctrine of Discovery: papal grants authorizing Christian monarchs to claim non-Christian land.

· It became Manifest Destiny: American settlers convinced God chose them for the continent.

· It became the Dutch and British trading companies: Calvinist corporations that fused predestination with profit and called it providence.

· It became Christian Zionism: British evangelicals and American dispensationalists who spent 300 years proposing a Jewish state – before Jews had organized to request one.

And it became Zionism itself.

Not because Zionism is a conspiracy. Because Zionism is a franchise. It is the form Jewish sovereignty takes when it is authorized, funded, armed, and constrained by Christian-imperial power. The apparatus draws the blueprint; the franchise builds the houses. The apparatus holds the charter; the franchise administers the territory. The apparatus retains the ultimate authority to grant, withhold, or reassign sovereignty; the franchise governs on conditional lease.

This is not antisemitism. This is not a denial of Jewish agency. It is the documentary record of 1695 – 1917 – two centuries of Christian-imperial proposals for a Jewish state, advanced by clergymen and cabinet ministers, funded by oligarchs and evangelicals, executed by consuls and generals, before Herzl ever arrived to ask for a charter.

Herzl was not a villain. He was a patsy.

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The Trap, Precisely Drawn

Here is what the apparatus does not do:

It does not destroy its opposition. It hosts it.

It does not silence its critics. It funds them.

It does not defeat movements that demand justice. It employs their alumni.

Watch how it works:

· A Palestine solidarity organization demands the U.S. enforce its own laws regarding military aid to Israel. This is useful to the apparatus. It disciplines the franchise, stabilizes the brand, costs nothing. The organization receives foundation funding, congressional access, media legitimacy. It does not question why a Christian-imperial state has jurisdiction over Palestinian land at all.

· A human rights group documents Israeli war crimes and petitions the International Criminal Court. This is deference, not resistance. The apparatus wrote the laws, appoints the prosecutors, retains veto power over enforcement. It opens investigations, delays rulings, issues symbolic warrants, never surrenders sovereignty. The opposition celebrates. The apparatus continues.

· A two-state solution advocacy organization lobbies European capitals to recognize Palestine. This is legitimation, not liberation. It accepts that the apparatus had legitimate authority to partition Palestine in 1947, retains legitimate authority to mediate, and can grant sovereignty to Palestinians just as it previously granted a charter to Zionists. The opposition does not ask: Who gave the apparatus this authority? Who holds the original title?

This is not opposition. This is the apparatus talking to itself, using opposition voices as its vocabulary.

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The Coming Transition, Which You Will Mistake for Victory

Here is what is coming. You can feel it already:

· The United States “pauses” a weapons shipment while approving eleven others.

· European capitals “recognize” Palestine while funding PA security forces that coordinate with Israel.

· Saudi Arabia “normalizes” relations while conditioning it on Israeli gestures that never arrive.

· The ICC issues arrest warrants that are never executed.

· The UN authorizes a “peacekeeping” mission that protects the occupation’s logistics.

· Gaza is “reconstructed” by Gulf capital, Israeli oversight, and the permanent exile of refugees.

And the majority of the anti-Zionist movement will celebrate.

It will call this victory. It will thank the apparatus for its justice. It will declare the boycott campaign a success, the two-state solution imminent, the occupation ending. It will go home or back to brunch.

And Palestinians under the new arrangement will understand that nothing has changed except the name of the cage.

The occupation continues. The refugees remain exiled. The land remains confiscated. The sovereignty remains elsewhere. Only the management has changed – from a high-liability franchise to a lower-liability one, from a teller who embarrassed the bank to a teller who follows policy.

This is not liberation. This is rebranding.

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How to Know If You Are in the Trap

Ask yourself three questions:

1. Who funds your organization?

Not in the conspiratorial sense. Just: does your budget depend on foundations whose boards include former CIA directors, State Department officials, defense contractors, executives of corporations building IMEC corridors? The apparatus does not fund its own dismantling. It funds movements that threaten its competitors – or that demand it live up to its own stated values. It does not fund movements that question its authority to have values at all.

2. Who would celebrate your victory?

If the U.S. conditioned military aid to Israel, would the White House press secretary call it “a step toward peace”? Would European foreign ministers issue statements of support? Would UN agencies applaud your success?

If the apparatus celebrates your victory, you have not won. You have been integrated.

3. What do you want?

Do you want the U.S. to apply its own laws? Do you want the UN to enforce its own resolutions? Do you want the ICC to investigate Israeli officials?

Or do you want something the apparatus cannot give you, because giving it would dissolve the apparatus itself :

· Sovereignty that is not a grant, but a return.

· Jurisdiction that does not originate in Christian-imperial charters.

· A political order in which the people who live on the land hold title to the land – not as a concession, but as an original fact.

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What Real Opposition Looks Like

Real opposition does not ask the apparatus for anything.

It does not petition the UN. It does not lobby Congress. It does not wait for ICC arrest warrants. It does not measure progress by European recognition.

Real opposition refuses the apparatus entirely.

It says: You do not have authority over this land. Your charters are forgeries. Your resolutions are theater. Your peace process is occupation by other means. Your humanitarian aid is the bandage you offer after you yourself inflicted the wound.

Real opposition builds institutions that do not depend on imperial permission:

· Cooperative farms in the Jordan Valley, demolished and rebuilt, demolished and rebuilt.

· Popular committees in refugee camps that organize return marches without coordinating with the PA.

· Jewish-Palestinian anti-Zionist organizing that refuses both Israeli citizenship and Palestinian Authority patronage.

· Boycott, divestment, and sanctions that target the entire apparatus, not just its Israeli franchise – including the corporations building IMEC, the foundations funding co-opted NGOs, the universities hosting normalization conferences.

Real opposition understands that liberation cannot be granted. A liberation that is granted can be revoked. Only a liberation that is taken – without permission, without charter, without imperial blessing – can be secure.

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The Hardest Thing to Accept

I know how this lands. I know it sounds like purity politics, like moving the goalposts, like demanding perfection from a movement that is already exhausted and outgunned and grieving.

I am not demanding perfection. I am demanding accuracy.

You have been fighting the franchise while the franchisor smiles at you. You have been petitioning the sovereign while the sovereign prepares your victory speech. You have been so focused on the teller that you did not notice the bank owns the building, the vault, and the contract that employs you.

The apparatus is not going to liberate Palestine. It is going to manage Palestine – through Israelis when that is useful, through Palestinians when that is cheaper, through Gulf Arabs when that is more stable, through international peacekeepers when that is more presentable.

And it is going to call this management peace. It is going to call this rebranding justice. It is going to call this reassignment of the franchise the two-state solution.

And the majority of the anti-Zionist movement, trained for decades to measure progress by apparatus approval, is going to celebrate.

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A Closing Question

I do not expect you to trust me. I have spent this entire conversation showing you how the apparatus operates. You should be suspicious of anyone who claims to see the trap clearly.

So do not trust me. Test the framework.

Look at the next victory your movement achieves. Watch who celebrates with you. Watch whose statements of support arrive first. Watch what the White House press secretary says. Watch what the European foreign ministers say. Watch what the UN agencies say.

And then ask yourself:

Did we win? Or did we become useful?

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The framework I have laid out here is not a prediction. It is a description of what is already happening. The transition is underway. The reassignment is in progress. The apparatus is preparing to declare peace while preserving occupation.

You can walk into this trap cheering.

Or you can refuse to celebrate your own defeat.

The land does not need your petitions. It needs your refusal.

Not refusal just of “Israel”. Refusal of the entire chartering authority that created “Israel”, that arms it, that protects it, and that now prepares to replace it with a more stable manager.

Refusal of sovereignty that originates in imperial grant.

Refusal of liberation that arrives by imperial permission.

Refusal of victory that the empire itself applauds.

That refusal is the only opposition the apparatus cannot absorb.

Everything else is just a longer lease.