12 illegally occupied Palestinians were killed by Israel in Jenin, 4 were children. Palestinians are seen here mourning those murders. (photo credit NYT)

Taking the realities of the region into account, the principle of “Israel has a right to defend itself”, is based on the condition that it is facing attacks from Palestinians against its civilians inside sovereign Israel.

However, if Israel is using attacks and targeting and / or disproportionately killing Palestinian civilians then it’s essentially attacking civilians.

And / or even if not specifically targeting civilians but targeting one Palestinian fighter, but then ending up killing six civilians, then that is also as good as saying Israel is targeting civilians – because de-facto it is so.

If Palestinians target Israeli civilians inside the UN allocated (1947) borders of Israel, for example Tel-Aviv, and Israel is targeting Palestinian civilians inside Palestine’s UN allocated borders (1947), for example, Jenin. Then, what is the difference between the two?

If Israel can target Palestinian civilians, and the UK and the USA can say “Israel has a right to defend itself”, then we ought to be saying the same for the Palestinians.

The fact is, “x country has a right to defend itself” when facing attacks inside their territories, is an absolute obvious, it doesn’t need saying. It’s a line that helps fuel extremism and extremist actions by Israel.

What needs to be looked at is the context on the ground and international law-based facts.

Israel is the illegal occupier, which the UK and USA officially designated, as did the rest of the world.

They all also accept that under national or international law, the illegally occupied have a right to self-defence.

If those are the law-based facts, and the UK and USA are saying a Palestinian attacking civilians inside the borders of Israel is a terrorist. Then by the same principle, an Israeli attacking Palestinians inside the borders of Palestine should be called a terrorist too.

Furthermore, we accept that the illegally occupied have the legal right to resist, and fight if necessary to release themselves of the illegal occupation.

So then, does the illegal occupier (Israel), have a right to attack bases inside the illegally occupied territory / Palestinian territory i.e. Jenin? When Russia attacks bases inside Ukraine, we say Russia is in breach of international laws, and Ukraine has a right to defend itself.

And so, it naturally follows that in Palestine, we must stop saying – the illegal occupier has the right to attack; under the pretence of “has a right to defence”, and the illegally occupied must just accept it.

Ukraine, like Palestine, is the illegally occupied, Israel, like Russia, are the occupiers and breaching international law.

Instead of parroting loaded and irrelevant rhetoric, we need to pressurise Israel to withdraw its illegal occupation to make a two-state solution viable again.

And if it doesn’t, then we should pressurise it to declare a single state with equal rights for all.

Because Israel’s behaviour is only sliding further and further into extremism.

Out of the twelve illegally occupied Palestinians recently murdered by Israel in Jenin – whose recent ancestors were ethnically cleansed from historic Palestine, four were children. Under the age of eighteen.

They were innocent civilians, who were ready to take up arms against the illegal occupation of Israel, like many Ukrainians are doing against Russia.

They were innocent, because Israel has provided no evidence that they were intending to attack inside sovereign Israel.