_{^{let me begin by clar­i­fy­ing: this is not satire. this is nev­er some­thing I would joke about. I was an active par­tic­i­pant of pales­tine action from 2022-2024 as well as a mem­ber of the cam­pus occu­pa­tion stu­dent protests in leeds. i’ve been advo­cat­ing for pales­tini­ans (and the sudanese, rohingyas, uyghurs, latin amer­i­cans, kash­miris, cam­bo­di­ans, caribbean peo­ples, and all oth­er indige­nous vic­tims of impe­ri­al­ism) for over a decade now. unlike mal­di­vian politi­cians, this is my expe­ri­ence that peo­ple will tes­ti­fy to; i’ll nev­er work in pol­i­tics.}}

israel should not exist.

it must end, and pales­tini­ans should be giv­en the right of return to their lands. every sin­gle set­tler and their descen­dants should be deport­ed to their euro­pean home­lands (where they own dual-cit­i­zen­ships in), with­out a sin­gle excep­tion. it is not their land; ban­ish them all. the gov­ern­ment struc­ture should be one-state, one nation, gov­erned by the indige­nous natives of pales­tine. the whole set­tler-colo­nial garbage about some “jew­ish home­land” should be for­got­ten and nev­er attempt­ed again. i won’t change my mind on this; nev­er have, nev­er will.

that is the stance our politi­cians should’ve had, but nev­er, ever did. all of them.

why am I focus­ing on pales­tine? because it is the first glob­alised, live-streamed geno­cide in mod­ern his­to­ry, the cul­mi­na­tion of over 70 geno­ci­dal years.

since mal­dives is a small island coun­try far away from pales­tine, there isn’t much at stake for our politi­cians. we can’t mean­ing­ful­ly help the coun­try with our min­i­mal resources or geo­graph­ic dis­tance.

so, it becomes a very easy thing to use for a polit­i­cal mar­ket­ing cam­paign — since much of our pub­lic demand is right­ful­ly aligned with pales­tine, our politi­cians have to respond to those sen­ti­ments and appeal to them. “denounc­ing” and “con­demn­ing” israel is an easy thing to do, and that’s all they do. that’s the only thing our politi­cians do.

we aren’t com­plete­ly help­less. there are things we can do for pales­tine. the first and most impor­tant thing is, as a pop­u­lar tourist des­ti­na­tion, to stop legit­imis­ing israel and the west­ern pro­pa­gan­da that tries to nor­malise israel, and to call for the end of israel. to use our diplo­mat­ic voice and to use it rad­i­cal­ly — like ire­land does — is an extreme­ly pow­er­ful and effec­tive mea­sure of sol­i­dar­i­ty.

that is the least we could do.

yet all our politi­cians, espe­cial­ly when they were in pow­er, have failed to do this.

there’s no bet­ter or worse: they’re all equal­ly com­plic­it.

mohamed nasheed estab­lished and nor­malised diplo­mat­ic rela­tion­ships with israel. he maybe “sup­port­ive” of pales­tine now, but that is sim­ply because israel has gone so far that even he — like his west­ern allies — could no longer defend israel and have fall­en to the sec­ond colo­nial line of defence, which is ram­bling about a “two-state” solu­tion.

even the bodu-vagu yameen abdul gayy­oom has par­rot­ed the same garbage about a two-state solu­tion, repeat­ed­ly. he may have tak­en per­for­ma­tive action lat­er after mil­i­tary aggres­sions and is cur­rent­ly say­ing the two-state solu­tion is hol­low (the bare min­i­mum), but again, it’s because he’s not in gov­ern­ment right now and does­n’t need to suck up to the west yet. con­ve­nient, isn’t it? he did­n’t have a pro­found real­i­sa­tion; he could’ve done so when he was in pow­er. he did­n’t. that’s all you need to know.

in ibu soli­h’s admin­is­tra­tion, we saw the same luna­cy about a “two-state” solu­tion. they even allowed naf­tali ben­nett to vis­it the mal­dives, remem­ber that? even mohamed Muiz­zu is repeat­ing the same tired stu­pid line about a two-state solu­tion, and his pass­port ban was per­for­ma­tive since most israelis have dual-cit­i­zen­ships any­way. recent­ly, we’ve found out that the ex-envoy waheed has­san was best friends with a pedophile mossad agent.

not a sin­gle non-per­for­ma­tive dis­play of sol­i­dar­i­ty from these suit-wear­ing jok­ers.

why do our politi­cians refuse to show hon­est and effec­tive sol­i­dar­i­ty with pales­tine? sim­ple. they rely on the euro-amer­i­can impe­r­i­al order for pow­er and wealth, and israeli tech­nolo­gies like Nso’s pega­sus sys­tem or cellebrite soft­ware. the euro-amer­i­can impe­r­i­al sys­tem also equips them with the bour­geois state-cor­po­rate pow­ers that they have.

so of course they’re going to suck up to the impe­r­i­al west. they don’t want this sys­tem of greed and extrac­tion to end. they want to hog as much wealth for them­selves as pos­si­ble and dip to their sec­ond-homes in europe and amer­i­ca (that they’ve bought with our tax mon­ey) with their fam­i­lies. of course they’d fol­low the west­’s pro­pa­gan­da line like obe­di­ent dogs.

it should­n’t sur­prise you. they’re all cap­i­tal­ists, neolib­er­als, and fas­cists. neolib­er­als work with fas­cists against the work­ing class and pre­serve the ide­olo­gies of the empire.

you have to under­stand, even my left-wing prax­is method­ol­o­gy is inspired by pales­tin­ian marx­ist rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies like ghas­san kanafani and leila khaled. you may recog­nise kanafani from this viral video. so, of course my views are “rad­i­cal”, yours should be too. even these rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies reject­ed the colo­nial idea of a so-called “two-state solu­tion”, they called for total restora­tion of pales­tine and the right of return. even mod­ern rev­o­lu­tion­ary faces like mohammed el-kurd reject this so-called two-state solu­tion, as do many oth­er pales­tini­ans (and I don’t mean zion­ist-sym­pa­thet­ic trai­tors like Mah­moud abbas). we should be lis­ten­ing to pales­tini­ans and ampli­fy­ing their demands, not what we think is “diplo­mat­ic” for the “inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty” that has failed to pro­tect them.

i’m no longer going to accept these lega­cy politi­cians or their par­ties’ new youth-wing rep­u­ta­tion laun­der­ers and their faux “sol­i­dar­i­ty”, even if they start say­ing these exact things now. it’s too late. and to advo­cate for these things under the bro­ken neolib­er­al par­ty sys­tems that per­pet­u­at­ed these con­di­tions of inac­tion and com­plic­i­ty will sim­ply not do. these politi­cians had all this time to realise this, this infor­ma­tion was all there, and the nak­ba and coloni­sa­tion of pales­tine are well-doc­u­ment­ed. why did­n’t they? why did they only just sim­ply respond to pub­lic demand and do the bare min­i­mum?

all these politi­cians and their loy­al­ists sick­en me.

they make me feel ashamed for my coun­try. i can­not look my pales­tin­ian friends in the eye and say this is all my coun­try has done in its pow­er against fas­cist israel, it’s our great­est shame and embar­rass­ment.

so what can we do, as mal­di­vians?

i’m not here to sell you the worn-out old lines about donat­ing, boy­cotting, and spread­ing aware­ness. yes, those things are impor­tant, and we should be doing them. i’m going to tell you real ways you can organ­ise and make an inter­na­tion­al impact as a coun­try:

1. pres­sure the gov­ern­ment into tak­ing a more rad­i­cal stance towards israel and to stop endors­ing the west­ern par­ty line about a “two-state solu­tion”, and instead call for the end of israel, pales­tini­ans right of return, the expul­sion of the set­tlers and their descen­dants to europe, amer­i­ca, and wher­ev­er else they came from, and a sin­gle pales­tin­ian state run by indige­nous pales­tini­ans. this dele­git­imis­es the west­ern cap­i­tal­ist agen­da.
   
2. demand that the gov­ern­ment enforces a nation­wide ban of the prod­ucts on the boy­cott list. next, demand that they sub­si­dize the imports of alter­na­tive prod­ucts and shift the mar­ket equi­lib­ri­um so that micro, small, and medi­um enter­pris­es (sme) — kudafi­haara, marts, super­mar­kets, tech stores, etc. — in the Mal­dives can seam­less­ly make the switch and end reliance on bds-sanc­tioned prod­ucts with­out going bank­rupt. this also nat­u­ral­ly kills demand by end­ing nation­wide sup­ply.
   
3. demand that the gov­ern­ment enforces a new tourist law: any vis­i­tor to the mal­dives must pro­vide a dec­la­ra­tion from their gov­ern­ment or nation­al immi­gra­tion that they do not have a dual cit­i­zen­ship or res­i­den­cy in israel. work with inter­na­tion­al gov­ern­ments and local immi­gra­tion author­i­ties on mak­ing this process smooth and con­ve­nient for tourists.

by offi­cial­ly and pub­licly tak­ing a rad­i­cal stance against set­tler colo­nial­ism, by end­ing mil­lions of dol­lars worth of month­ly import cir­cu­la­tions for bds-prod­ucts nation­wide, and by tru­ly enforc­ing an israeli tourist ban beyond a per­for­ma­tive “ban”, our nation­al show of sol­i­dar­i­ty becomes some­thing far more pow­er­ful than just stu­pid words and par­rot­ing about “two state solu­tions”.