The capitalist model of overaccumulation bets on threat and force to access foreign natural resources, and also to turn repression into a business: apartheid in Palestine and the war on migration are two examples.

The leader against whom an international arrest warrant for war crimes and crimes against humanity has been issued, Benjamin Netanyahu, will be the first guest of honor at the White House next Tuesday, hosted by the U.S. President. The warrant against the Israeli Prime Minister, issued by the International Criminal Court, has been publicly rejected by Washington, but it has also been questioned by several European countries, despite the fact that all European nations are part of the Rome Statute and, therefore, are obligated to respect and comply with the mandate of the Hague Court.

This illustrates well the situation of the global stage. Western leadership presents itself as the great guarantor of democracy, rights, and freedoms, but the unresolved issues and double standards are notable. Assuming that this is solely due to the return of Donald Trump is to forgo an analysis that takes all the facts into account. Nothing starts today.

On a planet with over eight billion inhabitants, there is a competition for the control of more natural resources and market spaces. Within this dynamic, in which the trade war between Washington and China is framed, Europe is caught in the interests of its American ally.

In this race, everything is expendable: allies, image, credibility, the rights of broad sectors of the global population, and the health of the planet. Instead of imagining equitable models with more mutual respect between states, more international law, and more human rights, the insistence on overaccumulation leads to new bubbles, financial speculation, and a bet on the business of war as a market outlet.

As sociologist William I. Robinson points out, the «overaccumulation crisis by large transnational corporations» leads to a bet on the coercive control industry in all its forms: low and high-intensity wars, wars against migration, against drugs, at the borders, global police control, technological surveillance, and masses labeled as «surplus population» to be subjected to this business.

When Trump announces deportations of migrants to Colombia—and declares a “state of emergency” at the southern border—he engages in politics through racist and dehumanizing speeches, while also seeking business. When he accuses Mexico of having relations with organized crime, he seeks an excuse to deploy coercive control and repression, with which “security” companies obtain lucrative contracts (also in Europe).
The new U.S. president seeks to expand commercial control over neighboring territories—Canada, Panama, Mexico—while also unleashing the wall, surveillance, and war industries as an important part of his economy.

The new U.S. president seeks to expand commercial control over neighboring territories—Canada, Panama, Mexico—while also unleashing the wall, surveillance, and war industries as an important part of his economy.

In the global race for more resources and markets, Europe is trapped by the interests of its American ally.

The Space Metaphor
The forward flight is such that billionaires like Elon Musk, whom Trump serves, enjoy the narrative of the space race, the dream of an escape exclusive to the most privileged elite, while the great masses remain on an exploited planet, squeezed dry to the last drop.

“I think space is really a clumsy metaphor for what they are doing down here, which is building their escape hatches,” noted thinker Naomi Klein this week in a conversation with journalist Mehdi Hassan, who added about this elite: «They don’t care about the long-term outcome because, as you say, they’ve discarded the planet, they’ve discarded society. The only thing that matters to them is the final result.»

In these circuits of massive profits, there is no long-term project. The escape in a spaceship is the foolish dream of a model with no way out and no Plan B: that of more accumulation for an elite, until the planet is exhausted. The lack of wealth redistribution condemns 1.3 billion people to precarious jobs, over 2 billion to the informal economy, and an undetermined number to situations of semi-slavery. It is on these sectors that the biggest business of repression and control is applied.

The escape in a spaceship is the foolish dream of a model without an exit: to accumulate until it runs dry, with no Plan B.

Palestine as a Laboratory
The Palestinian case is representative in this sense. Israel is expanding its illegal occupation through an apartheid system. This guarantees a Jewish social majority without having to assume Palestinians as part of its population. Furthermore, it extracts natural resources from the lands it illegally occupies, extending the business of construction, militarism, and high-tech warfare against civilians, with artificial intelligence programs for mass bombing.

Coercive control and genocide in Palestine are, in themselves, lucrative businesses for many companies, not just Israeli ones. U.S. military contractors already operate in Gaza, currently in charge of controlling the Netzarim corridor. Just as with the war in Ukraine, major arms companies have risen on the stock market and increased their profits.

Repression, in all its forms, fuels the economy. Trump asks NATO countries to increase military spending once again, and he has allied governments willing to buy into the argument, as well as the support of the NATO Secretary General.

The massacre in Gaza and the systematic blockade of aid entry have been made possible thanks to the diplomatic and military support of the Biden Administration and the complicity of European allies, who maintain their relations with Israel and have not adopted the pressure measures proposed by the International Court of Justice and the UN. In this way, they have allowed a framework of impunity that reduces their mechanisms to demand respect for their territories.

U.S. military contractors are already operating in Gaza, controlling the Netzarim corridor.

For all these reasons, the Palestinian issue has become a paradigmatic case. Gaza and the West Bank are laboratories where it is tested to see how far things can go in the future when the climate crisis causes more scarcity of natural resources. It is a demonstration of domination dynamics.

This was well understood more than a year ago by Colombian President Gustavo Petro, when he wrote—paraphrasing Hemingway and Donne—that, in the face of the genocide in Gaza, «the bells toll for all the peoples of the South, for humanity.» The message being sent is: “If you don’t obey, we will treat you like the Palestinians of Gaza.”

Trump’s impositions in his first two weeks in office, the new tariffs, his declarations issuing ultimatums and threats, the deportations and mistreatment of migrants, are part of the push for the normalization of force. This is why the responses of Mexico and Colombia defending their sovereignty and the rights of their populations are important. And this is also why the consequences of Israeli impunity can be so grave. Without accountability, anything goes.

The path is clear for the normalization of looting and exclusion, not only against the peoples of the global south but also in Europe itself, where the imposition of more military spending threatens the development of social policies. The growing difficulty of accessing decent housing is one example. Everything is expendable in the pursuit of accumulating more wealth for an elite, at the expense of global dispossession.

The return of Palestinians to northern Gaza disturbs and challenges that global agenda willing to exclude pockets of the world’s population.

Few countries are trying to put a stop to this. The unprecedented steps taken in international courts against Israeli crimes provide tools to states, but most look the other way. The Hague Group, founded this Friday by nine nations, was born precisely with the intention of reversing this impunity. Without pressure measures and without the application of international law, the genocide in Gaza will create space for other crimes and abuses.

“One form of genocide is physically eliminating the population. But another form is simply enclosing and not allowing masses to escape who no longer have any way of surviving from day to day,” William I. Robinson reminds us, at a time when the migrant population is the scapegoat on which responsibilities are unloaded, and when there are governments—also European—willing to extend this disregard to more sectors.

In this context, the return on foot of tens of thousands of Palestinians from southern Gaza to the north, after fifteen months of crushing, disturbs and challenges the global agenda willing to exclude and discard pockets of the world’s population. “If a genocide has not succeeded in expelling two million Palestinians from Gaza, here is the lesson: they are not going anywhere,” says UN rapporteur Francesca Albanese. The majority of families that return find their homes reduced to rubble or severely damaged, but they are determined to rebuild them again “with their hands, if necessary,” as one woman told me over the phone this week.

In that demand from the Palestinian population is a powerful message to those who defend racism, exclusion, and plundering as models of domination and global business. That is why Gaza is a turning point, and that is why it is our universal present.

(This text was originally written in Spanish, published on elDiario.es and has been translated into English using Artificial Intelligence)