Israel and Palestine: A Solution

One analyst shortly after Hamas’s October 7th attack on Israel, conjectured that given the absurdity of Hamas actually conquering Israel, their real objective was to goad Israel into a level of retaliation that would destroy support for the Jewish State internationally, and strengthen Hamas’s position in Palestine. In all past attacks, Israel had retaliated vigorously; Hamas knew exactly what the response to their October 7th attack would be.  Recent reports suggest Hamas has met their objective.  Protests in favor of Palestine have popped up around the globe, antisemitism is on the rise, and as the devastation of Gaza continues, an increasing number of Palestinians and Arabs and Muslim countries support Hamas.  It is hard to believe peace will be possible, and the idea of a two-state solution seems ludicrous: insofar as Hamas governs the Palestinians and Netanyahu remains in power in Israel, there is no impetus for peace or equally independent states.  Hamas’s objective is simple - wipe Israel off the map, no matter how many Palestinians are slaughtered in the process, and Netanyahu’s objective is to wipe out Hamas - Palestinian civilians are merely collateral damage. 

Shortly after the brutal and barbaric Oct 7th attach on Israel by Hamas and the beginning of the Israeli retaliation, reporters interviewing civilians on both sides found an amazing amount of empathy for victims on both sides.  But war hardens hearts and minds and while many Israelis do not support Netanyahu’s approach, starving Palestinians with their loved ones dying in their arms, their homes destroyed, and having nowhere to escape, become more and more hardened against Israeli repression and now destruction thrust on them.

Here in the US, the protests favoring Palestinians and the antisemitic words and violent acts are largely from young people, often at universities. Israelis compare their 10/7 attach by Hamas to Our 9/11 which occurred in 2001. Most college students were not even born yet.  It is likely that anyone under 30 has little or no knowledge of our response to that attack by Al-Qaeda. Our “war on terror,” aimed at wiping out Al-Qaeda, involved invading Afghanistan, a war that lasted 20 years, and then Iraq in fear of fictitious weapons of mass destruction, and lasting 16 years.  It is estimated that 46,000 Afghan citizens and 66,000 Iraqi citizens were killed. The leader of Al-Qaeda, Osama Bin Ladin, was killed by US Special Forces in his home in Pakistan in 2011, ten years after 9/11 and not in Afghanistan or Iraq.  Al-Qaeda was weakened but is rebuilding its strength and its relationship with the Taliban in Pakistan. Hamas is supported by Hezbollah which threatens Israel on its border with Lebanon.  The likelihood that Israel will meet its goal of wiping out Hamas and thereby the threat to its security is extremely low. 

The increase in antisemitism in the US ignores some simple facts.  Judaism is a religion.  Israel is a country.  Israel is a Jewish state as we might we say, Italy, and numerous other countries, are overwhelmingly Roman Catholic.  When we attack Jews in our country, we are attacking Americans, not Israelis.  If Italy does something we abhor, would we hold American Catholics responsible?  Doubtful.  Do American Jews support the Israeli government’s response to the attach on them by Hamas.  Probably some, just like some American Christians support Israel’s attach on Hamas.  These attacks are not helpful to anyone.

One person I talked to called Israelis the Native Americans of the middle east.  They were settled in what is now Israel centuries before the Romans or the Ottomans or the British to name only a few. But the territory being occupied or conquered by those entities was considered Palestine.  In 1947, the UN with the support of the British partitioned the land to be an Israel and an Arab state (a two-state solution, and in 1948 Israel formally declared itself an independent sovereign state. The Palestinians refused to recognize Israel. Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon invaded the new state followed by a cease-fire agreement in which the West Bank, and Gaza Strip were declared Arab territory.   

Now imagine, that you live in your nice home in South Carolina and some government agency decides that the Cherokee Tribe [which in 1837 – 39 lost 5000 people in the 1200 mile forced march, called “the trail of tears,” from their ancestral home in South Carolina to be relocated in Oklahoma] should go back to their ancestral home which happens to be where your house sits.  That’s how the Palestinians feel: someone took away their land and gave it to Israel. To make things worse, since the late 1960’s, Israel has been encroaching on the territory that was allotted to them, building settlements in the West Bank. I asked someone back in the 1970’s if it was ethical to build on land assigned to Palestine.  The answer came straight out of our Wild West play book: “the Palestinians don’t do anything to improve the land and make it productive.  The Israeli’s are building houses and farms.” There is disagreement in the global community about whether Israel’s expansion in the West Bank is legal by international law. There is also the issue of Israeli control over areas occupied by Palestinians, placing the Palestinians in a virtual police state.

 Jews have been persecuted for centuries.  Many of the Jews who are settled in Israel are holocaust survivors or had family members who did not survive the genocide undertaken by Hitler.  To them Israel represents a sanctuary, a place of safety not unlike the United States has been for so many persecuted people, Jews and others around the world. Keep in mind that our first settlers, the Pilgrams, were escaping religious persecution.  Both sanctuaries for Jews, Israel and the US, are being fractured. Since 1948, Israel has survived 7 wars with Arabs and 6 conflicts with Hamas. Five of the seven wars were initiated by Arab attacks.  The conflicts with Hamas include: suicide bombings, capturing of Israelis, missile strikes from Gaza to name a few. In all instances Israel responded strongly and definitely. Israel is further threatened by Hamas, considered a terrorist organization by many countries, including the US, because they hold a majority of seats in Palestinian Parliament.  They rule Palestine. And Gaza is not the only hot spot for conflict.  There are small hostile outbreaks between neighbors in the West Bank where Israelis and Palestinians live side by side, and there are threats from Hezbollah, another terrorist group, on the Lebanese border. The Current situation is made more problematic by the fact that Israel gave Gaza back to the Palestinians in 2005, removing citizens and security forces after having won that territory 40 years earlier. No doubt, they expected their gesture would garner enough gratitude that the shellings from Gaza would stop - not so.  There is also Israel’s geographic vulnerability sharing boarders with countries which shelter terrorist groups: Lebanon with Hezbollah and Syria with Isis and Hezbollah. In short, Israel is surrounded by hostile neighbors.

The US is between a rock and a hard place. We have strong diplomatic and political ties to Israel.  We were the first to recognize the independent state of Israel in 1948; we strongly support Israel’s existence: they are the seat of western democracy in the Middle East.  We see Hezbollah,  which attacked US military forces in Syria and Lebanon and the US embassy in Iraq, and Hamas to be a terrorist groups, so we are empathetic with Netanyahu’s unreachable goal. We have also for decades been instrumental in trying to broker a deal which would bring long-term peace to the region. We have pro-Israel lobbyists influencing congress, and we have also been a site for antisemitism including a couple dozen terrorist attacks on synagogues since 1957. Loyalty prompts us to stand by our Ali.  Is there a point at which we might reasonably dilute loyalty and turn to pressuring Israel to halt the carnage?  Was there a missed opportunity when we vetoed the United Nation’s resolution that called for humanitarian pauses to provide aid to the Palestinians? Let’s get real: no UN resolution will weaken the resolve of the two parties to destroy one another.  But the optics matter.  The world calls for humanism and the US vetoes the resolution.  Biden is trying to influence Netanyahu to change his military strategy in order to save civilian lives, but with our record in World War II, in Vietnam, and in response to 9/11, the best we can do is advise Israel to not make the mistakes we made.

To the protesters: what we see is utter devastation in Gaza and an increasing potential for a broadening of the war; every sane person on the planet wants this to stop, AND, yes, Israel has the right to defend its territory and seek revenge on the Hamas aggressors. Violence in word or deed toward the opposing side is singularly unhelpful  Denying those arguments would be absurd.  So, in a way neither the protests on either side, nor choosing sides serves a purpose in this case.  The situation is very complex, and both Hamas and the Netanyahu government are deeply flawed in their approach, as we were after 9/11.  Personally, I side with the commentator who pointed out that we are capable of empathizing with the Israeli people in their need to  eliminate future attacks on them at the same time we demand the end to the death and destruction of innocent Palestinians. 

I mostly want to lock leaders from both sides together in a room with no communication to the outside world until they either reach an agreement or kill each other: I really don’t care which. I want to disarm both sides, bring in aid and enlist people from around the world including Israelis and Jews to help the Palestinians rebuild. That would be a place for protestors on both sides to put their energy.  Then I would bring in a UN peacekeeping force so that Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank are being policed until such time the Palestinians can form a new government which will be sufficiently interested in peace to negotiate in good faith with the Israelis and the Israelis elect a government which will be sufficiently interested in peace to negotiate in good faith with the Palestinians and they reach a solution tolerable for both sides. Naive, of course, but wants need not be doable.