So there has been a lively debate on my Facebook page on the developments in Israel and I decided to clarify a few things for some of my friends there. It seems many do not know the long history leading up to the current escalation of violence. The response on what I wrote was encouraging and positive, so I decided to adapt my response for the Substack blog here.
In short, there is not a simple answer, nor is there an answer on what the masterplan is from a Jewish or Palestinian/Arab perspective. But there are a few things to consider when you evaluate the violence of the last few weeks: history, international politics and the situation on the ground today. I will walk through it at a high level, point by point.
Status of the land – the area that the British occupied and governed from 1918-48 and was called Palestine was originally Jewish, in fact Jews can trace their indigenous status back some 3,000 years to this very land. Its capital was and is Jerusalem, housing the holiest of holy for Jews, the Temple Mount where once the temple stood and which was destructed some 2,000 years ago. On its spot are now the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, both Muslim shrines. The Jews now pray at and what was left of the temple, the Western Wall or as they call it, the Kotel.
The status was resolved by the UN in 1947 when the Brits realized they had to go, chopping up the land between Jews and Arabs/Muslims roughly 50/50. Most of the world and the Jews thought it was a great idea, the Arabs/Muslims, not so much. Endless wars followed, all of them won by Israel at a very high cost. Note: the wars were largely conducted by Arab nations and Arab Palestinians, over the years some real deep rifts would appear among the Arabs as Palestinians became a real nuisance (think about how leader Yasser Arafat supported Iraq’s Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait in 1990 and how Iran is currently dividing the Arab world). The divisions among the Arab parties did not help to resolve the conflict as we will see later.
Palestinian Terror – having lost all wars the defeated Arabs were left with two pieces of the land, the West Bank and Gaza which in 1967 were conquered by Israel after yet another war. The answer was terror, making no difference between army and civilians, in fact innocent non-combatants were the target of choice in most cases. The violence knew no bounds, in the 1970s we had the murder of Israeli Olympians, the murder of schoolchildren at Ma’alot and I can go on for a while, one story even more gruesome than the other. The Israelis were left with no option other than to button up, secure their lands and fight back without mercy. What would you do if your kids are now legitimate targets?
Peace – peace efforts really started in 1977 when Egypt’s Anwar Sadat sealed a deal with Menachem Begin, the latter one of Israel’s most successful prime ministers. It was the start of the Arab world abandoning the Palestinians. These peace dealings progressed and reached their peak in the 1990s under Bill Clinton and Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin whereby a division of the land was agreed to with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. The world was happy, Nobel Prizes were handed out and investors were ready to jump in as it seemed the conflict had stabilized and more or less been resolved. It did not end well. The Palestinians balked and resorted to terror, this time via suicide bombings, if you want to understand the full scope and horror of these, read up on one of these, the attack on the Sbarro restaurant in 2001. Israel itself was deeply divided and Rabin was murdered in 1995 by an Israeli radical. When the 2000s came around it was clear that peace dreams had been shattered and that the culprits were the Palestinians who in the end refused to really accept any peace arrangement with a permanent character.
There was another guilty party in all of this: the rest of the world. Palestinians are still treated as refugees (73 years after vacating Israel proper) and are funded with billions through the United Nations’ UNWRA organization, with nothing to show for it other than two corrupt and somewhat impoverished places (West Bank and Gaza) under leadership that will only consider a full return to the land and a full restoration of Arab/Muslim lands. If you see a reference to ‘from the river to the sea’, that is what that means: no more Israel anywhere in the Middle East. The world, the rest of the Arab world, all of them have been propagating and fund the refugee myth without the real work of resettling the refugees and helping them to rebuild the places that they were resettled in. No wonder that many Palestinians and their leaders (who derive their position of power from leveraging the misery of their population) still believe in the ‘right of return’ and in a dream that can effectively never be realized. They were never given any other option and the one they were given they mistakenly rejected. When you think about it, the Israelis are probably the last ones to blame for this enduring drama. Endless political international games have relegated Palestinians to an almost impossible status and as a consequence they have become more isolated over time.
Think about all the billions of aid that could have gone to Gaza and the West Bank if Hamas and the Palestinian leadership had decided to invest in tech, trade and development instead of building a rocket arsenal and training suicide bombers. Gaza could have been a Tel-Aviv on the Mediterranean with an international airport with hotels, bars, restaurants, whatever. Same on the West Bank, although the latter has fared a bit better than Gaza benefitting from open borders and a somewhat more benign leadership than Gaza’s Hamas.
Settlements - But I can hear the question: what about the Jewish settlements, are they not an obstacle to peace? First, Israel vacated the Gaza strip in 2005, there is not a single Jew there other than two hostages and two dead bodies that so far have not been returned. The West Bank is more complicated as this is ancestral Jewish land and the settlers have in many cases a rightful claim for which they paid: many Arab landholders were more than willing to sell land. The original peace accords provided for a certain number of settlements where Jews would live as a minority on the West Bank, much like the Arabs/Muslims that live as a minority in Israel proper. Seems like a balanced deal, right? The result would be a patchwork of pieces of land and borders criss-crossing cities and townships, but with trust and security it could have worked. What’s more: the challenges of the region will affect both Jews and Arabs, think about collaboration on water, agriculture, climate change and energy, all things that could potentially unite people to work together.
So what now ? The core question is what the strategy on both sides is now. Israel has checked out and with that I mean Israeli society as a whole pretty much has moved on and given up on a peaceful solution. Sure there are elements in Israeli society that still believe it, but they are seen as naïve and almost dangerous, let’s move on is the dominant credo. In a way Israelis feel betrayal, they know much of the Arab World wants peace with them but if the Palestinians in Gaza and West Bank do not want it, well, go figure it out and live in your own misery. In the meantime if you do not mind, we will protect ourselves. This has resulted in a wall, checkpoints, security checks and many incidents where things get out of hand although we have had long periods of relative peace and even quite a bit of co-operation in the West Bank (governed by the Palestinian Authority, the PA). Not in Gaza however (governed by Hamas). The PA has opted for on-again, off-again collaboration, Hamas for rockets as we know now.
In the meantime – much underreported in Western media – some 20% of Israel’s population is Arab and in most cases lives happily along their Jewish neighbours. Because it is not all that bad: they are wealthier, get better healthcare and on top of it, get to vote and are represented in parliament. They are so well represented that they are now holding the balance of power during coalition talks for a new Israeli government. They even carry Israeli passports. Key Arab nations have concluded peace agreements with Israel as they too are not interested in an ongoing war (they lost all of them) and want to do business with Israel, but also because they view Israel as a partner against Iran who is the real shit disturber and lethal threat in the Middle East right now. And to put a fine point on it: Iran is the key party supporting Hamas in Gaza.
Resilience and Strength - So how do we think that the Jews who have barely survived a Holocaust (European or Ashkenazi Jews) and decades of minority status and often abuse in Arab lands (Mizrahi Jews) will respond to a party that seeks to kick them out of their ancestral land and/or kill them all? The Jews have survived the Babylonians, the Romans, the Assyrians, the Nazis and the Soviets to name just a few, so does the world really think they will pack up and go? To paraphrase Israel’s only female prime minister, Golda Meir: “We Jews have a secret weapon in our struggle with the Arabs; we have no place to go.” So, they will fight to the last person standing and will do anything to survive, much as they did in the Warzaw Ghetto in 1943 when they were eventually annihilated by the Nazis. That will never ever happen again, whatever the cost. And they are in my opinion correct to take that stance.
In the meantime, again, Israel is a thriving multi-ethnic, multi-cultural society. It is galling to hear its opponents qualify it as an ‘apartheid’ state. Using this language is a precursor to delegitimize and destroy Israel and anyone using this language uses it with a clear intent. The same with the ‘BDS’ boycott which seeks to deprive Israel of economic oxygen. It is eerily reminiscent of ‘don’t buy from Jews’ in the 1930s which was the first step of a process that ended in Auschwitz. There are many among the Palestinians and in the western world (notably hardcore leftists, think Jeremy Corbyn and AOC) who are happily propagating this toxic anti-Semitic language.
And Now? Israel did not initiate the recent hostilities. Sure, there are tensions and the pandemic has no doubt brought an extra layer of pent-up frustration to the entire dynamic on all sides. And radical elements have been waiting to fire up these things even further. But it is and remains a war crime for Hamas to fire an endless number of rockets on citizens and in the process (war crime number two) endanger and kill your own population. That Israel is condemned for defending (in many cases giving prior warning of launching an attack, something Hamas does not exactly do) itself says a lot about the moral state of the world.
The state of Israel was the result of the first human rights case (Jews seeking safety and a state in the 19th century) the world ever saw. The Jews have in their new state gone out of their way to meet and manage relations with Arabs within and outside its borders while adhering (to an almost extreme extent) to international law governing warfare. It is perverse that the one open and liberal democracy in the Middle East is held to an almost impossible standard while defending itself. And of course there are breaking points where no reasonable human would not take the most dramatic decision when faced with the question, do I live or do I die?
Photo: a few hundred meters from the Israeli-Egyptian border in Eilat. Any driver coming in from the other side will see it and so did I wandering off the nearby coral reef beach.
Nice summary. A couple of comments: 1. Never did understand why the Arabs refused the UN directive to form the modern state of Israel in 1947. As it turned out, the proposed 50/50 split between Jews and Arabs ended up with the Arabs taking over most of former Palestine which became Jordan. 2. The UNHCR has been - and still is - responsible for the world's refugees (except for the Palestinians). Many refugees have sprung up and been resettled by the UNHCR since WWII. The UNWRA is the only UN organization specifically formed to manage the Palestinians. One wonders why the UNHCR did not (could not?) assume responsibility for the Palestinians who are still considered "refugees" after 73 years.