WE ARE OBSERVERS TO A WAR WE CANNOT PREVENT

Some personal reflections on the unfolding catastrophes in the war between Israel and Hamas.

The unspeakably inhuman massacre of 1,400 Israelis by Hamas terrorists on October 7th remains very raw. It was grotesque in its savagery. Evil is an elusive term suggestive of a transcendent reach into a level of depraved behavior that cannot be addressed by words or put into a rational framework. It touches the bleakest realm of human motivation and capacity. Hamas's crimes were an orgy of bloodletting and violence. It was evil for which there can be no excuse.

But time changes things, and with time's passage perspectives widen, complexities emerge, and derivative responses make themselves felt. For those of us who are not on the ground, we remain dependent on contacts we may have. But it is the media that greatly formalize our understanding, imposing a type of “official” picture of what is occurring and its meaning. It is the primary lens through which we see these events. The Israeli-Hamas war has inevitably become part of the news cycle. Initially capturing our total attention, it now takes its place as one story among several: the appointment of a speaker of the House, yet another mass shooting, and others to follow. Its prominence will again be front and center as Israel begins its invasion of Gaza on the ground. But as the war grinds on, as it probably will, its prominence in the public mind will become one current event among others.

Multiple issues proliferate – military, political, and moral - highlighting this conflict's boggling complexity. Hamas has freed four hostages in what may be an attempt to forestall Israel's ground invasion. The Israeli military has deferred that invasion up until now, no doubt to deliberate on military strategies. There are rumors of dissension among war planners and between top commanders and the government. It is common knowledge that war carried on in an urban environment is especially dangerous and deadly. The task initially involves destroying Hamas while somehow safeguarding the hostages. It is an impossible needle to thread. With the ground invasion having begun, it is possible that Israel will choose by agonizing default to abandon the rescue of the hostages.

For the moment, Israel has garnered sympathy, mostly in the West and outside of the Arab world. This will quickly fade as the bombardment of Gaza intensifies, thousands of innocent Gazans are killed in proliferating numbers, and the entire population is deprived of water, food and fuel, the most fundamental necessities to sustain life. It strikes at gross inhumanity, and Israel will again become the center of global opprobrium. Thousands of innocent Gazans, almost half of whom are children, will die. Israel and Egypt must collaborate in immediately allowing a large and continuous flow of supplies for humanitarian relief to enter Gaza.

Israel will claim it has no choice. There is no doubt that Israel is the regional superpower. But the balance of power is complicated. While Israel's relations with the surrounding Sunni Arab state are good, history has shifted in that its major threats come from non-state actors: Hamas in Gaza, and Hezbollah, with its 150,000 missiles just across Israel's northern border in Lebanon. Behind these terrorist entities, and actively supporting and stoking them, is Iran, a nation that is committed to the annihilation of the Jewish state. Israel, in its occupation of the West Bank, is condemned by sectors of the Left as a colonial power. Yet, in a gross political and moral inconsistency, Iran, a theocratic, autocratic, misogynistic, homophobic, and utterly corrupt power, is committed to expanding its control over Shiites in Iraq and Syria, and a sponsor of Hamas, gets a pass from the Left, as is it quick to condemn Israel for its abuses. Given its precarious position, and despite its military power, Israel's militancy in its own defense is understandable. Israel exists in an environment of threat.

Is there any hope emerging from this crisis?

Sometimes, out of the most dire circumstances, a positive outcome emerges. Perhaps the horrors we confront imbue human beings with the realization that conflict has reached its limit and radically different approaches must be sought. The nadir of crisis can dialectically give rise to something new and better. Crises at times beget opportunities.

It is often noted that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is sustained by the extremists in both camps. Among the Palestinians, it has long been its corrupt and stubborn leadership, which has balked at a negotiated peace settlement with Israel from the time of the State's founding, through the Oslo Accords, and afterward. The Palestinian Authority, since Oslo, has formally recognized Israel's existence. Hamas, a terrorist organization, has sustained an unremitting commitment to Israel's destruction as its goal and raison d'etre. Its capacity to fire thousands of missiles at Israel is an index of its unrelenting and unmitigated bellicosity.

On the Israeli side, extremism manifests itself in the ideologically driven settlement movement, which has expanded Israel's presence in the West Bank. There are now more than 400,000 settlers in the West Bank, and Palestinians are increasingly displaced from their homes in East Jerusalem. The division between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas controlling the Gaza Strip, as well as the passage of time and an uneasy status quo, have caused the two-state solution to fade from the agenda. It has been all but declared dead.

It has never been apparent to me what the Likud, which has controlled the Israeli government since Menachem Begin, and the Israeli right presume the consequences of the occupation would lead to. Netanyahu, especially earlier in his prime ministry, would grudgingly claim, probably in response to American pressure, that he supported a two-state solution. That pretense is gone, as he has brought into the government extreme right-wingers who openly advocate for the annexation of the territories. One concludes that in suppressing the right of Palestinian self-determination, Israelis could nevertheless mollify their aspirations for a state of their own through spurring economic development. That, plus military vigilance, would keep the Palestinians in check ad infinitum. Perhaps the oppression would cause Palestinians to slowly leave over time, or if need be, as a final measure, a slow process of ethnic cleansing would force them to vacate their homes. From the Israeli standpoint, by sustaining the status quo, with time the Palestinian problem would be out of sight and out of mind. So it had been until October 7th.

The occupation of the West Bank and the containment of two million Gazans in their tiny enclave is cruel, humiliating, and unsustainable. Beyond the oppression of the basic rights of Palestinians, it is also corrupting of Israeli society and has proven to be so. At the heart of that corruption is the settler movement, which began under a Labor government. Most settlers on the West Bank move there in search of cheap housing. But the hard core of settlers are right-wing ideologues who invoke religious doctrine to justify their settlement of the West Bank, at times appropriating the land that Palestinians have lived on for generations. While a minority, the settlement movement is smart and well-organized. In a very rough analogy, just as politicized evangelicals have moved the American political landscape far to the right, the Israeli settler movement has thus transformed Israeli society. They have made inroads into Israel's administrative offices, and as we witness, the highest echelons of government. Perhaps most ominously, they have increasingly infiltrated the army, thus compromising the mainstay of Israel's security. The ability of Hamas terrorists to breach Israel's vaunted security apparatus to execute their massacre, and the reason why it took the army so long to come to the region in which the killing was taking place in a country in which distances are of county proportions, is that soldiers, engaging in police functions, were guarding settlements on the West Bank. The small Israeli villages near Gaza were left unprotected. Moreover, Israel became overly dependent on technology to surveil Gaza's borders, in lieu of human monitors. Israel had grown complacent.

Looking at the larger picture, one cannot oppress six million people and keep them under occupation forever. If violence is to be overcome, what's needed is an end to the conditions that give rise to violence. Some have proposed a one-state solution, with Jews and Palestinians living together in a democracy, all enjoying equal rights. What might have been a viable option in the early history of the Zionist movement, after 75 years of Israel's existence as a Jewish state is a non-starter. Some have proposed a confederation, wherein Arabs residing in Israel would be citizens of an independent Palestinian state, and Jewish settlers residing in the West Bank would retain Israeli citizenship. Perhaps.

There has been been mutual killing between Jews and Palestinians in the area for more than a century, long before Hamas came into existence in the 1980s. With the destruction of Hamas, other terrorist organizations will arise. Destroying Hamas will not put an end to the cauldron of violence. .

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I believe that President Biden is to be commended for putting the two-state solution back on the table. The months of civil unrest prior to the massacre revealed that a major sector of Israel's population, perhaps a majority, is discontent with Israel's rightward advance and the Netanyahu government. It is likely that Netanyahu, whose braggadocio as “Mr. Security” has been unmasked as a fraud, will not survive in office. There may be an opening for a more moderate government to emerge, and, forced by the horrors of the moment, for a two-state solution to again emerge as the only option. It is my view that such a state would need to be demilitarized with the American (not international) military in place (think Korea) in order to keep the peace. Israelis have observed that each time they have ceded control of territory, as in Gaza and southern Lebanon, in short order they have faced hostile regimes with missiles pointed at their population centers. They have a compelling point.

If and when Israel succeeds in demolishing Hamas, a Palestinian government in Gaza will need to be formed. It is doubtful that the Palestinian Authority will enter Gaza on the coattails of an Israeli victory. Here, and in brokering a two-state solution, I believe the leadership of the surrounding Arab states – Egypt, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia – would become crucial. Egypt, which is contemptuous of Hamas, has nevertheless mediated ceasefires between Israel and Hamas to curtail violence. Qatar, which has supported Hamas, is currently negotiating for the release of hostages. And Saudi Arabia is not far from establishing diplomatic relations with Israel as they share a common enemy in Iran. The Saudis could predicate finalizing official relations with Israel on restarting the peace process with two states in view. These Arab nations have the lines of communication and relations with both parties to make this happen. They need to recognize this opportunity. It is an initiative that the United States would welcome and stand behind, employing whatever positive support would be necessary.

Is such an outcome plausible? Probably not. Is it possible? Yes, it is.

But this is an end in view and not for today. At the moment, the world watches as bombing, violence, and killing unfold. All lives are precious, Palestinians no less than Israelis. Civilian casualties must be kept to a minimum. But war, and especially war in a tightly urbanized environment such as Gaza, makes this adage seem like a vapid bromide. After 9/11, the United States launched an all-out assault on Afghanistan to rout Al Qaeda and the Taliban from that country. At the time, some commentators opined that it would have been preferable to see the pursuit of Al Qaeda as a police action rather than an all-encompassing military assault. I am by no means a military strategist, but perhaps the Israelis need to deploy a similar approach to effectuate their goals while minimizing casualties on both sides.

No doubt, the Israelis will do what they think they must to secure the security of their nation and its people. But this is no time for isolationism. The relevant global actors need to assert their influence and work to ensure that a minimum of lives are lost and peace restored, while the legitimate needs of Israelis and Palestinians are met.

No immediate solution presents itself. We need hope, nevertheless, as circumstances rapidly evolve, that new and better opportunities will emerge.

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