The goal of war – according to Aristotle – is peace. Perhaps this is too simple. One war is not like the other, and given the technology of modern warfare, there may be other goals. Peace, such as the peace of Westphalia that created a kind of mutual recognition of sovereignty and autonomy between Protestant and Catholic states and principalities in seventeenth-century Europe, was not the end of warfare, but it put an end to the wars of religion triggered by the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. The Good Friday Agreement, much called into question by the impact of Brexit on the status of Northern Ireland, also put an end to sectarian warfare, as did the NATO intervention in the Balkans in the 1990s. Where states emerged from the partition of territory along sectarian or ethnic lines, as in Ireland, India, and Palestine, important questions were left unanswered and a certain instability was left behind by the British Empire precisely because of what may have seemed, at the time, a fair and peaceable solution. Instead, partition was followed by bloodshed, i.e., decades of warfare and, with the possible exception of Ireland, no real peace in sight.
The justification for pursuing this goal of a “pacification” of Gaza now, rather than, as in the past, just taking the edge of Hamas, but keeping the organization intact and in place, is that it has become too strong to be tolerated. Much to everyone’s surprise, or so it seems, and despite all advance warnings, which were dismissed by the upper echelon of Israel’s military and by the political establishment, Hamas and its sister organizations who have been holding sway in Gaza since the elections of 2006 and the subsequent defenestration of the PLO, which amounted to a coup against the Palestinian National Authority, mustered a large number of fighters, overran the much taunted digital border, and wantonly massacred over a thousand Israelis living in kibbutzim along the border, as well as at an open air music festival, raping, pillaging, murdering, mutilating, and parading their over two-hundred captives, many of whom, weeks after October 7, are still held in Gaza. Israel’s vaunted military and secret service had failed, just as they had failed in October of 1973, when Israel was jointly attacked by Egypt and Syria on a religious holiday. The images from the massacre of October 7 are now seared into the Israeli psyche. Memories of the Holocaust were invoked. Hamas and Islamic Jihad had, in the Israeli perception, shown themselves for who they truly were: Islamo-fascist nihilists who placed themselves outside the human family. The only reasonable and proper response was a full on war with the goal of eliminating Hamas altogether. Only with Hamas and Islamic Jihad gone from Gaza can there be peace. This, at least, is the Israeli rationale for the war in Gaza. The costs in human lives and in damage to the civilian infrastructure of Gaza are staggering. Whether or not Israel can achieve military victory over Hamas and essentially destroy the group as a military organization, as the combined forces of the US and various allies did to the Islamic State in Mesopotamia and Syria remains to be seen. Many people around the world feel that this war is waged at the expense of the civilian population of Gaza, a predominantly young and therefore vulnerable population, and that military action will not defeat Hamas, or the ideas it stands for.
But what does Hamas stand for? What was it they had in mind when they attacked the border communities and massacred civilians? What kind of a group are we dealing with? Was the action ordered and condoned by the civilian leadership, most of which lives in exile, or was the military wing acting by itself, seizing the opportunity of Israeli society being distracted by the inner turmoil of the mass protests against the legal reforms pushed through by the government, inattentive because of the high holiday, and otherwise engaged because of the deteriorating security situation across the West Bank? Was their attack a ploy, a baiting of the Israelis, provoking the very military reaction that took place? What did they expect to happen? What were they thinking? Did they expect that parts of Gaza would be flattened by Israeli counterattacks, that not even hospitals, schools, and mosques would be safe from Israeli shells? Were they surprised by how Israel reacted?
People who are calling for an immediate ceasefire in the Middle East, the return to the negotiating table, and a stable political settlement believe, perhaps, that for Hamas as for the government of Israel, this war is the continuation of diplomacy by different means. That diplomacy, not war should end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that a just and lasting peace can and must be achieved between the two parties to a conflict caused by the partition of Palestine, based on the UNGA resolution of November 29, 1947. The obstacles to such a peaceful and equitable settlement are mounting with every day. Peace is buried with every potential peacemaker buried under the heaps of rubble into which Israeli military is turning section after section of the strip. What I find astounding is that appeals for a ceasefire are mostly if not exclusively directed at the Israelis. As if Hamas and Islamic Jihad had nothing to do with it. As if their actions had not provoked this war. As if they were not still firing random missiles at Israeli civilian settlements. As if they were not waging a clever war of disinformation and delegitimization against Israel. As if they did not still hold hostages. As if they needn’t give an account for the massacre of October 7. As if they were the legitimate representatives of the fight against Israeli occupation. By being eclipsed as agents in this war, by being obscured as the cause of this war and as a threat to peace and coexistence between Jews and Arabs, they are being legitimized and their actions celebrated as yet another war of liberation against the almighty evil oppressor of all black and brown people.
This is the reason why so many calls for a ceasefire are unhelpful. They mix the humanitarian with the ideological. They assign blame only to one side and thereby implicitly take the side of an evil cult that aims not to build but to destroy. If Hamas represents the future of the Palestinian people, their future is bleak. The Palestinian people clearly deserve better. This is not to say that Israel is waging this war to liberate the Palestinians from Hamas. The Israelis would be mistaken if they thought they are in a position to determine the political future of the Palestinian people. They cannot pick and choose who represents the Palestinians.
The war came at the worst moment possible for the Israelis. The current government coalition led by Benjamin Netanyahu has been discredited in multiple ways, involving personal misconduct, which is being litigated in Israeli courts, involving a weakening of the defense infrastructure by pushing the interests of radical settlers who are part of the government itself, and by eroding the trust of the majority of the Israeli people who have been out on the streets demonstrating against the pending legal reforms for months. Worst of all, Netanyahu and his ilk see no future for a Jewish and democratic state of Israel other than one that permanently condemns the Arab and other non-Jewish citizens of Israel to second class citizenship. Their vision of a Greater Israel is not just incrementally realized by means of settlements and infrastructure projects across the West Bank but also pushed by constant harassment and provocation of the Arab population by the radical settlers, often with the tacit support of the military. It is therefore not surprising that even long-standing friends of Israel, Jews and non-Jews alike, are becoming frustrated with the policies of the State of Israel. As friends of Israel, others and I are heartened by the tremendous engagement of Israelis, Jewish, Arab, and other, for the return of the abducted and care for the survivors of the massacre, even when it goes against the war aims of their government; by people who speak truth to power even when their dissent is being stifled; by the many groups who foster coexistence; by Jews who draw attention to settler abuse, standing between their fellow Jews and the Arab shepherds and farmers of the South Hebron Hills.
The damage caused by the massacre in Israel and by the Israeli government in Gaza is mind-numbing. As mere spectators we seem condemned to watch, open-mouthed, what unfolds with grim necessity. Our readiness to protest and call for a halt to the military overreach and the death and depravation it causes to Palestinian lives is canceled out by the wave of anti-Israel propaganda spilling all over social media and parroted by people who until recently had barely an idea where Palestine was. One marvels at the fact that this crisis is spinning out of control while so many other conflicts are being forgotten or ignored. Who benefits from this disaster?
Here is a possible outcome that one could live with. The combined pressure of protests across the globe will move governments, however reluctantly, to put pressure on the warring parties (and not just on Israel), to enter into a long-term truce. Because Israel will have failed to remove Hamas, the government of Israel will fall and there will be new elections in which someone like Gantz will emerge with a mandate to move the needle of Israeli politics toward Israeli-Palestinian rapprochement. Initially, the old guard of the PLO will take the lead on the Palestinian side, but they will soon be eclipsed by people like Hanan Ashrawi and Marwan Barghouti who will insist on political rights, not just the faux authority and moneyed impotence that has haunted the PNA from the day it was established. It was the flawed rule and corruption of Arafat and his circle that gave rise to the protest vote that brought Hamas to power in the Gaza strip. A repeat of this debacle cannot be the solution to the leadership vacuum among the Palestinians that Hamas stepped in to fill.
To those who believe that this war is the beginning of the end of the “Zionist colonialist settler regime,” I would say: no and perhaps. Israel will persist. The Jews are part of the Middle East, as they have always been. They will not go away. In that sense, no. But perhaps the neo-Zionism of the Israeli right and the religious-national chauvinism of the radical settlers can be reined in and be replaced with something more productive, something based on mutual respect and equality. The future of Israel, Palestine, and one may add the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, if there is to be one, must be based on equal rights of movement and citizens’ rights for all in whatever political and economic federation will emerge from this highly problematic and unstable political morass. Europe did it after many centuries of warfare. Why shouldn’t the Middle East?
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