The Intractable Conflict - Part 1

Here it is in no uncertain terms: a democratic polity must be allowed to defend itself against attack.

In 2005, amid much internal controversy, Israel withdrew unilaterally from the Gaza Strip, dismantling its military bases, pulling out its soldiers and evicting Israeli settlers after 38 years of occupation. It was a huge gesture towards peace and possible reconciliation.

Israeli leaders were surrendering land it had captured in the 1967 Six-Day War, and it was doing so of its own volition. No-one, let alone the Palestinians, could have forced such a decision. The pullout signaled a willingness to allow the Palestinians to begin setting up their own nation-state.

Even hard-liners, like Ariel Sharon, began to rethink their occupation of key territories. Israelis were content to pull back to defensible borders and leave the Palestinians to fend for themselves.

The opportunity for the Palestinians couldn’t have been clearer. If their leaders could maintain a minimum of order in Gaza and prevent it from becoming a base for attacks on the Jewish state, Israel would gain the confidence to take the next step: withdrawal from the West Bank, home to the majority of Palestinians, and negotiate the creation of a true Palestinian state.

Israel took the first step towards peace by withdrawing troops and dismantling settlements, despite widespread opinion that, left to their own circumstances, the Palestinians would choose to support continued conflict. And how did Palestinians respond? In 2006, the Palestinian people elected the militant, guerrilla organization of Hamas as their elected representatives.

After the many years of Fatah negotiations, and the subsequent Israeli withdrawal of occupied territories, the Palestinians chose to be led by a militant Islamic organization whose desired goal is to expel Israelis from the middle-east.

Instead of continuing to move towards practical solutions, Palestinian leaders chose conflict. This was what Israeli traditionalists and fearful settlers had warned would happen: Handed over to the Palestinians, Gaza would become a breeding ground for militant attacks and organized guerrilla operations. And Hamas did exactly that. From the beginning of the withdrawal to today Hamas has continued its rocket attacks and bombing of Israeli civilians. Thus, opportunity lost.

If Palestinian leaders would have behaved with more wisdom and more pragmatism they could have had their state by now, in both the West Bank and Gaza. When Israel pulled out three years ago, international donors and Palestinian exiles were queuing up to finance new roads, ports and factories. There was talk of railway lines, a rebuilt international airport and a thriving agriculture industry. Instead, Palestinian chose to spend their energies on rearming and organizing for militant operations. Thus Gaza remains what it's been for years: a miserable ghetto, producing extremism and hopelessness.

Let me be quite frank here. i accept the fact that Israel was founded by a group of rogue Zionists who took control of occupied lands by military force. That is obvious. And I have great empathy for Palestinians, and fully condemn the injustices caused Israeli actions and manipulations. The situation was, and is one of ethically indefensible imperial domination by a largely ‘western’ cultural group - a general social formation that i am very critical of and believe to be pathological in its effects.

But (and this is a very tentative ‘but’) Israel does exist, it is a fully functional and democratic nation-state, it has the military power to ensure its continuance, its people live within a well-established sociocultural milieu, and it has been recognized by the international community as such. In other words, Israel is here to stay. This is a raw fact. (no matter how much you and i want it to be otherwise)

So, then, now what? How do we proceed from these facts? For starters, from a strictly pragmatic position, the problem becomes less about how or why Israel came to be, and more about finding a way of creating a peaceful co-existence between two relatively different peoples.

Israeli leaders need to be more compassionate in their land use and tactics towards the Palestinians, and Palestinians need to accept the presence and existence of the Israeli state. And both need to compromise in the best interests of their respective peoples. The details, or course, are complicated indeed and need to be dealt with at the level of specifics, with great care and openness.

Much as Israelis (still) want the conflict to be over, they have lost whatever small confidence they had that the Palestinians might be tolerable neighbors. The idea of pulling out of the West Bank, only to see it become another, bigger base for militancy, now seems almost unthinkable. Mr. Netanyahu, head of the Likud party, could return to office in next month's election on a tough program of zero tolerance for Palestinian hostility.

It can be argued that Israel began its current operation against militants in Gaza out of despair at Palestinian failure to develop internally. It knew full well that such an assault would cause angry protests in the Arab world, condemnation from the United Nations security council and civilian casualties that would make it look brutish in the eyes of the world. But what choice do they have? Does a democratic polity have any other choice than to defend itself from attacks???

What's worse, Israeli leaders know, and i fully believe, that it carries out these operations at the expense of perhaps never truly achieving its main goal of stopping rocket attacks against Israeli civilians. Israelis know that the current bloodshed will only increase Palestinian hatred and opposition. But what choice do they have? Letting their own civilians be attacked by rockets is no choice at all.

Ask yourself: would you let your neighbor throw rocks through your windows day after day without any reaction to prevent him from doing otherwise? I think not. If there were no governing body (e.g., the police) to prevent my neighbor from doing this i would walk next door and force my neighbor to stop. i would not allow it to continue to happen. What would you do? Would you keep negotiating with your neighbor by phone in the hopes that someday he would stop his rock-throwing ways?

The transformation of Gaza into a militant launching pad by Hamas left Israel no choice but to react firmly, or risk losing power to deter further, more devastating attacks against the Israeli homeland.

The humanitarian situation in Gaza in desperate, and after the fighting subsides there should be an international effort to help the people in Gaza. I truly feel for the families and civilians who are being harmed every day. And state war is an atrocity in general. But a war is obviously what Hamas wanted, and now they have it – only now they hide among civilian populations using their own people as shields.

Whatever comes of this latest fighting, the Palestinians will have to decide what their own future will be. The only way for Palestinians to get their state will be to choose a new leadership strategy and build it themselves.

Sign a global petition to demand international collaboration for the peaceful resolution of the Gaza crisis here: AVAAZ.ORG

-- this is part one of an ongoing series dedicated to understanding the crisis in the middle east --