Israel / Palestine
If every possible effort is not made to avoid it, then war is always inevitable
Sometimes it helps to have no skin in the game. It must be almost impossible for a Jewish person, or anyone with a family connection to Palestine, to comment objectively on the hideous war now being fought in Gaza and Israel. Some do manage it, and when they do it’s their humanity and empathy that shine through; two qualities generally absent in most of the writing in support of one side or the other.
I am not inclined to condemn anyone for their views on the conflict: I have a great deal of sympathy for Israelis, and Jewish people in general, in their reaction to the horrors of 7th October last year when Hamas terrorists killed hundreds of Israeli civilians and took hundreds more hostage. I have equal sympathy for the people of Gaza who have endured immense loss of life and the destruction of their homes and livelihoods by one of the best equipped fighting forces in the world. Both sides have acted with total disregard for innocent civilians; all unwitting victims in a war few of them would have chosen.
While I accept the right of people to protest in support of the Palestinian cause and to demand a ceasefire, I have no time for those who join in the chanting of vile anti-Semitic slogans. Too many on the ‘progressive’ left in western countries - where they have the luxury of being able to take to the streets and vent their righteous anger - have crossed the line between legitimate protest and anti-Semitic hatred.
The left has a long history of allowing partisanship to cloud its moral compass, and of making arguments that take little account of history. Many on the left are at best lazy and at worst explicitly anti-Semitic when they talk about Israel. It’s indicative of how tribal political discourse has become that so many feel compelled to take a side, even if it means adopting anti-Semitic language.
It is not difficult to criticise the policies of the Netanyahu government without resorting to anti-Semitic tropes. If, like me, you have sympathy for the Palestinian cause and you want to persuade others to see your point of view, then surely it’s worth making clear through the language you use that you consider Israeli and Palestinian lives to be of equal value. Such nuance may not make for easily chanted slogans, but when considering how to use our right to protest, we surely have a moral obligation to show sensitivity to a group of people who were the victims of the gravest crime in history less than a century ago.
Many on the right seem rarely to consult a moral compass. I have always assumed this to be a function of their lack of capacity for empathy. But at least they know where they stand. Their ‘pragmatic’ and ‘realistic’ approach to such conflicts rarely wavers from the belief that wars inevitably arise from time to time, they have to be fought until one side wins, and, almost without exception, it is the pro-western, whiter, richer and ‘more-civilised’ side that should be supported.
In my long-form piece, Civilization and Survival, I argued that reaction to the horrors of the Holocaust was a key factor in motivating the western powers to create a more stable and and inclusive world after 1945. It’s now 50 years since those same powers gave up on that project; five decades during which the Holocaust has faded from political memory. Perhaps this is why many young people today are so insensitive to the concerns of Jewish people. The increase in anti-Semitic behaviour in Britain following the Hamas attacks on 7th October, which proportionately killed more Israelis than the 9/11 attacks did Americans, is deeply worrying.
Whether it’s possible to be truly objective about Israel / Palestine, there is no chance of an end to nearly eighty years of conflict without removing the tribalism from political discourse. This is not going to be easy, and what follows may appear hopelessly unrealistic, but in the absence of any other solution, here goes:
We must start by recognising that all human lives are of equal value, and that the interests of all human beings, regardless of ethnicity, nationality or religious belief must be treated equally. I know it’s unrealistic to expect this world view to be adopted by people whose loved ones have just been slaughtered by the ‘other side’, or by those whose interests have been systematically disregarded for decades. But there can be no solution without the acceptance of these values by considerable numbers of people on both sides of the conflict, and by outsiders who involve themselves in mediation efforts.
The historical events that led to the current crisis occurred in a world in which all human lives were not regarded as equal. I’m not concerned with correcting past wrongs, rather with ensuring the mistakes of the past are not repeated. Which isn’t to say that history doesn’t matter, it does: it helps illuminate an aspect of collective human behaviour that has driven much historical conflict, and not just in the middle-east: the choice of most people, consciously made or otherwise, to identify as members of a group which they perceive as superior to other groups. This tendency to group identity is almost universal.
A few years ago, while desperately trying to appease the far-right lunatics in her own Conservative Party, the then British Prime Minister, Theresa May, attacked people like me as ‘citizens of nowhere’. Although my passport states that I am British, this is only because I was born here, and because my parents are British. I’m a straight white male with no disabilities, which puts me in the most advantaged group on the planet, but I know that none of these characteristics make me superior to anyone else, or my life more valuable. There are no rational grounds for claiming Britain is better than any other country, nor that being British makes me and my fellow Brits better people than citizens of other countries. And this applies to every such group anywhere in the world, whether its identity be rooted in nationalistic feeling, ethnicity, cultural heritage, sexual orientation or any other of the myriad ways people choose to identify.
If a long-term solution to the crisis in the middle-east depends on more people realising the capacity to be objective in their assessment of the conflicts, then we need to increase the numbers of people who consciously reject the temptation to identify as part of a group. An end to conflict requires consensus. And consensus demands compromise. This cannot happen while the debate is so polarised and people on both sides, along with those shouting from the sidelines, remain so tribal.
The requirement for more people to reject group identity might seem unrealistic. This conflict in particular is so steeped in historical antagonism and mutual mistrust that continued tribalism seems not only inevitable, but likely to be further reinforced by the current conflict. But two things suggest it is possible: First, the embrace of group identity is a learned behaviour. Young people only succumb to tribal attitudes and perceptions as a result of social conditioning. There is nothing inevitable about it, and it certainly has nothing to do with genetic differences. Second: many people on both sides already support peace and reconciliation between Israel and the Palestinians. For these people, peace and mutual security has become more important than tribal loyalty.
[Note: The near universal tendency for human beings to identify principally as part of a group is too complex a subject to investigate in detail here. Its causes and consequences demand a separate essay, which will be appearing here in the next few weeks.]
It’s no small irony that democratic elections returned the politicians currently leading both sides in the war between Israel and Hamas. The cheerfully brainwashed, depraved fighters of Hamas are as poorly served by their maniacal leaders as the innocent attendees at the music festival in southern Israel, where so many were murdered last October. Sure, Israel has held nine general elections since Hamas won a majority in the 2006 Palestinian legislative election and promptly suspended democracy in Gaza, but neither system of governance has delivered the kind of leadership required to end decades of conflict.
With leaders on both sides hell bent on a victory that involves the annihilation of the other, there is no way forward. Not only is this an abdication of their moral responsibility as representatives of their citizens, it means endless war.
Hamas’ governing charter makes clear that its objective is the end of the Israeli state and its replacement by a Palestinian one through Jihad, which it celebrates as the only way to achieve its aims. Although it claims not to be at war with the Jewish people, only with Zionism, if modern-day Zionism is understood to mean the continued existence of the Israeli state, then the annihilation of Israel clearly implies a war against the Jewish people, as they make up the vast majority of Israeli citizens.
But this is a war that can never be won. It is unimaginable that the western powers would ever let Israel fall, not only for geo-political reasons but also for moral ones. Giving up on Israel would allow the mass killing of Jewish people or their forced removal to other lands: it would amount to a second Holocaust. It cannot and will not be allowed to happen. Hamas’ leaders probably realise their Jihad is unwinnable, but they don’t care. Their minds, like the minds of the young fighters who did the slaughtering in southern Israel, are infected with a mania that begins and ends with the notion that their cause is just and has the support of God, while their enemy’s cause has no such support.
If you accept the right of Israel to exist, then you can understand its determination to defend itself from terrorists who are happy to die for their cause. But if I were an Israeli, I’d be asking why my government failed so abysmally to defend the country last October. Is the appalling failure of intelligence connected with the chaos of Israeli politics in general? Nine elections in seventeen years hardly suggests a functioning democracy. And if the intelligence was so poor they didn’t see Hamas coming, you can be sure that claims by the Israeli Defence Force that they know exactly where Hamas are hiding in Gaza now, are lies.
Whatever their tactics, the Israeli government sees itself as engaged in an ongoing battle for its own survival, but like Hamas, it is choosing to fight an unwinnable war. No power in living memory has prevailed against an enemy employing guerilla tactics: Think of the American-supported regime in south Vietnam. The best-resourced military machine in history couldn’t deliver victory for Saigon. Or the battle for a united Ireland which cost 3,500 lives during the thirty years of the Troubles until both sides sued for peace. Or the efforts of western powers in Afghanistan and Iraq, both unmitigated disasters. The militarily stronger side failed in each of these cases because their opponents had an endless supply of people prepared to die for the cause.
As the late Mo Mowlam said when, as Northern Ireland Secretary, she was charged with finding a solution to the Troubles:
You don't beat terrorists by bombing and shooting. All that does is increase work for the recruitment officers for terrorists.
It is, perhaps, conceivable that Israeli forces could kill every last Palestinian living in Gaza, but just as the world would not abandon Israel, nor would it allow such an act of genocide. Of course Hamas is storing munitions and planning its activities in areas with large civilian populations. That is what terrorists do; they care no more fore the lives of ordinary Palestinians than for the Israelis they kill. As Israel has never been satisfied with a single Palestinian eye for an Israeli one, it was inevitable that thousands of innocent civilians would be killed in its futile effort to defeat Hamas.
If both sides are led by people with no qualms about the numbers who die as a result of their actions, then both sides require new leadership, and quickly.
Progress in the resolution of such conflicts is rarely achieved without inspired moral leadership. This could come from outside, but it would be more easily achieved if it came from within one, or ideally both, of Israel and Gaza (or the wider Palestinian population). As John Aziz asked recently on Twitter / X:
It’s no coincidence that the exemplars John mentions are the three towering moral-political figures of the twentieth century. What each did was to provide leadership to millions of people who wanted to improve their experience of life but couldn’t do it alone. Such leadership is crucial in helping more people think rationally and resist the temptation to use group identity as a psychological crutch.
Like the Israelis before them, the Palestinians do not have a recognised nation state, nor do they have a functioning democracy, both of which make it difficult for inspired moral leadership to emerge. I’m not sure either Yasser Arafat or Yitzak Rabin rank as great leaders, but they at least had the moral courage to engage in talks which led not only to the Oslo Accords in 1993, but a previously unimaginable handshake on the White House lawn.
Perhaps those accords would never have secured a lasting peace, but after Rabin was assassinated by a right-wing Israeli extremist in 1995, and Arafat fell victim to internal Palestinian divisions before dying in 2004, it never stood much chance. And between the deaths of these two leaders, the events of 11th September 2001 re-shaped middle-east politics, consolidated the position of Benjamin Netanyahu, and enabled the emergence of Yahya Sinwar as the leader of Hamas in Gaza.
Lest you conclude I judge the Palestinians more at fault than the Israelis for the current situation: it’s true that through its actions Hamas brought down the full might of the Israeli military machine on the people of Gaza, but ultimately both sides share half the blame, more or less equally, while the other half falls squarely on the shoulders of the colonial powers who conspired in the creation of Israel back in 1947. Not because they allowed the creation of Israel. That had to happen after the Holocaust. But the way they went about it did a great disservice to both the Jewish people who wished to make their home in Israel and the Palestinians who were displaced as a result.
Something changed in the years after 1945: Revulsion at the Holocaust sparked a great moral leap forward. Our collective delusions had been brutally exposed. It turned out we weren’t quite as civilized as we had thought. And while lazy thinkers argued that the Holocaust could only have happened in Germany because of some characteristic in the German psyche or of German culture, others realised that under propitious circumstances, such a crime could happen anywhere, at any time. It was imperative therefore, that the circumstances that give rise to such crimes be avoided.
The response of the colonial powers to this imperative, depleted as they were after six years of war, was a mixture of good and bad. The Bretton Woods framework ensured twenty five years of economic stability and steady growth, at least in the industrialised nations, but in their haste to rid themselves of colonies they laid the foundations for decades of conflict, not just in the middle-east, but also in India and Pakistan, South-East Asia and across Africa.
So here we are: the world has avoided nuclear annihilation and many millions of people now enjoy a standard of living their parents’ generation could never have dreamed of. But large parts of the world are still riven by apparently insoluble conflicts. If an end to war requires many more people to reject group identity, to transcend tribal hatred and distrust and consequently to choose decent politicians to lead them, then we need to understand how this might happen.
A perception of physical and economic security, a sense of being psychologically free, and the mental strength to be independent of mind and not be seduced by reactionary group think, are all crucial to avoiding the moral trap of group identity. Cultural, political and economic norms and institutions clearly have an impact on the world view of individuals, but the strength of that impact varies from person to person. Few have the moral maturity to reject group identity without encouragement from a benign cultural and political environment. And very few succeed in the face physical and economic insecurity. But where people do enjoy freedom and security, many have succeeded in transforming their feelings of group identity into something more benign. And quite a few of us (citizens of nowhere indeed!) have managed the task more or less completely.
This is cause for great hope: imagine what might happen if the environment through which so many acquire a divisive, tribal world view were modified with the opposite outcome in mind.
Economic insecurity and the perception of economic injustice lies at the heart of all conflicts, even if it is mediated through long-standing cultural or religious beliefs. And although largely disregarded by today’s dominant neo-classical economics, access to land is fundamental to achieving economic security. No economic activity is possible without land. People cannot have a secure home without land. They will starve if denied access to land on which to grow food. Of course, Jewish people know this only too well. For 2,000 years they were collectively denied access to land. It’s no coincidence that some of the most resourceful and enterprising Jews made their fortunes in banking. Money is not a factor of economic production (that’s a story for another day), but because of their poor understanding of the role of money in the economy, those non-Jews who believed they controlled the economy were not able to prevent Jews not only from being successful bankers, but transforming the banking industry into the essential part of the economic infrastructure it has become today. Still, having a number of successful bankers among your people does not make up for being denied access to land and the productive economy, as the vast majority of Jewish people have been for the last two thousand years. It was to rectify this centuries-long exclusion that the Zionist movement was established and Israel finally came into being.
The distribution of land in Israel and Gaza explains much: why the Israeli government is fearful for the country’s future; why many young Gazans are all to willing to sign up for Jihad; why many Israelis would rather their government seek a permanent solution to the problem of Palestine, rather than blockading and bombing Gaza; and why current arrangements are untenable.
Excluding the occupied territories, ten million Israelis live in an area of more than 20,000 km², while two million Gazans live in an area of just 365 km². Population density in Gaza is 6,507 people per square kilometre, nearly 15 times that in Israel, which has just 444 people per square kilometre. By comparison, population density in Great Britain is 302, the United States, 87, and even in neighbouring Jordan, only 126. Among established nation-states, only four: Macau, Monaco, Singapore and Hong Kong have a higher population density than Gaza, and of these only Hong Kong and Singapore have bigger populations. And all four have well-established modern economies. Imagine how people in Gaza must feel when they hear that Israel is moving settlers into the occupied West Bank because of a lack of space Israel proper.
Back in 1947 nobody bothered to look too closely at just how many Palestinians were living on the land that would become Israel. The world was apparently seduced by the early Zionist saying:
A land without a people for a people without a land.
Except that the land was not empty. More than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs were were moved from their homes in 1948.
The reaction to the greatest moral crime in human history was to allow another crime, not on the same scale and certainly not with the same vile intent, but nonetheless a crime which would lead to decades of conflict and bloodshed.
Does any ethnic group have a right to a exist exclusively on a particular territory? Of course not. Ethnic groups are a social construct that, in some cases, were established when people who shared certain religious or cultural bonds occupied a contiguous territory, and in some cases were not. That the Jewish people were eventually made a special case was a consequence of political and moral advances on the part of countries with the power to bring Israel into existence. It’s fair to say that guilt also played a role: not only were Jews the victims of the Holocaust, but they had suffered centuries of discrimination, pogroms, ethnic cleansing and economic and political exclusion.
But that history does not give anyone permission to commit even a lesser crime in order to assuage their conscience or right historical wrongs. And the Western powers made a rod for their own back in the process. Notwithstanding the desire of Zionists to create a Jewish state in an area they viewed as their historic birthright, the southern Levant was not an especially welcoming piece of desert back in 1947. Indeed, Israel could not have established itself as a modern, vibrant, thriving state without massive financial support. Its creation at once served to destabilise a region the west would come to depend on for oil, and required huge amounts of development aid, more than $150 billion from the US alone.
But however poorly conceived and executed, the creation of Israel was the right thing to do. It was a historic achievement. The next challenge for Israel and its supporters is to find a way to ensure that Israel, the Palestinian people and their neighbours can co-exist peacefully. And that will require major changes.
What follows may sound impossible given the situation today. But unless we strive for truth in the search for a solution, unless we recognise the deep historical antagonism that underpins this most intractable of conflicts, and unless we understand the need to ditch group identity in favour of accepting the equal rights of all people, we will achieve nothing.
This is not meant as a ten point plan, but rather a list of what needs to happen for a solution to be achieved. If it seems obvious in a way that suggests no solution will ever be possible, it does no harm to articulate the harsh reality.
Progress is impossible as long as both sides are led by maniacal psychopaths. It may be possible if one or other side were to choose leadership of exceptional moral vision, but it would be preferable if both sides were led by people who at least were prepared to commit to no further violence.
These new leaders will have to accept that to guarantee mutual security and viable economic arrangements going forward, there will have to be compromise from both sides. In fact, given the environmental constraints under which the region will labour in the coming decades, progress will be impossible without explicit cooperation.
The above will not happen in isolation. Foreign intermediaries, ideally under the auspices of the United Nations, will have to get their hands dirty. And the people of Israel and the Palestinians will have to be supported in restoring authentic, pragmatic, peace-driven leaders.
The politics of the region must be disentangled from the economic interests of the Western powers and of Russia and China. If Donald Trump returns to the White House in November, there is no chance of this happening. But even if the American electorate chooses wisely, new and different leaders will be required in Russia and China too.
There should be an immediate ceasefire. Of course this will allow Hamas to regroup, but if the Israel security agencies are unable to protect southern Israel from further attacks, they should be supported in their efforts. At the same time, massive humanitarian aid must pour in to Gaza and thousands of homes must be rebuilt. For a community to survive under the conditions that Gazans have for so long, suggests immense resourcefulness and entrepreneurship, but aid must also be directed at rebuilding the infrastructure crucial for economic security and independence.
The United States government (and others) must do everything possible to ensure Benjamin Netanyahu is removed from power. I’m not saying he’s more of a maniac than the leaders of Hamas, but he has far greater firepower, and is therefore able to do more harm. There is also considerable evidence that he leads a section of Israeli opinion that is simply not interested in peace.
As soon as a new Government is in place in Israel, talks should begin on an interim solution that ensures security for Israelis. This will likely require a large UN peace keeping force in Gaza and southern Israel. At the same time, Israel must commit to no further settlements in the occupied territories. And if the Israeli authorities are unable to rein in attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians in the West Bank, UN peace keepers should be stationed there too.
Diplomatic means must be used to pressurise neighbouring states (Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt) to facilitate and support the UN peacekeeping process and not provide military support or supplies to Hamas or any other group committed to Jihad as long as talks continue.
People outside the region who are not able to recognise the equal rights and interests of citizens on both side of the conflict should shut up; they should stop protesting and find a way to involve themselves in the struggle for a lasting peace which guarantees security for Israelis and Palestinians.
Finally: more figures from both sides should publicly and vocally campaign for peace. At times Daniel Barenboim, who with the late Palestinian writer Edward Said founded the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra in 1999, sounds like the only person making the case for peace. There are many people on both sides who are desperate for a end to the conflict. Their opinions deserve representation, and if politicians aren’t doing it, then other public figures should.
It’s a massive ask, and it will require many people to reduce the extent to which group identity shapes their world view. But if that begins to happen, then it’s not impossible that continuing talks could lead to a permanent solution in which Israelis and Palestinians can peacefully co-exist. This would probably involve a two-state solution with Gaza and the West Bank becoming a single independent state under the authority of a legitimate, democratic Palestinian government. It may sound impossible, but if you asked the people of Israel and Palestine whether they’d prefer peace and mutual security over endless war, I have no doubt that a huge majority would vote for the former.
The avoidance of war and conflict requires an enormous amount of effort, especially as we seem unable to choose leaders who prefer diplomatic solutions to military non-solutions. But we know what that effort involves. Most of western Europe and large parts of the rest of the world have avoided war for nearly eighty years now because people came to realise that it’s a great deal easier to remain at peace if physical and economic security is extended to more people. This is what we must now do for the people of Israel and Palestine. It really is worth the effort.
I’ll end with the words of Daniel Barenboim from an article in the Guardian he wrote shortly after the October 7th attacks:
Over the years, through this commonality of music-making, but also through our countless, sometimes heated discussions, we have learned to better understand the supposed other, to approach them and to find common ground. We start and end all discussions, no matter how controversial, with the fundamental understanding that we are all equal human beings who deserve peace, freedom and happiness.