Gaza: The Longest War
Gaza: The Longest War
What response should we have to the current bloodletting in Gaza and Israel? In the current situation, it may seem useful to apply F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous line about “a first-rate intelligence” being able to “hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”
On the one hand, the leaders of Israel brought this crisis on themselves. Netanyahu and his cabinet refused to halt settlements, refused to allow Gazans to develop their way out of poverty, and made no serious concessions that would have allowed Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority he still runs to regain their status as a government-in-waiting, one that would have a chance to marginalize Hamas by showing their people that they could deliver jobs and, finally, a state. To underscore his intransigence, Netanyahu said in a televised statement last week: “I think the Israeli people understand now what I always say: that there cannot be a situation, under any agreement, in which we relinquish security control of the territory west of the River Jordan.” The last ten days of attacks from the air, to be forever remembered by that unspeakable photo of children blown to death as they were playing on the beach, only sped the mounting mistrust—even hatred—of Israel around the world. The current invasion will increase it still further.
At the same time, Israelis are not wrong to view Hamas as a threat to their well-being, both in the present and the future. Hamas has no strategy for liberating Palestinians from the agony of their daily lives besides stoking continual revulsion against the state of Israel. In its election platform, the group pledges to keep fighting until all of “historic Palestine” is again “part of the Islamic and Arab land.” To stay true to those words signifies unending war—and a futile one, since even the most peace-minded Israelis are not going to abandon their nation or allow themselves to be driven out of it. Meanwhile, shooting rockets from apartment houses assures retaliation that inevitably kills non-combatants of all ages.
To hold both these ideas in one’s mind should not, however, mean evading responsibility for resolving the crisis. What is happening now is just the latest battle in a sixty-six-year-long war that began with the founding of the State of Israel. For the first quarter-century of the conflict, the two sides—Israel and the Arab states around it—were fairly evenly matched. But since then, Israel has surpassed the Palestinians in every area but international esteem. Israel should adopt a policy as moral as its mighty capability to do harm. Announce a dismantling of the settlements in the heart of the West Bank. Declare full and unalterable support for a Palestinian state. Denounce the growing anti-Arab racism among young Israelis. None of these steps will be politically easy, and Netanyahu’s current government will not accept them. But the longest war in modern history has to end some time. If Israel wants to persuade the world that it is the decent and democratic society it claims to be, and not merely one that can defend itself, it should begin to do what is necessary to make peace.
Michael Kazin is editor of Dissent.
