Rocket Science
You'd need a slightly robotic view of human beings to believe this, but let's say Hamas' acts of terror, from suicide bombing to indiscriminate missile attacks, are the pure expression of a closed circle of jihadists, whose fanatic, intractable views are more or less conveyed by the organization's charter: that the "land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf [trust] consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgment Day," that Islam must "obliterate Israel," and "all initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors."
Think of Hamas' message as code--as the Darwinist digerati say, a "meme"--that spreads and replicates itself under given conditions. Suppose that no peace process can survive its triumph, and that not only Israelis, but West Bank leaders and professionals, moderate pro-Western Arab regimes, Americans and Europeans--all advocates of civil society--have an interest in seeing it defeated. How to fight it? Is Israel's attack in Gaza, Operation Cast Lead, a kind of awful therapy?
Let's leave aside for the moment whether Israeli settlement organizations express a corresponding fanaticism, or whether Israeli forces have ever committed acts that might qualify as terror, killing Palestinians indiscriminately (or accepting random "collateral" deaths), or whether people who were once terrorists, or actively tolerated terrorism, from Yasser Arafat to Yitzhak Shamir, might eventually be transformed into responsible political figures. No, let's default to an extreme Machiavellianism, subordinate being loved to being feared, and entertain the idea that Israel should obliterate Hamas before Hamas obliterates Israel. Would we not first ask under what conditions the Hamas meme seems to have spread?
TWENTY YEARS AGO, during the first intifada, Hamas was a miniscule Islamist organization, preaching a vague jihadism and just beginning to engage in suicide bombing and kidnapping. The vast majority of Palestinians were insisting on national representation by the Palestine Liberation Organization, which had begun angling for a two-state solution. Palestinians in the territories militantly resisted the occupation, but tens of thousands still worked on Israeli construction sites, and their mass demonstrations were not, on the whole, lethal: Most young men and women threw rocks and the odd Molotov cocktail at heavily armed soldiers and tanks. Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin, afraid that a show of weakness would encourage resistance, adopted the "iron fist" policy of repressing the uprising, ordering his troops to "break the bones" of demonstrators--an order some soldiers took literally. Hamas stayed underground. As the Intifada wound-down, Israeli-Palestinian dialogue groups flourished.
The Oslo process put Hamas into nearly total eclipse. Under Israeli pressure, Arafat's Palestine Authority imprisoned Hamas activists. Israel, for its part, began to engage in targeted assassination of Hamas leaders, especially in Gaza. Yet Hamas was never wiped out because, throughout the Oslo process, neither side had any idea where peacemaking was leading. Jewish settlements never stopped; in fact, the number of settlers doubled, and annexationist activities in Jerusalem redoubled. The schools of the PA continued to glorify armed struggle.
In Gaza, where the Israel Defense Forces' defense of Jewish settlements from periodic attacks trumped everything else, there were often border closings, and per capita income of Gazans plunged to about half of what it had been in the early 1990s. Fatah leaders of the PA enriched themselves, often claiming monopolies through their "ministries" of food and building commodities. Finally, in 2000, a new intifada erupted.
Ariel Sharon tried another iron fist, which he called Operation Defensive Shield. He belittled the newly elected Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, deeming him too weak to govern, while more and more Palestinians saw Fatah as Quislings. By the winter of 2006--after Sharon was forced to evacuate Gaza, much as Rabin had been forced to recognize the PLO--Hamas was strong enough to eke out a victory in PA elections. Hamas leaders even became culture heroes to Arab citizens of Israel who were increasingly frustrated by the exclusionary way so many Israelis defined the Jewish state.
THIS HISTORICAL SKETCH is seriously incomplete, but some patterns are clear. The Hamas meme spread especially when Israelis attacked in Palestinian towns to "reestablish deterrence." The idea that the disproportionate power of Israel's occupation was ever doubted, or that Hamas acts of "martyrdom" came because its youth were simply not afraid enough of Jews, rests on the kind of primitive psychology you get from combat generals, neocons, and battered children.
Actually, Israel's expansive power has always been a part of the Hamas message: The Hamas charter continues, "After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates." And how could Israelis seriously expect ordinary Palestinians in their towns to turn off any Hamas insurgency just because they were getting battered?
Hamas ideology spread, moreover, when Israel insisted that the occupied territory of the West Bank was actually "disputed," or tried to dissociate its evacuation from Gaza from what it was doing in the West Bank. Hamas influence spread when circles upon circles of grieving youth fought out of rage and survivors' guilt. It spread when settlers seemed able to push Palestinians who would otherwise support a two-state solution into calls for steadfastness; or when jihadists were themselves able to push Israelis, who are increasingly skeptical of the settlements, into calls for national solidarity in the face of "existential threats."
Hamas ideology spread, especially, when Israel sealed the Gaza border in a vain effort to starve the place of Hamas influence. It spread when Palestinian economic life seemed futile, or inevitably corrupt--when a fight to the finish seemed the only chance at a meaningful life. Why would Gazans feel beholden to Hamas' tunnels if they had an open border, relief from grinding poverty, and business opportunities with West Bank partners?
MAKE NO MISTAKE, even under international law, Israel has the right to respond to missiles on Sderot and other southern towns. And if Israeli forces could wipe out Hamas in a great, terrible blow, killing only people set to kill Israelis, one could hardly blame the IDF for defending Israeli lives. A ground attack has just begun, but nobody in his right mind thinks this will end as a surgical strike, which will excise the whole of the Hamas leadership, and not utterly destroy many neighborhoods; already, much of Gaza city is without power; to kill Hamas extremist Nizar Rayyan, a bomb killed his four wives and nine of his children. It is most likely that Cast Lead will end in a monitored cease-fire, and that Israel will be satisfied to have made what one Sderot resident called "a statement." Unfortunately, this statement helps Hamas, or its successor, make its case--not only in Gaza, but across the West Bank, and among Israeli Arabs as well.
The point is, the rise of Hamas is a cautionary tale about trying to do quickly with military force what needs to be done over a generation with reciprocity. All along, Israel might have made a strong statement of a different kind. It might have endorsed the obvious features a two-state solution, like the ones worked out with President Clinton just before he left office in 2001. It might have helped strengthen the Palestinians' immunity to Hamas ideology, creating a stronger civil society, new businesses, new schools, new Palestinian cooperation with international peace-keepers and investors.
Israel might have meanwhile announced, say, that it can know the precise location from which each Hamas missile is launched, and that it would bomb that location exactly ten minutes after each launch, giving surrounding citizens a chance to flee--and creating a mounting incentive for civilians to resist Hamas cadres using their homes as cover. One can think of any number of creative ideas that project strength, decency, and hope. This is not, well, rocket science.
(This post appeared first in The Daily Beast.)
I begin to think that these parliamentary elections yield leaders with compromised mandates, and no chance of even doing as much as Rabin did. Looks increasingly hopeless, as the feedback of aggressive reprisals against aggrieved Palestinians aggravates more frustration, more harassing fire, and more spasmodic suppression attempts.
It is exactly the same mistake we made by calling for "War on Terror." It is the creation of more terrorists by trying to attack them as national enemies. Treating them as criminals would prevent the gains in respect caused by the military assault and its expected collateral damage, read dead civilians. But that would have required the inherent respect approach of police investigating and preventing crime, which means treating Gaza inhabitants as clients of Israel. The price of war and occupation is responsibility for the occupied. Israel has failed its responsibilities.
Why do so few ask this question: Is Hamas crazy? Those rockets are only vandalism, really, just dangerous tomatoes thrown at the Empire's minions. Their only effect is to ask for retribution. The people doing it are beyond persuasion. Nothing left to lose. Only Israel has anything left to lose, its remaining friends along with its last shreds of moral force.
January 6, 2009 8:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Tom, I think it is pretty clear (at least, I argued this in Harper's two years ago) that there can be no hope of either the Israeli PM or the Palestinian president advancing to the deal, which is obvious, without outside powers imposing it. Each side is to divided, and each leader is too much the hostage of the other side's atrocities.
January 6, 2009 9:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
Outside powers can not "impose" a solution. Why someone as smart as Dr Avishai can't understand this simple point is beyond me. During Obama's visit to Israel a few months ago he stated this to the Jerusalem Post's David Horowitz. What leverage does the US have with the Palestinians to "force" them to make concessions that will leave those making them open to the charge of being traitors? Arafat told Clinton he would be assassinated (I guess he can dish it out but he couldn't take it) if he compromised on the Temple Mount or the Palestinian Right of Return. What incentive do the Palestinian leaders even have to make an agreement since they are given large amounts of money every year to pocket (call it a "dhimmi tax"-the non-believers are forced to pay up or else the "extremists" will take over, endangering Western interests). The only place an "imposed solution" exists is in the deluded dreams of "progressives" like Dr Avishai or MJ, or Daniel Levy whose prescriptions for the Arab/Israeli conflict have been proven wrong over and over.
January 6, 2009 11:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
Welcome back Dr. Avishai. I'm not sure if the kind of reciprocity that you speak of would have worked to prevent the kind of missile attacks that Israel has responded to. I think the more important point is that, to whatever extent that Israel is justified in doing what it is doing, and I defend her right to prevent missile attacks to a large extent, the fact is that it is important to recognize and acknowledge that Israel's failure, and the failure of the United States as her principal ally, to pursue a peaceful two-state solution with vigor in a consistent manner over the last 20 years, has brought us to this situation in which we find ourselves in now. Succinctly stated, unapologetic zionists like me must acknowledge that we are responsible for creating the conditions that have allowed a Hamas to rise and to flourish. And that is important because it is one of the reasons that, however justified or necessary Israel's current actions are, they are actions that are insufficient to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict going forward.
It is, of course, imperative that we look back, not to point fingers of blame, but to try to figure out what to do going forward. And, here again, I look to President Elect Obama and his team to practice a tough love on Israel that has not, in the past, been practiced before. It is a tough love that is needed and will work best, and that is distinguished from the kind of polemical assaults and ostracizing and othering that Israel is subjected to by other nations and other peoples for good faith purposes or otherwise. Perhaps they can help by closing their mouths a little and opening up their hearts and their purses to help to build Gaza and the West Bank and prove to the Palestinian people that there are benefits in a real and tangible sense to their children when there is peace. This, of course, to rebuild Palestine, is the responsibility of Israel and the United States going forward as well.
It is where President Obama must lead, and it is where those of us who truly want peace and justice for both Palestinians and Israelis must help to lead him. I think you are helping already Dr. Avishai.
Bruce S. Levine
New York, New York
January 6, 2009 8:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent post and a complex idea. Don't take this metaphor literally but in nature we do see that some viruses survive and thrive on the very things that attack them. I'm thinking autoimmune diseases. Again... don't take that literally! Though couldn't you just see Sarah Silverman reading that and then deadpanning, "Hamas is AIDs."
January 6, 2009 9:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
It occurred to me, destor23, that Cast Lead (which sounds like medieval medicine) is like taking a insufficient course of chemotherapy and not expecting the cancer to recur even more virulently.
January 6, 2009 9:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
By the way, Bernard -- sorry I was kind of a jerk when you started posting here. I think you're an excellent writer and thinker and you can expect to be treated as such by me going forward.
January 6, 2009 10:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
Mea culpa myself. I think I was excessively sarcastic to Professor (Dr.?, Bernard?--what are we supposed to call you?) Avishai when he first posted here about folks like me making a big deal out of the fact that Obmama was elected and he was an African American. I sort of (no did) gloss over his principal point that PE Obama was a heckuva lot more than just an African American. Sorry about that.
January 6, 2009 10:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
Chemo is for cancer. Now you are referring to Palestinians as a cancer. Sigh.
January 6, 2009 12:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bernard said: "And how could Israelis seriously expect ordinary Palestinians in their towns to turn off any Hamas insurgency just because they were getting battered?"
Enough said.
January 6, 2009 9:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for this insightful and comprehensive analysis, Bernard Avishai. I think it go still further:
1) I have often read, but never with elaboration, that Israel "created" Hamas. Is there any substance to this, and if so, why not make your "incomplete" picture more complete by discussing it?
2) Given the long lasting and solid plausibility if not obviousness of your views here, it is hard to believe that intelligent Israelis in positions of power have not been aware of them, and at least somewhat convinced by them. And yet Israeli governments have persisted since 1967 with failed policies of indiscriminate, childish, and dysfunctional brutality and oppression of Palestinians decade after decade after decade. The question is begged: Is it not possible, or even likely, that these Israeli leaders, or more narrowly but precisely the settler-fanatics to whom they often kowtow (notwithstanding as with Sharon in Gaza, occasional temporary tactical opposition), in fact WANT to fail to defeat Hamas et. al.? That their whole messianic fervor is based on a kind of twisted Warsaw Ghetto paradigm: brave Jews abandoned by the world, whose only choice is how fiercely fight and kill before being killed? That compromise or accommodation or creative alternatives to this eternal mission of pre-emptive revenge would violate the core of their most fundamental ideology?
Again, thanks, and please continue to post on this important issue.
January 6, 2009 9:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
The Army War College describes the next chapter in the story:
Publication date, December 23, 2008, and already in need of an update....I do not intend this as, in any way, a defense of Hamas and, Israel having made the decision to try, I'm hoping that they succeed inasmuch as possible in reducing Hamas to a minor influence. Am I optimistic? Not since 1993.
January 6, 2009 12:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
I have read any number of reported incidents of Palestinian civilians catching Hamas "fighters" setting up rockets in their neighborhoods, and chasing them out. But that's not always possible, first because they don't ask permission and second because they're armed gunmen. I could argue that the only reason that there's gang activity in South Central L.A. is that the residents of those neighborhoods don't tell the gangs to leave, but really.
January 6, 2009 10:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Another minor question to Dr. Avishai regarding his proposed "10 minute delay" solution - how would that affect Intel's plan to invest several billion dollars in a fab which suddenly might fall into Hamas rocket range? Should Israelis say: " Don't worry, we'll bomb that pasture from which they destroyed your nice fab in 10 minutes, now please build us another one?"
Not that I disagree with the general tone of Dr. Avishai's article, but there needs to be a solution to the rocket problem now, not in a generation. I'm not sure, alas, that a solution exists (not one that is better than the problem, anyway)
January 6, 2009 2:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Good column by Nadav Shragai in Ha'aretz explaining why the disastrous policies that Dr Avishai's "peace camp" brought on Israel (2 wars in 2-1/2 years and 3 wars in 9 years-quite a record for "men of peace" including Israel's Nobel "Peace Prize" winner President Shimon Peres) must be ended and those who brought this disaster on Israel and the Palestinians must be ousted from office:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1052993.html
January 6, 2009 11:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
YBD:
I have expressed ambivalence about what is happening and I have and will continue to defend Israel's right to defend itself. I don't want to take issue with whether the peace camp or the war camp in Israel or here is to blame most for the current situation. But from my armchair over here, enough is enough. From where I sit, and I confess that I am not in Ashkelon or Sderot, the marginal benefit that Israel can achieve by continuing this ground assault is far outweighed by the devastation to the civilian population of the country.
I think we need to pause, at least for the moment. I pray that's what's going to happen today or tomorrow, and in the meantime let the factions inside and outside of Israel squabble about whose fault it is.
In the meantime, get ready for more and more people like me, who defend Israel and it's right to defend itself against those who claim otherwise, to push our new president to push Israel and push Israel hard to cease letting the settler movement in the West Bank stand in the way of the just peace that I believe G-d was talking about when he told us way back when that the Land of Israel could be a blessing or a curse.
January 6, 2009 11:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ben David - I have been following your comments for a LONG time on various sites. You have consistently supported settlement expansion, totally disagreed with removing the Gaza settlements, and express venon against Palestinians and any Israeli to the left of Moshe Feiglin. Here is my question - what exactly do you propose to do with the Palestinians who live in Eretz Israel?
January 6, 2009 12:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you for posting this here, because you posted the same question earlier, but it got lost in the maze of comments, before I could reply.
Here is my answer, and you most certainly will, at first glance, reject it, but I hope you will ponder it for a while.
There is no chance of peace while Israel goes around offering withdrawals and unilateral concessions and adheres to the "2-state solution". The only chance for peace will occur when Israel STRENGTHENS the settlements and makes it clear that it will not remove them. This will not happen right away, it will take time for the Arabs to absorb this, but they will be the major beneficiaries from such a shift.
How does this work? The Arabs do not accept the right of any dhimmi people to have self-determination in any part of what the Arab/Muslims consider to be the Dar al-Islam (the Realm of Islam). The creation of the state of Israel, along with Christian control of Lebanon, were intolerable for them. Thus, Arab policy since the creation of the State of Israel has been to eradicate it. At first, it was thought conventional military confrontation would do the job, but the Yom Kippur War, carried out under ideal conditions from the Arab point of view yet ending in a decisive defeat for Egypt and Syria, showed that Israel can not be defeated in this way. Thus, the confrontation shifted to the Palestinian front, which from 1948 up until 1987 had been marginalized. 1987 had mass unrest in the first "Intifada". Although it was successfully suppressed by Israel, the combination of this unrest, combined with the fall of the Soviet Union, leading to mass aliyah from the USSR and the loss of Soviet support for Arab anti-Israel intransigence, plus an ideological collapse on the part of the ruling clique in Israel (i.e. loss of faith in the justice of the Zionist cause) led in the early 1990's to the leaders of the secular, Leftist camp in Israel (who have held power since the beginning of the state) deciding that Israel should get rid of Judea/Samaria/Gaza. This led to the Oslo agreements when for reasons I can never fathom, Rabin, Peres and the rest of the Establishment decided bringing terrorist chief Arafat and his terror gangs to Israel, and giving him money and weapons. We of the Right, warned this would bring only bloodshed and misery to both sides, and of course we were correct. Arafat interpreted the Israeli concessions not as Israel being "nice", but rather Israel was being "weak". Arafat never had any intention of making peace, his colleague Faisal Husseini said openly that the Oslo Agreements were a "Trojan Horse" designed to give Arafat's FATAH terrorist movement a territorial base from which to attack Israel.
So, as I said, the Arab side views Israeli concessions as weakness, not "generosity" and it simply moves them to increase their demands and the violence. It is HOPE on the Arab side which fuels the conflict. This HOPE must be eliminated. The Arabs heard Prime Minister Olmert say "Israel is doomed if it doesn't create a Palestinian state right away". Why should the Palestinians want to help Israel in this way. NOT having a state makes them stronger, it gives them the flexibility to maintain their long-term war of attrition against Israel without any responsibilities that a sovereign state apparatus has in the world community. They also heard him say "Israel is too tired to fight any more". They also saw "tough, right-wing General Ariel Sharon" order the IDF to run away from Gush Katif and to destroy the Jewish communities for nothing. They concluded "Israel is finished". Both HAMAS and HIZBULLAH's leaders give Israel another 10 years before it collapses for good (G-d forbid). So why should they make concessions that will open their leaders to charges they are traitors and sell-outs when they believe Israel is going under anyway and they will get what they want for free. After all, the Americans and EU will never cut off the money (AKA the jizya "dhimmi tax") because the Palestinian Authority people will say that doing so would bring the HAMAS "extremists" to power (even though ther is no difference in the goals of FATAH and HAMAS in goals, merely tactics and differences in opinion about Islam's role in public life.)
Thus, if it is true what MJ and Bernard Avishai believe that Obama is going to crack down on Israel and be more "even-handed", then all this will do is make the conflict even more intractable.
So is there hope on our side for an end of the violence? Yes, there is. By Israel proving to the Arabs that it is here to stay, by showing that Jews are as committed to their holy places and their connection to the land no less than the Arabs/Muslims are. Today, Islamic extremism is in the political ascendancy throughout the Arab world, because it seems to be succeeding for the reasons I outlined above (Israel's weakness, the Post-Zionist ideological bankruptcy
of Israel's ruling clique, etc). Once Israel shows it means business, the extremist Muslim preachers won't be able to point to these things as proof that their way is right.
This will then lead to an UNOFFICIAL modus-vivendi between the sides. An easing of tensions...this is what should be aimed for, not formal peace agreements which are unachievable.
Unlike what the anti-Israel commentors are always spouting, it is not the policy anyone in Israel political life today to expel the Arabs, and that includes Feiglin's people, the Likud, the settler movement, etc (yes, there are individual extremists, but they have no political power). I, for one, oppose expelling either Jews or Arabs from their homes.
So then the question arises: what about the political rights of the Arabs in Judea/Samaria?
With good will on both sides, this can be achieved by working towards an UNOFFICIAL Israel-Jordan-Palestinian condominium in Judea/Samaria. Jews will be Israeli citizens, Palestinians will be represented in some sort of Jordanian-Palestinian confederation, Israel will maintain security control of Judea/Samaria and this presence can be reduced to a minimum with improvements in the security situation. This will take years, and it will be unofficial, because the Arabs can not now officially recognize Israel, but when the Palestinians realize this is a good deal for them (a much better deal than an independent state which they have proven they are not capable of setting up or running) they will learn, gradually, to accept it. Don't forget for all the talk about Palestinian "suffering", they have a higher standard of living than the Arabs in any Arab country that doesn't have oil wealth. This includes Gaza...when the wall between Gaza and Egyptian Sinai was broken a year ago, the Gazans poured into the Sinai (El-Arish) and bought up everthing in sight...thus, they have more available cash than they average Egyptian.
It is NOT the policy of the Nationalist Right in Israel to "take over the Middle East"...simply to exercise Jewish rights in historic Eretz Israel which is currently in our hands (i.e. Judea/Samaria). Interestingly enough, it is the Israeli Left that poses a much greater threat to the Arab world because (e.g. look at Dr Avishai's "Hebrew Republic") they have a materialist, conserumerist view of what Israel's culture should be. The Arab/Muslim world is conservative and religious and they fear these secular Leftist Israeli values which push things like break-down of the family, lack of respect for elders, sexual immorality, rampant consumerism, etc. The Jewish Orthodox/Religous community, of which the ideological Judea/Samaria settlers are part, are much closer to the Arabs/Muslims in their cultural outlook than the Israeli Left is. Traditional Judaism is not a missionary religion and is no threat to the Muslims, whereas the secular, materialist "Hebrew Republic" values of the Israeli Left ARE such a threat. Thus, we of the pro-settler religious Right are in a much better position to talk to the Arabs as equals because we share many values. They will learn to trust our views and will know that we can keep agreements. Only the Zionist/religious Right in Israel can really make peace with the Arabs, eventually.
But again, this can only happen once the Arabs lose the hope of getting rid of Israel. This tragic military campaign, which Israel's "peace camp" brought on us (and which never would have happened if Gush Katif had not been destroyed) is the first, painful step in the change of direction. Hopefully, this defeatist corrupt, "peace" gov't will be replaced by a gov't that really believes in Zionism which will allow quicker steps in the direction I have stated.
January 6, 2009 3:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Makes me think of the Afrikaners and the ANC, who rejected liberal-politics English as unrealistic.
But I consider both the Arab/Muslim religious ambitions, and the settlers' ambitions as dangerous. What the hell are "Jewish rights"? Why should anyone yield an inch to a dream of recreating ancient history? Should the Etruscans fight to take back Rome? How about American indigenous natives? For that matter, why not honor the prior historical claim of the occupants of the area that Joshua killed?
January 6, 2009 6:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ben David - First of all I REALLY appreciate your taking the time to rather completely outline your prognosis and cure for the I/P conflict. As you guessed, I disagree with your primary premise that the Palestinians would agree to anything other than their own independent state. The Jews would not agree to such a deal and neither would the arabs. Any confederation with Egypt and/or Jordan would merely shift the battle lines.
That being said I agree the Palestinians might be terrible at governing. But they will go to their deaths in a fight to have that right. There simply is far,far, far too much nationalistic furor now after 40 years of occupation. They would view any confederation as simply changing the name of the occupier.
Leaving Jews in the West Bank is a totally unrealistic idea. Do you really think they could abide by Israeli laws inside their towns and arab law once they stepped out. They would need Jewish only roads and you can well imagine what most settlers would think of Arab authority.
I honestly think you have come up with your proposed solution by looking at the end result you want to achieve(ie Jews living in all parts of Judea and Samaria) and then worked backward to see what kind of political structure would allow it. It's NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.
I also believe you overstate the Palestinian desire to wipe out Israel as a Jewish state. Even Hamas has said they would sign a peace treaty with Israel as long as it passed a Palestinian plebecite. (I will try to find the citation). Remember the days when Egypt was saying the same things as Hamas - well they changed their minds and everyone is better for it. The Palestinians may also surprise you - seems to me now is the time to find out while Israel is so strong militarily and economically. In the intermediate future Israel cannot be pushed anywhere by anyone.
The muslims are not afraid of Jews converting them. They simply want Human Dignity after 40 years of miserable occupation and degrading Israeli behavior. I've gone to many a West Bank checkpoint with my IDF relatives and witnessed first hand the terrible demeaning behavior by the IDF. Until that deep yearning for freedom is sated, the Palestinians will fight for another millenia - just like the Jews would. Can you just imagine what Jews would think if they were penned in a big cage like Gaza? Would you be satisfied being totally dependent on someone else for everything? You certainly understand the Jewish yearning for an independednt homeland, is it really so hard to imagine others feel the same way?
January 6, 2009 8:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Let's leave aside for the moment whether Israeli settlement organizations express a corresponding fanaticism, or whether Israeli forces have ever committed acts that might qualify as terror..."
Why?
And on Hamas, your "historical sketch" is more than "seriously incomplete" it's a lie
January 6, 2009 12:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
"How to fight it? Is Israel's attack in Gaza, Operation Cast Lead, a kind of awful therapy?"
The only practical way to beat it is to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian territories. I don't believe that Israel could ever do this because it would violate Israeli morals. Therefore Israel is stuck running a couple of ghettos, (internment camps, bantustans, call them what you will).
Obviously smart people argue over whether they created this situation or if it was forced upon them. I don't have an answer. I'm glad I'm not in their shoes.
I just don't want to send them any more of our planes or bombs or money to administer this apartheid.
***
"Actually, Israel's expansive power has always been a part of the Hamas message"
Indeed.
January 6, 2009 1:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
I know this is cheeky, but why can we all not come to an agreement about a two-state solution? Ego - pride - culture - power - ?
I really hope I live to see the day when Israel and a sovereign Palestine exist. Obviously, from reading what little history I have on the subject and not being Jewish or Muslim, I want what every humanist must want, a stop in fighting and progress to rebuild the ties between two cultures. It's a completely complex problem and the more I the less sure I am about how this problem will be resolved. I simply think that at the end of the day, you will always have extremist/nationalist in both of these cultures; the problem is that the moderates on both sides seem trapped in a cycle of violence only paused for moments which treat us with an enticement of hope. Both cultures, as well as our own here in the US, seem to need the middle to stand up and push the extremist to the edges of political and economic discourse. Pragmatism seems to be a buzz word. Again I apologize if my comments seem simple.
January 6, 2009 2:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bernard, I think this post and bslev's and jdleddel's responses have somewhat restored my optimism that a just and peaceful resolution to this depressing conflict might be possible. Thank you all.
January 7, 2009 7:39 AM | Reply | Permalink