There is an abstract sense in which the Israel-Palestine conflict is easy to resolve: one side must simply give up. Let the Palestinians accept a state within borders that do not encroach substantially on Israel’s current territory or let them all agree to leave for Jordan or Egypt. Alternatively, let the Israelis accept that they cannot have a Jewish state in the Holy Land, perhaps even that no Jews are to live there at all. Either way, problem solved.
It must immediately be objected that these simple solutions are also fantastical. Note however that such fantastical simplicity is popular on both sides. Among Israelis and their advocates, there is an undying hope that Palestinians will (in the moderate version) give up on their claims to live on land where they or their parents and grandparents once dwelled and accept the existence of an adjacent Zionist state, or (in the extreme version) be successfully expelled from Gaza and the West Bank. Meanwhile “from the river to the sea” means (at worst) “kill all the Jews in the Holy Land”, or (in less bloodthirsty versions) “the Jews can stay but there can be no Jewish state”, or “the Jews don’t have to die, but they must go live somewhere else”.
Faced with such rival propositions, it is extremely tempting for the external observer to join the moral fray, to adjudicate according to her lights the claims of the belligerents, determine in her view which side should give up, and then hope, pray, write, lobby, demonstrate etc. for the victory of her preferred side. Heaven knows that many have given into this temptation. But cui bono? No matter how certain any observer or participant may be of which side should win, no means has yet been found of transmitting that certainty to the one place that matters most: the hearts and minds of whichever side one thinks ought to give up. You may be convinced to your very core that Israel has a God-given or history-given right or need to exist, or, conversely, that Israel must be dismantled as the embodiment of white supremacist colonialism. But neither of these certainties shows any sign of prevailing over the other, and holding fast to either thus amounts to an argument for one’s own side not giving up, and so for further wars.
But neither of these certainties shows any sign of prevailing over the other, and thus holding fast to either amounts to an argument for one’s own side not giving up, and so for further wars.
At this stage, one may seek to resort to a more pragmatic form of moral judgment, namely, to argue that no one ought to fight a war they cannot win. Accordingly, the side that ought to give up is the side that cannot win. This then seems to argue for Israel: Palestinians and their allies cannot and will not overthrow the State of Israel. They lack the resources. Their war is therefore a lost cause, and the right thing for them to do would be to give up. Might makes, if not right, less wrong.
The difficulty here is that it seems from the evidence before the world that neither side can really win. True, given the current balance of power, Palestinian forces cannot march into Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv and annihilate the Jewish state. True, Israel can bomb Palestinians indefinitely while losing relatively few of its citizens to the enemy. But all this has been true for decades, and Israel has not thereby succeeded in winning: Palestinians are not pacified and have not given up. Israel is losing by failing to win, in much the same way as happened for the US in Vietnam, and for the US and NATO in Afghanistan.
Admittedly the US could have “won” in Vietnam and Afghanistan by deploying the full force of its firepower, including nuclear weapons. But this option was always artificial, not just because of the risk of nuclear escalation, but because the US would be destroying its very core, as a polity, if it chose to become an engine of unlimited death. Likewise, Israel probably has the means to end the conflict by committing the genocide of which its opponents tirelessly accuse it, but this is an essential impossibility, as (again leaving aside the problem of brinksmanship)—to quote—”not one single early proponent of Zionism thought that the project required the extermination of five million people to succeed, and, if they had, not one of them would have become a Zionist”.
It seems that the Israeli government and army are now seeking to find a way out this impasse by “defeating Hamas”. Israel’s hope is that a full military defeat of Hamas and other Palestinian combatants, along with a neutering of these forces’ most dangerous international allies, will so weaken Palestinian fervour and military power that Palestinians will at long last give up.
As we have seen, such an attempt at weakening must, of necessity, pass through inflicting vast suffering on Palestinians, including non-combatants. Surely, there could be less such suffering if both Israel and Hamas agreed to fight differently. However, there is no war that does not beget horrors, and if we demand that—both with immediate effect and forever more—no further horrors be inflicted, we are back to demanding that one side or the other give up.
Surely, there could be less such suffering if both Israel and Hamas agreed to fight differently. However, there is no war that does not beget horrors, and if we demand that no further horrors be inflicted, we are back to demanding that one side or the other give up.
This demand, as I stated at the outset, has no basis in reality. A question that does concern reality is whether Israel’s gambit can succeed, whether Israel can “defeat Hamas” in the relevant sense, so that what follows that putative defeat is indeed Palestinians giving up, that is to say rejecting a politics centred on the overthrow of the Jewish State.
I do not know the answer to this question, and doubt anyone does. However—if they are not to return to mere holding actions or resort to a saintly pacifism—answering it with as much prudence and foresight as they can seems to me to be the primary political duty of Israeli leaders.
Within any immediate horizon, the belief that violence can create a Palestinian or mixed state “from the river to the sea” is clearly delusional. The belief that Israeli violence can crush that version of Palestinian politics may be less so. Such things have happened. But it is hard to be hopeful that this nightmare’s end is so near. Still, one day, please God, both sides (and it must be both) will decide that, however incompatible their visions of the political future of the Holy Land, they are no longer prepared to kill or die to for those visions to prevail. A mutual giving up on that will be the definitional, necessary, and in due course sufficient step needed for peace.
