Uncomfortable truths about Israel and Palestine
Preface: Setting the tone
Let’s establish some table stakes because you don’t know me and I don’t know you. I suspect they’re not controversial until you have to apply them to people you’re less familiar or comfortable with. We all need to get over that.I won’t indulge in debates on who’s earned the right to murder innocent civilians. If I allow empathy and intellectual honesty to inform my opinion here, I can expect neither Palestinians who have been oppressed and dispossessed for decades, nor Jews who have been persecuted for centuries and for whom Israel is the one and final safety net, to exercise restraint and resolve their differences by drawing straws. But maybe you and I can agree to these principles:1/ There is no moral high ground that makes it ok to murder civilians, and that logic should apply equally to the IDF and to Hamas. Civilian populations can’t answer for their governments. We moved on from this in the Geneva conventions on the back of the massive loss of life in World War 2, didn’t we? And we know enough about politicians the world over to understand that we can’t possibly punish civilians for their leaders’ choices. Case in point: The families shot down in the Kibbutzim had little agency over and little approval of their Government’s policies. and consistently accused of being traitors to the Zionist cause by right wing settlers for opposing settlements near the Gaza border. For example, this beautiful human spoke up to condemn the destruction of Gaza . And this woman condemning the violence despite herself at the hands of the terrorists. And this
2/ Selective outrage is a de-facto de-humanisation of the other side because you’re literally saying their dead don’t warrant your outrage. For example if you are vocally outraged by the massacres committed on October 7 and believe yourself to be an unbiased humanist, then you have to be equally vocal about the constant trickle of tragedies befalling Gaza and the West Bank over the past few decades, let alone about the current displacement of 1.1M vulnerable people and intentional bombing of densely populated civilian areas. As a prime example of bias Lex Fridman, who up until now has had compelling interviews that challenged the war-mongering US establishment narrative, hosted Jared Kushner of all people lately. He spent an extended amount of time describing the atrocities in the Kibbutzim but at best glossed over the loss of life in Gaza. Let’s see Jared take the time to acknowledge the massacre unfolding in Gaza now. Maybe actually humanise them and say their names for once. As Dutch TV presenter “80% of children in Gaza are diagnosed with depression, have you ever wondered what their dreams are”.
To me the only genuinely de-escalatory and emotionally coherent attitude sounds an awful lot like Tangle News’ Isaac Saul:
Am I pro-Israel or pro-Palestine? I have no idea.
I’m pro-not-killing-civilians.
I’m pro-not-trapping-millions-of-people-in-open-air-prisons.
I’m pro-not-shooting-grandmas-in-the-back-of-the-head.
I’m pro-not-flattening-apartment-complexes.
I’m pro-not-raping-women-and-taking-hostages.
I’m pro-not-unjustly-imprisoning-people-without-due-process.
I’m pro-freedom and pro-peace and pro-all the things we never see in this conflict anymore.
Whatever this is, I want none of it.
Whose land is it anyway? Ancient history overview
The amount of revisionism on both sides is astounding. Here’s a loosely accurate and entertaining and the accompanying list of that either settled in or ruled over the land (all 24 of them to date).How did we end up here? My take on the more modern history
I won’t try to chronicle all the wars but I will revisit the starting state of things when Jewish immigration began intensifying (1880+) and the end state we find ourselves in today (2023!):Starting state: The Zionist movement came to life in the late 1800s, with an aim to establish (or restore) Israel as the motherland for all Jews, on the back of centuries of persecution and recent rising anti-semitism in Eastern Europe. There is debate on what the Zionist slogan “a land without a people for a people without a land” meant at the time. At worst it meant that the locals didn’t matter. At best it meant that early Zionists just didn’t grasp the size of the native population that lived alongside Jews in the land. Between 1900 and 1947 Jews increased significantly in numbers (from 3% to 33% of the local population). While they did actually buy up to 6% of , it was in skirmishes against the mounting violence from Arab Christians and Muslims that Jews slowly increased their territory. In 1947 Palestinians refused a UN-proposed partition plan that would grant them 55% of the territory in somewhat disconnected chunks. Civil war erupted and Israeli militias swiftly conquered 78% of the territory and displaced 750,000 Palestinians in the event known as the Nakba. In May 1948 the State of Israel was declared and through military, political and diplomatic miscalculations the Arabs were defeated. Palestinians were left with the Gaza Strip and the West Bank in its entirety at the time. Bluntly speaking Israel cemented its position fair and square through good old fashioned warfare, because they were more competent than Arabs on all relevant fronts.
End state: The conflict today is dramatically different and does not exactly earn Israel a medal for sportsmanship. Of note, Israel occupied 100% of the Israel-Palestine territory from 1967 to 1993 and then the IDF “retreated” from the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Palestinians are only allowed to live in restricted and disjointed enclaves cribbled with 175+ permanent checkpoints that severely and arbitrarily restrict their movements. They are under constant threat of eviction as thousands of homes continue to be demolished and people forcibly removed to make way for illegal settlers in direct violation of humanitarian law. I’m dwelling on the West Bank because Hamas has no presence whatsoever there, so how does one explain that homes are constantly and people ? Take a look at this by Israeli NGO B’tselem for some high res doom and gloom. You will have also heard by now that Gaza was bestowed the monicker of “largest open air prison in the world” by human rights groups due to the myriads of restrictions imposed on it, not least of which are on entry and exit by land, sea and air. Let’s finish with this whole issue of Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and other NGOs calling Israel an apartheid state. Here’s a . In summary, Israel engages in institutionalized discrimination in favor of Jews over their own Arab Israeli citizens and over Palestinians across the entire territory in settlement, housing, land development, citizenship, language and culture. Do we honestly expect Palestinians who grow up in these conditions to keep calm and just get on with the whole going-extinct business quietly? I deliberately wanted to give the Palestinian context before acknowledging that have been perpetrated and at Israeli civilians even after the 1993 withdrawal. I’m doing so because this article may get shared in US and European circles who hear plenty about the human and psychological toll of these attacks on Israelis, but far less about what goes on in Palestine (at least based on adhoc conversations I’ve had). I do want to stress a couple of things so I’m not just beating on Israel here: 1/ If I was born and raised in Israel, I reckon I’d find it hard to be moderate when the surrounding peoples pepper my town with rockets while chanting for my annihilation. I understand Israeli grief even more so in the context of centuries of Jewish persecution, 2/ Palestine did squander a few peace deals that look generous in hindsight i.e. when compared to what has been lost over the years. They have often done so because factions within their ranks straight up sabotaged any kind of negotiation e.g. through violence like the .
Relevant world order changes from the 1948 until today: When wars were being fought over the creation of the state of Israel, the 1949 Geneva conventions didn’t even exist and neither did so many countries as we know them today. As ugly as this sounds civilians were being targeted and displaced as humans competed for their own nationalistic narrative until fairly recently, think Pakistan and Bangladesh. So someone with sufficient emotional distance can understand the argument that Israel can’t be blamed for successfully forging its path in this climate of emerging nations. But here’s the issue: Israel is still today pushing further on its vision of a safe haven for global Jewry through the same methods as it was in 1948 i.e. violence towards Arab Palestinians and discrimination towards Arab Israelis. This creates two problems: a/ As the world slowly but surely becomes less barbaric than it was in the mid-20th century, there is an increasingly deep dissonance between Israel’s aspirations for a modern democratic state and its methods, as J Street put it at the expense of Arabs in 2018; b/ Israel is now the military and economic Goliath in this fight, rather than David the underdog. This fundamentally changes its moral obligations. The principles of distinction and proportionality under Humanitarian Law require all parties to limit the civilian harm they inflict when they can afford to. I’m not referring to these laws to make a Legal argument, which I know on the basis that Palestine is not a country. But the moral underpinning of these laws and the post-WW2 experience they are built upon remain relevant. By virtue of its crushing superiority today, our collective assumption is that Israel has sufficient means to do a better job at the “Civilian Harm vs Military Advantage” equation. Much like hurling pipe bombs with shitty sound effects at innocent Israeli civilians has achieved nothing militarily to date, we are yet to understand what military advantage depriving an entire population of electricity, food and water while repeatedly carpet bombing dense civilian areas confers to Israel. If the IDF is disciplined in the application of its extensive operational plans and rules of engagement, why have they consistently refused any form of investigation by internal and external bodies on the mounting list of civilian casualties they’re tallying up in Palestine and Lebanon? When you add the of top government officials to the open questions above, it’s hard to see how the magnitude of Goliath’s actions correlate with its otherwise legitimate right to defend itself.
What are the stakes for regional players today?
Israel — Palestine: As far as Israel is concerned, I’m referring to Netanyahu’s government and their too-far-gone right wing supporters specifically as opposed to the liberal minority that can be reasoned with (~40% of the Knesset). Netanyahu spoke publicly of and events are unravelling exactly as he promised his right wing electoral base: accelerating the rate of in the West Bank, annexing the Golan heights, making moves on East Jerusalem and now taking over Gaza through a ground invasion on the back of the October 7 tragedy. Settlers have also been actively . I wonder what liberal Israelis will get out of current escalations. Netanyahu’s government is applying the to a tee, complete with pandering to the ultra nationalist right wing, eroding public institutions and undermining the economy with judicial reforms (see the FT’s take ), drawing up legislation to imprison anyone who “”, and playing up the war narrative (Erdogan vibes anyone?). Even if all of Israel is supportive of the necessary sacrifices to eliminate the current Hamas leadership, the country is diverging further away from its original democratic / progressive vision and morphing ever more into an authoritarian military state. In the process, what are the traumatised, orphaned and mutilated children of Gaza going to turn into as adults pray tell? Software developers. Right.
Arab nations: Folks who aren’t close to the region have wondered why Arab nations like Saudi, Jordan or Egypt aren’t taking a firmer stance so far. It is worth remembering that the Palestinian conflict has been a destabilising factor for several Arab countries. Jordan and Lebanon welcomed a large proportion of Palestinian refugees historically but those were never granted the right of return to their homeland. And both welcomed Yasser Arafat’s fedayeen in the 70s to wage war on Israel from their respective territories, only to find themselves at war with them shortly thereafter (e.g. see in Jordan). So Arab nations are weary of welcoming Palestinians in general, lest they get ideas of self determination in their country. It’s no surprise that Jordan and Egypt hastened to that they will not welcome more Palestinian refugees during the current crisis. Saudi is keen to play a greater role in the region and has been quietly working on normalising relationships with Israel in the process, possibly doubling down on regional diplomacy as both have had quarrels with the US and need strong regional alliance in the face of Iran. In this instance I’m guessing they will want to take the lead on any resolution to the current conflict, before Iran gets the chance to emerge as the true patron of Muslim causes by sticking its nose in further.
Iran: Through its support of Hezbollah who inflicted considerable losses on the IDF in their war with Lebanon in 2006, and through its steadfast support of Houthis in the Yemen and of the regime in Syria, Iran is filling a leadership vacuum in the Arab, largely Muslim world. They have increasingly cozied up to Hamas and are likely to see them as useful leverage for their portfolio of conversations with Western rivals (nuclear, sanctions etc.). I realistically can’t see how Iran would relinquish the geo-political lever that is Hamas without trying to wrangle a deal of sorts.
What is likely to happen next?
Your guess is as good as mine but here’s what the strategy board game looks like to me by decreasing order of likelihood:
- World War Zero — Permanent annexation of Gaza: The grim truth is that Israel is levelling Gaza and displacing its people. There is no indication neither from Israel nor from the arbiters of international law that this will stop. Given the very public intentions of Netanyahu and his government I don’t see another outcome than the permanent annexation of Gaza and displacement of its people. Egypt and Jordan will be forced to open up their borders or be complicit in the genocide (hence their panicked statements on refugees?). Hezbollah, Syria and Iran may delay the progress but will limit themselves to isolated skirmishes to save face while not antagonising the rest of Lebanon, as this may jeopardise Hezbollah’s alliance and cover within the country. Also, the US can’t risk sinking too many of its resources on this front when it’s still trying to keep the Ukraine equipped and needs to be prepared for a possible front in Taiwan. All Arab and many Muslim-majority states will “denormalise” relations with Israel for a generation to keep their constituents happy. I suspect that some point the West Bank will follow a similar path. I call this scenario world war zero because it implies that we let ourselves collectively slide into pre-WWI barbarity if we let something like this happen. So far that’s what we’re doing.
- Mediated de-escalation — Palestinian DMZs and Bibi scapegoating: The US and western allies take their time in brokering a deal with the Arabs and Iran. This allows Israel sufficient leeway to neutralise as much of Hamas as possible and move the world to a more desperate “😱 just take the deal for God’s sake 😱” position before any negotiations take place. As part of this deal Israel may offer up Bibi to the International Criminal Court so we all get to feel less barbaric and Israel gets to diffuse mounting internal tensions. Iran possibly gets some concessions on sanctions. Gaza is rebuilt with international aid. Some proportion of recent settlers are forcibly removed (there are precedents of this e.g. ) such as to ensure a minimum of territorial contiguity for Palestinians. A Saudi / Emirati peacekeeping force polices transport links and internal affairs within Gaza and the West Bank. I’m saying Saudi / Emirati peacekeeping force and not UN because a/ the UN has not been effective at controlling DMZs in the region in the past e.g. Lebanon, b/ Saudi may relish this role to come across as a regional leader and curb Iran’s reach in Palestine, c/ Israel may agree to this as part of a broader normalisation agreement with a few Arab countries. What I love about this option is that it paves the way for a transition to a sustainable in a generation or two.
- Going-All-In — Regional escalation: There are many ways an escalation can occur and lead to someone pulling the trigger. If Arab and especially Iranian citizens become more agitated their governments may have to get more deeply involved. If Hezbollah leans in and inflicts meaningful losses, Israel may escalate in turn. Both parties have nuclear and / or chemicals weapons. If tensions are high the current tit-for-tat can easily blow up but I suspect there are several negotiation opportunities before we get there.
Conclusion — If you have a platform, de-escalate. Right f*cking now
What we are witnessing today is a complete breakdown of supranational agreements that were put in place to avoid civilian war casualties in the wake of WW2. “Never again” is a decision we made for all humans and is ever important as our means of self destruction evolve in strides. It is so deeply disturbing that Netanyahu telegraphed his plan to punish an entire population and is while the “leaders of the free world” for photo ops and to parrot platitudes. They are sinking the collective moral bar of the West down to where it was during the Holocaust and profaning the memory of the 80 million deaths from WW2. The post-Gaza norms of warfare will be ugly and they will be visited upon all of us.I’m appealing most strongly to open minded Americans and Europeans with platforms that encourage tough debates, like the I’m so fond of. You can reach hardliners in your countries in ways I simply can’t being a Lebanese / Arab in London. We have to encourage dialogue and recruit support if we want a critical mass that pressures our leaders to de-escalate. Today Arabs look to your leaders and your media for a coarse and often unfair summary of what you stand for as nations, as people. I deeply worry about the implications of this when the likes of Biden are holding the mic, even more so when totalitarian superpowers are using this opportunity to score cheap sympathy points.If this isn’t the world you want for yourself and for your children, then you need to pressure your leaders by any means necessary to demand an immediate ceasefire, the investigation of the October 7 / 17 massacres and all potential war crimes, and the prosecution of the perpetrators. And brokering a lasting peace deal has to become one the top priorities of foreign policy making (yes, I know it’s competing with a lot right now).I‘ll close with these words from the late Chris Cornell to express how I feel:
“So come pull the sheet over my eyes
So I can sleep tonight despite what I’ve seen today
I find you guilty of the crime
Of sleeping at a time when you should have been wide awake”