The Israel-Palestine conflict returns with striking and depressing regularity to divide Western public opinion.
Whereas the international context and geopolitical panorama have seen profound changes over the decades, there has been little change in the endemic characteristics of this conflict, waged with appalling continuity since the days of the Cold War.
The latest dramatic events, the fifty-day war that led to the death of approximately 2,000 Palestinians and nearly 100 Israelis, are ‘merely’ further proof of the persistence of what has for decades now been a hotbed of barely changing conflict.
The cyclical nature of these events is the very reason they are ultimately relegated to an arena of debate that goes beyond history and fact, beyond rights and wrongs. The narrative built up around the conflict has developed an identity of its own that has little or nothing to do with the actual, dramatic reality, for which the peoples and the ruling classes involved are responsible.
Once again the flurry of rockets launched from Gaza, and usually intercepted by Israel’s defence systems, and the harsh repression by the Israeli army have generated protests, criticism and issues of identity shaped by opposing interpretations of the reasons behind the conflict and the events of this August. It is increasingly difficult to use rational analytical tools to define the many rights and many wrongs on both sides, even taking into account international law and the differences in might of the contenders. As the slaughter grinds on an objective assessment of this conflict, and this corner of the globe, based on concrete issues is constantly thwarted by the symbolic, political and religious elements this struggle has inherited over millennia.
Perhaps it’s the excessive power of the symbols, compared to the interests involved, that makes it so difficult to rationally acknowledge that a solution certainly exists, because there is always a solution to all human endeavours. As the debate hardens into positions of identity, with ‘supporters’ on either side, we lose sight of the fact that the historical wrongs and mistakes, the tactical cynicism and strategic short-sightedness that have prevailed in the Middle East are widely shared by both the Israeli and Palestinian leaders and populations, even if undoubtedly the proportions and relative strength of each side are different and change over time.
As we’ve said, the solution exits because a solution can always be found. The solution at times was even glimpsed, discussed – then shelved on several occasions, because of a sudden revival of hostilities and the unexpected resurgence of weapons and violence, clearly detrimental to diplomacy and political rapprochement.
The solution, of course, lies along the path that saw Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat shake hands with Bill Clinton’s blessing. The same path that led to a renewed dialogue between Arafat and Ehud Barak, after Rabin’s assassination, albeit on considerably more shaky ground. And ultimately, it is the same path that was chosen by Ariel Sharon in the final stages of his political life – without any dialogue with the other side, held to be ultimately unreliable – when he unilaterally decided to withdraw from Gaza, putting an end to colonisation and the Israeli military presence in the Strip. This solution involves full acknowledgement of the right to both a Jewish and a Palestinian state, which must peacefully coexist and respect each other’s borders like good neighbours. To reach this goal of peace and stable coexistence, the first knotty problem that needs ironing out is that of the Jewish colonisation of the Occupied Territories in 1967 at the end of the Six-Day War.
Clinton and Rabin understood this at the time of the Oslo Accords. Ehud Barak knew this, but his actions were thwarted by political conditions both at home and on the other side. Even Ariel Sharon knew it and acted accordingly, in his own way: freeing Gaza of those few thousand settlers was undoubtedly a gesture with much greater symbolism than concrete effect, but it showed that where there’s a will, there’s a way. Those who are most aware that a progressive end to the occupation would create the psychological and material conditions for a partition along national lines are the enemies of the peace process. They are, to be perfectly clear, the very political parties and personalities that for decades have been living and feeding off the ongoing conflict. They are the Palestinians of Hamas (and before them Arafat and his ‘magic circle’), who consistently refuse a deal because their statute denies Israel’s right to exist.
And on the other side, it is the Netanyahu-style Israeli leaders, whose political success over the last twenty years has come at the expense of those leaders who have tried and failed to negotiate a peace accord, or a unilateral yet real, substantial and lasting peace. A solution exists. It essentially involves the complete withdrawal of settlers from the West Bank, a rational division of Jerusalem and a symbolic solution to the hoary, now century-old problem of the refugees. The solution is there. It’s complicated but feasible, all it takes is the will to see it through.
The Israel-Palestine conflict returns with striking and depressing regularity to divide Western public opinion.
