A New Conception of Israel-Palestine?

The current misconceptions around competing national narratives cannot be sustained.

Ten days ago, I launched this newsletter with a (personal) commitment to delve further into my take on the current state of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—the first subject being what I described as the ‘misconception’ that for decades has gripped both the Israeli and American political class and distracted their military leaderships, leading to the Gaza debacle.

On Monday, an article was published in the New York Times that covers most of the ground I believe to be important.

The article is entitled War Has Smashed Assumptions About Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. It was written by Steven Erlanger, The Times’s chief diplomatic correspondent in Europe, based in Berlin. I strongly encourage you to read it. Below, I offer some commentary and an additional '“smashed assumption.”

Mr Erlanger cites four assumptions that have been shattered by recent events:

• Hamas could be contained and the conflict managed. He gives context to the reference in my earlier post to Israel’s “divide-and-conquer strategy” with regard to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank vs Hamas in Gaza. He concludes, as do most analysts, that this strategy was meant to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. Keep this thought in mind.

• Israel is invincible and maintains military superiority. This is now a very contentious political issue in Israel, which implicates all of the Likud (Prime Minister Netanyahu’s political party) leadership and has created a simmering rift between the current government vs the military and security services. Mr Erlanger concludes this section of his piece by saying: “With Israeli military credibility suddenly questioned, concerns have emerged about what capacities Iran has provided Hezbollah in southern Lebanon that the Israelis have failed to imagine.” Actually, those capacities are fairly well acknowledged: Hezbollah has the capacity to attack Israel on a scale that one retired Israeli military leader has described as “Armageddon.” This should worry everyone.

• The Arab world is moving on, despite the Palestinians. The key point here is, as Mr Erlanger says: “There was an assumption in Israel that these Arab states now recognized Israel as an ineradicable fact in the region and a source of business, technology and trade, and that they no longer regarded the plight of the Palestinians as a major obstacle.” That may have been the wishful thinking of the governing class in the region, but they have little control over—and much to fear from—the Arab “street” and the Iranian regime. Hamas just pushed back on this assumption, big time.

• America can ignore the Middle East. Mr Erlanger begins with the observation that the United States has, for years, given “lip service to its commitment to a two-state solution and a condemnation of Israeli settlement growth in the occupied West Bank.” He ends the article with a quote from the American-Israeli scholar and New Yorker contributor Bernard Avishai:

“Only the United States can provide some degree of hope,” he said, that a new paradigm will be established “in which Palestinian self-determination will finally be addressed.” American statements on a two-state solution and the settlements “have been seen as platitudes,” he added. “But to do something [emphasis mine] concrete now, it’s not too late.”

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But what is the something that Mr Avishai had in mind? (That’s a rhetorical question, to which I will return in a later post.)

I agree with him, in principle. It’s not too late—but if and only if the Israeli and American governments renounce the bad faith approach they have adopted toward the Palestinians for at least the past two decades of Netanyahu’s political dominance.

If one studies that history, or even pays close attention to the current commentary¹ on the ongoing conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis, the conclusion that successive Israeli governments have consistently and deliberately undermined the potential for the establishment of a Palestinian state is inescapable.

They’ve succeeded with this strategy because of Israel’s presumed geostrategic importance, physical control of the territory, and diplomatic control of the narrative.

And those successive Israeli governments (along with their American supporters) have tried to maintain an iron grip on the moral high ground.

They’re about to lose that grip.

I have always held the conviction that anti-semitism is irredeemably evil and that the Jewish people must make for themselves a safe haven. That said, I cannot escape the conclusion that the deliberate, inexorable oppression of the Palestinians by the Israeli state—most recently in the Gaza War, but also as an ongoing constructivist political project in the occupied West Bank and annexed East Jerusalem—is also evil.

But not irredeemably so.

Here is a fifth assumption which is not yet smashed but, I hope, will soon be:

• Israeli governments can continue to overcome Palestinian national aspirations by force, deception and bad faith engagement with the international community.

Smashing this assumption opens the space for all manner of possible political imaginaries that acknowledge and address the ethical dimensions of these concurrent but incommensurate evils. There are voices calling for various radical approaches to reach a just and lasting resolution to this conflict.² Those voices should be privileged in the ongoing debate, even as the war rages.

1. For an example of English language Israeli commentary in this regard, see “Don't Be Fooled: Israel's Far-right Government Plots Its West Bank Moves With a Calculated Frenzy” by Amira Hass, Ha’aretz, Sep 5, 2023.

2. Including measures to strengthen the Palestinian Authority, hold new elections in both Israel and the Occupied Territories, release long-imprisoned PLO leaders who can unite the Palestinians (notably, Marwan Barghouti), and renewing peace negotiations on the basis of a two-state solution.