A pause in Israel’s war on Gaza to allow for a hostage-prisoner exchange, and for increased humanitarian assistance to reach Gazans, is good news. But Israeli leaders are eager to get back to their war.
That war cannot bring security for Israel, and could very well produce something worse than Hamas. That is the only way Hamas could truly be an existential threat to Israel, even though many Israelis are convinced it is now.
Israeli leaders seem heedless of the warnings to oppressors by the prophets of old. Any true friend of Israel should insist that it halt for good its self-defeating collective punishment of the Palestinians, and end the unjust order it has imposed on them.
The United States should seize this moment to leverage its massive military assistance to Israel, and press for a permanent cease-fire.
We can thank the right wing extremists in the U.S. House of Representatives for one thing. The weeks they held Congress in limbo spared us from rushing a huge package of military aid, $14.3 billion worth, to Israel. That package was conceived before it was obvious to so many that the Israeli government was incapable of restraining itself, and happy to oblige the equally hell-bent leaders of Hamas.
If President Biden and enough lawmakers summon the courage to leverage military aid and insist on a permanent cease-fire, that will be in the interest of all Israelis, whether or not the loose screws behind the wheel can see that.
And as many Americans have recently learned, for years Netanyahu viewed the existence and growth of Hamas favorably, for it helped keep the Palestinians divided. With Hamas ruling Gaza, he could claim there was no point in negotiating a two-state solution with the Palestinian Authority because it did not represent most Palestinians, and negotiating with Hamas, sworn to Israel’s destruction, was a non-starter.
For all most of us can know, Hamas was not always single-mindedly determined to rid Israel and the Palestinian territories of all Jews. And for all most of us can know, it was, with those committed to that goal calling the shots.
But now it should be clear to all that Hamas is up to no good. By promising more October sevens, it basically told Tel Aviv: Bring it on!
And that is the last thing Palestinian families need.
In truth, Netanyahu and his cohorts may have the opposite plan as Hamas, to rid Gaza and the West Bank of Palestinians. In any case, the collective punishment entailed in the Prime Minister’s“ mighty vengeance” reveals a low regard for Palestinian lives, especially children’s lives.
It did not have to come quite to this. Hamas had plenty of time to consider what sort of attack to carry out to rescue the Palestinian cause. It could, for instance, have conducted a much more surgical attack to kidnap adult males only, with minimal loss of life.
A surgical attack to get hostages, justified or not depending on where you stand, would have been proportional, as most of its actions up until October 7 were. Many will dispute that assertion, but over many years, Israeli attacks and military campaigns, though often “targeted”, killed more civilians than Hamas attacks did.
For many years the United States has made sure that Israel enjoyed preponderant military power over any potential enemies. And it is unfortunately the nature of preponderant power that it is lousy at restraining itself. America’s War on Terror, which featured two disastrous wars, illustrates the point.
Because Hamas has always been out-gunned as we say, it has resorted to asymmetrical warfare. Lacking the means to carry out surgical strikes on Israeli leaders, it has resorted to primitive rocket attacks, suicide bombings, car bombings, and hostage-taking.
Until 1994, Hamas had largely if not exclusively targeted Israeli military and police forces, which it regarded as instruments of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. In 1994, following a massacre of 29 worshipers in a mosque during Ramadan, committed by an American settler in the West Bank city of Hebron, Hamas began attacking Israeli civilians.
Should the Palestinians have limited their resistance all these years to nonviolent means? History has powerful examples of successful nonviolent campaigns, but that is asking something of Palestinians that neither Israelis nor Americans would feel obligated to do, were they in the same circumstances.
Considering recent provocations by Israeli leaders and illegal settlers in the West Bank, Israel was due for something on October 7. But not what it got.
I bet that most Americans who now support an immediate cease-fire and are questioning all that military aid to Israel are not trying to justify or in any way minimize the atrocities Hamas committed on October 7. They don’t need to. They can clearly see that both Hamas and the Netanyahu gang are polarizing forces, and both derive their support from the actions of the other.
If Israel cannot destroy Hamas at any tolerable cost, what should it do? It should do what it has methodically tried to make impossible: it must accept the necessity of a Palestinian state. That will mean relocating several hundred thousand illegal settlers back to Israel proper. But it’s gotta be done. Maybe a couple billion of that $14.3 billion can induce some of those settlers to move. A few billion more could help rebuild Gaza.
The Netanyahu gang is absolutely not willing to accept a viable Palestinian state. And the only thing that could possibly change their minds, or produce a new government willing to negotiate in good faith, is if the United States froze military assistance.
Should Iron Dome be an exception to a freeze on military aid? Only once Israel has clearly reversed course, is clearly committed to negotiating a political solution, and the United States can be confident that Israel is finished with its collective punishment of the Palestinians on the assumption of impunity by virtue of Iron Dome.
With whom can Israel negotiate? In the worst case, the current leadership of the Palestinian Authority. But a more promising prospect might be Marwan Barghouti, currently in an Israeli prison, who is likely more popular among Palestinians than either Hamas or the Palestinian Authority (see: https://prospect.org/world/2023-10-20-barghouti-palestines-nelson-mandela/). He and the rest of the prisoners should be released in exchange for Hamas freeing all of the hostages, as Hamas has demanded.
We should insist that Netanyahu agree to such an exchange, even though he will say that the hostages are all innocent and Palestinian prisoners are not. We should insist because Hamas will agree to nothing less. It is the price of ending this catastrophe and getting on with the only thing that can bring real security to Israel: a political solution.
Since October 7, Netanyahu has murdered thousands more innocent Palestinians than Hamas took innocent Israelis as hostages.
The Qur’an warns that nations face trials so that they might learn humility. Those who do not learn but continue to oppress others and perpetrate injustice may not be long for this world. Both Israel and America should heed this wisdom.
Only the freezing of military assistance will send the message the gang needs to receive. Until we act decisively to stop this God-awful crime, we remain complicit in it.
Get Real with Israel 