One Perspective on Israel-Palestine

It’s hard to have a conversation about the Israel-Palestine conflict. There are some obvious reasons for this. To start, it’s an incredibly ambiguous issue about ownership. But this issue is made more complex and confusing because of its relation to ethnicity and religious identity, which makes it easy for the issue to be oversimplified and boiled down to the most inane and stupid talking points. Anti-Semites terrorist Nazis are against Israel while racist Islamophobes are against Palestine. Now throw in the fact that Israel, for some reason, is regarded as the most important American ally in the history of American allies and being Pro-Israel is equated with being the most red-blooded of God-fearing, terrorist-hating patriots.

But what makes the discussions of Israel-Palestine (at least the ones that occur in the public consciousness) most difficult is that they co-occur with outbreaks of armed conflict in the area, conflicts which have muddled and confusing beginnings. This latest outbreak of real violence, for example, was an Israeli air-strike that killed an important Hamas military leader. But that, of course, was preceded by an increasing number of Hamas-coordinated rocket strikes into Israeli territory. But that, of course, was preceded by a series of evictions and embargoes enacted by the Israeli government against the Palestinian community. And before that was the 2008 military strike made by Israel in response to, again, an increasing number of Hamas’ rockets fluttering into Israeli farmland.

Discussions that occur during the periods of greatest tension never seem to be fruitful. After World War I, Vengeful French and British leaders punished Germany with the most devastating reparation demands in history, crippling a stable and otherwise peaceable (at least as peaceable as the Entente had been) regime enough to pave the way for the rise of Nazism. After the United States’ Civil War, Lincoln’s more-forgiving, moderate reconstruction plan was scrapped in favor of a degrading and punitive peace plan proposed by Congressional extremists, which left the southern United States in a state of corrupt, segregated disarray for nearly the next century.

In this case, armed conflict breaks out, a tense ceasefire is reached and overall peace talks between the two sides continue.

That is, they continue to stall. And beneath the surface, rage boils.

And, for some reason, most of the major players seem to be alright with that. The U.S., the U.N., NATO, Russia, China are all content to sit back and watch the status quo unfold before them, only stepping in with superficial cries for peace when it appears that World War III might erupt.

They must be happy with themselves because there have yet to be any glass deserts.

Of course, the status quo is not nearly good enough. Sure, were some world war-esque conflict break out region, the United States would have a formidable Israeli army on their side. And the flow of Middle Eastern oil to industrial nations hasn’t been slowed at all. Of course, Israelis continue to live in fear of explosives falling in their backyards. So do, for that matter, Palestinians, that is if the Israeli government lets them have enough territory to have backyards. And everyone lives in fear of a worldwide war breaking out because some Austrian Archduke got assassinated on a trip through Serbia.

It is possible that the status quo changes, it just takes monumental patience and an inhuman amount of reasonable level-headedness. Imagine if the Mahmoud Abbas-led Palestine Authority has its status upgraded from “entity” to “observer state” by the United Nations. Then the plan of the Fatah party, one which relies (at least a little bit more) on diplomacy rather than Hamas’ terrorism, suddenly becomes legitimate. If Israel hopes to show faith in peaceable negotiations, why would they oppose such a measure? Why, for that matter, would the United States? Unless a Palestinian state just has no right to exist.

My personal fear is that Palestine becomes another Armenia, whose strangled cries for help during the last decades of the 19^th century were audible, but well hidden from view. I think it’s unquestionable that Israel is the bully in this scenario (although their bullying is sometimes justified). They’ve already begun bullying Palestine out of existence. Of course, that would be a simple solution to this conflict, wouldn’t it? Just let this play out. Place the pillow firmly on the victim’s mouth and nose and wait for the breathing to stop. There is no Israel-Palestine conflict if Palestine doesn’t exist.

We could stop it. We could change it. But it’s a bit of an inconvenience.

Unfortunately, war will start sooner rather than later. There are, by the way, less than six weeks left before the supposed end of the world on December 21st. Israel inevitably launches a ground offensive into Gaza. Maybe they decide to root out the Hamas supply line in the Sinai Peninsula. Maybe they decide that if they are invading one country, they might as well invade another and carry out a few “pre-emptive” strikes against Iranian nuclear stockpiles. Then what? In the face of greater conflict, the U.S. or Russia intervenes? The “Glass Desert” strategy turns out to be a miscalculation and a nuclear winter envelops the globe, suffocating human civilization? Sounds pretty easy to me…

Start the countdown.