Israel vs Palestine
Part II
What happens when a nation is at war? For those living in the country, it becomes a never-ending battle to survive every day. For those who do not live in the country, it binds them to their besieged motherland and leaves them vulnerable to attacks in the foreign land.
In his recent article titled “A brutal year and the tale of two Israels” which was published in the Guardian, Jonathan Freedland writes “There’s the Israel you see on the news: the mighty bully, wildly lashing out at its neighbours, that, not content with turning much of Gaza into rubble, has now rolled its tanks into Lebanon – apparently for no better reason than because it can. This Israel is the one indicted by the world’s courts, where it is accused of the most heinous crimes. This Israel has, for a year, brought out millions in mass demonstrations in the major cities of Europe, the US and beyond, a scale of protest unseen for two decades, politicising a generation that has decided that opposition to Israel is the great issue of our age. And then there’s the Israel you glimpse in the testimony of the men, women and very young children who survived a massacre – telling how they huddled, alone and undefended, in bathrooms and kids’ bedrooms, for long, terrified hours as Hamas men surrounded their homes, firing bullets through doors and hurling grenades through windows, before eventually setting house after house ablaze, yelping in delight at what they themselves called a “slaughter”. This Israel is the one still yearning for the hostages seized that day, scores of whom remain in captivity in Gaza. This Israel is the one whose north has been pounded by Hezbollah rockets for 12 months straight, forcing about 65,000 Israeli civilians from their homes.”
He further writes, “Take the war that has caused so much pain for all of the last year. What the world sees in Gaza is a benighted strip of land that Israel has crushed, heedless of the consequences for civilian life. What Israelis see is a cruel Hamas enemy that revealed its true face on 7 October and which has embedded itself inside and beneath the streets and homes of Gaza, using the entire population as a human shield, so that when innocents die there, it is Hamas who should bear the blame. You can keep on like this, each example exposing the gulf that separates Israel from a swath of world opinion. But all this only points to the deeper difference. To most outsiders, Israel is a regional superpower, backed by a global superpower. It is strong and secure. But that is not how it looks from the inside. Israelis see their society as small – the size of New Jersey – besieged and vulnerable.
For several decades, the rest of the world could say such talk was absurd; that whatever Israel’s origins, with the state established just three years after the liberation of Auschwitz, the country that existed now was muscled and armed, with nothing to fear. But then came October.”
You have talked about the tale of two Israels. One which is struggling, the other which is standing strong. How do you think this war is likely to end?
“It is a very hard question. Wars usually end when both sides are exhausted and have come to the conclusion that they are not going to win this war by military means and that they will have to negotiate. That’s usually how conflicts end or they end with one side utterly defeated and in total surrender. That’s just how history has tended to work. In this case, I don’t see the latter ever really happening. So instead, what you have to look to is what diplomats have been working on for many, many months, which is the ceasefire agreement by which there’d be a pause in the fighting, there would be a release of the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza and a release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails and an agreement to stop the fighting at least for a while. That seems to me the best way of ending things, although it may only be a pause. The problem has been that Hamas, it seems, is not really ready to go through with that. They’ve never fully 100% said yes. And Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also never said yes and people debate the reasons why. But there is a ceasefire agreement there and neither side has yet been ready to do it and so the war continues. So, the best way of ending the war will be a ceasefire agreement on both sides and then a negotiation that delivers that ceasefire agreement that might continue and eventually get on to the longer-term core issues of this conflict.”
Since the war, how have the lives of Jews living outside Israel changed?
“Their lives have changed since October 7th in a couple of ways. Firstly, a whole lot of people who had not particularly identified strongly as Jewish before suddenly found that they felt very connected to the events of October 7th and they felt connected to Israel, which is after all the largest Jewish country in the world. And I found that lots of people I’ve known for a long time who didn’t feel particularly Jewish before suddenly felt very Jewish because of this attack on Jews in huge numbers and with such devastating consequences. They felt a sense of solidarity that they didn’t even know they had in them. Jews are continuing their normal lives, Jewish events go on, and people live and go to school and go to work in all the ways they used to.
The difference is that there has been the most enormous increase in recorded incidents of anti-Semitism, meaning anti-Jewish racism. The figures are through the roof in Britain and in America. The figures have increased by an enormous quantity. And that is deeply troubling, that as soon as there was this huge attack on Jews in Israel, then Jews themselves were attacked all around the world. And that started happening even before Israel’s military response in Gaza. So, you can’t say it was just a direct protest at Israel because, for one thing, it came before Israel had reacted. But for another, the targets were not Israeli, they were Jewish targets. So, synagogues were vandalized and there were threats outside Jewish schools. So, yes, there is more security and there is more nervousness. You do hear about Jewish people who used to wear, for example, the kippa, the religious skull cap that men wear, but some Jews were no longer wearing those things because they didn’t want to be identified as Jews in public. So, there was a kind of nervousness, but very much continuing to live and work and go out in all the same ways as before.”
How will this war really end?
“In some ways, this is the same question. How will this end? Probably in a ceasefire agreement when both sides feel exhausted from fighting. There was just one other thought I was going to mention about how and how this could end.
There is a group of Arab states who are very opposed to Iran and are opposed to Iran’s proxies, its allies, who have surrounded Israel with a so-called ring of fire. And I’m thinking, like I wrote in that article that you mentioned, of the Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen, and Hezbollah in Lebanon. They’re all arms of Iran. There are a whole series of Arab countries that oppose those allies of Iran. And here I’m thinking of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Egypt, and others. Those countries have offered a kind of new alliance with Israel, all lined up against Iran. What Israel would have to do to make that alliance happen is accept that one day there will be a Palestinian state. I think Israel should make that move. I would like the Prime Minister of Israel to say yes, we accept that one day there will be a Palestinian state alongside Israel. I think that’s the moral thing to do and it’s strategically the right thing to do for Israel’s own sake. However, the current Israeli government is not ready to make that move and does not believe in it. I think they’re wrong. But to me, that would be a very good long-term way of ending this war and forging out of it a new alliance, which offers a new possibility for Israel’s future. I think that option is on the table. But many people in Israel, including the Prime Minister and the government, do not agree with me.”
..Concluded
This article by Shailaza Singh appeared in Rashtradoot Newspaper’s Arbit Section on October 24, 2024
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