https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/12/opinion/israel-palestinians-gaza.html
NICHOLAS KRISTOF
Saying Hamas must pay a “very heavy price” for belligerence, Israeli bombs destroyed a 13-story apartment building in Gaza that had a Hamas presence. And saying Israel “ignited fire” and is “responsible for the consequences,” Hamas launched more rockets at Israel.
The late Eyad el-Sarraj, a
prominent psychiatrist in Gaza, described this dynamic when I visited him
during a past cycle of violence: “Extremists need each other, support each
other.” He lamented that Israel’s siege of Gaza had turned Palestinian fanatics
into popular heroes.
The recent fighting was
prompted in part by Israel’s latest land grab in East Jerusalem, part of a
pattern of unequal treatment of Palestinians. Two prominent human rights
organizations this year issued reports likening Israel’s treatment of
Palestinians to apartheid. One group, B’Tselem, described a “regime of Jewish
supremacy” and concluded, “This is apartheid.” Human Rights Watch published a
224-page report declaring that Israeli conduct in some areas amounts to “crimes
against humanity of apartheid and persecution.”
Personally, I’m wary of the
term apartheid because there are significant differences from ancien régime
South Africa. But putting aside nomenclature, there is no doubt that the
ongoing Israeli misrule of Palestinians is both unjust and creates a tinderbox.
It’s also true that Hamas
not only attacks Israeli civilians but also oppresses its own people. But as
American taxpayers, we don’t have much influence over Hamas, while we do have
influence over Israel and we provide several billion dollars a year in military
assistance to a rich country and thus subsidize bombings of Palestinians.
Is that really a better use of our taxes than, say, paying for Covid-19 vaccinations abroad or national pre-K at home? Shouldn’t our vast sums of aid to Israel be conditioned on reducing conflict rather than aggravating it, on building conditions for peace rather than creating obstacles to it?
The obvious way out of the
Middle East morass is a two-state solution, but that is becoming difficult to
cling to even as a dream. A recent survey showed that Israeli Jews and
Palestinians actually agree on something: Only 13 percent, with little
variation among groups, think Israel wants a two-state solution.
Hard-liners in Israel
sometimes accuse Americans of being naïve about what works in a tough
neighborhood. But those hard-liners have repeatedly shown their own naïveté in
pursuing policies that backfired. Consider that it was Israel itself that
helped nurture Hamas back in the late 1980s and the 1990s. Israel was then concerned
with Yasir Arafat’s Fatah movement, so it cracked down on Fatah and allowed
Hamas to rise as a counterforce.
Since then the Middle East
has been caught in a “Boomerang Syndrome,” in which extremists on each side
mount violent assaults, which ultimately lead to attacks against their own side
as well. Hamas’s past shelling undermined political moderates in Israel. And
Israel’s siege of Gaza destroyed a Palestinian business community that could
have been a moderate counterweight to Hamas, while land grabs in the West Bank
and East Jerusalem made the Palestinian leadership seem irrelevant.
It’s true that force
sometimes works. In my conversations in Gaza over the years, I’ve found that
many Palestinians have complicated views. Some resent Hamas as oppressive and
incompetent, and many dislike missile launches at Israel because they know they
will face retaliation. Then again, they have endured economic distress, fear
and funerals because of Israel, so some acknowledge a bitter satisfaction to
seeing missile launches and anticipating that Israeli mothers will grieve as
they do.
Israel’s future security
depends in part on good will in America and on some modus vivendi with
Palestinians, yet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has frittered both away.
History suggests that Israel cannot consistently deter nonstate terrorists, but
it can very effectively deter nation-states — so it should welcome a
Palestinian state. Yet as extremism on each side foments extremism on the
other, that possibility fades.
The Biden administration
has been timid and restrained, slowing the U.N. Security Council’s engagement
on the issue, and it has yet to name an ambassador to Israel. But the stakes
are too high for evasions, and President Biden should stand with others on the
Security Council to demand a cease-fire before this escalates further.
Secretary of State Antony
Blinken helpfully said “it’s vital now to de-escalate.” The administration
should also express strong concern about the planned evictions of Palestinians
that provoked the crisis. Dithering and vacillation help no one.
A basic truth of the Middle
East is that anyone who predicts with any confidence what’s going to happen is
too dogmatic to be worth listening to. But for now it appears that the winners
in the current fighting are Netanyahu, who may be able to use the upheaval to
get another chance to continue as prime minister, and Hamas, which is showing
itself relevant in a way that the Palestinian Authority is not.
Meanwhile, millions of
Palestinians and Israelis lose, and the Boomerang Syndrome spirals on.
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