The crisis in Israel-Palestine, and the vanishing prospect of political peace

Violence has flared up once again in Israel-Palestine. The fragile peace — or, at least, the temporary absence of a large-scale warfare — has fallen victim to zealotry, to the ease with which ultra-nationalist religious extremism can spur its troops and provoke, almost unfailingly, in-kind retaliations.

Except that this time, once the violence subsides — as it sooner or later will — we could witness, along with all the death and destruction, the emergence of an alarming new reality. Before our eyes, the vestiges of the “two-state solution” to the conflict could come crashing down, and with it, in tatters, the dream of a bi-national alternative: the one-state solution.

Background

In a century-long tussle between two peoples over a parcel of land, the cycle of escalating reciprocal violence continues to go strong. Two diametrical — though in striking and sometimes uncanny ways, analogous — cultures continue to evolve around frustratingly robust challenges of adversarial historical and territorial claims; countless leadership errors and missed opportunities; and polarising narratives that have bred mutual mistrust, competing accounts of victimisation, debilitating fears, and animosity — to the point of mutual dehumanisation, one of the “other”.

On one side is the Jewish narrative of existential security threats and a corresponding necessity for military supremacy and self-reliance, founded on lessons and traumas of the Holocaust, and the decades-long battle against terror attacks. On the other side, Palestinian experiences of dispossession, humiliation, Nakba, perpetual violations of rights, and abandonment by the world. In the clashes between these two realities, the stoking of the conflict’s fires hardly subsides. To further stymie hopes for a solution, the growing influence of religious fundamentalism, on both sides, have turned an already intractable conflict into a rock-solid gridlock.

The current round

The present cycle of violence began during the early days of Ramadan and gradually escalated in and around the Old City of Jerusalem. Some poorly thought-out strategic decisions by Jerusalem’s police, combined with instances of unnecessary heavy-handedness towards Muslim worshippers celebrating the holy month, led to the escalation of tensions. Another exacerbating factor was a high-profile court case involving home-evictions of Palestinian families in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah. Cast by Israel’s government as an ordinary dispute over ownership of real estate, the story had opened for many Palestinians — inside and outside Israel — festering wounds of dispossession, confiscated lands, and reviled discriminatory property laws designed to provide preferential treatment for Jews.

Tensions skyrocketed, however, when violent clashes erupted between the police and Muslim worshippers on Temple Mount, just outside the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Shortly after, an announced intention to direct a highly provocative Jewish nationalist flag-march through the Muslim Quarter in the Old City coincided with the first rocket attack from Gaza, bringing the city to a halt, and with it, half of Israel.

The reprehensible attacks (at last count, 3,000 rockets) on Israeli cities by the military wing of Hamas and other Gazan armed groups constitute war crimes under international law. Additionally, many of the rocket launchers, along with other Hamas installations, are embedded within, and shielded by, Gaza’s civilian population — another category of war-crimes.

No government could sit back and do nothing under such circumstances, and Israel is certainly no exception. However, its aggressive military tactics — which in the past had also been judged to amount to war crimes — seem now to be heading in a similar direction.

Over the past week, public attention in Israel has been divided between the lethal effects of the incoming rockets and unprecedented bouts of intercommunal violence between Jews and Palestinians inside the country. Most altercations had taken place in mixed cities — such as Acre, Lod, Ramle, Haifa, and Jaffa. Isolated accounts of “lynching” on both sides have terrified the nation, but have not thus far upended the tensions, implying potentially serious damage to the delicate fabric of interrelations. Most chilling, perhaps, is the ease with which years of trust-building could be reversed in such a short time.

Behind the scenes

Examining the chain of events that had led to the current situation, commentators have pointed to a number of actors whose interests would have been served by the violence. On one side, allegations abound concerning Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu’s role, or lack thereof, in preventing the escalation. The tensions have thwarted efforts to form a new coalition government involving right-wing, centrist, and two Israeli-Palestinian political parties. In fighting for his electoral survival and potentially his freedom from future imprisonment, it seems reasonable to suspect that Netanyahu had benefited from these tensions — at least at the early stages.

Additional beneficiaries would include radical elements among the ultra-nationalist religious right, who have long advocated for, as well as carried out, violent assaults against Palestinians. During the early stages, such attacks were recorded in Jerusalem and contributed to the tense atmosphere in the city.

On the other side, the incitement of East Jerusalem, West Bank, and Israel’s Palestinians has long been a Hamas strategy, as part of the struggle against the Israeli occupation. Furthermore, after the cancellation of scheduled Palestinian elections — which would have likely seen a victorious Hamas — coming to the rescue of the Al Aqsa Mosque was likely to gain the organisation added popularity in the competition against Fatah for Palestinian support.

What does this mean for the one-state and two-state solutions?

As I hinted at the outset, serious concerns could and should be raised about the consequences for sustainable comprehensive solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The capabilities presented by Hamas in terms of the range and accuracy of its rockets, and its ability to continue firing despite Israel’s overwhelming military dominance, have taken many by surprise. The longer-term effects of the sudden shift for many Israelis from being bystanders to targets — the first time since 2014 — should not be underestimated. How would such a trauma influence a public already fearful of an independent Palestinian state next door to its largest cities? How many would be willing in the future to risk having such a neighbour, not a hundred kilometres away in Gaza, but five or ten? And hence, what are the implications for the future viability of the “two-state solution”? Amid the rise in violent clashes in the West Bank also, such fears seem set to multiply.

Another concern pertains to the future of a “one-state solution”. Even before the current round of the conflict, the viability of a bi-national state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea was already highly questionable. When asked in the polls, a clear Jewish majority had rejected citizenship rights for West Bank Palestinians. The animosity of the last week between Jews and Israeli Palestinians puts an even larger question mark over the prospects for a just solution based on a democratically appropriate but politically untenable “one state for two peoples” option.

What now?

There are no easy solutions to the current round of violence. As the strongest actor in an asymmetrical battle, Israel should accept the ceasefire allegedly offered by Hamas to prevent further bloodshed. With mounting casualties on both sides, including women and children, such a step has become urgent.

Notably, Israel is already in hot water over a recently published report by Human Rights Watch, which accuses Israeli officials of committing the crimes of apartheid and persecution — two categories of crimes against humanity. And with an ongoing investigation by the International Criminal Court involving both Israel and Hamas over allegations of war crimes in Gaza during 2014, both parties would do well to take such warnings under consideration.

However, for the Jewish Israeli population under attack, thinking past their predicament is difficult. While Netanyahu is widely blamed for the barrage of rockets, this is not because of his disingenuous efforts at peace, but because of his government’s past failures to dismantle Hamas’ power. A grimly combative mood seems to have taken hold of the Israeli public, which until now has mostly favoured the continued escalation. Israel is, in so many words, already fighting the next war. The plan, popularised on mainstream media by a stream of retired generals and other military commentators, aims not only to stop the rockets, but to hit Hamas hard enough that it will think twice before attacking Israeli cities again. The lethal consequences for the civilian population of Gaza are left largely aside, however, on the premise that Israel’s military would do what it can to prevent unnecessary casualties. This premise, however, does not stand up to the historical evidence of past confrontations in one of the world’s most densely populated places on earth.

Sadly, the human costs in Gaza do not seem to feature strongly in the Palestinian armed groups’ calculations either.

Competing interests and ignorance of the other side’s narratives and needs have led over many decades to mistrust, reciprocal violence, failures to reach agreements, and society-wide certainty that there is “no partner for peace” on the other side. A meaningful transformation of this relationship would require a much greater and more proactive international engagement than currently existing, to support the inevitable painful compromises required from all sides. In the current circumstances, such conditions remain a far distant prospect.

Dr Eyal Mayroz is a Senior Lecturer on human rights and international peace and security in the Department of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney. Formerly a counterterrorism analyst (Captain, Retried) in Israel’s Defence Forces, he is the author of Reluctant Interveners: America’s Failed Responses to Genocide from Bosnia to Darfur, which was named one of Choice magazine’s outstanding academic titles of 2020. You can hear him discuss the crisis in Israel-Palestine with Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens on The Minefield.