What it’ll take to bring peace
What will bring peace in Israel/Palestine?
More than either side is willing to give at present.
Palestine — the area including the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip — is recognized as a full-blown state by 138 nations as well as the United Nations. Countries not recognizing that designation include the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and most of Western Europe, a few scattered smaller nations, and of course Israel.
Israel now occupies or controls the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and exerts de facto control over imports, borders and other key aspects of life in Gaza.
The entire area — Israel and Palestine — had been part of the Ottoman Turkish Empire prior to World War I. The Ottomans aligned with Germany and Austria-Hungary in that war to form the Central Powers. When the Allied Entente, which included most of Britain, France, Russia, and later the United States, defeated the Central Powers, Britain and France divided up the western parts of the Ottoman Empire and took the territories they wanted.
Under that agreement, Britain assumed governance of Palestine as a mandate under the postwar League of Nations. That meant Britain had to deal with local unrest resulting from the Zionist movement. A number of Jews, mostly in Europe, had sought for decades to return to the former Jewish homeland which comprised the Palestine mandate and which had been under Arab control for centuries.
Britain struggled with simmering Jewish-Palestinian conflict in Palestine in the years between the two world wars. After World War II and its Holocaust, in 1947 the newly created United Nations adopted a partition plan recommending independent Arab and Jewish states in Palestine, with Jerusalem as an international city.
Jews accepted the concept, but Arabs rejected it.
Jews declared the birth of the state of Israel despite Arab opposition in 1948, and neighboring Arab armies immediately invaded the infant nation.
In that war, and succeeding Israeli-Arab conflicts, Israel won victory after victory.
In 1967, in the Six-Day War, Israel captured the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria. Israel later gave up Gaza to Palestinian control and returned Sinai to Egypt, but retained control of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.
Palestinians ultimately want the return of all of Israel to the nation of Palestine. In an immediate sense, they want a separate Palestinian state, in both legal and actual control, to comprise the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza.
Hardline Israelis ultimately want their nation to include all of their ancient biblical lands, which would include present-day Israel and the area recognized by the U.N. and other nations as Palestine.
Not all Israelis desire that outcome, but until the Palestinian people, including groups like Hamas, are willing to recognize Israel’s right to exist, most Israelis are unwilling to hand over control of Israel-occupied Arab territory to Palestinians.
It appears more and more certain that to achieve real and lasting peace in Palestine/Israel, here’s what would have to happen:
• Israeli agreement to a two-state solution.
• Palestinian acknowledgement of Israel as a nation, especially by the Hamas militants.
• Israeli evacuation of the West Bank, and certainly cessation of building additional Jewish settlements in the occupied territories and evicting Palestinians from their home neighborhoods.
• Agreement on both sides to either internationalization of Jerusalem, or a division of the city into East Jerusalem controlled by Palestine and West Jerusalem controlled by Israel.
• Acceptance by both sides of international aid to rebuild neighborhoods and infrastructure in Gaza destroyed by the wars, and humanitarian aid as necessary for both sides.
• Some kind of agreement on control and access to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. The mosque, the third holiest site in Islam, sits on the Temple Mount, sacred to Jews. It is thus of the highest significance to both religions, and has been the nub of Muslim-Jewish conflict for decades.
The Trump administration lost its status as a broker of peace between the two nations through its overweening favoritism of Israel. The Biden administration is working to regain that broker status once again, but so far has little to show for its efforts. The U.N. likewise appears weak in that regard.
Public opinion in the United States traditionally has favored Israel, and there is near-universal acceptance of Israel’s right to defend itself. But Israel’s response to Hamas rockets fired into Israel from Gaza (which apparently were themselves a response to Israel’s intended evictions of an East Jerusalem neighborhood and police actions at the Al-Aqsa Mosque) was overwhelming and devastating to Gaza civilians.
About a dozen Israeli citizens died from the Hamas rockets. Gaza citizens’ deaths from Israeli bombing numbered over 200. To many Americans the ferocious Israeli response didn’t seem appropriate — it seemed to go beyond what was necessary. They seemed to be saying Israel has a right to defend itself, but Palestinians have a right to live.
That discontent may end up being an advantage to the Biden administration, if it gives American envoys more even-handed leverage to bring both sides to the negotiating table.
At best that’s a very tall order.
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