It is hard to avoid what is happening in Gaza and Israel. The headlines scream at me to pay attention. Like so many of us, my attention is political and personal. Political, because the Middle East is an endless source of fascinating events, violence, war, and confrontation. Personal, because I have been in the region, have a few friends there, and have been deeply involved, at times, in Middle East issues.
I feel, as I have for some years, that all hope is lost, all of it, and there is nothing left to say. Yes, there once was hope for peace across the region, peace between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples, peace between Arab and Jew. I felt that hope personally because I saw it during an “official” visit to Israel, Jordan, and Egypt in 1995 (I was responsible for national security and foreign policy budgets in the Clinton White House).
Every direction I turned in, as I toured the region, I was learning that both the Israelis and the surrounding Arab countries were busy trying to shape a different future. A future that would transform Israel from being a small piece of Europe clinging to the edge of the Middle East, to a country whose economy and people were embedded in the Middle East. A flurry of discussions and conferences, some official, some less visible, were taking place. Israeli investors were traveling to neighboring countries to examine investment opportunities; trade talks and joint ventures were on the table.
An immense effort was being planned to marry Israeli capital to the opportunities for growth in Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf states. Governments were committed to this process – I spoke with senior economic and financial leaders in Israel, Jordan, and Egypt as they were preparing to move forward with an economic equivalent of the Camp David Accords that promised revolutionary change in the economy and the politics of the region.
This quiet, but expanding set of talks and opportunities paralleled the more visible process of the Oslo Accords, redefining the relationship between Israel and the Palestinians, potentially leading to a separate, independent Palestinian state. Together, the two processes promised great hope for change in Israel, Palestine, and the broader region.
Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli Prime Minister, was a central force pushing the country toward this hopeful world. I saw this optimistic future coming in the summer of 1995. In November, hope died when a right-wing Israeli extremist assassinated Rabin at a rally supporting the Oslo Accords. The intention was to halt this process; it succeeded.
There has been little hope, ever since. Benyamin Netanyahu has been Prime Minister for 16 of the 27 years since the Rabin assassination. He and his governing partners have convinced the Israeli people that their security is best guaranteed by partitioning and separating the Palestinians from the Israelis, building a wall enforce that partition, seizing territory to expand settlements, isolating Gaza, hammering Hamas (“mowing the grass”), and severe punishment of and control over Palestinians themselves.
It is a mystery to me, today, how that sales pitch has succeeded. How could a people be convinced that they are more secure through confrontation, violence, partition, and repression? These very policies guarantee greater insecurity. The fear such policies generate in the Israeli people supports ever more draconian repression.
Fear becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is a recipe for even greater insecurity. Hamas cannot be excused for what it is doing today. AND (the operative conjunction), extremist reaction is to be expected; almost guaranteed, given the repression of the last 30 years.
There must be a way out. Yet every step on both sides closes alternative exits. The flickering candle of hope lives today, but largely in the hard work being done on the ground to bring Israelis and Arabs together, people-to-people, against the policy of separation. These efforts are now swamped in the tidal wave of violence and angry emotion.
Peter Beinart has given better voice to this cruel complexity than I ever could:
“I feel like at this moment, it’s so hard for Jews to hear anything other than what is gonna keep us safe? And I think that is because of this powerful metaphor of family that has been reinforced by a real trauma that is kind of often in the deep recesses of people, but then comes to the surface at moments like this when you see Jews being killed, being kidnapped, and horrific, horrific things. I have no patience for people who justify those things. I have no patience for them. I really don’t wanna be in conversation with those folks right now. It’s too painful for me.
But I also cannot try to prove to people that I, and people like me, that we genuinely love other Jews and genuinely feel for other Jews by endorsing a set of reactions that put aside the horror that they bring to Palestinians. Put aside the horror of cutting off Gaza from electricity and water and food. Put aside the horror. This does not keep Jews safe.
If it kept Jews safe, what happened on Saturday morning would never have happened because Israel has blockaded Gaza for more than 15 years now. Israel has pummeled Gaza, bombarded Gaza again and again and again. G-d knows if beating up on Palestinians, if brutalizing Palestinians kept Jews safe, Jews in Israel would have been safe a long time ago, starting with the Nakba when most of the people who live in Gaza were forced into Gaza. If this was the way to keep Jews safe, this would never have happened. This logic in other contexts, if it were not us, we would understand it so simply.
The logic is for every Hamas member that you kill, for every bunch of weapons that you destroy, you are producing more trauma, and more hatred, and more rage, and more people, and they will join Hamas. And if Hamas doesn’t exist because the Palestinians have been fighting against Zionism in Israel long before Hamas started, some other organization will exist. And if you get rid of this set of guns, people are ingenious and creative. They will find more guns. They will make more guns and you will be where we were today again.”
The hope I felt in 1995 is a long way back in my rear-view mirror. I no longer know how to retrieve it. I take no hope from the Abraham Accords. They are not what was happening 30 years ago. They seem to be more of an arrangement at the level of the elephants - governments moving the deck chairs around to balance Iran in a Middle Eastern power struggle. They do not promise the same outcome I eagerly anticipated in 1995.
Now, it seems, we can only wait for the latest cycle of violence to play itself out; hope is not a policy, at least not in this moment. The resulting despair and suffering are shared on both sides of the Gaza border.
Abby - thank you so much for this. I, too, have been shaken and saddened. I have despaired in my (limited) travels in the Middle East of there ever being a lasting peace as the resentments and mistrust are so embedded in culture, history, and the very geography of the place. And yet... I keep turning the question over and over in my head since the weekend: "What's really going on here?" It may just be a way to avoid emotion and hide in reason, but there is a persistent doubt in my head. Hamas was extremely well prepared. Their attack was vicious and targeted civilians. The Israeli response was of course going to be huge. Who benefits from a destroyed Gaza? I don't think it's Hamas. I think it's some other entity and Hamas was their tool. I'm not a conspiracy theorist by nature, but something is setting off my internal alarms that the focus is all wrong here. Someone decided to send an Uzi to a knife fight. Who? And why? And I'm entirely aware that the entire time I'm running these thoughts in my head, innocent civilians on both sides are dying and will continue to die by the thousands on both sides of the border. My lovingkindness practice has the tinge of desperate prayer to it these days.
Thanks, Gordon. I remember when Washington NBA owner Abe Pollin was on his flight back from Rabin’s funeral (they were friends), he had an epiphany that led him to change the Bullets’ name, now the Wizards (no comment in that choice). Seems to me the only hope now is some major epiphanies; which are hard to come by when you feel an existential threat.