I went to the Cambridge Footlights Review, in 1981 I think, which starred students who went by the names of Hugh Laurie, Stephen Fry, Emma Thompson and Tony Slattery. Slattery performed the most wonderful sketch – all Star Wars episodes in 90 seconds. I laughed so much I felt nauseous! On a similar level of ridiculousness, I now try to summarise my take on the Israel-Palestine conflict in about 1300 words.
I’ve never studied the topic and am not going to become an
expert after a few days checking my books and googling to fill gaps. Over the
years, I have tended to side with Israel – uncritically, I admit – because: I’m
part-Jewish; my paternal grandmother certainly looked Jewish; I’ve mirrored my
family’s pro-Israel inclinations; the holocaust out-evils anything Israel could
ever be guilty of; I’ve liked most Jews I’ve met; Jews have never threatened
Brits (the odd ball excepted) whereas Muslims (a minority) have; and I loathe
most pro-Palestine groupies (Adams, Corbyn, etc.). I’ve also built up, yes, an
incomplete picture of Israel defending itself against unprovoked attacks, and Hamas
using civilians as human shields, giving Israel a choice of killing Palestinian
civilians or allowing more Israelis to be killed. Finally, Israel is as close
to a functioning democracy as there can be in the Middle East.
To frame my shot-gun research, I broke down the issue into simplified, more manageable chunks, a bit like breaking down an atom into its constituent parts. The atom analogy is a fortuitous one, because an actual atom doesn’t have distinct protons, neutrons, and electrons; they’re more like probabilities of energy in a certain form, time and place. On that note:
1) Does Israel have the right to exist?
2)
Does Israel have the right to exist where it is
with the borders it has?
3)
Does Israel have the right to keep forcibly expanding
into Palestinian territory?
4)
Is Israel always the aggressor?
5)
Is Israel’s response to Palestinian aggression
proportionate?
6)
Is Israel responsible for extreme Palestinian
poverty?
1) Does Israel have the right to exist?
Firstly, is that an historic, military, legal or moral
right? My simplistic respective responses would be yes, dunno, yes and yes. The
original Israel was repeatedly invaded BC, and pockets of Jews have lived in a
myriad of countries since. But for some reason that I have never understood,
the Jews were too often mis-trusted and persecuted so probably were always
looking over their shoulders – for 2,000 years. That gets very wearing. Then
there was Hitler and after what he did, the world owed the Jews some compensation
and a leg-up. Having your own homeland where you feel you belong and where
everyone around you says you belong and where you feel protected (if not 100%
safe), must have felt like nirvana.
2) Does Israel have the right to exist where it is with the borders it has?
If not there – their historic and spiritual homeland – then
where? After 1948 Jews moved in, and Arabs moved out to a number of other Arab
countries. From what I can gather it went a lot more smoothly than in India. Israel’s
1948 borders were only ever meant to be temporary and were to be finalised as
and when.
3) Does Israel have the right to keep forcibly expanding into Palestinian territory?
Legally probably not. Morally the jury’s out. How about pragmatically? According to honestreporting.com, many of the West Bank
settlements were established on land you'd be hard pressed to call Palestinian.
The Palestinians never held sovereignty of the West Bank, and rejected all such
promises. Honestreporting.com further claims that some of the areas on which
settlements were established, like Gush Etzion and Hevron, had Jewish
communities that had existed sometimes for thousands of years before they were
depopulated in Arab riots and by Arab armies in Israel's war for independence. My
counter-argument to the above is that many Palestinians consider this land to be their
home so their grievances are real to them. It is their Lived Experience. I have
more sympathy for them than I do for the ruddy Sussexes.
4) Is Israel always the aggressor?
No. For example, the six-day war in 1967 was prompted by
Nasser moving Egyptian troops into Sinai. Israel launched a pre-emptive strike (some
accounts say that Israel had warned Egypt that such a move by Nasser
would be considered an act of war) and took control of the Gaza Strip, Sinai
Peninsula, the West Bank, and Golan Heights. Any state has the right to defend
itself against even the threat of unwarranted aggression. Did they need to grab
so much territory in the process? If they felt it would discourage future attacks
then that's one argument. I’m not a military strategist so I’d better stop there.
The most recent flare-up was started by Hamas and has something to do with two of their warring factions.
5) Is Israel’s response to Palestinian aggression proportionate?
It doesn’t look like it if you compare casualty stats, but then again Hamas has engineered it so that if Israel were to avoid killing civilians, they’d also fail to destroy military targets that would keep on killing Israeli civilians. The Israelis do have precision weapons that have bulls-eyed specific buildings, tunnels, vehicles and terrorists, without which civilian casualties would be worse.
6)
Is Israel responsible for Palestinian
poverty?
The popular narrative is that it’s in Israel’s best interests to keep the Palestinians weak and poor so they can’t afford food, healthcare or weapons. Weapons. Hold that thought. So Palestinians can afford to arm themselves to the teeth but not put food on their tables? Or, if Iran or wherever can supply them with arms, why can’t they throw in a few kebabs with each shipment? Answer – because it’s in Iran’s interests to keep the Palestinians hungry and angry more than it is Israel’s.
Again from honestreporting.com and 2017 data provided by the
United Nations, Palestine’s GDP was US$2,946 per capita. Israel’s was over
$40,000. But Egypt’s was $2,000. Palestine aint rich but it aint as poor as Egypt, a nation with a middle class that represents the largest such
segment to be found in any of the region's Islamic countries.
What wealth there is in Palestine must be somewhere. Honestreporting.com quotes reliable Arab sources that Hamas has 1,200 millionaires, 600 in Gaza. For example, Hamas leader Ismael Haniyeh paid $4m for a 2,500m2 parcel of land in Rimal, a tiny beachfront neighbourhood of Gaza City. The BBC reported in June 2019 that Palestinian ministers’ monthly salaries were increased in 2017 from $3,000 (£2,360) to $5,000 (£3,930) (a 67% raise). This was right after the Palestine Government had announced that it would halve the wages of all but its lowest-earning employees.
Conclusion:
My personal opinion remains that while Israel isn’t
blameless, I blame it less than Hamas, and before them the PLO, plus their
allies in Syria and Jordan etc. The saddest part is that the biggest sufferers,
as always, are the weakest, the Palestinian civilians. Hamas treats them as
pawns / collateral damage, so Israel has to as well or it will compromise its
own security. I’m not saying it’s right; I’m saying that’s how it is.
As for the rest of the world intervening to help secure peace, given the absolute pig’s ear ‘the West’ made of Libya and Afghanistan I can’t see how we can sort out Israel and Palestine. We’re probably doing the least harm by fiddling while that part of the world burns. A local broker is a better bet. Egypt made significant progress with the Camp David Accord (1978). And perhaps the 2020 Israel–United Arab Emirates normalisation agreement will lead to further good (or less-bad) things.
Or I could don my sparkly red shoes, click my heels three times and chant, “There WILL be peace in Palestine.”
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