Thinking About Israel and Palestine: Headaches and Insomnia

 I am not sure that the past month's headaches and insomnia are due to the challenges of thinking about the Israel-Palestine conflict, but I am going to use that as my intro to this effort to think through this stuff.

Usual caveats apply: I am not a political theorist or moral philosopher, I am not an expert on the conflict itself.  Oh, and I was raised Jewish and the education I got at Hebrew school did not adequately present the realities of the past.  I did take one Mideast politics course in college, and I did spend one week on an amazing and amazingly depressing tour of Israel and Palestine with a bunch of other academics four years ago.

One of the conversations that disturbed me most this past week was when a rabbi I met on that trip     responded to my criticisms of Israel's attack upon the hospital.  He asked what is the right way to attack a group using a hospital as a shield (and as a trap), and my answer was simplistic: don't.  I get that he and some of my relatives feel as if there are unfair standards being applied to Israel.  And I absolutely get that anti-semitism is on the rise in the US, Canada, and Europe, although I wonder how much of this pro-Palestinian and how much of this opportunist far right folks using this moment (something to discuss another day).  But Israel is fucking up in a major way here, and I want to think through why I think that, and why it is legitimate to criticize Israel at this moment of crisis.  

Oh, and one more caveat: Hamas is more evil.  It is bad to target the civilians of the adversary, but it is even worse to deliberately endanger one's own civilians.  Netanyahu has indirectly engaged Israelis by empowering Hamas and by diverting troops to protect expansionist (irredentist!) settlers, leaving communities close to Gaza essentially unguarded.  So, even as I criticize Israel, I am not apologizing for or supporting Hamas.  I want Hamas to be defeated, but in the right way.  More on that below.

So, I am starting with first principles:

1. Everyone is deserving of self-determination: Jews, Palestinians, Ukrainians, Taiwanese (oops), Quebecois, etc.  
2. Violence is bad, so it should only be used proportionately.
3. Just because someone did something in the past, such as mass bombing of cities, does not legitimate folks using the same strategy today.  The bible speaks of laws of war that we generally find abhorrent--there has been progress in our moral stances and also in our strategic understanding.  

The best way to provide people with self-determination is democracy.  It is better, in my humble opinion, that infinite secession where every group has its own state, because the act of secession or partition will probably increase the grievances of some groups that are left behind. Quebec's separatism had a very small burst of violence largely because Quebecois could and did exert power via voting to get damn near everything they wanted. Not everything, but all the stuff that might have been worth fighting for.

One state from sea to river with all Palestinians and all Jews sharing one state with heaps of religious and other rights .... would be cool, but, well, Jews want a Jewish state since bad things have happened in democracies where other groups have more votes.  Alternatively, a single state where Jews have rights and Palestinians don't is inherently problematic and wrong--the apartheid label feels icky but when you run a massive open-air prison with no end in sight, it is hard to think of it in any other way.  I have believed for quite some time that Israeli Jews faced a choice--Israel could remain a theocratic state or it remain a democracy, but not both. 

Some of my relatives have said that the Arab countries should welcome the Palestinians.  The thing is: the Palestinians think they are a people, the Arab countries think the Palestinians are a people, and since nationalism is intersubjective, Jews can't wish away Palestinian identity.  However, Netanyahu can use the Israeli military to destroy many symbols that resonate with Palestinian identity, and that gets us to the g word.

Threatening a second nabka, which would expel the Palestinians from the occupied territories would be ethnic cleansing.  If the Palestinians were to win and push the Jews out, that too would be ethnic cleansing.  And it would not be legitimate even if one considers all Jews to be settlers-colonizers.  We can't unwind history with heaps of bloodshed and call it justice.  Anyhow, I try to avoid using the word genocide because it is very fraught.  In the past, did Canadians practice genocide against its Indigenous peoples. Yeah.  Now?  I'd say no, as state policies are not aimed at reducing or eliminating these peoples, even if bad policies continue and are harmful.  But I can see why some folks may argue this and I probably need more info to take a clearer stance.

Is Israel engaged in genocide right now?  It is using lots of violence to reduce the population of Palestinians in Gaza.  It is not proportionate, and it is not well aimed at achieving military objectives, two of the requirements for the just use of force. Israel is making Gaza uninhabitable. While Israel has not been all that strategic/deliberate--this is mostly about revenge since 10/7--the way force has been used is suggestive--to solve the Gaza problem by getting rid of the residents.  That has some echoes, doesn't it?

So, the hospital: Hamas had some stuff based at the hospital?  Does that make it either a legitimate (morally speaking) or sound (strategically speaking) target?  No.  Most of the folks at the hospital had limited agency--they neither voted for Hamas nor had power to remove Hamas, nor much ability to leave.  So, one should not target many vulnerable civilians if the aim is to kill a few Palestinian leaders.  With that specific campaign over, we are learning that the Israelis never had the best intelligence about the threat posed by those in the hospital, which is now a trend--Israeli intelligence failure.  Would it be legitimate and smart to hit the hospital if it had a ticking weapon of mass destruction?  Sure.  Anything short of that?  Not so much.  The Hamas use of human shields is ... a TRAP!  And the Israelis walked right into it.  War is, as they say, politics by other means, and so the Israelis lost big time on the world stage by attacking a hospital  Their strategic communications about all of this has been awful.  

International support matters for both sides, and Israel surrendered whatever moral authority and international support it gained on October 7th, much like the US gave up all of the goodwill from 9/11 by attacking Iraq.  Jews are upset because Hamas is not getting as much criticism, and that is for a few reasons.  One is that countries are siding with the Arab world due to strategy or convenience or cheap oil or whatever.  Another is that Hamas being evil is baked in.  It has been held to a lower standard because it is a terrorist group.  Palestinians in Europe and North America support Hamas and cheer on Israeli defeats, including, alas, the attacks on kids.  Jews in Israel and elsewhere are cheering on violence against Palestinians.  Both are wrong--both because the people of both sides deserve human dignity and because the attacks are not going to achieve anything.  We hold Israel to a higher standard because it is a democracy and it is the more powerful side, which means, yes, it has more responsibility.

One of the ingredients of just war is whether an attack is actually going to accomplish something.  If you repeatedly use violence with little expectation of changing the situation, that is morally problematic--revenge, for instance, is not a legitimate justification for the use of violence. If some violence can avert more violence and end a conflict, then it is more just (and more sound from a tactical or strategic standpoint).  Ukraine has a morally superior position for continuing the war because Russia has abused those who have been on their side of the lines.  Violence, targeted at Russian troops and Russian military assets, is legitimate and also strategically sound.  Russian attacks on Ukrainian hospitals and other civilian locations is not.  And no, I am not saying Russia and Israel are morally equivalent... but I am saying that Israel's actions are positioning Israel closer to Russia.  And who would want that? 

During the insurgencies of the 2000's, scholars and American military folks came to the same conclusion, more or less: that the best way to win (or at least not lose) a counter-insurgency effort is to minimize civilian casualties.  These casualties would undermine the war effort--not just by creating more insurgents--the family and friends of those killed-but also by undermining the legitimacy of the Irag and Afghan governments.  So, a policy of "courageous restraint" was enunciated, although I am not sure how well it was observed.  The basic idea is that if you want to attack a certain military leader or target, and there  are a bunch of kids or other non-combatants present, you wait for a better time.  Indeed, our rules of engagement for air attacks often lead to hitting targets at night when buildings are not as occupied.

The point here is that there are ways to deal with a hospital that may have some "bad guys" in it.  Leveling it is not one of them.   

Which leads to the question of a cease-fire.  I don't always support cease-fires (I am clearly not a pacifist), as it make give one side a big advantage.  In the case of Russia-Ukraine, a ceasefire with Russia on Ukrainian land would be bad because it would allow Russian to continue to abuse the Ukrainians and it would potentially create a semi-frozen conflict that limits Ukraine's ability to free its territory and enable Russia to fuck with Ukraine in a variety of ways.  In this case?  I think with so many civilians in harm's way, and with a cease-fire perhaps giving time for Israelis to think about what they are doing (like following Netanyahu), it might lead to a better, more humane outcome.  Would Hamas benefit from a cease-fire?  Probably, but so would Israel.  

This all has avoided the big questions: what should Israel's objectives be?  Because you can't have a strategy unless you know what the goal is. If the objective is a one-state Israel with the occupied territories full of folks having no rights and no access to power, then buckle up for unending conflict.  Eradicating Hamas should not be an end to itself because removing one organization from the territories will not change the fundamental challenge of two peoples living in this area between river and sea. Removing the Palestinians from Gaza might be the objective now, and, if so, that is horrifying.

Until October 7th, Israel focused on tactics to perpetuate the status quo: deterrence by punishment.  Or to put in pop culture terms, the strategy that Sean Connery told Kevin Costner in the Untouchables: they came with a knife, you come with a gun.  They send your guy to the hospital, you send their guy to the morgue.  I will always remember a conversation I had with a retired Israeli special ops general while our group was at the Golan Heights.  He was being critical of Obama for not hitting harder than the US got hit by various attacks.  That Israel's tactic was always to escalate a bit, to hit harder than have been hit.  And I basically asked: how has that worked to end the threat to Israel and stop the violence.  

Maybe it was kind of working for Israel, but that ended on October 7th, when Hamas decided it was not just willing to take Israel's punishment for an attack that was far more aggressive and damaging to Israelis than previous ones, but actually eager for that punishment.  Deterrence only works if the costs of punishment are both credible and greater than the costs of the status quo.  To Hamas, they apparently felt the Abraham Accords and other moves were more threatening than getting shellacked by Israel.  Maybe their own domestic political game needed as much distraction as Netanyahu did/has.  

Anyhow, it was a limited strategy since it was mostly kicking the can down the road and had episodes of violence priced in.  It may still be working with Hezbollah, but mostly because Hezbollah is in no shape to get into a war with Israel with Lebanon being such a mess (I am guessing here).  But the days of deterring Hamas are gone, so what now?

Eradicating Hamas?  Not so easy.  Israel should be doing cost/benefit calculations of the various ways to attack Hamas, which would, yes, mean not attacking hospitals.  I think Israel's old strategy was and is the best option: after the Munich Olympics, Israel went out and targeted each person responsible for that attack and, as far as I recall, killed most of them.  Israel can do the same here with Hamas's leadership--they might miss a few, but better to miss a few awful Hamas leaders than to kill a lot of civilians.  This, of course, requires patience, which Netanyahu does not and cannot have, given the precarity of his political position.

And this gets to the one of the key problems: Israelis have voted for various far right parties that have trapped Israel into more and more dangerous paths.  Making Israel more theocratic may be good for the Orthodox, but it is bad for the economy and for the political system.  Destroying the possibility of a two-state solution not only angers Palestinians but reduces bargaining options and exit strategies.  Putting corrupt, awful Netanyahu back into power again and again undermines Israel's democracy, its legitimacy, its military, and its security.  And ultimately its future.

I am so angry and frustrated not because this is a hard situation, but because it didn't have to be this bad, it didn't have to be this way.  Netanyahu and the parties backing him have made things worse.  My anger towards Hamas is baked in--never democratic, always autocratic, always determined to wipe Israel from the map.  I never had any hope for that organization.  I had some hope for the Palestinian Authority until I visited Israel and got a better understanding of its limits.  But I had some hope that Israel would see the trap so visibly set in front of it and not hop into it so enthusiastically.  It is hard to kill one's way through a counter-insurgency, it is both wrong and counter-productive to kill so many civilians along the way.  

As a scholar who used to study ethnic conflict, I understand that it is hard to end these kinds of disputes.  But I also understand that conflicts end, that violence is not inevitable--that it is a choice.  And as a scholar of civil-military relations, I am so glad I never studied Israel.

I am not sure if any of this is coherent, but I am just trying to think through this situation.  Do I feel any better now that I have spewed my thoughts here?  Not really.