Fanatical religious doctrines are a major hurdle to any two-state solution

On the extreme wing of one side, we have religious nationalist fanatics who believe their God wants them to control the land between the river and the sea. On the extreme wing of the other side, we have religious nationalist fanatics who believe their God wants them to control the land between the river and the sea.  

When the extremes are among the dominant players in a fragile situation, they find it easy to disrupt moves which might compromise their maximalist aims. If they believe they are carrying out God’s wishes, then compromise is not in their lexicon and the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea can only belong to one side.

Many of us are familiar with the Jewish religious extremists in the Palestinian West Bank. They tend to live among the tens of thousands of ultra-orthodox Jews who make up about a third of 500,000 Israelis who have settled there. They believe that God told their ancestors “I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession”. (Genesis 17.8)

The violent minority among them are thought to number in the low hundreds and are the ones who target Palestinians, and sometimes the Israeli security forces. Since the Oct 7 Hamas massacres, they have committed numerous acts of violence against Palestinians including the shooting of a farmer. The alleged gunman has been arrested by the Israeli police and an extremist settler leader has been ordered to be detained for four months on the grounds that he is a danger to state security. The Israeli authorities know that the West Bank is boiling and could explode into a third intifada.

The extremist settlers justify murder on religious grounds. For example, when the religious ultra-nationalist Yigal Amir murdered Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 it was because he believed Rabin’s peace plan, which included withdrawing from most of the West Bank, would deny Jews their God given land.

Most religious settlers are not violent, but they do hold strident views. The settler movement has political parties and, in a country which always has coalition governments, this gives them a pathway into government. That in turn restricts the possibility of centrist conservative politicians making concessions to Palestinian demands in the West Bank as it would collapse the government. For now, the settler parties are marginalized from the Israeli War Cabinet, but when the dust settles the extreme right in Israeli politics will still be there.

The other sides’ extreme religious justification for total control of land is similar to the one as laid down in Genesis but stated, if at all, less clearly in scripture. The 1988 Hamas Charter says that the “Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic waqf land consecrated for future Muslim generations until judgement day”.  In this context, it means the land is holy and was “endowed” to Muslims by God.  Many Islamic scholars are not as confident about this as are Hamas.

The Charter insist that no part of Palestine “from the Jordan River in the east to the Mediterranean in the west” can be given up because “This is the law governing the land of Palestine in the Islamic Sharia and the same goes for any land the Muslims have conquered by force.” All means to achieve the liberation of Palestine from Jews are permitted whether by stabbing, beheading, or bombing.

This position provides something of a hurdle to those who hope for a two-state solution.

It is also why this week Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu said “Calls for a ceasefire are a call for Israel to surrender to Hamas…the Bible says that there is a time for peace and a time for war. This is a time for war.”

Hamas has successfully destroyed the Israeli peace camp which has been shrinking for more than 20 years. The conclusion much of Israeli public opinion has drawn from Oct 7 is that the situation can no longer be “managed”. Until this date, many Israelis thought they had locked Hamas up behind the Gaza wall and thrown away the key. The bestial events of that day have convinced them that Hamas would not have stopped killing them until there were no more Jews to kill. The moment the Hamas gunmen could, they lived out their fantasies.

For 20 years Israel, assuming it could not destroy Hamas had tried to manage them. One year it might deter them with threats, another year it might degrade them with air strikes, and on the occasional year, it would reward “good behaviour” with thousands of work permits for Gazans thus relieving political pressure on Hamas. It worked, until to their absolute shock and horror, it didn’t.

Now Israel intends not to manage the threat but to remove it – temporarily.  The Israeli government has faced criticism for not concentrating on “the day after” – as in what to do when they have finished dismantling Hamas. However, it is naive to think they have not factored it in.

It’s a question of priorities. After Oct 7, Israel can’t just “manage”. As early as Oct 8, the government said Israel’s goal was now to destroy Hamas so that it cannot threaten people “for many years”. They are not fools, they know Hamas, in one form or another, can reconstitute and come back. They are buying time, just as in 2006 they bought 17 years of time by inflicting enough pain on Hezbollah in Lebanon to deter it from launching serious attacks against Israel (until last month). If they can take Hamas apart, there will be time to work out who governs in Gaza.

But now we are in the “time for war”. A time where the cold logic of strength and weakness means Israel must demonstrate it is willing to use extreme violence to defeat its enemies knowing that if it does not – it is at the beginning of its end.

Hamas, perhaps having gambled and lost that its hostage taking might deter Israel, must try to bring the whole house down and bring in Hezbollah, Syria, and even Iran, to save its own skin despite the cost of thousands of lives. At time of writing Hezbollah is calibrating its military action on Israel’s border to a degree short of triggering war with Israel, and Iran, having lit the fire, seems to prefer to watch things burn as opposed to being burnt. Tehran needs Hezbollah intact as an insurance policy against Israel attacking its nuclear facilities in the future. The governments of the Sunni Arab states mostly loathe Hamas and in private will be happy to see them taken apart even if they must pay lip service to large sections of public opinion on the Arab street.

That is the big power politics of the crisis. On the ground there are those who believe they are doing God’s work. When this round is over, the Israeli political system will again struggle to rein in its true believers. An even bigger challenge will be to Palestinian society which, yet again, having suffered thousands upon thousands of dead, may ask the question – if Israel is the problem – is the messianic, end of days belief system of Hamas the solution?

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