Where’s the fresh thinking on Israel-Palestine?

The Biden administration is getting a tough lesson in reality. However much it may wish to leave behind the Palestinian issue, the security of countries like Iraq and peace-keeping and stabilisation in Afghanistan, they won’t leave him.

There is an uneasy ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, but things can’t be put back to where they were. There is no sense of a “new normal” to be recovered and nurtured. New elements of anger and instability are well within the horizon now in Iraq and Afghanistan – two countries from which America and its allies cannot cut and run with impunity. Shiite militias are currently swarming the regime in Baghdad. Even before the last Nato troops and agents quit Afghanistan, a fresh phase of civil war is on the way, which even the Pashtun Taliban cohorts won’t be able to control.

One of the most striking aspects of the aftermath of the fourth Israeli-Gaza clash in under twenty years is the paucity of ideas about any realistic resolution to the conflict. Two of the prime protagonists, Israel’s acting prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Hamas leadership have said they are prepared to strike, and fight again if provoked. For the Palestinians of Gaza this raises the prospect of being bombed again across a landscape already strewn with rubble and broken sewers. If there is a next time, the humanitarian meltdown in Gaza won’t be contained to the 141 square miles of the Strip itself – it will cross borders.

The “big dry” in fresh thinking on the issue has been well illustrated this past week across the international print media – none more so than in the New York Times. Traditionally the paper has taken a great deal of interest in the affairs of Israel and the Middle East in general. Since the ceasefire was called a week ago, there has been quite a lot of print – much being commentary rather than reportage, from editorialists old and new, ranging from moderate Palestinians to hardline Zionists. They have one thing in common – not an original idea with which to address the current crisis.

Much the same uncertainty colours editorial columns elsewhere, such as the Washington Post and the New Yorker, and most of the UK’s broadcast and newspaper media. The veteran Middle East Editor of the BBC, Jeremy Bowen, has been the exception in advancing suggestions of what really may have changed this time. He highlights two aspects. The fighting between Jews and Arabs with Israeli citizenship has brought a new degree of communal violence that the Israeli authorities may find hard to contain in future. The scale of violence wrought on Gaza by Israelis aerial, artillery, and naval offshore bombardment is also bound to be questioned more in the days of WhatsApp – with their memes of Palestinian Lives Matter.

Yet on at least one occasion the BBC has pruned back his commentary.

At the heart of the diplomatic confusion, reflected by the lack of conclusiveness in the commentaries of the likes of Thomas Friedman and Roger Cohen in the New York Times, is under what reasonable terms can Israeli-Palestinian talks be revived. The two-state solution under the terms of the Oslo accords of 1993 -1995 are written off as unviable. Many young Palestinians now believe Oslo is dead.

On the other hand, the notion of a one state solution in the terms most contemporary Zionists would want it, seems almost impossible. Today it would mean a state of Israel where there would be three or four hundred thousand more Jews than Arabs. This makes the idea of promoting a Jewish state, but with equal citizen rights for Jew and non-Jew alike, impossible. This was reinforced by the Nation-State Act of 2018, reinforcing the notion of Israel as the home for all Jews, and with all settlements to be part of Israel – instruments of creeping annexation, in other words.

Add to this the question of Jerusalem, the starting point of the latest conflict. The new Zionists, who promoted the Parade of the Flags in the Old City earlier this month, want a united Jerusalem as the undivided capital of the new united Israel. Currently about 40 per cent of Jerusalem’s population is Arab, and vital to its economy. Arab labour is important in Israel as a whole, especially in service industries. This last week Arab Israelis called an effective general strike – proving the vital role played by the Arab workforce.   

Arabs and Israelis are now looking at failed political leadership – in Ramallah with the Palestinian Authority under President Abbas, the Hamas leadership in Gaza and Israel itself. After March’s inconclusive general election in Israel, Yair Lapid of Yesh Atid and Gideon Sa’ar of New Hope are trying to stitch together a coalition which would see Benjamin Netanyahu leaving office for the first time in 12 years. He is still facing trial on counts of corruption, bribery and breach of trust – which could land him in jail.

The coalition talks were suspended during the Gaza crisis. Netanyahu played the strongman – an opposite and complementary role to Hamas. Hamas and the acting prime minister seem locked into a strange danse macabre – both needing each other to prove they are the right leadership for times of war. In Gaza Hamas has long outstayed its mandate, and can no longer inspire trust. Elected to power there in 2006, it should have returned to the polls ten years ago. If Palestinian elections were held this year, it is unlikely to win in Gaza, though might on the West Bank.

On the West Bank, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, 85, also postponed elections this year, knowing that his Fatah party was likely to lose. Meanwhile with the recent disturbances in the holy sites and the Sheikh Jarrah district of East Jerusalem, Hamas has tried to paint itself as the natural saviour of the Palestinian people – emphasised by firing 4,000 rockets over 11 days.

The fighting has resulted in 242 Palestinian and 13 Israeli deaths, and internal and external political impasse. But, sometime and somehow, Israelis and Palestinians will have to talk – because they will have to share the space between the Mediterranean and the Jordan valley.

Antony Blinken is making a practical and sober start to address the issue, belatedly, with his visit to Israel, the West Bank, Jordan and Egypt. He has offered emergency relief of about $5 million to Gaza, $32 million of help and support for the UNRWA agency and about $75 million towards a reconstruction fund. He has also said the US will re-open its consulate for the Palestinian Authority in East Jerusalem.

Blinken should be reminding his Israeli and Arab counterparts of Sherlock Holmes’s great dictum, “after you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable must be the truth.” Or in this case, it must be the way forward. Arabs and Israelis need to revive their politics to be viable and practicable. Talks between communities have to start again, whether on the Oslo agreement model or not.

America is vital to the process, as was Egypt to brokering the present ceasefire to Gaza. Washington has tried to step out of obligations in the region, including Iraq and Afghanistan. This isn’t the reality being unfolded by the facts on the ground. Biden doesn’t have the luxury of the Irish road direction – “if I were going there, I wouldn’t be setting out from here.”

America and its allies are involved and obligated at present in the toils and travails of Israelis, Arabs, Kurds, and Afghans. Try to ignore this, and it will come back to haunt them, many times over.