About 1,200 people were killed during the Hamas-led Oct. 7 assault against Israel, a majority of them civilians, according to the Israeli authorities. Israel’s retaliatory war against Hamas in Gaza has killed more than 23,000 Palestinians, a majority of them women and children, according to Gaza health officials.
Warning of a long conflict, the Israeli statements exposed a growing dissonance between the domestic perception of the timing and goals of the war and increasing international impatience in the face of a deepening humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/14/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-war-gaza.html
On the 100th day of a disproportionate vengeful retribution against Palestinian civilians, with inhuman acts of criminal collective punishment conducted with impunity by the Israeli military, the world observes with dismay the complicity with which the United States continues to support crimes of war with taxpayers’ funded offensive weaponry killing Palestinian civilians. This is well beyond the more justifiable support for the defensive Iron Dome.
Of course, using civilians as human shields and taking civilian hostages are also war crimes to be universally condemned without any justification whatsoever, even in an asymmetric warfare. However, the disproportionate death toll of civilians is only comparable to the imbalance of power to negotiate a just and lasting peace between the warring parties. The genocidal rhetoric of Netanyahu and his extreme right coalition adds fuel to the raging fire.
This imbalance of power is the main reason why all previous peace accords between Israel and Palestine have not stood the test of time. This is made clear by Fareed Zakaria’s historical overview in his GPS Special: The Road to War in the Middle East aired on December 24, 2023.
In the last segment, despite Fareed’s biased question,
Do you think that fundamentally the problem is that the Palestinians, at some point, have not been educated by their leadership to recognize that, look, they’ve lost this long struggle, that they’re not going to get the whole loaf, they’re going to get 22 percent of that loaf? And you have to kind of admit that. And the unwillingness to admit that is — and, you know, the worry that if you admit that you will be assassinated or you’ll get outflanked by Hamas, that that’s been at the core of it, that there isn’t somebody who’s willing to speak honestly to the Palestinians and say, look, this is all we can get?
Fareed Zakaria
the former U.S. Ambassador Edward Djerejian aptly deflects such offensive and patronizing tone, replying instead with wise advice about the course of American diplomacy in this conflict.
At the end of the day there’s 7.2 million Palestinians and 7.2 approximately Israeli Jews in between the Jordan River and the Eastern Mediterranean. Neither one is going to go anywhere. They’re there. They have to divide the land.
Economic peace simply doesn’t work. But that was the trope, and that trope started in the Trump administration and the Biden administration obviously continued that with the normalization. I have nothing against normalization of Arab countries with Israel, but it was done at the cost of neglecting this central issue, the territorial aspects of peace between Israel and Palestine.
First, American diplomacy needs a deep understanding and appreciation of the basic facts on the ground in the Middle East and where the parties are coming from.
Second, we have to have a spine in our diplomacy. We have to be tough on both sides, or else nothing will happen. You know, we started off in 67 Israeli settlements. In U.S. government proclamations, Israeli settlements are illegal under international law, the Geneva Conventions of ’49.
You’ve seen over the years how the verbiage is that, oh, they’re an obstacle to peace, or they’re a problem. No, they’re illegal. The United States [must stand] tall on principle, and we have to do that with both sides: tough on the Arabs; tough on the Israelis. You have to be skillful in your diplomacy also.
The glimmer of hope is that I really do feel that October 7th is so consequential, akin to Yom Kippur in ’73. That the political landscape has changed. I hope one of the major lessons that everyone learns is that you cannot shunt the Palestinian issue aside and make it a secondary or tertiary issue, that you can make economic peace or peace for peace. We have to focus on land for peace.
And let’s make the hard decision to go for it. There’s a lot of diplomatic history in the archives on settlements, on territorial compromises, on Jerusalem, on refugees. There’s a body of negotiations that can be built on. Let’s get the leadership to get it done.
Former U.S. Ambassador Edward Djerejian has been working on diplomacy in the Middle East for more than 50 years. He’s been U.S. Ambassador to Israel, U.S. Ambassador to Syria and the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs.
May his words and experience light the way for a just and lasting peace in the Middle East. On this 100th day of the War on Gaza, it is made clear that the military option is not a viable alternative for a peace accord among equals. -JB
A Fareed Zakaria GPS Special: The Road to War in the Middle East
Why has the Israeli–Palestinian conflict been so intractable for so long? Fareed talks with Palestinian scholar Ahmad Khalidi, Israeli historian Benny Morris, former US diplomat Edward Djerejian and more about the attempts, missed chances, and future prospects of establishing a lasting peace in the region.
https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/fzgps/date/2023-12-24/segment/01
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