Hazem Saghieh
TT
20

Is There Another Way with Israel?

The "beneficial outcome" (or at least one of them) of the "harmful" “Al-Aqsa Flood," might be that it rid us of the idea that force is the solution to the Israel problem.

Neither our many wars nor our resistance movements achieved their mission. As for the things that should be said, they absolutely must be said, today more than ever, regardless of how acrid they may be, the criticism and accusations they may draw, or how shocking they may seem to our common rhetoric and sensibilities.

The Palestinians’ immense pain cannot be allowed to continue, nor can the suffering of the Lebanese and others who pay the costs of the cause’s exploitation as a pretext. With Trump’s presidency, the situation becomes even more dire, and the stocks of disasters, displacement, and genocide rise.

What should be said is that we will not manage, neither in the near nor distant future, to bridge the gap with Israel: Israel’s relations with the world’s influential powers (let’s forget the call for turning East), its technical superiority, its nuclear weapons, its political and social makeup’s capacity to live with its contradictions in the shadow of war... In fact, it is likely to grow.

Besides, our societies do not want to keep up the fight, whose primary function has become furthering ends that have nothing to do with Palestine and the Palestinians. We are seeing Syria, which had been a pioneer of the religion of war, and of making lofty pretensions tied to it, turn away, both as a people and a government, from this doctrine.

Does this mean that we have no problem with Israel? Of course not. However, it does mean that there are other means, that do not entail or threaten violence, to address this problem. The history of major conflicts can offer suggestions for how to leave the world of war, and thereby influence Israel itself in ways that empower its moderate forces, which have been weakened by the climate of violence and militarization that has prevailed since signing the Oslo Accords, when its "peace camp" had been home to more than two-thirds of society. Such an approach allows us to bet on putting the two-state solution back on the table. The faster we move in that direction, the better our chances of success.

In the history of conflicts, we find the many wars that France and Germany have fought against one another. We can gloss over the last three of them: In 1870, the Prussians were not satisfied with defeating the French and seizing Alsace-Lorraine (15,000 km2), they also humiliated them by capturing their Emperor, Napoleon III, and then crowned their victory with German unification.

In 1914, France joined the global powers that fought and ultimately defeated Germany. The humiliating "Treaty of Versailles" was imposed on the Germans as a result, and it would become one of the reasons for the eventual rise of Nazism. In World War II, Germany occupied France with ease; this became the source of extraordinary shame that was expressed, in various ways, in French literature and cinema.

In light of this history, the French and other Europeans were apprehensive about German unification in 1990, and President François Mitterrand was no exception. Nonetheless, he quickly took a different view and became enthused by this development, betting that the implications of its unity and strength could be absorbed into a European framework of mutual benefit to all. This vision led to the Maastricht Treaty, and later, the adoption of the Euro.

Japan and Korea have waged wars against one another since the seventh century. In the modern era, the former occupied the latter, between 1910 and 1945. During this time, and especially during World War II, more than half a million Koreans were killed, one million were subjected to forced labor, and a regime that ordained Korean women to “entertain” and “comfort” Japanese soldiers was imposed on them.

Only twenty years after that occupation ended, in 1965, the two countries normalized relations, but tensions and matters of contention remain, especially with regard to the question of compensation, which each side interprets differently. Nonetheless, the countries maintain a trade relationship worth billions of dollars annually, and they share economic, military, and security ties.

The Anglo-Irish conflict dates back to the mid-seventeenth century, with (Protestant) Cromwell’s occupation of (Catholic) Ireland and the large wave of settler migration that followed. In 1919-21, the Irish War of Independence broke out. After some twists and turns, it led to the partition of the country and the establishment of the Irish state in the south. Meanwhile, the conflict continued in the north until a settlement was reached, in 1998, that established a power-sharing arrangement that was satisfactory to the Catholics and by which Northern Ireland would remain part of Britain, reassuring the Protestants.

When India gained its independence and its Muslims seceded and established the state of Pakistan in 1947, it was ravaged by a civil war that displaced 14 million people and killed (in what is among the least precise estimates in modern history) somewhere between 200,000 and two million people. Like the Japanese and Koreans, the English and the Irish, the Indians and Pakistanis did not become enamored of one another. They have fought three wars since this conflict ended, and they are divided over a whole host of disputes, the most prominent of which is the status of Kashmir. Nevertheless, officials from the two countries continue to meet one another, trade with one another, and seek diplomatic solutions to the conflict.

Our wars, the Palestinian and Arab wars with Israel, are not an exception to war, nor are they the most hateful and painful of wars. However, following in the footsteps of Mitterrand and the Europeans, who saw the European Union as the only way to contain what they saw as the threat of German aggression, might be the only way to tame and curb Israel’s belligerence.