The Palestinian Catastrophe

 

            Anyone who is remotely familiar with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict will recognize the title’s reference to the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948 (“al-nakba” in Arabic, pronounced “an-nakbah”), when they were driven away from their lands and homes by the Jewish militias at the time under Plan Dalet, which was a master plan developed by the Jewish leadership to take control of areas in historic Palestine that went beyond what the UN Partition Plan of 1947 allotted to the Jews. The controversial part is that it is not known whether the plan aimed to expel the Palestinians so as to make the state as Jewish as possible (given Jewish goals at the time, and given the racist attitudes toward the natives at the time, I would not be surprised that it did so aim) or whether the expulsion happened during the heat of the battle. Either way, the outcome was the same: the dispossession of over 700,000 Palestinians and Israel’s subsequent refusal to allow them to return, and whose descendants now live outside Palestine, either languishing in refugee camps or, the luckier ones, have made better lives for themselves outside a refugee camp.

            However, the Palestinian catastrophe is not confined to what happened in 1948. It continues to this day because no fair and satisfactory solution to the original catastrophe has been found. Palestinians continue to languish in refugee camps, or live under Israeli occupation (the West Bank and East Jerusalem) as Israel chips away at their future state by adding more and more settlements, or they live in the “open air prison” that is the Gaza Strip. The main problem for this continuing catastrophe is not, as pro-Israelis like to say, Arab anti-Semitism or Hamas’s hatred for Israel. Groups like Hamas come and go (Hamas itself was born in 1987, some 40 years after the original catastrophe), and they will continue to come and go as long as the major issue is not addressed, which is Palestinian dispossession of land and of rights. Instead, the main problem is Israel’s double-consciousness: on the one hand, its desire to live in peace among its neighbors (not so much for the neighbors’ own sake as much as for Israel’s, though here I would not hold Israel to a higher bar than I would hold any other country), and, on the other, its desire to augment its territory, to increase its area so as to reach what it believes is its historically anointed land (Jews differ on what its borders should be). The problem is exacerbated by the number of Arab countries who were and are willing to normalize relations with Israel without conditioning this normalization on the realization of a viable, independent Palestinian state. (Here, I see Iran’s machinations behind the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, which is to scuttle, at least temporarily, Saudi Arabia’s and Israel’s normalization of their relationship.) In this respect, Arab regimes have failed miserably to come to the aid of their fellow Palestinians, and not a single Arab leader, despite the occasional bombastic rhetoric over the years, has had the genuine interests of the Palestinians at heart, at least not deeply enough to compromise his country’s national interests.

            It is an interesting fact that Israel has been more than willing to have peace treaties with surrounding Arab states, despite past and current hostilities, but not offer a single genuine peace treaty to the Palestinians. For example, the most famous one, the Oslo agreement, proved to be nothing but a ploy to get Palestinian leaders, who, after years of having been deprived of it, were enamored with the power of statesmanship, to do Israel’s bidding while getting little in return (Edward Said anticipated all this and was one of the first people to cry “Foul!” when the Oslo Accords were signed). The reason why Israel is willing to make peace with past enemies but not with the Palestinians is territory: Israel wants no territories from Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and even from Syria and Lebanon (though the Golan Heights and who has access to Lake Tiberius will surely prove a sticking point in future negotiations with Syria, as they have proven in the past).

            Things are different with the Palestinians precisely because of territory: Israel wants Jerusalem and the West Bank and, perhaps, Gaza. But those pesky Palestinians continue to prove a thorn in Israel’s side, a practical, political, and moral thorn. How so? Well, they exist. Their very existence is a constant reminder to Israel of what it has done to an entire people whose land it has taken. I can believe all I want that this land is mine, has always been mine, and that, to top things off, God has promised it to me. But then what do I do with those other people (talk about the problem of “the Other”!) who have come to inhabit this land and live on it generation after generation? The only way for Israel to solve this issue without (much) moral remainder is to give the Palestinians their own state. But, of course, this would mean giving up on the West Bank, and that Israel does not want to do.

            So Israel has maintained the idea that the Palestinians, led by groups like Hamas, want its destruction. I write “maintained” because I have no doubt that this was true early on, when hopes were high that Palestine can be restored to its rightful owners (and before you scream “Bloody murderers” at the Palestinians, remember that it was their land that was taken from them and given to immigrants from Europe, in as need of a safe haven as they might have been, and remember that the destruction was for the state of Israel, as a state, not the murder of Jews). But that was 75 years ago, and now few Palestinians believe that they can get rid of Israel. The most that they can hope for is a single state for both people, and, failing that, a state of their own in part of what used to be their land. Moreover, Palestinians have worked with enough Israeli Jews over the years to know that this mutual living can be accomplished. But the idea that the Palestinians are bent on the destruction of Israel is a useful device for Israel to maintain because it gives it the excuse to continue to acquire land at the expense of the Palestinians while posturing that it is all the Palestinians’ fault. Hence the mantra, by successive Israeli prime ministers since Rabin, that “we have gave them what they wanted and they still attack us.” Never mind that what Israel has given was always accompanied by taking something in return, and that the taking was more than the giving.

            The ideal outcome for Israel—let’s be frank about this—is maximum land acquisition with the fewest Palestinians. This is not a secret to anyone who knows the history of the conflict and what Israeli leaders said about their goals early on. No, not all of them were of one mind about this maximalist solution, but the idea of a Jewish state depends on the idea of a land “without a people” (though, unfortunately, the “without” has to be achieved after the land has been acquired; God, despite His promise to His chosen ones, did not provide them with a land already-without-a-people). This ideal helps Israel achieve its dream of a Jewish state from the sea to the river, while at the same taking out the thorn from its side, regardless of the morality of this pseudo-surgical procedure. Recent voices in successive right wing governments have not wasted time in re-iterating this vision.

            So now Hamas—stupidly, immorally, short-sightedly, recklessly—gave Israel the excuse it needs: the utter destruction of the Gaza Strip without many vociferous objections from the world (though there are some whimpering ones), whose guilt for the Holocaust still silences everyone but the brazen. Israel can now depopulate the Gaza Strip of as many of its inhabitants as it can. Incidentally, Israel does not care about killing Palestinians if it can get them to leave, which is precisely what it is doing by giving them safe passage out of Gaza. It’s a brilliant move if you think about it: under humanitarian guise, Israel, in infinite mercy and compassion, allows the Palestinians to flee with their lives. Egypt will eventually have to take them in (what else can Egypt do?) and good luck expecting Israel to allow them back in. This is a repeat of what happened in 1948. The fewer Palestinians, the better for Israel. Yes, it pays a moral price, but why would Israel care about morality when its entire moral compass has pointed to only its own people? (Here, again, we should not hold Israel to a higher bar than we do other states, were it not for the fact that those people that Israel continues to kick out belong to the land it currently inhabits.) As to the West Bank, only an eternal optimist cannot see that the fate of its inhabitants will soon be the same as that of the Native Americans in North America.

            I sincerely hope that I am wrong about the above.

            To conclude: People are quick to condemn Hamas for the evil that it has wrought, but they are as quick to neglect that Hamas acts out of sheer desperation, out of the sheer desire, no matter how steep the price, to score a victory against Israel, a country whose military might not even its prime ministers fully comprehend, and out of the sheer hopelessness of the slow death that their people has been dying. Although to explain this is not to justify it, I also ask the reader: What options do the Palestinians have? What do you advise them to do? Their lives are going nowhere. Peace initiative after peace initiative has failed them (and, to add insult to injury, they are blamed for the failure). No Palestinian state has emerged, and none is likely to given the current map (just look and see whether a state can be built out of the Swiss cheese that is the West Bank). Their tunnel has been long and with no light at its end. So what should they do? They ought to sit still and “take it like a man.” To suck it up. To bear the unfair burden of history. We have to tell them, “Misfortune has fallen upon you, and you may not extricate yourselves from it by killing civilians. Even as you yourselves die, slowly, surely, with no justification, and with barely an explanation, you may not take the lives of the civilians of your enemy. This is the noble way.”

Fine. But let’s also ask the Israelis to not attend music festivals in the desert while their own country, their own government, has been slowly choking to death the very people on whose land they dance and enjoy the music. If Palestinians are to die a noble death, the least that the Israelis can do is lead a life that comprehends the horrors that they have brought about.