In the Israel-Palestine Conflict, Simplistic Analyses are the Enemy

In an effort to combat the “four legs good, two legs bad” oversimplifications that dominate the commentary on the Israel-Palestine conflict, here are some thoughts that I find perfectly easy to keep in my mind simultaneously.

1. Israel is a powerful state that has systematically deprived Palestinians of their most basic human rights, seized their land, and imposed new laws and policies that are the immediate cause for the current conflict.
2. Hamas is a terrorist group sponsored by Iran.
3. Israeli political leaders knew that if they continued with their land confiscations in an effort to pander to far right groups they would trigger a backlash from Palestinians and they invited it in an effort to strengthen the political position of Primer Minister Bibi Netanyahu.
4. The Palestinian leadership is divided, largely incompetent, in some cases corrupt.
5. The vast majority of the people of Israel and of Palestine are better than their respective governments right now.
6. There is no justification for the indiscriminate killing or wounding or terrorizing of innocents on either side in the current conflict.
7. Launching thousands of rockets at Israel is wrong and Israel has a right to defend themselves against such attacks.
8. Israeli bombing of residential towers, refugee camps and other areas in which the likelihood of civilian casualties is high and not warranted by the military targets that may also be hit is not an appropriate, nor under international law, legal or moral tactic.
9. Israeli overkill–the idea that Palestinian lives are worth less than Israeli lives–is repulsive and wrong. It also has not worked as a tactic or over the years as a strategy for enhancing peace within Israel or Palestine.
10. Israel is an apartheid state. Apartheid states are not democracies.
11. Palestinian leaders, notably Yasser Arafat, squandered real opportunities to achieve a lasting two-state solution to the problem.
12. There are only two lasting, just solutions to the current crisis. One is a single democratic state in which Palestinians have equal rights with Israelis and which, based on demographic trends, would ultimately be a Palestinian majority-led state.
13. The other is a two state solution in which both sides respect each other’s right to exist, are mutually committed to respecting each other’s borders and peoples, and exist as democracies, side-by-side.
14. The actions of the Netanyahu administration and the Israeli right to increasingly align themselves with one political party in the US–the GOP–have been profoundly damaging to the US-Israel relationship.
15. The one-sided, provocative pro-Israel policies of the Trump Administration have undercut the progress toward peace between Israelis and Palestinians and damaged US interests in the region.
16. The Abraham Accords have been a positive factor in contributing to regional peace.
17. The rise of the Israeli right over the past few decades has radicalized the state and led to a wide array of policies that have not contributed to the well-being of Israel including new settlements, land confiscation, the nationality law & acceptance of anti-Palestinian racism.
18. Netanyahu, who like Trump is a corrupt, narcissistic, ethno-nationalist demagogue, will do anything to survive politically even if it is to the detriment of Israel. However, should he be replaced, the situation is not likely to improve dramatically.
19. There’s currently no sign of the leadership the Palestinian people deserve on the horizon.
20. The prior claims of both sides on the land in question are long-standing and complicated. Representations about them typically serve one side or the other. No answers lie among them.

I could go on. If this were a simple situation this would have been resolved long ago. It has not been because there are now significant entrenched groups that have an interest in maintaining the status quo.

That said, Israel, as the established state and by far the more powerful of the two actors and as a country that has systematically embraced unjust and inhumane policies toward the Palestinians at this point has the lion’s share of responsibility for the current conflict.

The U.S. interest in this issue has shifted over the years. With the Cold War over, dependence on oil and the Middle East down, and the end of the so-called “War on Terror” there is no disputing our strategic interests in the Middle East writ large have diminished.

The primary US interest should be in peace and the promotion of the values we seek to advance–democracy and respect for human rights–and that requires we actively advocate for a change in the status quo. That means a more balanced policy and an end to reflexive pro-Israeli stances.

We should promote, as the Biden Administration has pledged to do, a two-state solution. In its absence we should use our leverage to promote respect for human rights. That includes conditioning all US aid to respect those rights.

This may break down in other ways in your mind (though having studied this situation for three decades, I think it may be hard to refute the above). But here’s one thing we should be able to agree on: in complex situations simplistic analyses are of little help.

That said, right is right and wrong is wrong. The powerful abusing the weak, the imposition of apartheid, violating human rights, racism, corruption, and using terror as a tool are all wrong and we should vigorously oppose them regardless of the perpetrators.