with hope and trust shattered, what can bring an end to the violence in Israel-Palestine?
- Written by Eyal Mayroz, Senior Lecturer in Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Sydney
On October 7 2023, Hamas launched a savage attack on southern Israel, massacring around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting another 240 people. The following day, I wrote in an analysis for The Conversation:
For many Palestinians, this weekend’s events offered Israelis a small taste of what their own lives have been like under decades of occupation. However, the early celebrations will likely soon turn into anger and frustration as the numbers of Palestinian civilian casualties will continue to rise. Violence begets violence.
As the Israeli retaliation had only just begun, no one could have imagined how devastating it would end up being for the people of Gaza. There are now well over 40,000 Palestinians dead, mostly civilians, and countless wounded. Nearly 2 million people have been displaced within the coastal strip.
The ferociousness of the Israel Defence Forces’ aerial bombings – and its subsequent ground invasion of Gaza – triggered intense global pressure to stop the violence. This was coupled with a worldwide campaign to end Israel’s decades-long illegal occupation of Palestinian territories.
This popular movement was able to place its agenda at the forefront of the international media’s attention and sustain it there for many months.
A year later, however, concern for the people of Gaza – and for the dozens of Israeli hostages still locked up in Hamas’ tunnels – has begun to wane. The world’s focus is shifting to the fast-expanding misery along the Israel–Lebanon border, and to a possible full-scale war between Israel and Iran.
As the fighting in Gaza grinds on with no end in sight, the prospects for resolving the most intractable conflict in the world between Israeli-Jews and Palestinians seem ever dimmer. But is it so?
One conflict, two peoples and many onlookers
In a century-long struggle between two societies over the same small parcel of land, the cycle of violence has barely stopped.
The challenges today remain frustratingly robust – entrenched territorial claims, grave errors by leaders on both sides and many missed opportunities. Years of polarising narratives have also bred mistrust, competing accounts of victimisation, debilitating fears and animosity — to the point of mutual dehumanisation.
On the Israeli-Jewish side, there’s a strong sense of an existential security threat, compounded by the inter-generational trauma of the Holocaust and ongoing fears of terrorist attacks. This sharply contrasts with Palestinians’ experiences of decades of dispossession, humiliation, continuous rights violations and feelings of abandonment by the world.
To further undermine a solution to the conflict, religious and radical nationalist influences – on both sides – have turned an already complex, asymmetric conflict into an unyielding impasse.
Over the years, international failures to help resolve the conflict drove many states to recalibrate their foreign policies away from constructive engagement. Arguably, this was to avoid harmful impacts to their reputations over future failures, or accusations of bias, from one or both sides.
Fear, victimhood and tit-for-tat revenge
The 1948 Nakba, or “catastrophe”, followed by decades of oppressive Israeli occupation, have inflicted immeasurable suffering on Palestinians. In turn, this occupation has also inflicted significant and often unappreciated damage to Israel’s social fabric, cohesion, economy, international standing, security and moral stature.
Hamas’ brutal massacres and Israel’s vicious retaliations have only exacerbated these effects, for both sides. And they are now threatening to extinguish what tiny hope may have existed before October 2023 for a path towards a liveable future for both people.
Should the tit-for-tat cycle of violence continue, the blowback will hurt not only Israel’s efforts to attain safety and security for its citizens, but the prospects for a political future for the Palestinians, as well.
Arguably, existential fear may be the most underappreciated and damaging element behind the conflict’s intractability.
Outside observers tend to view security concerns rationally, and as a national concern, based on the threat to the state or to the people as a whole.
But in the Israel-Palestine conflict, people react to such fears emotionally, focusing first on their own safety. And the fear is ever-present – a rocket exploding in my house, or my child being shot at by a sniper on the way to school.
These worries and experiences have been etched in the minds of generations of Palestinians and Israelis. We need to appreciate this fact to make sense of how both sides have dehumanised one another and excluded the “other” from their spheres of moral concern, particularly following the October 7 attack and in the weeks and months after.
The late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, assassinated in 1995 by a Jewish extremist for engaging in peace efforts, once said you don’t make peace with friends, but with enemies.
However, absent a minimum sense of safety and trust – if not in the other side, than at least in the mediators and future outside guarantors – the security arrangements required to sustain a peace agreement would be difficult, if not impossible, for both sides to agree on.
Read more: 10 books to help you understand Israel and Palestine, recommended by experts
Entrenched views and dangerous simplifications
As the war in Gaza has not yet ended, a detailed assessment of the successes and failures of the campaign for a Palestinian state is still ahead of us.
During the fighting, misinformation and disinformation have been rife. With both sides waging a propaganda war, the manipulation of facts ratcheted up divisions and increased polarisation between “pro-Israel” and “pro-Palestine” groups across the globe.
Selectively embracing information that could validate one’s own position and omitting or rejecting everything else have become the norm.
Once we choose a side, we can go to great lengths to defend its actions. Our conditioned responses challenge or cast doubt on any claim or information put forth by the other side. And the more emotionally invested we become, the harder it is for us to empathise with the suffering of the “other”.
Simplistic misconceptions, for example, that an aggressor cannot also be a victim or vice versa, have added fuel to the fire and to the conflict’s polarisation. This has had negative consequences for empathy, reconciliation, trust and peace-building.
We could debate without end who has suffered more. But how useful would that be, at this stage, for the prospects of a future peace?
Despite the strong emphasis in the global debate on the “pro-Palestinian” versus “pro-Israeli” dichotomy, an important reality is that meeting the basic needs of one side could never be achieved without addressing those of the other.
These needs for peace, safety, security and dignity are mutual. As such, they should be promoted in the public debate over the incompatible needs ramped up by minorities in the two camps.
Rather than taking sides, efforts should focus on reconciling both parties’ objectives: a ceasefire in Gaza, an end to the unjust occupation, self-determination for Palestinians, and safety and security for Israelis.
As the future welfare of one side is inextricably linked to the security needs of the other, zero-sum solutions won’t achieve anything. Rather, they will only fan the suspicions, animosities and victimhood grievances on both sides, and lead to more violence.
Read more: Why is the Gaza war tearing us apart?
It’s the world’s turn
Most Palestinians and Israelis have lost what little desire or capacity they had prior to October 7 for trusting or empathising with the misery of the other. The anger, fear and suffering today are too overwhelming.
In the short term, meaningful solutions must come from the outside.
In addition to a critically needed change of leadership on both sides, it is time for more sincere collaborative efforts by key states in the international community.
It is time to replace years of empty condemnations with more meaningful and sustained commitments.
It is time to help both societies, through carrots but also strong sticks, to free themselves from the chokeholds of illusory, all-or-nothing radical ideologies that have brought so much suffering and devastation to all.
It is time for a better future for both Palestinian and Israeli children, even at the price of painful concessions. And concessions will have to be made on both sides for the promise of a lasting peace.
To pressure governments to do more, protests should continue, but their voices should call for peace for all and against harming innocents on all sides, regardless of who they are.
Peace, or at this stage an end to violence, has to come first – even if this would slow down (not prevent!) accountability and justice for all victims.
Hate comes easily in the face of injustices. It is hard to empathise with the misfortunes of “others” who may or may not have brought their miseries upon themselves. But selective denunciation of crimes perpetrated by the other side, based on one’s support or rejection of a cause, is not only morally flawed, but counterproductive.
Those who have been severely aggrieved by this human tragedy may struggle to apply the same yardstick to others, certainly in the near future. But the rest of us can, and should, do better.
Authors: Eyal Mayroz, Senior Lecturer in Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Sydney
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