“When you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose” – Bob Dylan, (Like a Rolling Stone)
Live Today
NBC’s Richard Engle reports from the middle of a Palestinian demonstration on the West Bank. A Hama’s missile, fired from Gaza, strikes and kills Israeli civilians. The current death toll in Palestinian Gaza, the most tightly packed population center in the world, is almost 200. And the United States and the world seems helpless to stop it.
Divisions
We are. The situation in the Middle East is incredibly complex. The Palestinians themselves are divided, with the West Bank controlled by the Palestinian Authority, the technical “government” of Palestine, and Gaza run by Hamas, an acknowledged terrorist organization, funded by the Iranians. And while the Palestinian Authority and Hamas are bitter rivals for power, their differences pale beside their grievances with the Israeli government.
And the Israeli government is itself in “flux”. After four national elections in two years the situation has not changed. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains barely in control, more because his opposition cannot coalesce around a single rival than support for his own Likud Party. But Netanyahu is also under criminal indictment, and remains Prime Minister only as a caretaker until – well – something changes. After vote after vote, it hasn’t.
US Ignorance
And the prime “peace-maker” in the Middle East, the United States, has pursued a four year policy of ignoring and even antagonizing the Palestinians. The Trump Administration moved the symbolic United States embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a move designed to improve Trump’s domestic political situation, but guaranteed to produce Palestinian outrage. As the ceremonies for the “new” embassy were being held, Palestinians were being shot and killed across the Gaza border. The Palestinians were in Gaza and the Israelis were in Israel, shooting. And the United States said nothing.
Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner negotiated the “Abrahamic Accords”, normalizing relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. It was heralded as a “great step forward in Middle East peace”, and placed some financial supporters of the Palestinian Authority in a “peaceful” position with Israel. But those negotiations served to further isolate the Palestinians, and empowered Hamas, who continued to get support from Iran.
Expansion
And the Israelis continue to expand settlement in the occupied territories, East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Part of that is about the traditional historic/religious position of Israel. Part is practical: if the population of the occupied territories is increasingly Israeli, then any future “popular sovereignty” peace solution will be in their favor. And part of the expansion is for Israeli domestic political consumption. The hard religious and “right wing” Israeli political parties see East Jerusalem and the West Bank as part of “Greater Israel”. To gain their political support in the parliament, Netanyahu has to support expansion.
It also helps with the all-important Evangelical Christian support in the United States. They see Israel as fulfilling Biblical prophecy, and many vote accordingly in US elections. Meanwhile the US Democratic Party is faced with increased divisions, with the “left wing” of the Party concerned more about Palestinian rights than Israeli protection. It didn’t help that Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu allied themselves personally as well as politically.
Nothing to Lose
It’s hard to see what Hamas has to lose by firing missiles into Israel. Ninety percent of them are blocked by the US supplied “Iron Dome” defense system. But if hundreds are fired, then tens will get through, do damage and kill civilians. Israel will respond with overwhelming force. And when they do, they will kill hundreds more Palestinians than Israelis killed, more martyrs for the cause.
And for Hamas, that’s a win. In the eyes of the world, Israel becomes the bully, the murderer of children. The world heard the words of the ten year old Palestinian child, fluent in English (learned from YouTube). She eloquently demanded that the Israelis explain why they are killing civilians, children, the elderly. It’s powerful stuff (Video), so moving that it makes you wonder. Real or not, it echoes the movie “Wag the Dog”.
Hamas is a terrorist organization. But there is no room in Gaza for “military” installations placed carefully apart from civilians. Gaza has over two million people packed into 147 square miles (the city of Columbus, Ohio has 225 square miles with only 800,000). So the underground fortifications, the tunnels, are dug underneath civilian housing. To hit military targets, Israel has little choice but to target civilians – they’re in the same place.
Hamas may lose civilians and infrastructure, but they and their Iranian backers are the real winners of this conflict. The Israelis look terrible to the world, and the United States looks helpless. That all plays into the Iranian hands.
If, after all of that, you think I have a solution to the Middle East crisis – well I wish I did. What I do know is that there will never be peace in the Middle East unless the issue of the Palestinians is resolved. Four years of US neglect did nothing but make that issue worse, and we are reaping the whirlwind now.
