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[PART 1 OF 3] - Finding promise in the aftermath of Gaza requires an optimism shared by few. Many reasons remain for despair. October 7 has scarred many Israelis and robbed them of a sense of security. Israel has engaged in an alleged genocide that has killed scores of thousands of Gazans. To this day images emerge that juxtapose starving Gazan children with well-fed Israeli soldiers stopping urgently needed food. Israel has partially withdrawn from Gaza only to be replaced by the murderous Hamas regime. The Israeli campaign has led to a scale of human suffering, misery and intentionally committed savagery that shocks all persons of conscience and reminds us of the seemingly boundless capacity for human cruelty. The words of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn remain compelling: “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either----but right through every human heart.”
The Hamas decision to commit the unforgivable attack of October 7 violated all respect for Israeli life as well as the lives of the Gazans that Hamas purports to represent. Hamas knew it lacked any semblance of ability to militarily overwhelm Israel. Hamas could only hope to commit an atrocity so vile and horrific that it would provoke an even more vile and horrific Israeli response. Sadly, Hamas succeeded. The crimes by Hamas and the Israeli government have been so appalling that both the Hamas and the Israeli leaders are deservedly the subject of international criminal indictments for crimes against humanity.
A fragile cease fire continues despite nearly daily Israeli attacks on civilians. The cease fire remains on the verge of failure, and the lives of even more innocent Gazans hang in the balance as Israel resumes policies of mass starvation and deprivation of vitally needed medical and other life-giving care. Hamas displays seeming indifference to the continuation of this alleged genocide, realizing that Hamas’ strength derives from international outrage over Israel’s policies of mass killing and imposition of unspeakable human suffering.
Amid this chaos, American leadership has deteriorated. The Biden administration offered only blind obedience to Israeli dictates. Trump’s policies, widely criticized as supporting displacement and annexation, have contributed to tensions, and have culminated into his bizarre notion of creating a Gaza resort for “the people of the world” symbolized by a golden statue of Trump. Trump ignores the long bipartisan history of Presidential Administrations using US influence to reduce Israeli violence and prevent senseless persecution of the indigenous populations. Indeed, US Presidential action has been needed every few years to reduce Palestinian persecution:
1956: President Eisenhower opposed the Israeli invasion of Egypt and threatened Israel with economic sanction if Israel failed to withdraw, prompting the Israeli withdrawal.
1967: President Johnson refused to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the occupied territories and led passage of UN Security Council Resolution 242, which called for Israeli withdrawal from occupied land in return for peace.
1973: President Nixon pressured Israel to accept a cease fire to stop the Yom Kippur War.
1978: President Carter conditioned US aid to Israel on Israel’s agreement to withdraw from the Sinai and engage in Palestinian autonomy proposals.
1982: President Reagan publicly condemned the Israeli killing more than 3,000 civilians in the Sabra and Shatila Massacre and pressured Israel to begin troop withdrawal from Beirut.
1991: President George H.W. Bush conditioned an Israeli loan guaranty on Israel’s agreement to halt West Bank settlement expansion.
1998: President Clinton brokered the Wye River Memorandum in which Israel agreed to withdraw from more West Bank land in return for Palestinian security cooperation.
2016: President Obama allowed UN Security Council Resolution 2334 condemning Israeli settlements as a violation of international law.
2024: In a rare showing of compassion, President Biden refused shipment to Israel of Bunker Buster bombs because of the continued likelihood of indiscriminate Israeli attacks of civilians.
Few have hopes that the Trump Administration will use its power to dampen Israeli violence. Indeed, President Trump’s actions to date suggest an unprecedented level of Presidential support of this violence.
The decades of violence have created deeply rooted animosity between the Israeli settler colonialists and the Palestinians that have been colonized. This is no surprise. Early Zionists such as Ze’ev Jabotinsky observed that “Zionist colonization must either stop or else proceed regardless of the native population. Which means that it can proceed and develop only under the protection of a force independent of the local population—an iron wall which the native population cannot breach.” Jabotinsky, “The Iron Wall” (1923). Israel’s first Prime Minister echoed these words saying, “We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population." Ben-Gurion "Letter to the Jewish Agency Executive” (1948).
Palestinian leaders responded in kind to the Israeli promise of violence. Haj Amin al-Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, vowed, “We shall continue to fight until the last drop of blood is spilled.” Al-Husseini “Speech during Arab Revolt” (1936) The leader of the precursor to the Palestinian Armed Struggle advocated, “O Muslims, death is better than life under oppression! Jihad is the only Path!” Izz ad-Din al-Qassam “Call to Arms” (1935).
Thus, a culture of violence and counter-violence has long been the accepted means of pressuring removal of indigenous people and resistance to such removal. Predictably, the results have been utter failure to create civil society and meaningful co-existence. The underpinning of all successful societies is the ability to maintain civil society without the need for constant violence to maintain order. By this standard, both Israel and Palestine have been and remain utter failures.
The first step in resolving this multi-generational fiasco is to acknowledge the failures of the past and resolve to learn from the abundant mistakes that have been made. Israeli commitment to violence as the means of controlling the indigenous population has failed. Israel stands as a country under international judicial review for genocide. Its leaders face criminal indictment for crimes against humanity. Images of children and mass civilian populations being starved and brutalized have eroded the soul of Israel and laid bare the hope that Israel would embrace Western notions of democracy and human rights.
Palestinian failures abound. Decades of violence have failed to produce a Palestinian state. The people of Palestine remain stateless and without means of protection from Israeli violence, ethnic cleansing. and persecution. What governance Palestinians have produces has been corrupt, ineffectual and indifferent to the needs of the people represented. A greater failure is difficult to imagine.
Returning to the policies of the past simply promises more of the same failures. Occupation and its inherent deprivation of rights has sown the seeds of resistance and on-going violence. Forced removal of indigenous people not only violates international law but creates new generations of people intent upon righting such historical wrongs. Even when victorious, ethnic cleansing leaves the victor a soulless outcast and pariah state. At present, 14 million Palestinians live outside of a Palestinian state. Approximately 7 million of those persons live under Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza and an additional 7 million live as registered refugees. Any decision to simply ignore these millions and not address a permanent solution promises to maintain a permanent state of conflict. So long as Israel has Western military and financial assistance, Israel can likely continue its use of violence as the means of controlling this population. But this solution carries the cost of constant violence and the cancerous knowledge of the human suffering inherent in this approach.
Gaza represents the apotheosis of this failed approach. As such, it also carries the opportunity to chart a new more effective course. The starting point to finding a new path requires an acknowledgement of the dismal failure of policies that have led to this point and an examination of history. History provides a strikingly similar circumstance and an approach that has proven highly effective for decades. In the next segment, this approach will be discussed. Thus, the promise of Gaza for those willing to embrace a new way.
(J. George Mansour was born and raised in Missouri and has long been a student of political science and international relations. Mr. Mansour is now based in Austin Texas, where he remains an active investor in a variety of businesses.)
