When Politicians Benefit from Repeated Death and Destruction

A mutually agreed ceasefire has finally taken hold after a short eleven-day rocket-and-air-raid war between Israel and Gaza. But the ceasefire only took place after hundreds of protests across the world (both in solidarity with Israel and the Palestinians) and pressure from major powers around the world. This ceasefire, unfortunately, was too late for the more than 200 people who perished in the conflict, thousands who were injured, and more than 50,000 people who were displaced in Gaza as Israeli airstrikes destroyed their homes for being suspected centers of operation for the ruling political party-cum-militia Hamas.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is neither new nor surprising. The Arab population, both as Israeli citizens and residents of the Palestinian territories, bristle at sometimes heavyhanded Israeli control over some of the important religious sites in the region, as well as the use of military force to maintain Israeli settlements in what are traditional Arab lands. The latest conflict is no different, with the conflict starting with Muslim protests about Israelis limiting access to certain sites in the holy city of Jerusalem in ways that interfered with the practice of the Muslim faith and maintenance of the Arab community.

But unfortunately, what could have been settled through a compromise of how best to coordinate the use of the holy sites that best contribute to inter-faith and inter-community peace, the protests at the heart of Jerusalem were quickly hijacked by opportunistic politicians who quickly jumped on the chance to prove their hardline nationalism to their respective domestic audiences. For Hamas and other militant groups like the Islamic Jihad, Israeli beatings of Muslim protestors in Jerusalem once again proved the necessity of their creed that peaceful coexistence with the Jewish state is impossible.

The result was a quick escalation to a supposed military solution, with Hamas and other militant groups, including those in the West Bank and southern Lebanon, launching rocket and other attacks against Israel and Jewish civilians. For them, it did not particularly matter that their actions would certainly invite more devastating retaliation from a far-superior Israeli military, while their attacks may only cause minimal damage to Israel itself. The point of the military action is not to realistically destroy Israel, but to signal to their compatriots of the continued efforts to do so, as well as the sheer inhumaneness of the Israeli retaliation.

For the Israeli government, the flare-up of the Hamas attacks now can almost be considered a godsend. Several elections have not broken the stalemate between those supporting and opposing the reelection of Prime Minister Netanyahu, who faces corruption allegations. A short war with Hamas can convince the Israeli public that Israel continues to face a real security threat, and only the current government is experienced and capable enough of keeping Israeli citizens safe through decisiveness and focus. Such a narrative may convince some of those who voted against Netanyahu in the past to rethink based on concerns for personal safety.

Thought this way, a sudden truce between the two parties after eleven days of fighting, and no strategic objective achieved on either side, is not so baffling. Both sides benefit politically from the continuation of tension that can lead to military conflict at any time. The hostility between Jews and Muslims in the Holy Land ensures that militant nationalists maintain political influence in the governments of both Israel and the Palestinian territories. It also ensures that those who seek a peaceful solution to permanently deescalate any tensions are quickly dismissed, as being politically naive and unrealistic, and worse yet, treasonous in pandering to the other side.

Breaking the centrality of conflict in the Israeli-Palestinian relationship, then, requires a rethinking of the existential question of what it means to be a Jew and an Arab in the Holy Land. The mainstream political discourse on both sides has too long been one that assumed a zero-sum relationship between the two sides, in that resources gained on one side must mean a loss for the other, which no possibility of the resources being shared. Indeed, the willingness of Israel to build walls and barriers to separate itself from the Palestinian territories only reinforces that zero-sum attitude in a highly visible physical form.

Neither is the increasingly unrealistic prospect of the "two-state solution" viable for helping to resolve the tensions. At the heart of the attempt to split the Holy Land into a Jewish part and a Muslim one is an almost intentional decision to ignore the historical reality that people of all faiths have intermingled in the same physical space for centuries. Beyond religious differences, people of different faiths have shared cultural elements, whether it be food, language, or the arts. To impose a political solution of permanent division is to ignore such commonalities built over centuries but only subjected to confrontation due to the wars of the past few decades.