by Karen Telleen-Lawton, Noozhawk Columnist, Read the original column at Noozhawk.com
Palestine loses Western support whenever Hamas resorts to terrorism.
“At the same time,” opines Daniel Blas in the L.A. Times, “we must acknowledge that the far-reaching tentacles of occupation are rapidly eroding Israel’s moral fabric, perpetuating the cycle of violence, and deluding us into believing that it’s possible for the state of Israel to remain Jewish and democratic without the establishment of the state of Palestine.”
Everyone in the region deserves freedom, peace, security, and national self-determination. With that conviction, I attended a lecture by Professor Allen S. Weiner, co-director of the Stanford Center on International Conflict and Negotiation. His topic was barriers to political conflict resolution, particularly Israel-Palestine.
I appreciated Weiner’s straightforward explanations with occasional notes of hopefulness. He described the 1948 Nakba (“Catastrophe”) in Palestine when about half of prewar Palestine’s Arab population fled or were expelled from their homes by Zionist militias.
Before the Nakba, Palestine was a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society. Afterward, the empty houses of 15,000 killed and 700,000 displaced were filled with Holocaust survivors, and the country of Israel was born.
I was reminded of the most eloquent history I’ve read on the heart of the Middle East conflict: “The Lemon Tree” by Sandy Tolan.
Weiner’s conflict resolution methodology is based on what economists call a Pareto improvement: finding a solution – often a partial or first-step solution – that leaves both sides better off.
In the case of Israel, he proposed three possible improvements, the first of which was removing Hamas.
Hamas’ 1988 charter states: “There is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by Jihad.” Although a 2017 version of its charter, claims to reject the persecution of any human being, its actions speak louder than words.
The U.S. State Department, the E.U., and other Western countries consider Hamas a terrorist organization. From the perspective of the Gazans, the majority don’t align themselves with Hamas ideology and are frustrated with its ineffective governance.
Weiner’s second Pareto improvement is to recognize that Hamas and Palestine aren’t synonyms.
Palestine’s grievances are legitimate. The international community considers the establishment of Israeli settlements in the Israeli-occupied territories illegal on the basis of the Fourth Geneva Convention and/or international declarations by the U.N. Security Council, General Assembly, International Committee of the Red Cross, and the International Court of Justice. Some legal experts describe the establishment of settlements in the West Bank and Gaza as war crimes.
The pressure cooker created 75 years ago under Israeli wardens is evident in the Intifadas and the terrorism on Oct. 7, which sparked the current warfare. Millions of innocents in Israel and Palestine are suffering surrounded.
One significant tragedy among many is the Ahli Arab Hospital in central Gaza, founded in 1882 by the Anglican Church of England. It is owned and managed by the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem since the 1980s. The hospital, its free community clinic the only health option for tens of thousands, has been hit multiple times by rocket fire. The second explosion, of unknown origin, killed 400-500 hundred Gazans taking refuge in its courtyard.
The real problem with conflict resolution, Werner intoned, is THEM (that is, “the other guy.”)
Civil rights attorney and writer Daniel Bral would agree: “Conflict must be understood through its catalyzing force: the collapse of empathy. We silence the human impulse to switch places by rationalizing animosities that enable us to strip others of their equal worth and right to life.”
Nevertheless, “Americans bring optimism,” Werner asserted, before admitting, “I’m not optimistic.” That may be because Americans bring a lot more than optimism.
The U.S. has provided more military aid to Israel than to any other country since World War II. As New York Times’s Nicholas Kristof argued in July: “American aid to another rich country squanders scarce resources and creates an unhealthy relationship damaging to both sides.”
Werner, a Zionist and the son of a Zionist and Holocaust survivor counsels a third possible improvement:
Avoid the temptation to reduce the conflict to good guys and bad guys.
I agree. I have visited Israel and the West Bank four times, and made lifelong friends among the Christian Palestinians. My Episcopal church supports Ahli Arab Hospital and its desperate mission to provide healthcare to all comers in these hellish times.
I also have a close cousin who converted to Judaism and lives in Jerusalem with her husband, children and grandchildren. They have been spending time in her mother-in-law’s bedroom, which doubles as a safe room. In our recent phone conversation, she responded in a measured tone, “We are all physically well.”
My copy of The Lemon Tree, signed by the author and the Palestinian and Jewish protagonists, each of whom lived in the same house in two different eras.
Karen Telleen-Lawton, Noozhawk Columnist
Karen Telleen-Lawton is an eco-writer, sharing information and insights about economics and ecology, finances and the environment. Having recently retired from financial planning and advising, she spends more time exploring the outdoors — and reading and writing about it. The opinions expressed are her own.