The Daily Escape:
Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, Cambridge MD – photo by abitslippy
America has supported Israel since it became a country. That support has largely been through foreign and military aid, as well as diplomatically, against threats from its Arab neighbors. Throughout this period, most Americans have supported that policy. Biden supports it today.
But things may be changing, considering whatâs happened in Israel and Gaza for the past two weeks. It may be time to reassess our unqualified support.
A major flash point was the campaign led by Israeli settlers to evict Palestinian families from their homes in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. There was also an Israeli police raid on the Al Aqsa Mosque on the first night of Ramadan, not to prevent violence, but to cut off its loudspeakers preventing Muslim prayers from drowning out a nearby speech by Israelâs president.
The violence surprised those who believed that the 2020 Abraham Accords and subsequent agreements to normalize relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan would somehow move the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians to the backburner. In fact, Trumpâs son-in-law, Jared Kushner who was dubbed the architect of the Abraham Accords, said this in March in the WSJ:
âWe are witnessing the last vestiges of what has been known as the Arab-Israeli conflict,â
But he was wrong. The reason nothing changed is that the âArab-Israeli conflictâ has always been about the Israelis and the Palestinians. Kushner was even more wrong when he said:
âThe Abraham Accords exposed the conflict as nothing more than a real-estate dispute between Israelis and Palestinians…â
Arenât most wars real estate disputes?
No matter how many treaties Israel signs with Arab states, nothing will change until they make a peace deal with the Palestinians. And that peace deal will require justice for the Palestinians. From the NYTâs Michelle Goldberg:
âPalestinians fear, not without reason, that Israel is trying to push them out of Jerusalem altogether. That, in turn, has let Hamas position itself as Jerusalemâs protector. And Israel seems to consider its right to defend itself from Hamas justification for causing obscene numbers of civilian casualties.â
The Palestinian current anger stems from the ongoing moves by Netanyahuâs government to locate more settlers in East Jerusalem. This is seen in Palestine as straightforward ethnic cleansing, further encouraged by the far-Right Jewish parties that Netanyahu now must depend on to retain power.
Letâs remember what defines âEthnic Cleansingâ: It refers to the expulsion of a group from a certain area. Other than that, it hasnât been defined, and isnât recognized as a crime under international law. The lines between ethnic cleansing and genocide can be blurry. As James Silk, of Yale Law says:
âYour motivation may be that you want the people out, but if in doing that you intend to destroy the group, then itâs also genocide…â
OTOH, by targeting Israeli civilian areas with unguided rockets, Hamas is certainly committing a war crime. It may also be true that Israel is committing war crimes by its bombing of Gaza. Despite Israelâs claims that its strikes are against military targets, the vast majority of those killed and injured in Gaza are civilians.
The core of Israelâs justification for expelling Palestinians is that they are bad actors who canât be trusted. And Israel is justified in launching attacks to defend itself. Thatâs partially true, but you canât defend yourself in a court of law by saying that the other guy is even worse than you are, so you shouldnât be in court at all.
Todayâs Republicans are 100% behind any Israeli government, no matter what actions they take. And right on cue, 44 Republican Senators used the conflict with Gaza as a pretext to demand that Biden break off talks with Iran regarding restoring the Nuclear Deal.
On the Democratâs side, there seems to be a growing divergence, with people under 50 saying they are disenchanted with the decades of bad behavior by Israel. Older Democrats agree generally with the Republican position. In fact, the Biden administration approved the sale of $735 million in precision-guided weapons to Israel two weeks ago.
We should remember that Israel is the regional superpower. It possesses nuclear weapons. Its GDP is 26 times that of the Palestinians. While it styles itself as the only regional democracy, it practices elements of apartheid and ethnic cleansing with the Palestinians.
Where do we go from here? Wrongoâs guess is that it will be more of the same, only more intense, and brazen.
The West really doesnât care enough about the Palestinians to attempt bringing Israel to heel. Despite lukewarm calls by Biden for a cease fire, the US blocked a proposed UN Security Council statement aimed at reducing the escalating violence.
Every member of the UN Security Council except the US unanimously supported the statement, which had no force of law.
If our government is content to protect successive Likud (or Likud-like) governments at the UN, no serious diplomatic pressure will be possible. Someday, a US Administration will abstain from some Israel related vote at the Security Council.
Then you might see some accommodation of the Palestinians by the Israeli government.
As an outsider (so neither Jewish nor Arab) I want to add my 2 cents. In some ways we should wonder what interest the US has in this area? We donât need middle eastern oil and we donât have the same fear we had when the UAR existed that the West is losing ground to our enemies (so the UAR allied with the USSR.). In fact if the area was decimated the impact on our economy would be little.
That said, we of European background recognize the unique status of Jews and after WW2, the US was the only nation powerful enough to secure a safe space for the Jews. That it was Israel was unfortunate. But the Jews had selected their homeland before WWI as colonies of European Jews took over bits of land. It also turned out that they used modern technology to exploit water resources not used by the locals. This seemed to open up empty land. But by now, the water is near completely exploited. By the way, by the 20s and 30s the local Arabs periodically rioted against the Jewish settlers.
There was much lying in the way Israelis sold their settling. Hence the way they managed to keep hidden their expulsions of some Palestinians during the Arab Israeli war. Of course others fled (as folks do during war).
In years since, many who support Israel in the US denied the existence of Palestinians as a people and suggested that the solution was to have these Arabs be can absorbed by other Arabs nearby. Now it must be clear that this is impossible.
This reminds me of the situation in the US with our native Americans. The natives are still upset and we are no prepared to let them return to their original land. One big difference, the Indians are a tiny proportion of the US – the Arab Israelis and refugees are far larger in relation to the number of Israeli Jews.
No suggestions but time for a bit more honesty especially on the part of our Israeli allies. But if all else fails, pull the cash aid.
Thanks for this sober and thoughtful analysis. Taken together with the last part of Sunday’s posting, I think you have it as right as anything I have seen or heard to date. The shift to less polarized views on the part of younger (Democratic) voters is something I heard about only within the last couple of days. I anticipate that this development will influence the White House in a direction less simplistic and traditional.