A Cease-Fire, and New Ideas in Israel and the
Palestinian Territories
May 21,
2021
By The
Editorial Board
The
editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by
expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate
from the newsroom.
The cease-fire between Hamas militants in Gaza and
Israel didn’t come a second too soon.
Israelis
should not have to live in fear of rockets raining down, which killed a dozen
people living in Israel since fighting broke out 11 days ago. Nor should people
in Gaza live in fear that they might become collateral damage from Israeli
bombs. Israeli airstrikes and artillery killed at least 230 Palestinians,
including militants and many civilians.
Israel has
a right — even a responsibility — to put a stop to the rocket attacks at their
source. More than 4,000 were fired at Israel from Gaza in 10 days, though most
were intercepted by the Iron Dome antimissile system. But the fighting took an
unbearable toll on civilians, the vast majority of them Palestinian. More than
60 children in Gaza were killed, tens of thousands of people were displaced,
and hundreds of buildings were destroyed or severely damaged.
The most
intractable problems facing Israel and the Palestinians cannot be bombed away.
When the dust settles, the misery and resentment will remain, starting in
motion the next round of fighting. It is not in the interests of Israel, the
United States or the rest of the world to make life unlivable in Gaza or to see
another generation of children grow into adulthood knowing no government but
Hamas, no economy but blockade and no certainty about the future except
periodic bombardment.
As this
round of fighting ends, two million people remain penned into 141 square miles
of Gaza, with no escape from the devastation and economic blockade. There is
now civil unrest and sectarian violence in communities in Israel that no Iron
Dome or separation wall can parry. Across the region, hundreds of thousands of
Palestinians mounted a general strike, the largest peaceful demonstration of
unity in many years.
Political
solutions are the only bloodless solutions. But politics is broken. Benjamin
Netanyahu, who has been prime minister longer than any other Israeli, has been
unable through several elections to gather a stable majority in Parliament.
Mahmoud Abbas, the octogenarian and increasingly unpopular president of the
Palestinian Authority, recently called off its first elections in 15 years,
dashing hopes that a new generation of leaders might emerge.
The Biden
administration could be forgiven for coming into office without any grand plans
for solving one of the world’s most intractable geopolitical problems. Every
year the “peace process” has yielded nothing but the aggressive expansion of
settlements and shrinking areas of land for a future Palestinian state. The
expansion has brought no lasting security for Israel.
There is a
dire need for fresh thinking from the Biden administration both to meet the
moment and to address growing calls from his party to reassess the U.S.-Israeli
relationship. That pressure comes not only from young lawmakers to the left of
the president but also from older, more hawkish Democrats. Senator Robert
Menendez, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, put out a statement
last weekend calling for an end to hostilities. “I am deeply troubled by
reports of Israeli military actions that resulted in the death of innocent
civilians in Gaza as well as Israeli targeting of buildings housing
international media outlets,” it read in part.
President
Biden should not delay in appointing an ambassador to Israel and reiterate that
American support doesn’t include support for settlements or endless occupation.
There is also an urgent need for his administration to rebuild ties with the
Palestinian people, which atrophied under President Donald Trump. In 2018 the
Trump administration closed the office of the Palestine Liberation Organization
in Washington, D.C., and also closed the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem that had
served as a quasi embassy for Palestinians. The consulate’s operations were
folded into the U.S. Embassy, which had just relocated to Jerusalem.
Palestinians boycotted the new office. As a result, American officials have had
no meaningful and sustained political contact with Palestinian officials for
two years.
The Biden
administration should appoint an envoy to the Palestinian people, tasked with
restoring relations with Palestinian officials and building ties with civil
society groups and the new generation of leaders who have been shut out of
power with the lack of elections. The portfolio should include Palestinian
people, broadly speaking, including their vital ties to brethren in Israel and
throughout the diaspora.
The Biden
administration should also consider new ideas. One approach would be for
American diplomats to take tangible steps to “improve the freedom, prosperity
and security of all people living between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan
River” while trying to preserve the possibility of a Palestinian state — a
proposal outlined in a report by the Center for a New American Security.
Adopting
this model would require American diplomats to speak out against restrictions
on trade and freedom of movement for Palestinians and to advocate reducing the
disparities in treatment of Israeli and Palestinian civilians. The secretary of
state, Antony Blinken, appears to be leaning in this direction, writing on
Twitter that “Israelis and Palestinians deserve equal measures of freedom,
dignity, security and prosperity,” echoing language in that report.
Many
Palestinians, as well as progressives in the United States and Israel, favor a
second model, which would shift American policy in the region away from a
nearly exclusive focus on obtaining Palestinian statehood and on Israel’s
security to the protection of human rights. A number of analysts have floated
this idea over the years, most recently in a report by the Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace and the US/Middle East Project.
In an ideal
scenario, the rights-based approach, as it is often referred to, would lead to
the preservation of rights of Jewish Israelis — to life, to security, to their
religious traditions and to the idea of a Jewish homeland — and address the
rights of Palestinians to life, security, political representation, freedom of
movement, freedom to work and to citizenship in a country that values them.
Many young
Palestinians say their parents’ dream of an independent state has morphed into
a struggle for civil rights within the borders of land that Israel has
controlled since 1967. But there are some who believe in the two-state solution
that this editorial board has long advocated and argue that the rights-based
approach is a strategy to get Israel’s government to grapple with what a
one-state reality would really mean, which might motivate them to get back to
the bargaining table to establish a Palestinian state.
A
cease-fire should be celebrated. But when the guns fall silent, the hard work
of forging a more lasting peace needs to begin. If it does not, it’s only a
matter of time before more innocent lives are lost again.
Correction:
May 21, 2021
An earlier
version of this editorial misstated the name of a policy analysis organization.
It is the US/Middle East Project, not the US/Middle East Peace Project.
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