One prominent criticism of Israel in the current Israeli-Hamas conflict is that Israel is a colonialist occupier. The implication is that Hamas and other Palestinians are the exclusively rightful inhabitants of what is recognized as Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. Some college students and faculty are strident advocates of this view. However, it lacks geographical and historical context, and leads to the application of a double standard to Israel, a common feature of antisemitism.
The context is the Levant and its history. The Levant, a term little used today, is defined as that area “of land bordering the Mediterranean Sea in western Asia: i.e. the historical region of Syria (“Greater Syria”), which includes present day Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and the Palestinian territories” (Wikipedia). From ancient times, it has been the crossroads linking Africa, Asia, and Europe. Because of its once strategic location for trade, it was liable to conquest and occupation by regional powers, with control shifting back and forth from one to another. Because of its importance to three religions, it has been the site of struggles then between Crusaders and Saracens, now Jews and Muslims. Religion and religious conflict are the Levant’s major exports.
In modern times, the Levant was part of the Ottoman Empire. For centuries, the area known as Palestine had declined into a backwater home to Jews and Muslims, who co-existed peacefully under Ottoman Muslim rule. The Ottoman Empire collapsed during the First World War, and England and France divided the Levant into its modern states without regard to its peoples, their cultures, or their religions. For 30 years, a three-cornered conflict involved Muslims, Jews, and Brits. In 1917, the British Balfour Declaration promised Zionist Jews a homeland in Palestine, and the League of Nations made it a British protectorate. Friction arose between Palestinian Muslims resisting the pre- and post-war immigration of Zionist Jews, most fleeing Eastern European poverty, prejudice, and pogroms, and British military forces. Conflicts between Jews and Muslims arose over control of land, water, and major Jewish and Islamic religious sites. Shortly after the Second World War, Jews turned against the British, who, attempting to placate Muslims, tried to restrict Jewish immigrants seeking to escape Europe, its antisemitism, and the shocks of the Nazi Holocaust. In November 1947, the United Nations, like the League of Nations, stepped in and carved Palestine into two separate areas, one for Jews, one for Muslims. I stop here; everyone knows the history of the area since Israel declared its statehood in May 1948.
The salient fact is that Israel differs from any other polity in being legitimized by its creation by an international organization with presumptive rights to create it. Today, when the inconceivable is liable to become conceivable, it still remains inconceivable that the United Nations would reverse its decision creating Israel or infringe upon its status as an independent country, with the same rights accorded to other countries. Indeed, it would be the most extreme example of a double standard to disestablish Israel. Israel as a colonizer is either a question for those eager to split semantic hairs to little purpose or a chant of offensive slogans reflecting faddish academic ideologies.
Although its settlements have become colonizing encroachments in the West Bank, Israel was initially less a colonizer than a tool of the colonizing powers who created it. European Jews wanted to go to Palestine as a homeland, and the United States and countries in Western Europe and the British Commonwealth, unwilling to be the final destination for large numbers of Jewish refugees or displaced persons, assisted them by using the United Nations to fulfill the promise of the Balfour Declaration. So countries with histories as colonizers made decisions about Palestine with its history as a colony, by drawing boundaries for two states without regard for the wishes of its inhabitants.
There is no going back on a century of a history of purposes and cross-purposes, some better, some worse, than others. There is no denying a century of resentments and animosities between two peoples who have become hostile to one another and have engaged in intermittent skirmishes of one kind or another in that time. There is no undoing a history punctuated by armed conflicts for the past 75 years, with the Israeli-Hamas war being only the most violent, destructive, and deadly conflict yet. And all exacerbated by the indifference of countries in the region, and the interference of countries outside it.
The call for a ceasefire may be well-intentioned, but it is a biased and futile gesture; a ceasefire can be enforced only on Israel, not on Hamas, and will lead to a resumption of Hamas attacks on Israel. If a ceasefire secures the release of the hostages, dead or alive, their condition or their narratives will cause widespread revulsion and call into question the militant self-righteousness and moral judgment of the protesters, who regard Hamas fighters as virtuous and heroic anti-colonialists, and ignore or know nothing about their oppressive rule over Gazans.
Current hostilities are convincing evidence that a one-state solution is not feasible. After Hamas’s barbaric attack on Israeli citizens and its treatment of hostages, and after Israeli forces’ disproportionate casualties inflicted on civilians in Gaza, the idea of peaceful co-existence in a single state of Israelis and Palestinians is absurd. Jews and Muslims would cluster into enclaves of their fellows, gangs would act on grievances and grudges, the government would fracture, and civil war would break out.
Given many causes, especially religious ones, for hostility between Jews and Muslims, even a two-state solution is problematic. Though it is un-American to say so, the best of reconstructions within a state of Palestine (including Gaza) is not likely to ameliorate these preconditions of conflict. International largesse cannot bribe either Jews or Muslims. Islamic shrines will remain Islamic shrines; Jewish shrines will remain Jewish shrines. Israel and Palestine will remain holy lands and Jerusalem will remain a city holy to both Judaism and Islam. It is implausible that peace—likely no better than a pause in hostilities—and prosperity will overcome deep-seated religious convictions.
Still, a two-state solution is the least bad of all proposals. Its realization would require finding a way out of a maze shrouded in a miasma of distrust, fear, and hostility. Such a solution would require Israel and Palestine to agree to asymmetric provisions. Israel would insist on defensive armaments against Iran, possibly Iraq, and certainly Hezbollah, including the retention of its nuclear weapons; Palestine would have little need for them but would insist on international guarantees of its security. Palestine would insist on Israel’s abandonment of settlements, and on its right to and means of unhindered passage between the West Bank and Gaza to unify the country and to promote trade and travel. Two provisions which both would resist but have to accept: small but symbolic numbers of Muslims exercising a right of return, and placing Jerusalem and all holy sites shared by both Jews and Muslims under international control. These are but a few provisions which must be addressed by all, but with the decisive voice of Israelis and Palestinians. I fear that this time, both sides will not miss the opportunity to miss an opportunity.
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