by Lonnie Palmer
While it is understandable Israel would want retribution for the brutal attacks by Hamas on October 7th, using retribution as a primary goal is counterproductive, to say the least.
Just ask Ireland, South Africa and the United States.
Israel’s stated goal with Hamas is to never allow Hamas to have any leadership role in Gaza or with other Palestinians. This will never allow for peace.
What happened in Ireland and South Africa will have to happen in Gaza and the West Bank. Hamas and/or a political offshoot of Hamas will have to become part of the leadership of Palestinians starting now and in the future. The goal Israel should be pursuing in Gaza is to develop a government for the Palestinian citizens of Gaza and the West Bank that will exist peacefully beside Israel.
Hamas (and ostensibly Palestinians) violently killed (murdered if you like) more than 1,000 Israelis and captured 200-plus Israeli citizens, but Israel’s present strategy of the violent, relentless killing, murder if you like, of more than 40,000 Palestinians will not produce a solution.
Take it from the United States. After the World Trade Center bombings the United states was angry and opted for retribution for those responsible for the deaths of 2,996 Americans.
However, a prolonged war in Iraq and then an even more prolonged war in Afghanistan did little (outside the death of Osama bin Laden) to ease our emotional pain, and the United States spent trillions of dollars (ugh!), lost and wounded thousands of Americans and lost many diplomatic friends around the world through both of those wars.
We need to help Israel not to make the same mistakes we’ve made. Learn from the lessons of the world. Without a proper response, Israel has only emboldened Iran and Hezbollah, the Houthi insurgents, Syria and other potential combatants in the Middle East.
Of course, Israel has the right as a country to defend its borders and to make certain no one – Palestinians or otherwise – can kidnap and kill its citizens. But Israel’s efforts with Hamas have not yet produced the sizable reduction in Hamas fighters and the end of Hamas leadership they had promised.
To move forward Israel must look forward, not back, to October 7th. That will mean finding leadership for the Palestinians that creates a country where Palestinians are free to determine their own future and are not warring with Israel or allowing terrorist organizations to run free in their midst. A real two-state solution.
In Ireland, the Irish Republican Army essentially disappeared, but its political arm, Sinn Féin, continues to this day and in fact has become an important leadership element in Northern Ireland and the whole of Ireland.
Similarly in South Africa, apartheid created unbelievably difficult political circumstances, but with Nelson Mandela’s leadership, apartheid was mostly put in the past and the rebel leaders who fought apartheid became part of the government.
If Sinn Féin found that some remnants of the Irish Republican Army were planning to blow up buildings or shoot people in present day Ireland, they would report these activities to the police and other authorities because they realized violence is not in their best interest.
Israel’s goal in Palestine needs to be to create a governmental structure and a party that will lead Palestinians to the same conclusion as Sinn Féin did for the Irish. The best option is probably Fatah in the West Bank which has cooperated with Israeli security successfully for several years.
Israeli’s present strategy is recruiting more terrorists and will create a future Hamas that is even worse than the present Hamas. The US government needs to change the strategy in Gaza to end Israel’s mistaken attempt to eliminate Hamas with two thousand pound bombs that kill ten times as many Palestinian civilians as Hamas fighters. A better strategy would call for an immediate ceasefire, the release of all Palestinian prisoners and Israeli prisoners and the creation of an immediate government that represents the Palestinian people effectively and puts an end to terror in the Holy Land.
Lonnie Palmer is the author of “The Politics of Education”
For more information, contact lonniepalmer4@gmail.com