Editorial | Palestinian state the only option

Having temporarily paused its campaign in Gaza, Israel’s main allies, especially the United States, must insist this ceasefire morphs into a real truce and the revival of serious negotiations towards a viable Palestinian state.

There is, therefore, need for the urgent fashioning of a new or restructured framework, within which these negotiations can take place, and for the transitional post-conflict governance of Gaza.

It can’t have escaped anyone, no matter how viscerally revolted they were by the October 7 incursion into Israel by Hamas fighters and their wanton slaughter of 1,200 Israelis, that the vengeful destruction of Gaza in the name of rooting out Hamas can’t be claimed any longer to be morally justified. Indeed, many of Israel’s military tactics, on the basis of humanitarian law, may be legally questionable.

In six weeks of Israeli bombardment and on-the-ground fighting in Gaza – a narrow strip of land the size of the Jamaican parish of St James, with 2.2 million people – large swathes of the territory have been bombed to rubble. Nearly 15,000 Palestinians have been killed and around 40,000 wounded. Over 40 per cent of the deaths have been those of children. In other words, the war deaths, so far, amount to over 680 per 100,000 Palestinians. Nearly 80 per cent of the population has been displaced.

To put Gaza into context, in the 21 months since Russia invaded Ukraine, which had a pre-war population of over 43 million, an estimated 10,000 civilians have been killed. A similar number have died in the ongoing civil war in Sudan, a country of 45.6 million.

So, even as we condemn Hamas’ terrorism and affirm Israel’s right to security, as we warned on October 13, indiscriminate action driven by primordial rage that amounts to the collective punishment of Gazans is a recipe for neither Israel’s security nor long-term Israeli/Palestinian peace.

DRIVEN TO DEEPER HATRED

Hamas may be routed or made an ineffective operating presence in Gaza but, if nothing else changes, young Gazans who witness this war will possibly be driven to a deeper hatred of Israel and Israelis, and the notion of another Nakba.

The bottom line is that Israel’s approach to the Palestinian issue, and, more broadly, the Middle East peace process, needs a reset. It can no longer be assumed that broad peace and stability in the Middle East, including Israel’s security, can be achieved solely through arrangements like the America-sponsored Abraham Accords, while the Palestinian issue is pushed to the sidelines with the hope that it will atrophy through inattention and the fait accompli of settled Israeli-Arab relations elsewhere.

Palestinian aspirations for an independent state have to be urgently addressed. How to get there and who will help to guide the process is a tricky and potentially fraught with question, given the distrust all around.

Traditionally, it is the Americans who have taken the lead on this matter, such as brokering the Geneva Agreement and Bill Clinton’s Camp David Summit. Unfortunately, the US’ vaulted status as an honest broker in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is greatly diminished.

While it was always appreciated that the US was a primary guarantor of Israel’s security, the Americans were nevertheless considered a restraining influence on Israeli governments. It wouldn’t weigh the scales overly heavily in Israel’s favour.

In recent years, however, the US, it is widely perceived, has done too little to forestall Israel’s advance of settlements in the occupied West Bank, even as Israel marginalised and weakened the Palestinian Authority and enabled Hamas’ consolidation in Gaza. President Joe Biden’s, until recently, all-in support of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, despite the clear humanitarian costs, has further weakened trust in the Americans across the Middle East.

OTHER PLAYERS

So, while the Americans are critical to any Israeli/Palestinian peace process, there is need for the involvement of other players who, apart from the potential size of their cheque books, inspire greater levels of trust among Palestinians. In this regard, the idea of the Middle East Quartet (United Nations, United States, Russia, European Union) provides a template, which can be tweaked to accommodate current circumstances.

Russia’s strained relations with the West over its invasion of Ukraine complicates the issue. But its continued influence in parts of the Middle East can’t be ignored. Neither can China’s growing political status in the region, especially after it shepherded a diplomatic pact between regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran. Put simply, the new, and enlarged, ‘quartet’ that includes players Palestinians trust should be immediately assembled. Regional states, such as Qatar, which helped broker the hostage deal between Israel and Hamas, have to be part of this club.

That group’s first order of business, starting immediately, must be to design the post-conflict transitional governance arrangements for Gaza. In this regard, Israel must be clearly told its re-occupation of territory is not on. Neither is any attempt to merely parachute an unreconstructed and unreformed Palestinian Authority - which two-thirds of the citizens of the West Bank say lacks legitimacy - into Gaza likely to work. And certainly not if Mahmoud Abbas’ Gazan legitimacy is perceived to be guaranteed through the barrels of Israeli tanks.

More fundamentally, as nasty as this war is, or has been, it has one potentially redeeming feature: it places the question of Palestine back on the global agenda.

Israel, however, must be clear that the only real guarantee against interminable war and bloodshed is the two-state solution, within boundaries that existed prior to the 1967 war. That means that it has to dismantle its settlements in the occupied West Bank, which, since the events of October 7, has itself been a cauldron on boil, threatening to erupt.

This may well be the last chance for generations for real settlement of the Israel/Palestinian question.