Gaza… Israel… Palestinians… and aspects of Inevitability

We have been watching the Gaza/Israel/Palestine tragedy, with degrees of personal angst, targeted or confused anger, and, for many of us, more a sense of helplessness and resignation than hope. I am not a member of our state department, but I lived and worked in Lebanon for a school year, travelled in Israel and Jordan, and much later worked for another school year in Oman. All along the way I engaged in many conversations, asking a lot of questions, and doing a lot of listening… followed by years of reading and thinking. I offer here some thoughts for your consideration.

When you and I, and Israelis, and most of the world, reacted to the October 7 terrorist attack, the murder of many Jewish members of Israel near Gaza, and thought and said that this was “barbaric,” “uncivilized,” “inhumane,” etc., these reactions were really a “duh” moment. OF COURSE these thoughts and words, and then the Israeli Defense Force’s actions, were Going to Happen… it was all inevitable, completely understandable.

I want to explore with you though, a background phenomenon which is also inevitable and completely understandable, but which most do not stop and think about.

When I had conversations with both Israeli settlers and displaced Palestinians in my time there in the summer of 1981, it was painful to hear the combination of hopes and fears expressed. The immediate past was spoken of, but more-so, the unknown future.

A Palestinian father, with his 10-year-old son listening, described watching bulldozers destroy his neighborhood to build an Israeli settlement. He noted that in just the four years since 1977, the population of settlers in the West Bank seemed to have well more than doubled. (We now know that in fact it had quadrupled.) He wondered if what he’d witnessed would stop at some soon-coming point, or would continue indefinitely.

Now let’s use our ability to concretely imagine. That 10-year-old, and his peers, would have been 24 by 1995, 29 by 2000. They could have 20-year-old children of their own by now. They, collectively, have witnessed the population of settlers increase from roughly 20,000 in 1981, to over 450,000 today. They have watched, again and again and again, the bulldozing of their communities, and have heard, again and again, the empty discussions of an independent Palestinian State (nation). (Don’t consider me an authority on the facts here; google them.)

Over the decades, what genuine hope could the father I spoke with offer to his children and grandchildren? Here is a central point for us to recognize, to fully grasp. When young Palestinians grow up repeatedly witnessing the slow-motion violence of bulldozers on their and their friends’ and relative’s homes, and when they hear of the endlessness from the past into the future, we should be able to see another “duh” moment. When one can’t find grounds for honest Hope… that’s when commitment to acts of violent retribution begin to develop roots. Future acts of terror are not completely random. To take violent action Knowing you’re going to die in the process requires a strong sense of desperation, driven by a lack of actual hope.

Some will attempt to dismiss this conversation as “excusing, justifying” terrorism. It is not. Not any more than studies of child abuse or wife-beating excuse or justify that. To grow our understanding of a negative phenomenon, to see significant “explanations,” is not to justify it. This is about coming to recognize a very tragic positive feedback loop, a downward spiral, where X generates Y, which continues X.

We need to recognize that although the time-scale of bulldozing is hours and days, not fractions of seconds as in a terrorist bomb, (both continuing for decades), it is no less violent in the hearts and minds of those repeatedly on the receiving end. I submit that we should find endless bulldozing and settlement-building to be equally abhorrent, inhumane, and completely unacceptable. Sadly, it is the failure of the west in general, and of successive US administrations, that has allowed this slow-motion violence to continue, generation after generation. (We have failed: to draw a line in the sand, to firmly and concretely state, “Enough! Any more settlements, which tear out simple hope, and create desperation, and we will implement financial consequences as just the beginning. This. Must. Stop.”, and then to follow those firm words with actual actions.)

That we find the recent Hamas terrorist attack to be repugnant, uncivilized, and completely unacceptable is indeed a duh moment/thought/reaction. Many more of us should also be able to react in an equally duh way by recognizing that repeated and endless bulldozing and settlement-building is also repugnant, uncivilized, and completely unacceptable, and if ignored will inevitably generate terrorism rooted in hopelessness and resultant desperation, for as long as any semblance of genuine and honest hope is cut short.