Muslims and Liberals

President Biden said Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s death had removed “an insurmountable obstacle” to the settlement of the Gaza war.  And his secretary of state, Antony Blinken, promised that the administration would  “redouble [its] efforts with partners to end this conflict.”

Sinwar’s death and Israel’s yearlong assault on Hamas leadership and activists have decimated the organization. I doubt, though, that it would change the group’s outlook or stance on Israel.  “We are continuing Hamas’s path,” Khalil al-Hayya, Sinwar’s deputy said from exile in Qatar, said, acknowledging his slain leader’s death.

Besides, I see Benjamin Netanyahu as the main obstacle to ending the war.  Will he finally agree to a lasting ceasefire in Gaza, driving his ultra-right ministers out of his government, which could end his prime ministership?

Nevertheless, Biden and his successor in the White House will likely try to wind down the Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Hezbollah conflicts.

From the First Intifadeh (1987-1993) to the 2023 war, Israel and Hamas had seven armed conflicts before the current one. Every conflict followed a ceasefire, and then fighting would resume. The main challenge for peacemakers now is not only to end the current conflict but also to see that it doesn’t recur. It recurs because Israel is unwilling to renounce its occupation of Palestinian lands, and the Palestinians won’t accept their second-class status under repressive Israeli occupation. And even when the Israelis agree to discuss Palestinian demands, they eventually wiggle out of the talks while Americans would look the other way.

On Nov. 6, 1991, a week after President George H.W. Bush opened the Israeli-Palestinian peace conference in Madrid, I had lunch with my Palestinian friend Jack Khazmo, editor and publisher of Al-Bayadir al-Siyasi magazine in Jerusalem. Alluding to the Madrid talks, I asked him if the Palestinians would finally have a state.

“I doubt it,” Jack said instantaneously.

“But Bush and Baker are very serious about it,” I said, “They have grabbed Shamir by the neck and dragged him to the conference.”

The government of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir had asked the United States to provide the guarantee for a $10 billion loan, which Israel needed badly to resettle Jewish refugees from the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, Israel had been building Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza despite U.S. objections and refusing to engage the Palestinians in peace talks, for which James Baker, Bush’s secretary of state, was pushing.

Bush decided to teach Shamir a lesson. He announced that he wouldn’t approve the loan guarantee unless Israel stopped building settlements and joined a peace conference with the Palestinians. Shamir complied with both of Bush’s demands. The U.S. president approved the loan guarantee, and Shamir stopped the settlement project and led an Israeli delegation to the Madrid conference.

“Yes, he [Bush] dragged Shamir to the peace talks,” Jack conceded, inserting his fork into his Fattoush (Palestinian salad). “Let’s see if Shamir does anything about peace.”

The 1992 U.S. election campaigns began soon. The powerful American-Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC) and other pro-Israel groups decided to teach Bush a lesson for humiliating the Israeli prime minister. They went on the hustings to derail the president’s bid for reelection, turning a segment of pro-Israeli voters against him.  The 41^st president had an 89 percent approval rating after the First Gulf War. He lost the election to Bill Clinton 37%-43%.  Bush had bagged 35 percent of Jewish votes in his 1988 election. Now he got only 11 percent.

The Madrid conference initiated Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, which ended Palestinian violence against Israel. Israel gradually got rid of the peace process and resumed building settlements.

The Israeli-Palestinian imbroglio has been festering for decades mainly because the Israelis don’t have an incentive to end their occupation of Palestinian territories. They are economically well-off in a prosperous, high-tech economy, and they have a stranglehold on the United States, which keeps Israel armed to the teeth to fight off Palestinian militant groups. Israelis’ appetite for Palestinian lands could end only if enough of them get concerned about their security and well-being in Israel.  

Nathan Thrall is a Jewish American journalist and author living in Jerusalem.  While browsing the Internet for news about the Gaza war, I ran into his comment about an outcome of Hamas’s incursion into Israel last year.

“Now the Palestinian issue is at the forefront of every Israeli’s mind,” he told a reporter. They are asking themselves, “Do I have a future here for my children and grandchildren?” Thrall added.

My sources in the Middle East tell me that Israel’s slaughter of 42,000 Palestinians in Gaza and the havoc it’s wreaking in Lebanon are heightening the Palestinians’ and Lebanese rage at Israel, instead of scaring them. The wars haven’t stopped Hamas’ Qassam rockets and Grad missiles, and Hezbollah’s Katusha and Fajr-5 rockets and Zelzal missiles from continually sending Israelis into bomb shelters.  These are the causes of their worries about the “future of [their] children and grandchildren” in Israel.

Palestinians and their allies aren’t going to stop their struggle for an end to Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, which, I hate to say, would only increase Israelis’ worries about their security and well-being in Israel. At some point, these worries should give Israelis the needed incentive to leave the Palestinians alone in an independent niche of their own.

• Mustafa Malik, the of this blog, conducted fieldwork in five Middle Eastern countries, including Israel and the West Bank, as a research associate for the University of Chicago Middle East Center; and worked as a journalist for the Hartford Courant, Washington Times, and Glasgow Herald newspapers, and as a journalism fellow for the German Marshall Fund of the United States.