The peril ahead

The US was never an honest broker in the Israel/Palestine conflict. Its roles were to push Israel into a process it didn’t want and guarantee an outcome neither side would otherwise trust. Washington abandoned those roles when it moved its embassy to Jerusalem, rewarding Israeli intransigence and failing in any way to compensate the Palestinians, even with a cost-free hint of a possible future capital in East Jerusalem.

Without the US fulfilling its responsibilities, the dominant party is now wrecking havoc with impunity. There is no legitimate excuse for firing on unarmed civilians. I might prefer that the Palestinians at the Gaza fence not throw stones, burn tires, fly kites adorned with swastikas, or try to breach the fence, but their doing so in no way justifies Israeli snipers responding with live rounds. Blaming the resulting deaths on Hamas for inciting the Palestinians, as the State Department has done, ignores a much more serious crime: the use of deadly force against civilians. No doubt Hamas will benefit politically from Israel’s mistake.

My eldest aunt, Rose Halperin, is buried in East Jerusalem, on the Mount of Olives. She had been a president of Hadassah. My mother worked on a kibbutz in Israel in the early 1930s. She spoke decent Hebrew and tried her best to teach me and my reluctant classmates in Sunday school, without much success. She and her elder brother were both avid supporters of Israel.

But they were also advocates of Jewish/Arab understanding, because they understood that ultimately there would be no security for Israel or for the Jews who live there without it. Givat Haviva, Wahat as Salaam/Neve Shalom, the Israel/Palestine Journal and other organizations devoted to improving communication between the two main populations of Israel and Palestine all survive today on fumes, but they survive because they are necessary.

I am all too familiar with ethnic territoriality, from my many decades working on the Balkans. Precious as “the land” is to Jews, they survived for at least two millennia outside the Holy Land. Had they attempted to remain there without migrating at all, no doubt they would have suffered the same fate as the Canaanites, Midianites, and other long-forgotten Biblical peoples. They were saved not because of their attachment to the land but because of their willingness to leave it.

Israel thus represents a sharp departure from the successful Jewish survival techniques of the past. After 70 years of defending itself, it is a strong state with strong security forces and a strong Jewish national identity. But what it is doing now is not wise, sustainable, or equitable. The Torah tells us 36 times (more often than any other injunction) to treat the stranger who lives among us like one of us. No one who visits the West Bank or Gaza could conclude that commandment is being fulfilled. Even within Israel proper, Arabs do not enjoy equal treatment.

American Jews enjoy a country where their rights are equal–no longer just in theory but also for the most part in fact–with those of the majority. Most like that system and hold tight to liberal democratic ideals. They want to see equal rights in Israel as well as the United States. A relatively few like Sheldon Adelson and David Friedman are committed to something dramatically different: an Israel that occupies the entire West Bank and pays no heed to the rights of Palestinians. They want to chase as many Palestinians away as they can and keep those who remain in second-class status, lacking political and economic rights.

This is not an Israel many American Jews can support. I’m not sure about my Zionist aunt, but I am certain my Hebrew-speaking mother would have been disgusted, as I am, by the unilateral move of the US Embassy to Jerusalem and the performance of the Israeli security forces on the Gaza border. There will be a price to pay for this departure from Jewish and American values. Israelis need to open their eyes to the very real peril that lies ahead.

Here is the CGTN appearance I did May 14:

• John Sitilides is a global risk analyst and a consultant to the U.S. State Department.
• Nour Odeh is the former spokesperson for the Palestinian Authority.
• Yossi Mekelberg is a senior research fellow with Chatham House.