Gaza: The Horrifying New Situation and some (well, just a little) heshbon hanefesh

The military collapse of Fatah in the Gaza Strip at the hands of Hamas, whose spokesmen quickly announced its intentions to turn the 25-mile-long densely settled enclave into an entity ruled by strict Islamic law, is a watershed event which calls for a reassessment of the situation by everyone on the Jewish side of the barricades, including people on the dovish left like myself. For decades, after all, I have been calling for Jewish-Palestinian dialogue and reconciliation, and have been urging Israelis to pull back to the 1967 lines and to pull out of settlements in order to achieve it. Yet now Israel faces an unalloyed enemy across the Gaza border which refuses to acknowledge Israel's existence or to offer Israel more than a long truce in an ongoing war dedicated to the final destruction of the Jewish state. Hamas sees itself as the vanguard of an Islamic polity—a new Caliphate stretching from Indonesia to Morocco—rather than as a specifically Palestinian entity. For Hamas, the question of the creation of a Palestinian state seems oddly irrelevant.

One can, of course, debate the reasons for this calamitous turn of events and I would argue that Israel's brutal, spectacularly short-sighted occupation policies in both Gaza and the West Bank over four decades contributed mightily to this awful denoument. Israel's unwillingness to trade land for peace in a timely manner; its insistence on constantly expanding settlements and grabbing more and more Palestinian land; its imprisonment of thousands of Palestinians on an ongoing basis and shoot to kill policies against Palestinians; taught two generations of Palestinians that they were fighting an implacable foe with whom there was no point in compromising as Israelis would never allow the Palestinians a dignified existence. Even the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, with its 20-years-too-late destruction of settlements, backfired since Israel subsequently insisted on deepening Gaza's isolation to the point where its residents slipped ever deeper into poverty and despair and became ever more devoted of Hamas and Islam as their only salvation.

Having reasserted all of the above, I have to acknowledge that the solutions I have advocated all of my adult life no longer appear viable. The supporters of Hamas appear dead set against a two state solution and not interested in communication and reconciliation with Jews; only in renewing the long struggle to destroy the Jewish state, even if it takes 100 years or more.

Over the years, I have had many wonderful personal encounters with Israeli Arabs and Palestinians; who received me in their homes as a brother, who, as much as they denounced Israeli policies, treated me as an equal and never demonized me as a Jew. This was never a religious war for them any more than it was for me. It was a conflict of two nationalisms for which there was at least the hope of ultimate solution. Now it is Hamas and the Islamists versus the Israeli right in a zero sum game of total destruction, and everyone with more moderate positions on both sides are the losers.

What happens now? Gaza is lost for the foreseeable future, but perhaps there is still a chance to strengthen Fatah in the West Bank; but that would only work if Israel is prepared to make major concessions, including uprooting a large number of settlements and taking down roadblocks and checkpoints which make Palestinian all but unbearable. But Israel shows no willingness to do—especially now. So the likelihood is that Hamas will become the dominant force in the West Bank as well, although it will be unable to govern openly as long as the IDF is there. What a miserable choice for the Palestinians of the West Bank—perpetual occupation or being taken over by Islamic militants intent on imposing Sha'ria.

And now for the heshbon hanefesh (soul searching) I promised at the top. I can no longer say confidently to my fellow Jews that if Israel were now to final adopt a conciliatory course and agree to pull out of the West Bank and Palestinian sections of Jerusalem, that would cause most Palestinians to agree to accept Israel. It appears that today most Palestinians are so angry and embittered that they would prefer endless war and occupation rather than accept Israel's existence. Therefore I can no longer in good conscience counsel Israel to take risks for peace. The Palestinians are simply not interested at the moment.

That wasn't much of a heshbon hanefesh, was it? Well, I don't think I was wrong in believing in peace and reconciliation. People like me were right, but unfortunately the hard liners on both sides won the day because the majorities in the middle weren't willing to fifght as hard as the extremists. It shouldn't have come to this. But it has, and at least for the moment, I am bereft of ideas as to how to overcome the damage. There has been a paradigm shift on the Palestinian side and in the new circumstances of ascendant Islamism, I have to admit I haven't a clue.

One can only hope that the experience of living under Hamas will prove to be so bitter as to disabuse Gazans that Islamic rule in the answer. Perhaps in a year or two, more likely in 5-10 years, a majority may sober up to the point that they will see anew that the only way out of the morass is reaching a two state solution with Israel. Just as Israelis eventually awoke from the ideological fantasy of a Greater Israel, hopefully the majority of Palestinians will come to understand that the maximalism of Hamas leads them nowhere except deeper into shit.

In the meantime—well, I'd rather not think about the meantime for the moment. I'm leaving for a nice weekend with Tanya in Connecticut and the whole matzav, the whole situation, is so profoundly screwed up as to defy imagination.