February 09, 2024
What this means is that neither the Jews nor the Palestinians are going anywhere. This conflict can only be settled based on that understanding. The goal is not to drive one or the other out of Palestine but to ensure that everyone has citizenship and equality in whatever state is sovereign over their lives – Photo Wikipedia
American Muslims and Palestine
The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (aka the “IPC”) has been ongoing for over a century, dating back to the earliest attempts by European Zionist Jews to create settlements in Palestine in the late 19 th century. The events of October 7, 2023 (henceforth “10/7”) have brought the conflict to a salience and urgency in the minds of the American Muslim community.
This has brought on feelings of anger, sadness, and revulsion over the actions of the Israeli government in its response to 10/7 and has also led many American Muslims to blame President Biden for insufficient concern about the massive human toll inflicted by Israel. Demonstrations and other actions around the country have called for a “cease-fire” and demanded that Biden pressure Israel into one. What is needed on this issue is more clarity within the American Muslim community, and to provide a roadmap of concrete action and policy objectives that are both desirable and politically feasible.
To start with, there must be a recognition of the ground realities. Between the Jordan River and the sea, in historic Palestine, there are now roughly 14 million people, half of whom are Jews and the other half Palestinian. The Jews are made up of descendants of both European Jews and Middle Eastern Jews, but the current generation was mostly born in Israel and knows no other home. While Israel was created by European settler Jews who mostly arrived between 1920 and 1940, the current Israeli Jews perceive themselves to be indigenous and not settler colonialists in Palestine. Just as Europeans settled and colonized North America and Australia, it would not be correct to consider the US or Australia colonial settler states at this point. Conversely, the Palestinians certainly perceive themselves as being legitimate inhabitants of Palestine.
What this means is that neither the Jews nor the Palestinians are going anywhere. This conflict can only be settled based on that understanding. The goal is not to drive one or the other out of Palestine but to ensure that everyone has citizenship and equality in whatever state is sovereign over their lives. Instead, we have a situation since 1967 in which Jews are full citizens in a democracy, Palestinians with Israeli citizenship (about 2 million people) have legal equality though suffer discrimination in housing, education, politics, and workplace, and Palestinians in Gaza (about 2 million) and the West Bank (about 3 million) are stateless and live under an occupation regime that the current Israeli government wishes to maintain as permanent status.
The events of 10/7 have made clear to the Israelis and the world that occupation cannot be permanent. The Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank must be given their freedom in their own state. Creating a Palestinian state is the only solution to this conflict. Some have called for a single state, in which Israel would annex Gaza and the West Bank and give citizenship to its residents. This is a non-starter. The Arab League, the PLO, the Palestinian Authority, the United States, and the Israelis themselves all accept that a two-state solution is what they support. The intense hostility, fear, and loathing the two communities have for each other makes a single state completely unworkable. Perhaps in a hundred years, when passions and fears have subsided, barriers may come down and the two sides may relate to each other as Belgium does with Holland. But that is not the issue for us today to decide. Today, the Palestinians need to be made free of subjugation by Israel.
10/7 has also made clear that Hamas is the enemy of any political settlement. To state the obvious, Hamas is a religious extremist group that opposes democracy and human freedom and indulges in the vilest forms of terrorist violence. No matter how wrong Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians is, it cannot justify the types of extremely disgusting acts that Hamas fighters carried out on 10/7. There is a vast difference between legitimate resistance to oppression and the murder of women and children in a deliberate fashion. There is no scenario in which Hamas remains in control of Gaza that is acceptable to Israel or most others. It is the issue of Hamas that makes calls for a cease-fire too vague to have meaning. Is it meant to be a cease-fire in place, in which Israel’s army is actively deployed and controlling much of Gaza? Is the cease-fire meant to be a permanent agreement between Israel and Hamas? Does anyone think Hamas would actually agree to and abide by a permanent cease-fire with Israel in exchange for resuming its control of Gaza? And what about the hostages?
A cease-fire should be implemented as rapidly as possible, to spare the people of Gaza even more death and destruction and give them the opportunity to rebuild from the rubble of the battle. But a cease-fire would only make sense with several elements. It must include a release of all the hostages seized by Hamas. Hamas leadership must also go into exile and leave Gaza. Gaza must be administered by a force capable of imposing a cease-fire on the Palestinian side. This could be a UN force made up of units from major Sunni Arab nations. Finally, this cease-fire can only be permanent if there is a clear commitment to rapidly negotiate the end of the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank and the creation of a Palestinian state.
President Biden and the US government should be pressured to force Israel to negotiate the end of the conflict. Interestingly, 49 of 51 Democratic Senators signed on to a call for a two-state solution. There have also been reports that Biden has asked the State Department to look into the consequences of a unilateral US recognition of Palestine. These two facts are tremendously significant. It shows that the Democrats are on board with two states, and it shows that Biden is willing to at least consider using the full diplomatic weight of the US to push Israel. It is diplomatic leverage that is America’s strength. Israel is too advanced a society for the US to force Israeli action based on reducing arms shipments or cutting off economic aid. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has made it his life’s mission to block a Palestinian state. He, in fact, intentionally bolstered and supported Hamas’s control of Gaza as a way of keeping the Palestinians divided and incapable of negotiating for their freedom. Fortunately, Netanyahu’s political fate is now dismal with the Israeli public, and as soon as new elections are held, he will finally be ejected after running Israel for over a decade.
The biggest impediment to a two-state solution is the presence of 700,000 colonial settler Israeli Jews living in the West Bank. These people are not legitimate inhabitants and the settlements built by Israel are a violation of the Geneva Convention and are considered illegal even by the US. The problem has been that three times the two sides have tried to work out a two-state solution, it has always foundered on the Israeli insistence of carving up the West Bank and holding onto the settlements. This occurred at Camp David in 2000, at Taba in January 2001, and at Annapolis in 2008. The American Muslim community should argue vigorously that the settlers are the primary roadblock to peace, and that Israel must move those 700,000 people back to Israel.
There are two other hot-button issues that must be addressed. The first is the “right of return” of the Palestinian refugees who were ethnically cleansed and expelled in 1947-1949 which made a Jewish state possible. These refugees, who fled a war zone, have a right to return to their homes and farms and businesses when the fighting stopped, but Israel blocked them and confiscated their property, which was then handed out to the large number of Jews emigrating to Israel after the war. Over 70 years later most of those refugees have died, but Palestinians consider the right of return to apply to their children and grandchildren. The Israelis refuse to consider that potentially two million Palestinians would move into Israel as part of a settlement of the IPC. Practically, the solution is to recognize the right of return and to resolve it through financial compensation. In fact, using the settlements that Israel should have to evacuate as part of that financial compensation makes much sense as those settlements could easily provide housing for 1.5 million Palestinians living in refugee camps from Gaza to the West Bank to Lebanon and Syria.
The second issue is that of the religious sites in the Old City. For Muslims, there is Al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock, and for Jews, there is the Western Wall. There is also small numbers of Muslims, Jews, and Christians living in separate quarters of the Old City. This is an issue for negotiation and compromise that allows each religion to be in charge of its holy sites.
Who should be involved in the negotiations to end the IPC? Israel in the past has negotiated directly with the Palestinians, either Yasser Arafat till he died, or Mahmoud Abbas. But the Palestinian leadership is too weak and too corrupt and inept to adequately represent the Palestinians. The negotiations should include the Arab League led by Egypt and Saudi Arabia and should have a US presence as an honest broker, not as an Israeli ally. A peace settlement would then be not just between Israel and Palestine but would include recognition of Israel by the entire Arab League. In fact, the Arab League offered Israel a final settlement and recognition by all Arab nations in 2002 if Israel would relinquish the entirety of the occupied territories. It was Israel that passed on that huge opportunity for Middle East peace.
Biden has been attacked and criticized by American Muslims for not forcefully restraining Israel and imposing a cease-fire. But as mentioned earlier, the US does not have the leverage to force Israel into a cease-fire. Biden clearly has been working behind the scene to limit the conflict, reduce civilian casualties, restart peace negotiations, do hostage and prisoner exchanges, and look toward a two-state agreement. He needs to be encouraged in all of these. Biden also clearly wants to see Netanyahu gone from power and a more centrist Israeli government that is willing to negotiate in good faith with the Palestinians. Contrast Biden with Trump and there is no comparison from a Muslim perspective. Trump is running on reinstating his “Muslim Ban”. He was a total supporter of Netanyahu and the extreme right wing in Israel, and he moved the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem after decades of American policy not to do that till the conflict was ended. Trump released his own peace plan for the Palestinians in 2019 and it was such a joke no one took it seriously. It carved up the West Bank into postage stamp fragments and left Israel in control of much of the land that should go to Palestine. There is simply no comparison between the Democrats and Republicans or between Biden and Trump on the IPC. Muslims should be cleareyed enough to see that and to avoid supporting the even worse Trump because of disappointment in Biden.
10/7 has evoked passion, anger, and sadness in the Muslim community, not just in the US but around the world. The response to it must be logical and thoughtful. As a community, we cannot engage in simple slogans or descend into anti-Semitic racist notions. We must think carefully about what makes real sense and then work for that. We as a community can make a difference if we are able to go beyond hatred and seek justice.
