THE ANGUISH CONTINUES: Viewing the aftermath of Israeli shelling and airstrikes in Khan Younis, on the Gaza Strip on Aug. 1.
Israeli forces began withdrawing from parts of the Gaza Strip on Aug. 3, after a quick collapse of a humanitarian ceasefire on Aug. 1 and a ferocious bombardment of the border community of Rafah in its aftermath. As what he described as a redeployment of Israeli forces began, Prime Minister Benjamin Netenyahu said the Israeli Defense Forces would continue operations in Gaza, taking “as much time as necessary” and exerting “as much force as needed.”
The overall death toll by Aug. 4 included
more than 1,800 Palestinians. At least 69 percent of the dead in Gaza
are civilians, according to U.N. sources, including more than 350
children. On the Israeli side, 64 Israeli soldiers and three civilians
have been killed in the conflict.
Looking beyond the current violence with any
degree of hope seems at best naïve. The images of the wounded and dying
emerging from the conflict “are horrific,” says Atalia Omer, an
associate professor at the Kroc Institute for International Peace
Studies at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind. Still, “we
can’t give in to despair,” Omer says. “We can never reach that point.”
For long-term peace to be achieved, “the solution is not military,” she says simply. “The solution is diplomatic and political.”
Despite political and media fixation on
“terror tunnels,” Israel’s right to self-defense and even the immediate
flashpoint of the most recent violence, the murder of three Israeli
teens on the West Bank, the ultimate source of tension, Omer says,
“remains the occupation.”
She explains, “If you crush Hamas, something
else will only emerge because Palestinian people are still living under
occupation.”
As an Israeli viewing the carnage from the
United States, Omer notes the emerging voices for peace and social
justice in Israel, especially among its young people. The resilience of
Israeli civil society’s actors for peace has been impressive, she
suggests, as tolerance for dissent and cultural critique within Israel
has diminished in recent years and fallen especially rapidly since the
beginning of I.D.F. operations in Gaza on July 8.
She admits that pessimists are probably
justified in thinking there is little reason to expect a change in the
political “narrative of inevitability” in Israel any time soon. That
narrative compels an inverted reality, she suggests, where the dominant,
occupying force pronounces its own victimhood while simultaneously
defining Palestinians as terrorists who “have a culture of death,” and
use the deaths of their babies to win public relations points. Such
intense and widely held beliefs dehumanize Palestinians, she says, and
enable Israelis to distance themselves from the suffering.
“Most of Israeli society accepts this
inevitability,” Omer says. “They’ll say, ‘It’s sad; we don’t want to
kill babies, but we have no choice.’”
Important global pressure for change, she
says, comes from civil society agents like, in the United States, the
Jewish Voice for Peace. Within the political establishment in Israel,
the Meretz Party remains committed to peacemaking. What a political
earthquake, she muses, if the tireless U.S. Secretary of State John
Kerry were to consult with Meretz leaders the next time he lands in
Israel instead of dutifully visiting with Likud leaders. “That would be a
very bold, creative move, but I don’t know if [the Obama administration
has] the courage or the political capital to do that.”
Omer insists that the existence of Meretz
and other persistent actors for peace in Israeli civil society—Breaking
the Silence, an organization of I.D.F. veterans who testify to the
reality of the occupation; Combatants for Peace, a joint campaign by
Palestinians and Israelis; and the Coalition of Women for Peace, a
feminist organization against the occupation of Palestine and for a just
peace—should be a source of hope that a peaceful resolution to the
conflict between Israelis and Palestinians remains possible.
“It is often said that Israel has a right to
defend itself,” she says, “but Gaza is not a sovereign state; it is
occupied.” She adds, “Israel controls everything, so most of the
responsibility for changing the course of events will have to reside
with Israel. But Hamas will have to demonstrate political will [for a
ceasefire]; it will have to stop firing rockets; it will have to
demonstrate it is in control of its people.”
Source: AMERICA Magazine, the National Catholic Review: http://americamagazine.org/issue/211/searching-way-ahead-israeli-redeployment-begins
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