The scale, audacity, and barbarism of Hamas’s attacks have generated immense anger within Israel, causing the latter to launch its military retaliation. How the Israel-Hamas hostilities will play out remains unclear, but one can be certain of two things: Israel’s pounding of Gaza will not end Palestinian resistance, and Hamas and its allies will not be able to overwhelm Israel. A stalemate soaked in more blood than before may return to close this round of violence.
That they were blindsided by Hamas speaks to the failure of Israel’s intelligence and political establishments. That Israel believed it could intensify its persecution of the Palestinians while successfully normalising relations with influential Muslim States illustrates either arrogance or misjudgement. Given how unreflective official Israel has turned in recent years, it can hardly be expected to see the current crisis as a moment of reckoning for the country. But it is one, and like no other since its founding in 1948.
The carnage across Israel’s territory, the high toll of its dead and wounded, and over 100 of its citizens taken hostage—to read these in terms of a country being attacked without provocation is untenable. Many Israelis won’t like to hear this, especially because it comes in their moment of trauma, but they need to ask hard questions of themselves and their State.
They could begin by asking what caused the Hamas militants to target Israeli citizens in this barbaric fashion. Were they targeted because they were seen as part of a collective that took part and pleasure in Israel’s direct and structural violence against Palestinians, which has markedly increased in recent times? There is no question that Hamas fighters perpetrated brutal terrorism. But did they do it because they were terrorists and Muslims or because they read the sociology of Israeli violence against Palestinians with a degree of accuracy?
Israeli citizens could also ask what happened to the two-State solution. The plan for enduring peace involved the coexistence of two states, Israel and Palestine. Why is it that only one State, Israel, has emerged? Are the alleged Palestinian or Arab intransigence, incompetence, or foolishness the only reasons why a Palestinian State has not only not emerged but has increasingly become unviable? How do they justify Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories on which settler colonialism is both practised and celebrated?
This last question is vitally important. It holds the key to war or peace across Israel, Palestine and their wider neighbourhood. Israel’s expansion of its occupation and colonisation of Palestinian lands with Jewish settlers is often explained as stemming from a millenarian ideology. This ideology lays claim to all lands on which the Palestinians have historically lived, including those that would be necessary for a viable Palestinian State to emerge.
Shorn of its theological scaffolding, the idea of “Eretz Yisrael” is similar to other notions of territorial maximalism such as “Akhand Bharat” and “Russkiy Mir”. These notions are imperialist because they lay claim to territories that today belong to other peoples. Whether these claims are justified or not has no bearing on the imperialist nature of these ideas and the practices they inspire. Israeli citizens must, therefore, ask if the imperialism of their State and fellow citizens is something they wish to be complicit in. And it would be an act of radical honesty to ponder the possibility that the deaths of their compatriots are in part the cost of that practice of empire.
But ultimately, Israelis must consider this: Their predecessors strived to establish the State of Israel in the belief that it was their only sure guarantee against persecution and genocide. Given this, how have contemporary Israelis failed to see both justice and pragmatism in the Palestinian search for statehood and do what it takes for its realisation? Worse, how is it that a community that cherishes the memory of escaping persecution and genocide has now become complicit in a moral obscenity that sees its State and kindred persecute a neighbour and rejoice in doing so? And how is it that Israel’s right to self-defence has been asserted at the expense of the territory, rights and dignity of the Palestinians?
Israel is the dominant actor in the conflict by a considerable margin. Its political leadership has decided to respond ideologically rather than pragmatically to the Hamas-led attacks. Gaza is being reduced to rubble and an invasion seems imminent. But it would come at great cost to Israelis and Palestinians and the conflict will remain unresolved. Israel needs to change course. It needs to rethink its national narrative. Rather than emphasising the conditions under which their State was established, Israelis should ask if the policies of that State since 1948 have really made them secure.
Hamas deserves punishment; Palestinians don’t. What they deserve is a viable Palestinian State; it is in Israel’s interest to commit to one. But that Israel is failing to see its moment of reckoning is a story for a future historian.
Atul Mishra teaches international relations at Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence, Delhi-NCR The views expressed are personal
