Gaza, Israel, Peace and War in the Middle East
Over the Christmas and New Year holiday, I took the opportunity to reflect on the war in Gaza. Based on my experience of being there as a correspondent from 2002-2004, and on my subsequent research and writing, this new post is the result of that reflection.
EVEN WHEN I LIVED IN GAZA I could not fully understand how hard life was for the people among whom I lived. Now I cannot even imagine.
Two decades have passed since March 2004 when I finished my correspondent posting in Gaza.
Reflecting on my time in Gaza, and on the research and writing on the conflict I have done since, I explain here why the present war is a disaster not only for the Palestinians, but for Israel, too. While there will be those on both sides who claim victory, the truth is that everyone on both sides of the divide will end up worse off than they were before the war began.
Perhaps the most perceptive remark on this war came from President Biden, when he counselled Israel against becoming ‘enraged’ as the United States did after 9/11. For that is exactly what Israel has done. Despite the president’s words, the United States has done little to act to prevent its ally from acting upon its rage. It vetoed a United Nations resolution for a ceasefire.
While that might have frustrated Israel’s military plans in the short term, it might have served the country better in the longer term.
The current course of action means that Israel will horrify a greater and greater share of international political and public opinion by its killing of thousands of civilians. That is in the short and medium term.
In the longer term, the conduct of the current war in Gaza will breed a new generation of Palestinians willing to take up arms against Israel. The US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, in December warned Israel against driving the civilian population of Gaza ‘into the arms of the enemy’, and this replacing ‘a tactical victory with a strategic defeat.’
When I was in Gaza, and reporting also from Israel and the West Bank, 20 years ago, it always seemed to me that a majority of Israelis and Palestinians wanted peace, but did not believe that the other people next to whom they lived were as committed as they.
Instead, extremist minorities on both sides set the agenda with acts of violence. I have not spent time in the region for some years now, so cannot say whether those majorities still existed when the war broke out in October 2023.
I doubt they do know, though. The experience of the last three months has more likely swelled the ranks of those who, in their rage, seek revenge.
The Gaza I knew has gone (so, I suspect, has the house I lived in) in the sense that it was a territory governed–as far as the presence of Israeli settlers (they left in 2005) and the Israeli Army permitted–by the Palestinian Authority. In the intervening years, the rise of Hamas in Gaza provided the starting point for the attacks of October 7th.
Israeli and Gazan friends and acquaintances with whom I have been in contact now fear the echoes of the most traumatic periods of their histories. An outsider then, I still know people on both sides.
I could come and go from Gaza more or less freely, and spend time in Israel in a way that was impossible for Palestinians. That rare access gave me a unique perspective. During my time in Gaza, I was the only international correspondent based in territory.
My successor in the role, Alan Johnson, was taken hostage and held for four months. The last BBC journalist in the role, Rushdi Abulaouf, himself a Palestinian living in Gaza, reluctantly left in December 2023 but says he, ‘will definitely go back’.
The dangers are clear. On December 23, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported that, ‘at least 68 journalists and media workers were among the more than 21,000 killed since the war began on October 7.’
Now, Gaza is completely off limits to international journalists. Israel controls access to the territory–and wants to conduct its attacks on targets in the territory away from the eyes of the world’s media, except on those occasions when it takes journalists into Gaza, and is able to set the rules for their reporting: including reviewing their work, and banning them from talking to Palestinians.
The saying that journalism is the first draft of history is especially relevant in Israel and the Palestinian territories. Reporting from there requires knowledge of the histories of the region–‘histories’ plural, because Israeli and Palestinian histories differ–as it comes up in everyday news in a way unmatched in most other major international stories. Gaza itself is home to two British military cemeteries, with graves from the First World War, some of which bear the traces of bullets and shrapnel from later conflicts.
Those British and imperial troops who died trying to remake the region in the last century are not forgotten–not least by the people of Gaza, who will sometimes take foreign visitors to task for the Balfour declaration that dates from the same period.
In September, my colleague at City, University of London, Professor Amnon Aran, and I made a podcast for The Conversation on the Oslo accords, marking the 30th anniversary of that attempt to bring peace to Israel and Palestine. One point that contributors to that series made was that the current generation of Israeli and Palestinian leaders do not seem to have the will or the skills to improve the situation–and that was before the war began in October.
The war will clearly not end with justice for the Palestinians. Anyone expecting it to end with security for Israel will also be disappointed.
Despite its actions in Gaza, Israel understands the limits of what military force can bring. As a source close to the Israeli security establishment, to whom I spoke during a meeting in London in November, put it, Israel has not previously succeeded, ‘when we tried to change minds with tanks or bombs.’ In other words, there must be some kind of political process too if there is ever to be peace.
Aside from the Abraham Accords, which, as I and others argued in an article for History Today, three years ago, had limited significance because they did not address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there has been little diplomatic attempt in the last 20 years to seek a lasting peace in the region.
Instead, Israel has been left to manage the conflict largely as it has seen fit. That has failed.
The world’s choice is either to intervene in some form or other–presumably it will have to, one day, in Gaza–or simply turn away. So far, as the killing continues, it has opted for the latter: a situation which some may see as serving the short term interests of parts of the leadership on both sides. It will serve no one’s interests in the longer term.
