Is there a way out of the Israeli-Palestinian trap? Both sides are right to fear destruction, but change is not impossible Professor Yuval Noah Harari*

This five page article is summarised here but people are urged to read it in full. If prevented by the paywall ask for a link in the comments section.

Professor Harari (below right) opens: “Israeli-Palestinian conflict is fuelled by the mutual horror of destruction. Each side fears the other wishes to kill or expel it, and terminate its existence as a national collective. Unfortunately, these are not irrational fears born out of paranoia, but reasonable fears based on recent historical memories and a relatively sound analysis of the other side’s intentions”.

The Palestinian fear of being killed or displaced

Palestinians experienced decades of massacres and expulsions at the hands of Israelis and other regional powers – two examples are given. In addition to such historical memories, each and every Palestinian in the occupied territories knows that any day they could be killed, imprisoned or driven from their land by Israeli settlers or security forces.

Harari quotes several calls for the utter destruction of the Gaza Strip by Israeli politicians adding that it is not unreasonable to believe that Israel would have attempted to drive the Palestinian population of the Gaza Strip into the Sinai desert but for Egyptian resistance and international pressure.

The Israeli fear of being killed or displaced

Jews arrived on the banks of the Nile and Euphrates at least 1,000 years before the Arabs conquered Egypt and Iraq in the 7th century CE. But after 1948 these communities were totally wiped out. There are virtually none left in any Arab country, other than the 2,000 Jews of Morocco and the 1,000 of Tunisia.

The founding event of modern Jewish and Israeli identity is the Holocaust. Then in 1948, the Palestinians and their Arab allies made a concerted effort to annihilate the new-born state of Israel and kill or expel all its Jewish inhabitants (Ed: during the second half of the 1948 Palestine war) and at least half of Israeli Jews are the descendants of these Middle Eastern refugees.

Each and every Israeli knows that they personally might be murdered or abducted any day by Palestinian or Islamist terrorists, whether in their homes or while travelling anywhere in the world.

When Israelis analyse the intentions of Palestinians, they conclude that if they are ever given the chance, Palestinians will probably kill or expel the 7mn Jews currently living between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea.

The current war has confirmed Israelis’ deepest fears, demonstrating that an alliance of powerful regional forces that back it, including Hizbollah, the Houthis and Iran, poses an existential threat to Israel.

Iranian and Hezbollah commanders help to direct Houthi attacks in Yemen | Reuters

What happened to Jewish villages such as Be’eri and Kfar Aza and to Nova music festival attendees on October 7 fed Israeli fears of extermination.

Israelis and Palestinians both have good reasons to believe that the other side wishes to kill or expel all of them. For both sides the way to remove the existential threats seems to be to get rid of the other side. 

Is there a way out of this trap?

A peaceful solution to the conflict is technically feasible. There is enough land between the Jordan and Mediterranean to build houses, schools, roads and hospitals for everyone.

But it can be realised only if each side can honestly say that, even if it had unlimited power and zero restrictions, it would not wish to expel the other: “No matter what injustices they committed against us and what threats they still pose, we nevertheless respect their right to live dignified lives in their country of birth.”

Such a profound change in intentions is bound to manifest itself in action, and eventually ease the fear and hatred, creating space for genuine peace.

There are already numerous individuals on both sides who wish well for the other (examples here), including close to 2mn Arab citizens of Israel, usually referred to as either Arab Israelis or Palestinian Israelis.

Members of Israel’s Arab Ra’am Party

When Hamas launched its attack, it hoped these Palestinian-Israelis would rise up against their Jewish neighbours. In fact, on the day of the massacre, numerous Arab citizens rushed to help their Jewish neighbours. Some were even murdered by Hamas for doing so.

Every day since, despite hostility from many Jews, including government ministers, Arab-Israelis have continued to serve in Israeli institutions from hospitals to government offices. The two most prominent Palestinian-Israeli politicians roundly condemned the massacre and called on all sides to lay down their arms and seek peace.

Harari reflects that we have little control over the intentions of others, but we should be able to change our own minds. Even readers who are neither Israeli nor Palestinian can decide whether they wish both sides, or whether they cherish the hope that one of these groups will simply disappear from the face of the Earth. 

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*Prof. Yuval Noah Harari: Historian, philosopher and the author of the bestsellers “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind”, “Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow”, and “21 Lessons for the 21st Century”. Co-Founder of Sapienship, a multidisciplinary organization advocating for global responsibility whose mission is to clarify the public conversation, support the quest for solutions and focus attention on the most important challenges facing the world today (technological disruption, ecological collapse and the nuclear threat). 2002, PhD, University of Oxford. Lecturer, Department of History, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His website: https://www.ynharari.com/

COMMENT

A reader from the Netherlands writes:

‘Both side-ism’ (“Both sides are right to fear destruction”) is a commonly used means to claim false balance (see the stats here from UN: https://www.ochaopt.org/data/casualties ) … nothing could be further from the truth … one is the oppressor, one is oppressed. This makes it a clear case in international law (“complex” is rarely used in other cases!). It’s also not about religion etc, but abuse of such for – again – fossil fuels:

Ed: I agree that for the last 7 decades the Palestinian people have been oppressed in many, many ways and I take every opportunity to tell people so – it’s surprising how many do not know.  

I hadn’t heard a whisper of the gas issue. https://priceofoil.org/2009/06/18/the-great-gazan-gas-robbery/  and found https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-shell-relinquishes-gaza-gas-field-rights-1001226973 and https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/partners-israels-tamar-gas-field-agree-further-expand-production-2024-02-18/

OF COURSE I too want sustainable peace; basis for that is honest assessment of situation and geopolitics at play ..

I sent the summary round because it seemed to me that it was an honest assessment of situation and geopolitics at play but I now see that in omitting any reference to the hardships endured by the Palestinian people it is not.

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The UK ‘has long sought to broker a political settlement to the conflict in Yemen’

Earlier this month an article on the BBC website and many other online sources stated that UK has long sought to broker a political settlement to the conflict in Yemen while backing the Hadi government in its effort to defeat the rebels.

The writer was not aware of these efforts and searched for further information. The best source found was a 2019 report by the Select Committee on International Relations which is appointed by the House of Lords in each session “to investigate the United Kingdom’s International Relations”.

It reported that, in September 2014, the Shia Houthis helped former President Ali Saleh to seize control of Sanaa from the interim government of President Abed-Rabbo Hadi. In March 2015, Saudi Arabia launched a military intervention to restore Hadi to power fearing a complete takeover of the country, seeing the Houthis as allies of Iran.

The U.S., the UK and France refused to join the Saudi-led military coalition but provided Riyadh with intelligence, arms and political cover in order ‘to restore the legitimate government’. This included providing spare parts, maintenance, technical advice and resupplying for the Saudi air force, training in targeting and weapon use, and providing liaison officers in Saudi headquarters.

The work of DfID was outlined, its assistance with providing food and water supplies, vaccination and helping to stabliise Yemen’s currency.

The Select Committee on International Relations noted that since the war began, the UK has licensed £4.7 billion of arms exports to Saudi Arabia, and £860 million to its coalition partners. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute Arms Transfer Database, between 2010 and 2017 the UK was the second-largest exporter of arms to Saudi Arabia (after the US), and accounted for around 25% of arms imports to Saudi Arabia.

The committee decided that “Given the volume and type of arms being exported to the Saudi-led coalition, we believe they are highly likely to be the cause of significant civilian casualties in Yemen, risking the contravention of international humanitarian law”.

Rt. Hon Alistair Burt MP, Minister of State for the Middle East, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), gave evidence to the committee, outlining the UK’s “constant” and “consistent” support for diplomatic progress.

• The former Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson MP, had taken a significant part in the small-group meetings of like-minded nations that were essential for progress.
• Later, Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt MP, had been very active in diplomatic efforts and had travelled to Saudi Arabia and the UAE. He had also visited Iran, as part of a number of UK visits to Tehran to try to understand more closely the relationship which the region needs to have with it.
• He went to the Stockholm peace talks in December 2018 where he met leaders of both delegations. He was the first British Minister to meet representatives of the Houthis.

Video: https://watch.thewest.com.au/show/72630

The committee thought that the UK had done everything it could as pen-holders at the UN to encourage the efforts of successive envoys.

The Government had great faith in the Special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General for Yemen, Martin Griffiths and had used its best endeavours to give him the support and space that he needed in order to be able to do his job.

A month after the UN’s February mass polling of several conflict zones, https://www.ft.com/content/f715b4ce-32ff-4aa8-be3a-5ae83e17c929
the warring parties in Yemen agreed to their first nationwide ceasefire since 2016, in what Saudi Arabia said was an effort to protect the conflict-ravished country from the threat of coronavirus. On the fifth anniversary of the Saudi-led coalition’s intervention in the impoverished nation’s civil war, the rebel Houthi movement and the exiled government agreed to a call from António Guterres the UN secretary-general for an immediate end to hostilities.

On July 1st, the  foreign minister of Sweden. Foreign minister Heiko Maas of Germany and foreign secretary Dominic Raab of the UK co-wrote an article in the FT: opening “We have a global responsibility to ease the suffering of the Yemeni people. We — the foreign ministers of Germany, Sweden and the UK — would like to share how we think the international community can contribute to peace”. They presented five aims (truisms):

• First, a nationwide ceasefire and a political settlement
• Second, humanitarian assistance needs to be delivered to all Yemenis who need it
• Third, we need to encourage implementation of existing agreements. This includes the Stockholm Agreement, which calls for a mutual withdrawal from the port city of Hodeidah, and the Riyadh Agreement.
• Fourth, for Yemen to effectively recover from Covid-19, its already fragile economy must be kept alive.
• Lastly, we expect full respect of international law, including humanitarian law and human rights, from all actors

The Select Committee on International Relations Committee was more hard-headed:

Although conclusive evidence is not yet available, it assessed that given the volume and type of arms being exported to the Saudi-led coalition, it believes they are highly likely to be the cause of significant civilian casualties in Yemen, risking the contravention of international humanitarian law.

It reiterated the conclusion of its 2017 report, The Middle East: Time for new realism, that the UK’s sales of arms to Saudi Arabia, which are used against Yemeni civilians, are the source of considerable public disquiet.

The committee was deeply concerned that the Saudi-led coalition’s misuse of their weaponry is causing—whether deliberately or accidentally—loss of civilian life. Relying on assurances by Saudi Arabia and Saudi-led review processes is not an adequate way of implementing the obligations for a risk-based assessment set out in the Arms Trade Treaty.

It urged the UK to redouble its diplomatic efforts with all external actors—particularly the US, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Iran—to keep them committed to the Hodeidah ceasefire, and its extension to Sanaa and elsewhere in Yemen.

The Select Committee concluded that the British Government should be more willing to use its role as penholder at the UN Security Council; it could take the initiative on all Council activities concerning Yemen, speaking first whenever the Council discusses the issue, holding emergency meetings, organising open debates and leading visiting missions to intervene if if blockages arise and peace talks are not progressing.

 

 

 

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‘The spirit of brotherhood defines Pakistan’s approach towards Afghanistan’

 

As tensions rise between Saudi Arabia/US and Iran it is good to read that heads of two troubled states are agreeing to seek peace and economic progress towards regional prosperity

In January, Afghan President Muhammad Ashraf Ghani phoned Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan to discuss recent efforts for peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan. Business Recorder reports that he expressed gratitude for Pakistan’s facilitation of these efforts, initiated by the US Special Representative for Peace and Reconciliation in Afghanistan, Ambassador Zamlay Khalilzad. He invited Imran Khan to visit Afghanistan at his earliest convenience. Khan reciprocated by inviting President Ghani to visit Pakistan.

In April, PM Khan (below) said “Afghanistan conflict has brought great suffering for both Afghanistan and Pakistan over last 40 years. Now, after a long wait, the Afghanistan Peace Process presents a historic opportunity for peace in the region and Pakistan is fully supporting the process including the next logical step of Intra Afghan Dialogue wherein Afghans will themselves decide upon the future of their country”.

Earlier this month the Times of Islamabad reported that according to a statement issued by the Foreign Office, Imran Khan has called Ashraf Ghani (right) and they agreed to work to realise the true economic potential of the two countries and assure the socio-economic development, alleviation of poverty and welfare of the two peoples. He stated that the spirit of brotherhood defined Pakistan’s approach towards Afghanistan. The prolonged Afghan conflict had damaged Afghanistan and adversely affected Pakistan over many decades.

Imran Khan presented his vision of a peaceful solution in Afghanistan, fully owned and led by the Afghans themselves and stressed that Pakistan will spare no effort to advance the common objectives of building peace in Afghanistan and having a fruitful bilateral relationship between the two countries.

The Gulf News adds that – according to the Foreign Office statement – during the conversation, the Afghan president accepted the invitation to visit Islamabad “for a comprehensive exchange of views on all issues of mutual interest.”

 

 

 

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US-based Human Rights Foundation’s ultimate aim: to use ‘soft power’ to bring down the North Korean regime

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The USA’s use of soft power has been effective with many worldwide, presenting an illusion of a free society (‘liberating minds’) and reinforcing a consumerist culture and the political regimes which collude with it.

On this site in 2015 there was an account of soft power – money and commodities poured from the United States into the Middle East. In the name of normality and freedom, all but the strongest young people are being remade in the image of the Western consumer whereas hard power is exerted by financial inducements, invasion and remote killing by drone.

One actor in the North Korean soft power drive is the Human Rights Foundation, whose approving Wikipedia entry emphasises its insistence on ‘economic freedom’. In Central and South America and the Middle East it has paved the way for the overthrow of regimes which would not play that game.

In North Korea jeans and pop music, though still part of the scene, have been supplemented by hydrogen balloons packed with DVDs, dollar bills and propaganda leaflets. Drones now drop USB flash drives full of news bulletins and documentaries aim to counter NK’s state propaganda with that of the United States; American movies and television shows to spread pro-Western sentiment were called “flash drives for freedom”. See Business Insider’s  informative account of this, published last year.

With the help of defectors USB-sticks are smuggled through towns on China’s border with North Korea and sold in the flourishing black market for goods and information. The Human Rights Foundation “has financed balloon drops of pamphlets, TV shows, books and movies over a course of several years”.

Its founder Thor Halvorssen, according to Joakim Mollersen a Norwegian economist and journalist, also set up the Oslo Freedom Forum whose  story, he says in some detail, is one  of US right-wing sponsorship, lack of transparency and “heroes of human rights” involved in supporting serious human rights violations.

State propaganda is ardently supplemented by this foundation which paid for a balloon drop of 10,000 copies of an edited version of the movie The Interview, and North Korea’s move towards becoming a denuclearized ‘democracy’, following its leader’s assassination.

In 2014, HRF hosted the world’s first hackathon for North Korea at Code for America’s offices in San Francisco. According to the Wall Street Journal, “about 100 hackers, coders and engineers gathered in San Francisco to brainstorm ways to pierce the information divide that separates North Korea from the rest of the world.”

For objective information about North Korea see http://www.nkeconwatch.com/

Alex Gladstein, HRF’s chief strategy officer calls this an ‘information war’ – the only way to inspire change: ”a third way . . .to liberate minds  . . . Given the history of Eastern Europe, I hope that people can think about the potential of information rather than reckless conflict and provocation and totally failed diplomacy”.

These soft power illusions of American normality, freedom and prosperity are confidence tricks. The unmentioned features of the USA, a country which young people have been led, by soft power, to admire as ‘an ideal state of freedom’, are extremes of economic inequality, youth unemployment, high cost housing, military aggression, pollution, gun slaughter, child abuse, violent pornography, and inequality.

 

 

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The cause of peace is not helped by sub-headline sensation-mongering

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“President Assad’s army cut the last supply line for rebel forces in the northern city of Aleppo yesterday as peace talks in Switzerland collapsed”.

Not so.

It was a relief to read in the actual report by the Times’ Bel Trew in Cairo, that the Syrian army said it had broken a three-year rebel siege of two government-held Shia villages and the UN envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, had merely announced a pause in peace talks in Geneva: “I have already fixed a date for the next talks of February 25.”

Most comments were well worth reading:

• It’s worth remembering that Assad was nominated for an honorary knighthood by Tony Blair’s government, and was a guest of the Queen at Buckingham Palace at the same time. Russia, Iran and Hezbollah have been entirely consistent in where their loyalties lie. It’s “our” foreign policy which is in total disarray.

• We need a better foreign policy. We are now supporting the insupportable, as the lesser of two evils.

• The west, Qatar, Turkey and Saudi back the rebels, the rebels fight each other, the Russians, Hezbollah and the Iranians back Assad. Good luck to anyone trying to sort out that mess.

• And how do you rationalise the behaviour of providing weapons to these so-called rebels which has caused this crisis? Are we humanitarian in our desire to determine the destiny of another nation that is no threat to us?
  

• My kids cannot understand why Blair got involved in Iraq and Afghanistan or why Cameron got involved in Libya and Syria. Nor can I. Having correctly predicted the outcome in all four countries, I await any valid excuse for the stupidity of our politicians.

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‘U.N. resolution: Israel must renounce nuclear arms’: Washington Post

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Mark Shapiro draws attention to another article in Electronic Intifada by the author of One Country: A Bold-Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.

Summary

Israel and the United States were the only countries to vote against a UN resolution calling for the prevention of an arms race in outer space and another resolution calling for a prohibition on the development and manufacture of new types of weapons of mass destruction, both passed by the General Assembly on 2nd December.

United Nations News Centre – Top UN officials called on hold-out states to ratify treaty banning nuclear tests in 2011

Another resolution on the “risk of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East,” calling on Israel to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) “without delay” and noting that it remains “the only State in the Middle East that has not yet” done so was passed, with Canada and Micronesia joining Israel and the US in voting against it.

US envoy Robert Wood voted against the resolution at the committee-level last month on the grounds that the measure “fails to meet the fundamental tests of fairness and balance. It confines itself to expressions of concern about the activities of a single country.”

But Israel is the only ‘single country’ with nuclear weapons in the region, and the only country that has not signed the NPT.

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In this article in Electronic Intifada, an independent online news publication focusing on Palestine, its people, politics, culture and place in the world, the author, Ali Abunimah, also touches on Israel’s nuclear safety record. It came near the bottom of a 2012 survey by the Nuclear Safety Initiative examining the security conditions of nuclear materials held in 32 countries. He also deplores the abstention of twenty states from the resolution calling on Israel to join the NPT, including India, Germany (which gives Israel submarines on which it deploys nuclear weapons) and other EU states including the UK, Italy, Austria, the Netherlands and France:

“The usual suspects who lecture the rest of the world about “peace” but are always on hand to assist Israel to commit its crimes while shielding it from accountability”.

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Western foreign policy’s third principle

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Professor Geoffrey Roberts points out in the Financial Times that Martin Wolf omits a third in his recent analysis that the western position is based on two simple principles:

• first, a country is entitled to make its own choices;
• second, borders may not be changed by force” (“Russia is our most dangerous neighbour”, Comment, September 17).

Roberts adds the missing (and critical) qualification: “as long as it suits the west”, continuing:

“Without this proviso it is impossible to comprehend the practice of western foreign policy as opposed to its rhetoric and propaganda.

“In 1962 the US brought the world to the brink of nuclear war because it did not approve of the Cuban government’s decision to invite the Soviet Union to place missiles on its territory.

“Today Iran faces isolation and sanctions to thwart its ambitions to become a nuclear power like the west’s allies, Israel, Pakistan and India.

“In Libya and Syria western states have intervened and interfered with woeful results. Borders are sacrosanct, but not those of the former Yugoslavia or Serbia, which has been dismembered by the western-sponsored secession of Kosovo.

“Yet when Russia acts to protect what it sees as its interests and security in Ukraine, Mr Wolf deems it a menace and the greatest challenge facing the US. He even trots out Vladimir Putin’s statement that the Soviet Union’s collapse was a major geopolitical disaster, without quoting the Russian president’s rider that anyone who thinks the Soviet Union can be recreated needs their head examined.

“Is it any wonder that Russia views the west’s moral posturing in international politics as not just hypocritical and self-serving but dangerous?”

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London-born Geoffrey Roberts is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and currently professor of modern history at University College Cork & head of the School of History at UCC. His academic awards include a Fulbright Scholarship to Harvard University & a Government of Ireland Senior Research Fellowship. He is a regular commentator on history and current affairs for British & Irish newspapers, contributing to the History News Service, which syndicates articles to American media outlets. He has made many radio and TV appearances, acting as an historical consultant for documentary series such as Simon Berthon’s Warlords, broadcast in 2005. He specializes in Soviet diplomatic and military history of the Second World War.

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Iran on the brink: Anne Penketh, program director of BASIC

 

 

Many readers will fear further aggression aimed at Iran. It was cheering to read the level-headed comment on the British-American Security Information Council‘s website with its constructive focus:  

The key in the next few months will be to persuade Iranian leaders – who insist that Iran has only peaceful intentions and is not developing a weapon – from going to the brink. They must accept international controls aimed at guaranteeing the program’s civilian nature. The Obama administration should continue to work through its international coalition, using all the tools at its disposal short of military action which would be a “cure” far worse than the disease. 

We hope that diplomatic efforts to this end will be successful.