Last week, the front cover of The Economist was a forlorn Israeli flag with the headline “Israel Alone,” and a lead article arguing that failure to secure a ceasefire in Gaza “could leave Israel locked in the bleakest trajectory of its 75-year existence, featuring endless occupation, hard-right politics and isolation.” This followed in the footsteps of a letter from UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron to the chair of the foreign affairs select committee: “It is of enormous frustration that UK aid into Gaza has been routinely held up waiting for Israeli permissions. For instance, I am aware of some UK-funded aid being stuck at the border just under three weeks waiting for approval. The main blockers remain arbitrary denials by the government of Israel and lengthy clearance procedures including multiple screenings and narrow opening windows in daylight hours.” Completing the triple whammy was the decision by V-Dem, a leading global democracy index, for the first time in 50 years, to downgrade Israel from the liberal democracy category, “primarily due to substantial declines in the indicators measuring the transparency and predictability of the law, and government attacks on the judiciary,” now defining it as an “electoral democracy.”
There is much to contest about these three claims. The Economist article itself acknowledges that Israel’s invasion of Gaza “has not gone badly” and has reduced Hamas’s fighting capacity, while avoiding (at least for now) a major regional flare-up. Cameron’s broadside doesn’t consider UN failings in delivering the aid or the fact that a significant chunk is stolen by Hamas. The head of the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI), Dr. Assaf Shapira, meanwhile, argues that the V-Dem downgrading is “troubling but not catastrophic.”
The exact details of the charges, though, are less significant than the fact of their existence. These claims are not coming from the Islamist or far-left groups that have dominated global protests against Israel’s war in Gaza. They come from figures and institutions that are taken far more seriously in the corridors of power. Nor are those making these arguments, unlike the Islamist and far-left protesters, opposed to Israel’s existence. As a result, they should be of even greater concern.
While it’s true that a noisy (and all too powerful) minority of Israelis are committed to Jewish settlement of the West Bank (and Gaza) for ideological reasons, most Israelis who oppose Palestinian statehood are more pragmatic. Today, they argue that a two-state solution would be too great a risk, that it would open Israel up to the possibility of an October 7 on steroids. After all, they say, look what we got when we withdrew from Lebanon and Gaza.
All they offer instead, though, is the permanent occupation and subjugation of the Palestinians. In advocating for this position, rightly or wrongly, they have already lost the argument. Much of the world views October 7 as an inevitable result of trying to manage the unmanageable; they are emboldened in this position by Israel’s refusal to spell out a coherent vision for the day after the war. The world sees the high casualty rate in Gaza, the problems with humanitarian aid, and the ongoing repression in the West Bank. With these optics, irrespective of their cause, a country claiming to be a liberal democracy will struggle to win.
One friend, who supports the status quo as the least bad option, compared this dilemma to being asked by friends to put one’s head in the oven. No matter how much they cajole you, you’re not going to do it. But this is a reductionist position. Israel does not need to immediately withdraw to the 1967 lines; this would indeed be foolish. But it does need to acknowledge the undesirability of the status quo, that the ideal solution is one in which the Palestinians are not denied rights that we Israelis take for granted. It’s right to condition this on the destruction of Hamas’s existence and the Palestinian acceptance of Jewish statehood, but one is left with the feeling that, for too many Israelis, even if the Palestinians started passionately singing the Hatikvah, they would still prefer the option of permanent occupation.
Whatever happens from here, we have lost the argument that permanent occupation is the least bad option. We could shrug our shoulders and respond with David Ben-Gurion’s credo of “what matters is not what the goyim say, but what the Jews do” but this is only staving off the inevitable. While Israel won’t become apartheid South Africa overnight, the examples cited above are harbingers of an increasingly inevitable trajectory, which makes it even more vital for Israel to seize control of any process towards Palestinian sovereignty.
Some might claim that this diagnosis is overly alarmist. They will point to support for Israel among the Republicans or the populist right in Europe and elsewhere. But this itself is evidence of my point. Leaving aside the obvious moral problem of relying on support from such people, they will not remain in power forever. As Chuck Schumer’s speech showed, support from the Democrats gets smaller by the year, and while it may be comforting to think that this is solely the result of the progressive takeover of the party, it is also the result of Israel’s consistent adoption of hardline policies. Even Donald Trump, with the evangelicals at his back and without having to worry about the progressive vote, said earlier this week: “Israel has to be very careful, because you're losing a lot of the world, you're losing a lot of support." It is unreasonable to expect a blank check from the world’s largest superpower while refusing to take account of its legitimate concerns.
It’s precisely because some of the criticisms above are unfair that the righteous temptation to ignore them becomes so strong. Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians, whatever one thinks of it, is a symptom and not a cause of the conflict. The cause remains the violent rejection of Jewish statehood, particularly from Hamas, as well as the other proxies of Iran. Accordingly, many might be tempted to continue to go it alone even in the face of massive opposition (this sentiment is already emerging following the UNSC Ramadan ceasefire resolution). But no man, or woman, or country, is an island. Whether right or wrong, fair or unfair, Israel cannot win the argument that the only option it has at its disposal is permanent occupation. It is far better to take up the mantle being offered by the likes of the Saudis than to churlishly seek a return to October 6th.
Israel did not "withdraw" from Gaza. They built a wall around it and continued to control the area. No one buys that "withdrew" BS anymore. And Israel's already an apartheid state. If Israel doesn't give a crap about we or critics think, fine. But then it should do what it wants on its own f-g dime.
Once the Palestinians acknowledge the futility of their goal of eradicating Israel and recognize both Israel’s right to sovereignty as the nation state of the Jewish people who have a millennial long connection to their historical homeland, only then can substantive negotiations toward a peaceful resolution proceed.
And until then, experience shows that there’s nothing Israel can offer to expedite the coming of that - to borrow from President Biden - come to Jesus moment the Palestinians need to have. Maybe treating them as adults responsible for there choices could be a first step for interested outsiders to consider. Beyond that, it’s time to admit that the ball has always been in the Palestinian court.