Rami G. Khouri

The 72-hour humanitarian cease-fire that went into effect in Gaza and Israel Friday morning lasted for half an hour before collapsing into total war. 

This should remind us what is needed to quickly shift the focus of discussion and analysis about the Israel-Palestine conflict into the rather convoluted realm of the constantly evolving strategic aims of many political actors. The desire by most actors to extend a temporary cease-fire into a permanent one would be a constructive endeavor if it forced all concerned parties to genuinely grapple with the tough underlying causes of the conflict between Palestine and Israel, mainly the wider, older conflict between Zionism and Arabism.

 

The issues and the actors keep changing, but it is important not to allow a human desire for permanent calm to distort our analyses of why we experience only repeated conflict, and of the many actors and aims that now flood the stage. The actors include Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Egypt, Qatar, Turkey, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority and its Fatah leadership under President Mahmoud Abbas, Gazans who do not support Hamas, West Bank-Jerusalemite Palestinians who do not support Abbas, Israel and its assorted internal ideological movements, Jews around the world, the United Nations and many others. 

They will all weigh in now on a combination of fleeting and even diversionary concerns as well as critical core issues, and we would do well to recognize the important differences among them. One way to do this is to always ask about cause and effect in assessing any party’s behavior. So issues such as removing Israel’s blockade of Gaza, ending Israeli aerial attacks against Gazans, closing Hamas’ tunnels and rocket launching sites, Gaza’s demilitarization and other issues dominating discussions can only usefully be addressed if one is clear about whether they reflect an underlying cause of conflict or are simply a reaction to an existing problem either side finds intolerable. 

The most important, enduring and powerful driver of this conflict remains the transformation of historic Palestine from a majority Arab land to a majority Jewish one, culminating in 1947-1948 in the creation of the state of Israel and the expulsion, wartime flight and exile of half the indigenous Palestinian Arab population. It is why Palestinians and other Arab states have fought and resisted Israel and Zionism since the 1930s. Gaza, Hamas, rockets and tunnels are only the latest manifestation of an Arab determination to redress those core grievances. 

From the Israeli side, repeated savage attacks against Gaza, the jailing of thousands of Palestinians, nonstop colonization of Palestinian lands, Judaization of Arab East Jerusalem, and many other actions similarly reflect a continuation of Israeli priorities in the fundamental Zionism-Arabism conflict that has driven events for nearly three-quarters of a century.

 

In the short term, this means weighing the Israeli-Zionist demand for the demilitarization of Gaza against the Arab demand for the de-Zionization of the 1967 colonized occupied territories and redressing the refugee status of Palestinians. The resistance movements in Gaza fighting Israel are only a consequence of how Israel has assaulted, occupied, expelled, colonized, killed, jailed, besieged and brutalized the Palestinians for the past 65 years. If Palestinians enjoyed their national rights and lived in peace in their own state and lands, they would have no need to fight Israel. 

This also means weighing the Israeli-Zionist demand for returning Gaza to the rule of Mahmoud Abbas against the reality that Fatah-led diplomacy and governance for the past half-century, and specifically in the West Bank and Gaza for the past 20 years, has been a massive disappointment for most Palestinians. Israel wants Abbas and Fatah to rule in Gaza so they can act as the policeman for Zionist colonization, as they have in the West Bank in recent years. How can anyone in their right mind ever possibly believe that this is an option that Palestinians will accept, without some gains of equal importance in exchange? 

Similarly, the roles of Egypt, Qatar, the United States and others will now enjoy fresh scrutiny, always within the equation that seeks to benefit either Zionism or Arabism in the wider conflict. Most discussions about Arab actors – Egypt, Hamas, Abbas or other Arab governments – tend to ignore the large gap still defining relations between Arab leaders and their citizens – the same painful gap that sparked the Arab uprisings in late 2010. 

A cease-fire, when it happens, could be an important moment during which all sides should courageously explore their willingness and ability to set aside short-term gains for the elusive but tantalizing long-term prize of genuine peaceful coexistence between Palestinians and Israelis, who both enjoy equal national rights in their respective sovereign countries. If any real leaders and statesmen exist out there who can respond to this challenge, now is the time to act.