In the longer-term, should it decide to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Biden administration will need to address the issues creating stress, and credibly pressure the parties to limit provocative actions. Toward Israel, this will mean expressing concern over incursions on Haram al-Sharif, home demolitions and expulsions, settlement expansion, and the like. Toward the Palestinians, the administration will need to determine its position on reconciliation, which would have to include Hamas, as well as issues of incitement and the controversial prisoner payment system.
But it seems that — as has been the case many times before — the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will not settle into a frozen one, able to be cast aside by the international community. Rather, without active measures to address flashpoints and convince publics that peace with the other is possible, events could spiral out of control. Type: Podcast. Type: Analysis and Commentary. Peace Processes.
Type: Congressional Testimony. Fifteen years after the last national elections, the Palestinian polity is as fractured as ever, adding but another obstacle to resolving the seemingly intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict. T he recent equation of African American oppression and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been hailed as a triumph of intersectionality, whose proponents aim to build international solidarity across barriers of class, race, gender, and nation.
And sometimes, they do. But in the current case, the theory has been used or, I would argue, misused to occlude complex realities, negate history, prevent critical thinking, and foster juvenile simplifications.
A truly intersectional approach would incorporate the realization that, while Israel is far more powerful than the Palestinians, it is an often besieged minority within the larger Arab and Muslim worlds—something of which even the most left-wing Israelis are acutely aware.
By Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas—everyone. An intersectional left—or a simply honest one—would not delicately turn away from the religious sectarianism, violent repression, and anti-feminism of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Instead, what we now have is a kind of deformed intersectionality—intersectionality lite—in which the theory has been robbed of its challenging nuances and flattened into a starkly reductionist insistence that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is Manichean.
Right-wing American supporters of Israel—including many members of AIPAC, for which the Jewish state is a perpetually innocent dream palace—are equally facile, and willfully blinkered, in their views. There is another problem with intersectionality, at least in the way it is now being used. But there is no intersection between American Blacks and Palestinians.
The moral significance of solidarity is that it extends solidarity to people with whom you have no intersection. Intersectionality is an entirely different idea from internationalism. And in the Manichean imagination—and this, I think, is its greatest sin, if I can use that word—the democratic forces within Israel, both Jewish and Arab, are rendered literally invisible, as if by a perverse magic trick.
It is extremely hard to figure out how to extend solidarity—in real, not rhetorically grandiose terms—to Syrians and Afghans ; to democracy activists in China, Nicaragua, and Hong Kong ; to horrifically endangered peoples such as the Uyghurs and Yazidis and Rohingya. Ending the occupation, and strengthening endangered democratic institutions in Israel, are goals that rank high on the list of political urgencies for some of us. In the current, often bewildering international context, the venomous attacks on Israel qua Israel offer a seductively easy, morally antiseptic—and, I would add, appallingly self-absorbed—way to intervene in foreign affairs.
The hysterical hyperbole, the self-referential projections, the lazy conflations, the warped histories that abound today: All substitute for solidarity.
What is needed, I believe, is an entry into the world of political thought, whose foundation is the ability to make distinctions within the context of history rather than to crush them. Skip to content Site Navigation The Atlantic. Popular Latest. The Atlantic Crossword. Sign In Subscribe. Britain took control of the area known as Palestine after the ruler of that part of the Middle East, the Ottoman Empire, was defeated in World War One.
The land was inhabited by a Jewish minority and Arab majority. Tensions between the two peoples grew when the international community gave Britain the task of establishing a "national home" in Palestine for Jewish people. For Jews it was their ancestral home, but Palestinian Arabs also claimed the land and opposed the move.
Between the s and s, the number of Jews arriving there grew, with many fleeing from persecution in Europe and seeking a homeland after the Holocaust of World War Two.
Violence between Jews and Arabs, and against British rule, also grew. In , the UN voted for Palestine to be split into separate Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem becoming an international city. That plan was accepted by Jewish leaders but rejected by the Arab side and never implemented. In , unable to solve the problem, British rulers left and Jewish leaders declared the creation of the state of Israel.
Many Palestinians objected and a war followed. Troops from neighbouring Arab countries invaded. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were forced out of their homes in what they call Al Nakba, or the "Catastrophe". By the time the fighting ended in a ceasefire the following year, Israel controlled most of the territory. Jordan occupied land which became known as the West Bank, and Egypt occupied Gaza.
Jerusalem was divided between Israeli forces in the West, and Jordanian forces in the East. Because there was never a peace agreement - with each side blaming the other - there were more wars and fighting in the following decades. Neither they nor their descendants have been allowed by Israel to return to their homes - Israel says this would overwhelm the country and threaten its existence as a Jewish state.
The lack of negotiations since has led to calls for unilateral action—some of which could support a two-state solution while others would undermine it.
Of course, unilateral steps, however significant or positive they may be, will never achieve a final settlement of the conflict. Unilateral Israeli measures that can advance peace are numerous. But there are numerous unilateral measures that Israel can employ to reduce the possibility of peace. The most dangerous unilateral step for the two-state solution would be annexation of parts of the West Bank such as the Jordan Valley, as proposed by Netanyahu during the most recent election campaign.
Alarmingly, the proposal was also seemingly endorsed by the more centrist Blue and White Party. The cost of annexation would be high. Former Israeli security officials recognize the threat annexation represents. While certainly fewer, the Palestinians do have some options for unilateral action, foremost the termination of previous agreements or the dismantlement of the PA.
At the U.
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