Imagine a group violently forced from their homeland two millennia ago that lived scattered through Europe, Africa, and the Middle East as minorities, tolerated at best, persecuted for their race and religion at worst, which only in the last century endured both one of the world’s most brutal genocides in Europe and a coordinated ethnic cleansing from North Africa and the Middle East. Further, imagine that this group was permitted to establish a nation in their former homeland and against all odds, held that nation against repeated military assaults from their hostile neighbors.
This group is the Jews, and their embattled nation is Israel. It would seem hard not to be sympathetic to a group that has survived and even thrived under these conditions, but the world remains largely hostile. A 2014 study found that one in four adults worldwide have anti-Semitic beliefs and 36 countries, nearly one in five, do not recognize Israel as a nation.
The U.S. has been a staunch ally of Israel but ended a longstanding tradition of protecting the Jewish state in December. Our U.N. ambassador declined to veto a measure that condemns Israel’s settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as illegal and does not recognize a Jewish claim to the Jewish Quarter, home for millennia to a Jewish remnant, or even the site of its historical religious center, the Temple Mount.
In this resolution, the U.N. joins a long list of governmental powers that have tried to restrict Jews from accessing their holy site, from the pagan Romans to the Christian Byzantines to the Muslim Umayyads. It is shameful that our nation’s representatives have stood by during this latest attempt while the U.N. strips legitimacy from the oldest religious group to lay claim to the Temple Mount.
The resolution’s condemnation of Israel’s settlements in Palestinian territory is more justified, but ultimately counterproductive. Though its stated aim is “achieving, without delay a comprehensive, just and lasting peace,” the resolution removes Israel’s primary tool to bring the Palestinians to the bargaining table and thus makes a peace deal less likely. Israel’s main bargaining chip has been its settlements. In previous peace talks, Israel has offered to withdraw from almost the entire West Bank and swap Israeli land to keep its largest settlements.
There will be no lasting peace between the two entities until Israel ends its occupation of Palestinian land, but trying to force Israel to withdraw as a precondition to talks is putting the cart before the horse.
Countries that have a history of ill will between them are moved by quid pro quo arrangements, not concessions in advance. President Obama found this out the hard way when he removed a proposed missile defense system in Eastern Europe as an act of goodwill toward Russia. Instead of being placated, Russia took it as a sign of weakness and has become more assertive in their attempts at regional domination. Pressuring Israel to remove their settlements in advance of talks, when these are the main thing capable of bringing the Palestinians to the table, is an act of at least as much naiveté.
Palestinians are not in a hurry to get their own state. Only a slight majority favors a two-state solution, and while it might seem that the U.N. resolution is a step toward this solution, it will not bring peace sooner. Instead it will embolden Palestinians to continue their strategy of rejecting peace talks with the Israelis in favor of letting the U.N. and other political entities without direct stake in the conflict take up the fight for them. After all, the resolution is a major diplomatic success for the Palestinians achieved without even coming to the negotiating table with the Israelis.
And the Israelis are unlikely to budge on their settlements without winning concessions from the Palestinians, resolution or no. They have little else they are willing to offer for peace, and as Israeli politics veer toward nationalism, increasingly little desire for it.
I’ve been to Israel and the West Bank. I’ve seen the fences and checkpoints keeping Palestinians out of Israeli territory. I’ve also seen signs warning Israelis to stay out of Palestinian areas on pain of death. I’ve been offered keepsakes that show the territory of both Israel and the Palestinian territories painted in the colors of the Palestinian flag, effectively claiming that Israel should be erased. I’m also aware that many Israelis likewise consider the entire territory their own and thus see no problem with encroaching on Palestinian land.
We in the West tend to misrepresent the Israel-Palestine conflict, blaming its intractability on one side or the other. In reality, there are significant groups on both sides which oppose the compromise of a two-state solution. As of last August, 41 percent of Israelis and 49 percent of Palestinians did not support a two-state solution. Many members of these groups believe that the entire land is legitimately theirs and reject any claim to it by the rival group.
On the Israeli side, these groups are generally the ones making settlements to claim land for the Jewish state. On the Palestinian side, these groups are the ones shooting rockets at Israel, running over Israeli citizens or calling for such violence. Both methods, employed by the nationalist radicals of both sides, tacitly aid the moderates in putting pressure on their counterparts to come to the negotiating table. Both of these methods are illegal, but the Israeli tactic is vastly more humane and reversible.
That’s why it’s hypocritical to censure Israel for its settlements without addressing the cult of violence endorsed by the leaders of Palestine and permeating its culture. People should take the time to acquaint themselves with the grim realities of the situation before they heedlessly jump on the bandwagon for one side or the other.
Palestinian sympathizers tend to portray the fault for the continued dysfunctional relations as being all on Israel’s side, and Israeli sympathizers tend to portray the fault as being all on the Palestinians’. Neither portrayal is helpful to solving the problem and neither is true. We shouldn’t be so quick to demonize or deify either Israel or Palestine.
It is easy to flatten out the world’s problems and offer simplistic solutions. But to assign one side or the other full blame for a situation like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is to oversimplify the problem and ignore the nuances of reality. The U.N. can’t root out hatred or extinguish religious revanchism. Any solution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem will have to be from the ground up, so heavy-handed efforts like the U.N.’s resolution are likely only to perpetuate the conflict.