Israel and the Palestinians

The obvious solution that is hard because it requires accepting that this is an unjust world

The Israeli-Palestinian issue is often framed as an insoluble conflict with no answers. I disagree. In fact I think the eventual solution to the problem is fairly obvious:

• Israel pulls back from the West Bank except for a few settlements close to the border and swaps other lands in exchange for the settlement lands they are keeping.

• Palestine gains recognition as a country and full self-government but agrees to full demilitarization (perhaps indefinitely or maybe for a set period of years) and agrees to give up all claims on lands within Israel.

• Demilitarization is enforced by a huge international military presence in the West Bank and Gaza.

• Big fences for the foreseeable future.

The tragedy, of course, is that neither side has been willing to agree to this obvious answer. But I still believe that an American led international effort could force this answer into existence. It likely requires the U.S threatening to cut off off aid and even imposing sanctions against Israel, but in the end the Israelis will agree if America is willing to put skin in the game by putting our own soldiers into the peacekeeping forces. The reality, I believe, is that the crazy settlers committed to making “Judea and Samaria” part of Israel are still a significant minority and most Israelis would still trade land for a credible peace.

So then it becomes a question of whether the Palestinians will accept this solution. I think they ultimately do so, if only because it has become clear that they never will have a better option (and because the solution could likely just be imposed upon them, even if they don’t agree).

But I also believe that the right messaging about this solution can help. And that messaging should begin by being upfront that this is not a “just solution.”

We should acknowledge that the plan described above means there will ultimately be no justice for the Palestinian families who fled and lost their homes because of the events triggered by an influx of Jewish immigrants fleeing from Europe and other Middle Eastern countries. We should acknowledge that these Palestinian families will always have legitimate grievances about how they have been treated by history.

That being said, it’s important to note that there was also never justice for the Jewish families who fled to Israel from the lands of their birthplaces (with far more coming from lands in the Middle East than from Europe) to escape anti-semitism, in most cases leaving everything they had ever known behind.

There will be no justice for the Israeli families who lost loved ones at a music festival in the the Negev, and there will be no justice for the families in Gaza who lost loved ones to the Israeli bombs that followed.

And while one could perhaps argue that it’s all Europe’s fault because of the anti-semitism that led to Zionism, and that they should ultimately fund reparations to both Israelis and Palestinians to try and make things right, that would hardly be just to the Europeans of today, who were neither the perpetrators of the sins of their ancestors and whose ancestors themselves suffered unjustly because of the horrors of World Wars I and II.

The reality is that expecting justice from history is a false hope that is almost always a practical impossibility. Whether one is Jewish, Palestinian, Cherokee, African American, South African, Rwandan, Cambodian, or Ukrainian holding out for “justice” is a mistake if it prevents you from making the most of the present.

Perhaps we will one day live in a world that is closer to life within modern societies where the expectation of justice in day to day life is reasonable, attainable, and worth fighting for. But the world of nation states and the march of history is not like that. Holding out for justice in these circumstances is almost certain to leave one stuck in the past with a future that is far less bright than it could have been.