“Do not appease your friend at the time of his anger, and do not comfort him while his dead still lies before him.” From the Talmud, Pirkei Avot (Wisdom of the Fathers) 4:18.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is strewn with inflection points — events that seemingly came out of nowhere and upended all previous calculations. An incomplete list of such events would certainly include the Palestinian general strike of 1936, which led to the Peel Commission’s recommendation for “Partition,” a concept still around today under the name “Two-State Solution”; the Holocaust, which made Western nations accept the imperative of a Jewish state; President Anwar Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem in 1977, which led to the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty and ended the full-scale wars between Israel and Arab states; and the First Intifada in 1987, which forced Israelis to recognize that occupation was not cost-free. And there were “turning points that failed to turn,” which is one description of the Oslo peace process of the 1990s.
Hamas’ murderous raid on Oct. 7, resulting in the deaths of more than 1,300 Israelis, mostly civilians, may well turn out to be such a consequential inflection point, having unleashed political and popular forces that could lead in a positive or, just as likely, extremely negative direction. Intensive diplomacy is underway, both publicly and, probably more importantly, behind the scenes, to channel the forces we see into constructive rather than purely destructive directions.
Israel is getting a temporary pass to bomb Gaza at will because no one is going to tell it what to do while its 1,300 victims still lie unburied. Any country, democratic or not, would be looking to strike out forcefully against an outrage like that when the perpetrator is known. The international reticence is not surprising but will only last until next week if the bombing continues, let alone if Israel launches a ground assault.
What I hope is happening privately is that Israel is being warned by the United States and Europe that a) global support will quickly evaporate if hundreds more Palestinians continue to be killed daily; b) many dozens and soon hundreds of Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers will likely be killed in the expected ground assault with little to show for it except hundreds or thousands of dead Palestinian civilians; c) “uprooting” Hamas will prove impossible without a full-scale occupation, which Israelis overwhelmingly, and rightly, don't want; d) Israel can protect itself adequately if it takes that seriously; and e) economic amelioration is, at most, a palliative and so the U.S. must insist on a Saudi deal that gives the Palestinian national cause significant political momentum. This will be even more difficult now because the Palestinian Authority (PA) is at the nadir of its power, given President Mahmoud Abbas’ age and ailing health, and its pitiful support among Palestinians. Now that Hamas has presumably permanently disqualified itself as an interlocutor, reviving an effective Palestinian leadership is crucial, one that is respected both by Palestinians and by the Arab states, as well as being able to deal with Israel. That will not be easy.
The immediate difficulty is how to channel the understandable rage of the newly united Israeli public into something that does not involve the death of thousands of people. The outline above may not be sufficient. But we are at an inflection point, where things could change historically. Unfortunately, there is no Henry Kissinger or Otto von Bismarck on the scene who could grasp all the moving pieces and put them into some sort of order.
There is also no public sign that the Biden administration, or anyone else in a position to do so, is forcefully and persuasively delivering these messages to the Israeli leadership. Nor is there yet any clear sign that the Israeli public's demand for vengeance is close to satisfied. Time is quickly running out to channel the situation into a possibly constructive course.
Paul Scham is a professor of Israel Studies at the University of Maryland, a former director of its Gildenhorn Institute for Israel Studies, and a Non-Resident Scholar at MEI.
Photo by Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images
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