The violence against hundreds of innocent Israeli civilians by Hamas over the weekend – Black Saturday – was horrific and unacceptable. What follows next will be far worse; already Israel and its western backers are demanding blanket endorsement for any and all actions that Israel might take in exercising its right to defend itself. 

We are told there is no moral equivalency between what Hamas has done and what Israel is clearly planning to do. We are told in not so many words that this is quite literally a battle between good and evil, between the region’s only democracy and a bunch of barbaric bloodthirsty terrorists. 

But what happened over the weekend – as horrible as it was – did not take place in a vacuum. For more than 75 years now, Palestinians have had to endure unimaginable repression, humiliation and misery under Israeli occupation. 

According to the UN, Israel has arrested and detained – often without trial – an estimated one million Palestinians since 1967. Indeed, two out of every five Palestinian males have been arrested and charged under 1,600 military orders that control every aspect of life under Israel’s military occupation. Indeed, Gaza itself has been described as the largest open-air prison in the world.

As far as Israel is concerned, the Palestinians have only two options – submit to Israel and accede to all its demands (as the Palestinian Authority has done) and be condemned to a slow death by a thousand cuts. Or fight back (as Hamas is doing) and be condemned as terrorists to be punished, blockaded and bombed out of existence. 

When an entire nation is left without hope, when it is pushed beyond breaking point, when its people are killed, maimed and humiliated at will, when their dignity is taken from them, violence is all but inevitable. Desperate people, people with nothing left to lose, are often driven to do desperate, even despicable things. 

We can condemn their methods – the same methods incidentally that Israel employed in its fight for independence decades ago – but not the legitimacy of their cause. 

And neither should we be selective in our moral outrage – rising up in righteous anger whenever Israelis are killed but ignoring the thousands of Palestinians that have been killed, maimed or imprisoned under Israeli occupation. Palestinian lives matter too. If Israel has a right to self-defence, do not the Palestinian people have a right to respond to decades of occupation and subjugation? Are they not allowed to yearn for freedom, to pursue their hopes and dreams like Israelis or Americans or Germans?

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has now vowed to reduce Gaza to rubble. The heavy and indiscriminate bombing of one of the most densely populated strips of land in the world and the anticipated invasion of Gaza will result in an even more horrific slaughter of civilians. Will the world watch in silence as Israel’s right of self-defence morphs into Netanyahu’s final solution to the Gaza question?

No matter the punishment inflicted on Gaza, one thing is sure – it will not bring Israel the peace and security it longs for. Violence begets violence. Today’s bombs will birth tomorrow’s terrorists and sow the seeds for yet more killing fields. 

It should be evident to all – and especially to Israelis and Palestinians – that there can be no peace, no respite from the deadly cycle of violence and retribution unless the legitimate rights of both Israelis and Palestinians are accommodated and respected. Both have the right to exist within secure borders as free and independent nations.  

The greatest thing that friends of Israel and Palestine can do at this difficult time is help them both to find that middle ground around which a two-state solution can be constructed and the occupation ended. It’s time for China to play a greater role as well given that the US is too invested in Israel to be an honest broker. Palestine’s Arab neighbours, in particular, must not shirk their responsibility; there must be no normalisation of relations with Israel until Israel is willing to normalise relations with the Palestinian people. 

[Dennis Ignatius | Kuala Lumpur | 13 October 2023]