Over the many decades of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory, too many innocents have died, too many futures have been cut short, too many families have been displaced. In the past week alone, as Israel and Hamas traded rocket fire, an estimated 185 Palestinians – mostly civilians – have been killed and another 1,000 injured. Thousands more have been bombed out of their homes.
Any opportunity to end the carnage, even temporarily, must be welcomed. And so it should have been with Egypt’s call for a ceasefire, which was endorsed by Israel’s cabinet in the early hours of yesterday morning, although it was soon dropped by both sides.
In being the first to accept the Egyptian proposal, Israel once again managed to take control of the narrative. And, in dragging its feet – by acknowledging there had been “diplomatic movement” but not accepting the Cairo plan – Hamas played directly into Israel’s hands. Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu can say, with a veneer of credibility, that he is seeking the way of peace, while Hamas continues to take the course of violence – despite its Palestinian constituency suffering disproportionately from the conflict.
Hamas continued to launch rockets into Israel after the deadline, while Israel held fire for longer, but retaliated yesterday afternoon. It is surely only a matter of time before full-blown hostilities resume and the cycle of provocation and retaliation returns. Israel will continue to build settler homes on the West Bank, Palestinians will continue to resist and they will continue to suffer.
As The National has noted before, there is a workable solution – the Arab Peace Plan put forward in 2002 by Saudi Arabia. It provides for the normalisation of relations between all the Arab countries and Israel in return for an Israeli withdrawal from the Occupied Territories and a “just settlement” for the Palestinian people.
Mr Netanyahu has refused to sign and has recently admitted that he has no intention of pursuing a two-state solution, effectively condemning the peace process to history.
But that also means that although Israel may be running the narrative now, it will undoubtedly lose friends later. Slowly but surely, Israel is revealing itself as an apartheid state similar to the former South Africa. When that is clear, perhaps the world will act against Tel Aviv as it did against Pretoria.
