What's Next? Questions and Answers

 

Day 76: December 21

What's Next? Questions and Answers

There are a lot of people asking when will these atrocities in Gaza end and what will happen next. There is a lot of diplomatic talk in the media about the political outcome, but more than any other battlefield (or aggression), I think the political outcome or solution is strongly linked to what is happening on the ground. The fighting on the ground will probably determine the politics in the near and distant future.   This may sound obvious, but this is especially true in this case. In this article, I am trying to answer some significant questions and provide additional questions that are key, in my opinion, to understand the complexity of the situation or the impasses that exist for both societies, the Israelis and Palestinians.

What is happening on the ground in Gaza right now in terms of fighting?

The fighting, in some areas, has become guerilla-like, from building-to-building warfare, where the Israeli army is literally fighting ghosts, and there are casualties among the Israeli military. No one knows for sure the number of deaths among Hamas fighters. The heavy bombardment has leveled more than half of the buildings in almost the whole of the Gaza Strip, North and South. These collapsed buildings and cement blocks are now the perfect cover for Hamas fighters and are slowing down the Israeli tanks, making them an easier target. Many people had to leave or, it can be claimed, were forced to leave from heavy and arbitrary bombardment. A few hundred thousand remain in the Northern parts, but the fact that there are fewer civilians has opened up the space and liberated Hamas fighters for this kind of fighting. However, the images coming out of parts of Northern Gaza are scary, where the Israeli military is systematically erasing any sign of life and leveling down any remaining structures, arresting many of the remaining men and sometimes women, and there are reports of executions. They are turning these neighborhoods into deserts.

How is this impacting Palestinians?

On the Humanitarian level, it is an unimaginable catastrophe that is still unfelt and unaccounted for in its totality for us as Palestinians and, I think, even for the whole world.  In my previous article, there was a description of daily life in Gaza. I encourage you to read it if you haven’t read it. On the collective psychological level for Palestinians, it is excruciatingly painful to watch, minute-by-minute, this violent destruction and ruthless eradication of our cities, agricultural land, and cultural heritage.  Memories are being wiped out with these towns and neighborhoods, and childhood landscapes and images are erased along with all these lives and families. Even if it all ends now, people would have nothing and no one to return to, especially in the North. The streets are unrecognizable, infrastructure is uprooted, and any source of life is drained and leveled down. This, for us as Palestinians, could end up worse than what had happened in 1948, when 80 percent of Palestinians were forced out of historic Palestine by what was then Jewish militias. As second and third-generation Palestinians, we grew up hearing our grandparents' stories of how they fled and had to rebuild their lives after being dispossessed, how they turned the tents into zinc containers and then later into simple homes and streets of the refugee camps that now we see destroyed again on top of people’s heads because they refuse to leave. We feel abandoned, isolated, betrayed, and left to be crushed by a far-right government and, yes, one can say, a fascist government and army.  “Never again” has failed as a motto for both the Israelis and Palestinians. 

When will this war or aggression on Gaza end?

It is difficult to say. It is taking longer than initially expected.  Until the date of this article, the Israeli army says they will need months.  The two declared objectives of this war or aggression seem challenging to achieve. The first objective for the Israeli military, which is bringing back the Israeli hostages, seems to need another round of negotiations with Hamas through Qatar. The Israeli army has so far failed to get the hostages back through military action. As for the second objective that the Israeli army has set, the “eradication of Hamas,” this is a more controversial goal.

But since I am addressing the question above about a realistic expectation of a timeline, the answer is: Phase one of the operation or aggression characterized so far with intense and daily bombardment, tank and boat shelling, might end within weeks. However, phase two will continue. This phase will probably be characterized by less frequent bombing. Still, the fighting on the ground, the division of the Gaza Strip into two or three parts, and the presence of the Israeli army and tanks in Gaza will continue. Israel could continue to withhold sufficient amounts of food, fuel, water, and medical aid from entering Gaza.

No one knows for sure what the next phase will look like. The Israeli army has said it wants to maintain a military presence in Gaza the way it does in the West Bank, and the situation on the ground in the West Bank is similar to what I described above as phase two, except for the withholding of food, fuel, and water. Phase two could go on for years, and in my opinion, it serves the undeclared political agenda of driving as many people as possible out of Gaza. This phase, or any later phase, I think, will also include assassinations of Palestinian political leaders from Hamas, and this will probably instigate more clashes or shorter bouts of fighting.

A significant question that follows my understanding of what Palestinians have been threatened with since the seventh of October, which is their existence on this land, is whether the Israeli government will succeed in its attempts to empty as many non-Jews as possible from the West Bank, Gaza, and inside Israel itself. The project is well-known among Palestinians and is called the transfer project. Will this project be implemented in different forms? We must wait at least a year or a few more years to answer this question.  

Will the Israeli army ever be able to eradicate Hamas or any other form of Palestinian resistance?

It is going to be very difficult to eradicate Hamas. Hamas represents a resistance movement for Palestinians, and such movements usually spring from, flourish in, and have the support of their local communities. Even if this movement is severely undermined, new forms of resistance or groups will arise. Wherever there is suppression, dispossession, impoverishment, and deprivation of rights, resistance will emerge. Only when the source of resistance is removed does it end.  

Will there be any political process?

No one knows for sure whether there will be a political process, and I think it is doubtful.

Israel, in 1992, when there was a more secular, pro-peace Labor Party in power, couldn’t secure the consensus to allow for a Palestinian State. The Israeli society back then couldn’t resume the peace process and the handing in of more land to Palestinians because many believed and still believe this land is their biblical right. The Labour Party lost the elections in 1996 after Prime Minister Rabin was assassinated in 1995 by a right-wing supporter for turning over seven cities to the Palestinian Authority.  Will Israel, now with a highly religious and right-wing coalition, allow a peace process that leads to a resolution where Israeli settlers are asked to change their beliefs about their biblical right to the land in the West Bank, specifically, and to stop confiscating land from Palestinians? 

Next year is an election year in the United States, and it is unlikely that any party in the United States can pressure Israel to engage in a political process. They can pressure the Palestinian Authority to ‘reform or revitalize,’ but it is unclear what that ‘revitalization’ will look like. But even if this takes place and the Palestinian Authority changes the names of figures and ministers in it, any real progress is only possible when both societies -not governments- can reach a consensus that there is a need to share the land. At this current phase, it seems highly unlikely. 

Unfortunately, however, in my opinion, this struggle has reached its final or pre-final stages. What I mean by this is that the 7th of October attack on the Israeli settlements was a reflection of a widespread belief and desire among a number of Palestinians to throw Israelis out of settlements and get the land back. The Israeli army is retaliating with similar desires to throw Palestinians out of what they believe is their land as well. My hope is that when one day, this extremely violent confrontation ends, these extreme points of view, these genocidal desires, will hopefully fail to eradicate the other side. Thus, slowly, a new reality emerges and becomes evident. We have to share the land as equal human beings.

Why do I think we will unlikely witness a peace process shortly?

Some major dilemmas or impasses exist in both societies or, more accurately, in the mentality and beliefs of both societies:  

In Israeli society: Before the seventh of October, Israelis had already voted for a highly right-wing, ultra-Orthodox government that encourages and is elected based on an agenda of confiscating more land. Will there ever be a change in the mentality of Israelis to allow an actual resolution based on ending the occupation, the military rule of Palestinians, and land confiscation?

Will the Israelis feel safe again to live in settlements around Gaza and the West Bank next to Palestinians, even though they have always maintained a heavy military presence, intelligence gatherings, and excessive violence against any fighting brigades?

In Palestinian society: For almost thirty years, the peace process has failed the Palestinians. Will Palestinians again accept negotiations for the sake of the talks without any real resolution, even if economic promises were made?

Can the Palestinian leadership, represented in the Palestinian Authority and Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), redefine itself on a genuinely democratic basis to reflect the changes that have existed in Palestinian society in the past thirty years?

For many reasons, Palestinian elections in the year 2022 were canceled, and this cancelation can be considered a failure and a lack of strong will to form an authentic representative leadership that can negotiate on our behalf in any negotiation process or lead us ahead in this new phase in the struggle. The underlying reason for this failure in unity among Palestinians is reflected in two different paths or beliefs: one that believes in negotiations and possible coexistence, and the other alternative believes in armed resistance and returning to historic Palestine. This paradigm is now heavily disrupted, and it can be argued that it no longer exists. The idea of armed resistance still has strong support in the West Bank, not necessarily for the sake of annihilating Israel, but for maintaining whatever land is left for Palestinians as a response to the increased dispossession of land by Israeli settlers. But it remains yet to be seen whether what is happening in Gaza will affect the people in the West Bank and change their support to armed resistance. Will this fear-based strategy Israel is adopting succeed in the West Bank? 

Also, the situation in Gaza has changed forever. The attempt to put to death the belief in armed resistance, the way it is done now, could backfire. What will any person who has lost literary everything do? How will a population of 2 million who have lost everything behave? 

Israel, after constantly undermining the choice of negotiations, is now choosing to exterminate the choice of armed resistance and, at the same time, is trying a new choice, that of driving Palestinians out. This is why both societies find themselves stuck in an impasse where both seem to deny the other’s side the right to exist on this land. How rooted is this idea in the mentality of both societies? That has recently become a central question on my mind. And will this war or aggression change this idea, especially if Israel fails to drive the Gazans out? This question will need time, at least a year, two years, or a few more years, to see the real effects of this tragedy on both societies.  Many unexpected changes will emerge from this ordeal in both societies. 

What does it take to change people’s beliefs of eradicating the other side? Does this change need a catastrophe of this magnitude? Will the hardliners on both sides finally acknowledge the impossibility of removing the other side from the equation?