Blood meridian in Palestine

Diarmait Mac Giolla Chríost

From that appalling day on 7 October 2023, the bloody tide of war has been at its fullest, at its highest, at its most all-consuming, in Palestine. It is on a par with the wars of 1948, 1967 and 1973.

Since that autumn day, the State of Israel has realised a number of dramatic geo-strategic goals that have for many years appeared to be beyond its reach.

The first of these is the emasculation of Hamas in Gaza. The immense damage done to Hamas by Israel includes the elimination of an entire leadership cadre.

Israel has similarly emasculated Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Also, Israel’s stunning attack on Iran has set back that country’s nuclear program and ballistic missile arsenal for years.

Syria 

In addition, its invasion of Syria in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Bashar al-Assad, hitherto ally of Hezbollah, has allowed Israel to further secure its entrenchment in the Golan Heights.

Beyond these goals, the extent of the expansion of both State-authorised settlements and of land declared as State property by Israel in the West Bank has reached a peak not seen since the 1990s.

Palestinian political institutions and groups have suffered very considerable damage. While Hamas has been pummelled into the rubble of Gaza, in the West Bank the credibility and legitimacy amongst ordinary Palestinians of the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, the single most important governmental body created as a part of the Oslo Accords (1993-5), a set of agreements made between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation, has reached pitifully low levels.

The last elections for the Palestinian Authority were held in 2006, the result of which was a clear victory for Hamas over Fatah. Following a short and brutal conflict between the two parties, the West Bank fell under the control of Fatah while Gaza came under the control of Hamas.

Since 7 October 2023, the Palestinian Authority has been fighting, literally, against other Palestinian groups in an effort to remain in power. These groups operate under umbrella terms linked with specific geographic locations in the West Bank, and prominent amongst them are Katibat Jenin, Katibat Nablus, and Katibat Tulkarm.

They are known to be affiliated to and also to draw their membership and support from some familiar organisations, including Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and also, it appears, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades (a militant grouping usually associated with Fatah).

Intra-Palestinian conflict

This intra-Palestinian conflict has culminated in the Palestinian Authority effectively allowing their own military campaign of Operation Protect the Homeland against Palestinian militants in Jenin to be merged with the Israeli military campaign in the West Bank, namely Operation Iron Wall.

And all the while, ordinary Palestinians in the West Bank are suffering an upsurge in Israeli settler violence against them and from which the Palestinian Authority seems incapable of providing protection.

A point of inflection has been reached in the Middle East.

Israelis and Palestinians have been here in the past, of course, one generation after the other, since the creation of the State of Israel and before.

War has worked for Israel and it has not for the Palestinians.

Today, the State of Israel is in ascendance and the Palestinians are a house divided.

And yet, peace will and must be made. The tide of war is shifting; the flow of violence slowly-slowly turning to ebb.

War crimes

And yet also, despite the extraordinary successes of its armed forces, the credibility of the State of Israel too has suffered. There are accusations of war crimes, of ethnic cleansing, of genocide. In the making of peace, how war has been prosecuted matters. In this regard the State itself is, rightly, held to a much higher standard than proscribed terrorist organisations.

Moreover, despite the geo-strategic gains made by Israel through force of arms, the fundamental problems remain:  the status of Jerusalem, the plight of Palestinian refugees, and the future of those Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories that are considered illegal under international law.

The current Israeli proposals on the future of Gaza comprising of the removal of Palestinians to other Arab countries through voluntary emigration, the concentration of the remaining population of Gaza in a ‘humanitarian city’, and, the occupation of Gaza and its subjugation to the control of the Israel Defense Forces, do not constitute the foundations for an enduring peace in Palestine.

Rather, they are an extension of the long-standing conflict in general and of the current war in particular. If they ever become a reality, they could only be a transition to something else: they are not the destination.

There shall be many architects of the peace to come.

But chief amongst them must be a new State of Israel, committed to ending the occupation, committed to sharing Jerusalem, committed to the permanent relief of the condition of the Palestinian refugees, committed to the application of international law, committed to enabling Palestinian statehood.

And chief amongst them also must be Palestinian partners, credible and legitimate, committed to recognising the State of Israel, to living with it amongst the family of nations in comity.

Diarmait Mac Giolla Chríost is a professor at Cardiff University, and the author of Fieldnotes from Celtic Palestine published by University of Wales Press. The book is now available in all good bookshops.