Immutable conflicts

Cultural conflicts?

The ceasefire anticipated for a few hours from now, following months of horrific conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, offers a reprieve but hardly a solution to the conflict between Israel and Hamas. It’s always so seductive to look at the immediate without confronting the fundamental differences in desired endstates each adversary holds. Put more concretely, Israel, now all the more fearful of its vulnerability after the 7 October attacks while determined never to face that again, refuses to acquiesce to a Palestinian state under Hamas control in Gaza. Yet Hamas still aspires to precisely that outcome with the long-standing intention of replacing the Jewish state with an Islamic successor. Despite the millions of artillery shells and bombs used since the conflict began, the basics remain the same.

The ceasefire will theoretically free hostages or prisoners (depending on one’s perspective) held by both sides. Israelis seized by Hamas in various locations on an idyllic weekend in early October 2023 remain an understandable national obsession. Jews, with history so painfully illustrating vulnerability because of unrelenting religious hatred over millennia, have sought to bring home each and every surviving hostage while continuing to mourn the murder of 1200 during the attack.

Hamas, as the nominal but extraordinarily flawed “governing authority” in Gaza, similarly wants to free well over a thousand prisoners taken since the Israeli Defense Forces swept against the Palestinians in retaliation for the original attack. The IDF have been quite successful in wiping out the upper echelon of Hamas (and Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon, for that matter) but also attacked entire Palestinian communities to assure Hamas had no sanctuary. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians face starvation, a paucity of any medical assistance, and dire conditions overall. Nearly two million—or 90%—of the Palestinians in Gaza went through internal displacement in this conflict.

The statistics are massive and the stakes high for everyone involved but the fundamentals still exist. My point is not that the ceasefire is bad as both Israeli and Palestinian societies are spent, although the wholesale destruction of the latters’ communities, already almost unimaginably weaker those in Israel before this round of fighting began, is far more devastating on a daily basis.

But the real question will be what effect, if any, will this conflict have on altering the desired endstates? Israel over its nearly 80 year history seeks security for the Jewish people, pure and simple. Of course the country, as a democracy, includes interest groups pursuing a raft of other goals: seeking an enhanced standard of living, ensuring a better future for their children, achieving overt, legitimate relations with neighbors, and recovering historic lands of Jewish history to name several.

The Palestinians remain a stateless people, thus seek a recognized state which Gaza, to the south of Israel, has never represented. Indeed, the territory Palestinian leaders of various political persuasions have sought back to the founding of Israel with the end of the British Mandate in May 1948 is precisely where the Israel exists today and has history supporting “ownership” centuries ago. Therein lies the non-negotiable of this conflict.

The initial state of Israel existed only for only 19 years before the 1967 War created a de facto buffer zone that many Israelis seek to translate into Israel proper though Jewish settlements. Israel, over the six decades since that conflict, never formally annexed all of the “occupied territories” (it did annex the Golan Heights) yet Jerusalem has ruled them and they are seen as Jewish lands to many devout Israelis. I am not a Middle Eastern scholar but I find it inconceivable today (although I do always say we can’t straight line things, don’t I?) that Israel would even surrender those territories, for religious and security reasons.

The Palestinians also seek control over the Jerusalem sacred site they know as the Temple Mount, a mosque below which Jews worship at the similarly biblical Western Wall. I find the idea of surrendering that portion of Jerusalem even less likely because of its profound importance to both faiths, though proposals to internationalize the city have floated for decades.

So, the ceasefire strikes me as just that: a stoppage in fighting to achieve short terms needs of releasing hostages and providing humanitarian aid.

The bottom line on this conflict is a rejection of compromise as an option because of the basic endstate sought. Israel demands retaining the land the Palestinians claim is theirs. While negotiations on this crop up periodically (ask Bill Clinton what he spent the summer of 2000 doing), powerful nationalist forces are hard to quell on what become existential demands in the eyes of those affected. On Jewish historic lands from twenty-five hundred years ago, Bibi Netanyahu looks more malleable than the hard religious right (part of his governing coalition) demanding that Israel completely reclaim its God-given lands. For Palestinians who lived in those same areas through the centuries of forced Jewish diaspora across the globe, these are non-discussable Palestinian lands that must be returned for any hope of long-term peace. In my lifetime, I don’t think there has really been serious likelihood that would change, although I know several readers of this column are more specialists than I am.

The Taiwan China issue is a similar (if ever so microscopically less difficult since the Chinese occasionally discover some “ancient text” providing an escape clause by curiously redefining things) problem. I am not optimistic that the CCP, with its fear that holding on to that remaining issue from the civil war some seventy-five years after the conflict ended with their victory, will bend on this as they have so much invested in their position. But I especially worry the crux of this problem is now a Chinese one rather than a CCP-centric problem. Conflict over Taiwan is not inevitable but China’s anxieties with the process of Taiwanization over the past seventy-five years makes the current illegitimate regime ever more skittish. But, I simply don’t see why they will negotiate because it’s become a matter of civilizational imperative.

If conflict erupts, I also see little reason to expect even a military defeat will resolve the problem since China would continue its demands. I understand many see this purely as a CCP issue but it strikes me that the Taiwan conundrum remains a China question born, like the Israeli-Palestinian problem, of cultural narrative which is a powerful motivator for obstinance.

As we enter an administration under a president-elect convinced of his negotiating skills (like so many predecessors, in fact), it’s worth remembering which truly intractable, non-negotiable problems exist. The Israel-Palestinian question, Taiwan’s status, and probably Russian obsession with resurrecting a Slavic empire come to mind immediately. Others may well reappear.

But, how much of our time ought we invest in solving irreconcilable challenges versus managing them? It’s a keenly American view that everything can be solved with enough money (perhaps in lesser supply these days), military power, and reason so we can move on to the next crisis as if history truly is a door opening, then closing permanently rather than history being a series of doors reopening at unexpected moments.

In the end, it’s always the rank and file members of society who pay the price for conflict. How often do we remember their plight and their commitment to these struggles rather than assuming they are being manipulated by leaders? Leaders may indeed try to herd their citizens into supporting certain actions but bombarding them over multiple decades with cultural messaging from the government, from religious figures, from cultural texts, and other sources of influence can instill an ironclad commitment to the non-negotiable in the native of nationalism.

When I was in graduate school, one of my colleagues laughed after her oral examinations that she had a question about nationalism. The faculty member opined, in about 1982, that political science literature assured us nationalism was dead so why would anyone study it? We kicked it around over midnight coffee for a couple of nights after her exam but we graduate students went back to whatever we were doing, figuring nationalism would leave us alone.

Turns out nationalism has a tendency to reappear rather often, often with deadly and unforgiving results. And too often it seems pretty immune to compromise so we might consider that as we move into the years ahead. That’s not an argument for surrendering to its bitter history but it’s a thought about how we spend political, diplomatic, military, and other resources in our world.

I welcome your thoughts on this topic. I also hope anyone will chime in with corrections, questions or rebuttals as i am far from correct about everything in the world. In any case, thank you for reading this column. I appreciate all of your time, especially those who also subscribe financially to make this possible.

Be well and be safe. FIN

Stephen Kalin, Summer Said, and Carrie Keller-Lynn, “Israel, Gaza and Egypt Prepare for Cease-fire”, WallStreetJournal.com, 18 January 2025, retrieved at https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israel-gaza-and-egypt-prepare-for-cease-fire-deal-e4781a24?mod=hp_lead_pos3

Grace Wermembol, “A year on, October 7 Reinforces Dueling Narratives Among Israelis and Palestinians”, Woodrow Wilson Center, 7 October 2024, retrieved at https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/year-october-7-reinforces-dueling-narratives-among-israelis-and-palestinians#:~:text=It%20has%20also%20reduced%20the,facing%20“unbearable”%20living%20conditions.