Hamas and Israel; an Essay on Moral Clarity

Hamas and Israel; an Essay on Moral Clarity

                                                 By

                                Dr. Michael Sakbani

Date: 14 March 2024 at 11:50:02 CET 

I know that many people all around the world are asking for moral clarity on the Gaza war. This happens in the midst of a genocidal war by Israel, launched in response to an abhorrent terrorist attack by Hamas. So, the call for moral clarity is a worthy and timely endeavor.

Hillary Clinton is quoted as saying that Hamas had broken a ceasefire that was in effect. They did start this war, she said. Yes, Hamas indeed started this war not out of a ceasefire but out of an open air prison for the last 17 years.  Hamas has controlled this prison camp almost on behalf of Israel. We know now that Netanyahu and Israeli governments have been complicit in allowing the financing of Hamas on the expediency of dividing the Palestinians so that the two -state solution would be scuttled.

How can one say Hamas has been in control in Gaza on behalf of Israel, if Hamas wants to replace Israel with an Islamic state that recognizes no validity of the others. One can well assert that in view of the successive Israeli governments policies to boost Hamas at the expense of the Palestinian Athority. Hamas is also a flip side of the advocates of greater Israel; the Charter of the Likude Party of Mr. Netanyahu and the advocacies of the messianic Jews in his government gives only the Jewish people the right of self-determination in "the land between the river and the sea".  After all, God, when he was in real-estate, gave the land to the Jews from the river to the sea!!! Mr. Netanyahu and his likes of extremists want to get rid of Palestinian and have Israel a home for only the Jewish people, the only Jewish state as many say.  But Israel was not created on a land without people for a people without land, as the Zionists repeatedly said. It was a land inhabited by 2.5 million Palestinians who hailed from ancestors who have lived there for thousands of years. These were the people from whom Jesus came and the people who became Christians and later on Muslims. In other words, the Hebrews who lived in that land 3000 years ago are the ancestors of the Palestinians and not of the Jews of the Jewish immigrants who came to Palestine in the 20th century. These Immigrants are people who converted to Judaism in various places outside the historical "Holy Land".

Let there be moral clarity, Israel Zionism is settlers colonialism to solve the European anti-Semitism at the expense of the Palestinians. The Jewish immigrants in the late nineteenth century and the Twentieth century were refugees from the Tsarist Russian pogroms, and in the interwar period, from German Nazi and Eastern European prosecutions. When WW1 ended with the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, the British and French colonialists had the opportunity to divide among themselves the Ottoman territory and solve their Jewish problem by planting the Jewish refugees in Palestine, ignoring fully the indigenous inhabitants. In the San Remo Conference they convened on Palestine, the Palestinians were not even invited. So, they and the Zionists conspired to build a Jewish nationalist state in the European style at the expense of underdeveloped and weak indigenous population. Thus, from the vantage point of Palestinians, the Zionist project was an imperial colonial project.

In 1917, when the British occupied Palestine, there were less than 35,000 Jews in Palestine. And when the UN declared its division plan In 1947, the official British records show that Jews owned only 6.75 percent of historical Palestine and numbered about 800,000. True, the Arab states and the Palestinians did not accept the UN division plan and lost the subsequent war, a war they were not serious about and in which they were out manned two to one and out fought by the small Jewish population. However, the UN decision was a proposal to be put to referendum. The Zionist Leaders did not want to have the referendum, since the Arabs were in the majority. So, Ben-Gurion declared unilaterally the establishment of Israel. 

How one cannot understand the injustice committed by the US and the European powers that dominated the UN. at the time. They decreed that the 800,000 Jews who gathered in Palestine fleeing Europe and the holocaust be given 52 percent of the land, while the 2.5 million Palestinians who lived there should get 48 percent. That is what happened; people who fled European prosecution were given the means and the right to settle a land on the expense of its indigenous inhabitants. This is the injustice of 76 years ago.

And here we come to another moral clarity: what has Israel done after 1967 when it had occupied practically all of historical Palestine. Instead of acknowledging what has happened, and the price paid by the Palestinians, Israeli Zionist leadership sought to occupy the Palestinians `land and keep them under conditions which will force them to immigrate. The catalog of discrimination and ill treatments includes confiscating their land; armed settlers’ aggression; restrictions on movements by check points all over (492 on October 7th); administrative detention of tens of thousands without trials; denial of equal human rights; denial of self-determination. All measures designed to make their lives impossible so that they immigrate. Ariel Sharon said it best: "it is difficult to be a Palestinian"

How has Israel lived comfortably in this precarious situation surrounded by hatred. This is where the US comes into the picture: by giving Israel more than $250 billion of official and tax-exempt private aid since 1967; by using its veto in the UNSC 46 times out of a total of 87 since 1945 to protect Israel; by arming Israel with the most advanced arms; by sharing with Israel military technology, intelligence information and by covering it politically in all international fora. This is why there is no Palestinian issue in domestic Israeli politics. The war camp has had no fear and no security anxiety since Uncle Sam is here. Regrettably, Hillary Clinton seems to have no moral clarity, she has the myopia of the uninformed.

How can reasonable people solve this 100 year war?

The first thing is to recognize that regardless of historical justice, there are two peoples on the same land who have to be protected and both deserve peace, security and dignity. While Zionism is settlers ‘colonialism implanted by colonial powers, Israelis have nowhere to go. On the other side, the Palestinians are also going nowhere. There are basically two solutions: either one democratic state or two -state solution. The first one would do away with a state for the Jews and would usher a binational solution on the basis of one person one vote and equality under the law. It is the easier solution to implement. But this can only happen if Israel casts off Zionism. The chance of that is slim indeed.

The other solution is becoming more difficult by the day. However, it is the only pragmatic solution: a two-state solution on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital. To be sure, the border can be negotiated, but only for slight and necessary modifications. (see the author`s paper “the Horror in Gaza & Israel; a Tragedy Pretold”, published in his blog, which outlines in detail the two-state solution).

In all likelihood, the two - state solution has to be imposed internationally, for Israel still lives with the illusion that it can have what it wants and that the Palestinians are a demographic inconvenience of an inferior and violent people, a typical dehumanization of "the other". In this respect, the US has to stop being Israel lawyer and sponsor and to impose, using its enormous leverage, this solution on Israel. The acid test is whether the US stops talking and starts acting by changing its policies. If the Israelis see that nobody will indulge their ambitions, there will be enough reasonable people among them to form a peace camp. If President Biden, a self-proclaimed Zionist, wants the security of Israel, he should give the Palestinians the right to self-determination in a viable state of their own and change his policies. This is, in my opinion, what any friend of Israel should support.

A final moral clarity: Mr. Netanyahu and most Israelis lament the Palestinians’ hatred of Israel, and the things they teach to their children in the schools. But most Palestinians do not hate the Jews for who they are, but for what Jewish Israel has and is doing to them. If Mr. Netanyahu cares about truth and facts in school curricula, he should first straighten out the falsehoods taught to Israeli children in Hebrew schools about Zionism, the creation of Israel and the Palestinian Arabs.  

Geneva March 12, 2024.