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Op-Ed Contributor, New York Times, Wednesday, June 2, 2010 Israeli Force, Adrift on the Sea For 2,000 years, the Jews knew the force of force only
in the form of lashes to our own backs. For several decades now, we have been
able to wield force ourselves—and this power has, again and again,
intoxicated us. In the period before Israel was founded, a large
portion of the Jewish population in Palestine, especially members of the
extremely nationalist Irgun group, thought that military
force could be used to achieve any goal, to drive the British out of the
country, and to repel the Arabs who opposed the creation of our state. Luckily, during Israel’s early years, prime ministers
like David Ben-Gurion and Levi Eshkol knew very well that force has its
limits and were careful to use it only as a last resort. But ever since the
Six-Day War in 1967, Israel has been fixated on military force. To a man with
a big hammer, says the proverb, every problem looks like a nail. Israel’s siege of the Gaza Strip and Monday’s violent
interception of civilian vessels carrying humanitarian aid there are the rank
products of this mantra that what can’t be done by force can be done with
even greater force. This view originates in the mistaken assumption that
Hamas’s control of Gaza can be ended by force of arms or, in more general
terms, that the Palestinian problem can be crushed instead of solved. But Hamas is not just a terrorist organization. Hamas
is an idea, a desperate and fanatical idea that grew out of the desolation
and frustration of many Palestinians. No idea has ever been defeated by
force—not by siege, not by bombardment, not by being flattened with tank
treads and not by marine commandos. To defeat an idea, you have to offer a
better idea, a more attractive and acceptable one. Thus, the only way for Israel to edge out Hamas would
be to quickly reach an agreement with the Palestinians on the establishment
of an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as defined by the
1967 borders, with its capital in East Jerusalem. Israel has to sign a peace
agreement with President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah government in the West
Bank—and by doing so, reduce the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to a conflict
between Israel and the Gaza Strip. That latter conflict, in turn, can be
resolved only by negotiating with Hamas or, more reasonably, by the
integration of Fatah with Hamas. Even if Israel seizes 100 more ships on their way to
Gaza, even if Israel sends in troops to occupy the Gaza Strip 100 more times,
no matter how often Israel deploys its military, police and covert power,
force cannot solve the problem that we are not alone in this land, and the
Palestinians are not alone in this land. We are not alone in Jerusalem and
the Palestinians are not alone in Jerusalem. Until Israelis and Palestinians
recognize the logical consequences of this simple fact, we will all live in a
permanent state of siege—Gaza under an Israeli siege, Israel under an
international and Arab siege.
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