Sunanda K. Datta-Ray | Israel can celebrate Sinwar’s killing, but no end to war yet
Israeli jubilation at the elimination -- the politically correct term for murder – of the Hamas commander, Yahya Sinwar, may be a trifle premature. If the killing does “pave the way for a change that will lead to a new reality in Gaza”, to quote Israel’s foreign minister Israel Katz, that change may indicate West Asia’s future polity rather than just the removal of Hamas and Iranian control, as Mr Katz hopes.
True change demands, especially in the aftermath of drone attacks on the private residence of Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, some innovative thinking on both sides of what now looks like a permanently impenetrable barrier of enmity. The Oslo Accords, that pair of interim agreements between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation that were signed in Washington DC in 1993 and in Taba, Egypt, in 1995, must underlie any long-term arrangement, but we must also recognise that they are less and less likely directly to shape the future.
The brutality of Hamas’s October 7 raid last year, which is blamed for the present cycle of Israeli violence, may turn out to be a crucial turning point in the sad history of what Palestinians denounce as the “Naqba”, the Catastrophe, that overwhelmed their lives in 1948. Put bluntly, this means that the two-nation solution on which this columnist -- among others -- has been harping may not be the decisive mantra for tomorrow. The reason is that Israel will not permit it.
The United States will not compel Mr Netanyahu, and the international order is not strong enough or willing to compel the US.
Nothing speaks more eloquently than numbers. Comparing national riches at a meeting in Haifa on my only visit to Israel more than half a century ago, a veteran leader of Histadrut, Israel’s national trade union, told me that India’s people made it one of the richest countries in the world. Money might appear to be more effective in the short run, but he was convinced that in the long term nothing compares with manpower, properly inspired and mobilised.
Management is crucial for the most effective Arab force, the Arab Legion, later renamed the Royal Jordan Army, was most effective when a British general, Sir John Glubb, was its commander.
Applying the Histradrut official’s logic, 9.9 million Israelis present a puny adversary against more than 473 million Arabs. The phenomenal oil wealth of many Arab nations is irrelevant; it’s because of their manpower that Hamas and Hezbollah have been able to withstand the ferocity of Israeli attacks all these weeks, sustaining more than 42,000 deaths in Gaza alone. It is because of the strength of numbers that Hamas still has not surrendered some 100 of the hostages that it took on October 7, when it also killed about 1,200 Israelis.
Recalling that Mr Netanyahu proclaimed in early October that Israel’s campaign, Operation Swords of Iron, had two goals -- to destroy Hamas and free the hostages -- it must be admitted that despite a fearful loss of life and the destruction of towns, villages and most of even the basic facilities of civilisation, the campaign has been a failure. Mr Netanyahu has not destroyed Hamas -- not yet, anyway -- and he has not freed all the hostages.
Moreover, the recruitment drive by Hamas and Hezbollah shows no sign of flagging. With the Arab population going up by leaps and bounds every year, unimpeded by any question of birth control, there will always be an abundance of martyrs ready to die for the Palestinian cause. Nevertheless, what Israel has gained is considerable, if only the Israelis were not greedy for more: The Oslo process begun after secret negotiations in Norway’s capital, resulted in both the recognition of Israel by the Palestine Liberation Organisation and the recognition by Israel of the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people
and as a partner in bilateral negotiations. Even if this peace process does not achieve a peace treaty based on Resolutions 242 and 338 of the United Nations Security Council, it does provide a basis for Israelis and Palestinians to co-exist without friction.
Plenty of instances worldwide assert that institutional sovereignty is not essential for nationhood. Even if the Dalai Lama fades out, the Central Tibetan Administration and its democratic institutions will remain as the legitimate political successor of His Holiness. Sri Lanka’s Tamils are a nation even if Colombo refuses to discuss devolution despite a bitter and bloody 30-year war.
Quebec was not allowed to secede. The sovereign Kurdistan that the 1920 Treaty of Sevres promised never materialised. The autonomy of Iraq’s Kurds, comprising roughly 20 per cent of the population, is upheld in the 2005 constitution, which designates Kurdistan an autonomous federal region.
There are plenty of models to choose from. It should not be impossible to find a federal arrangement with international guarantors for the people of Gaza and the West Bank and supervised no-fly zones as in Iraq. One obstacle is that despite the PLO’s recognition of Israel, Israel has never acknowledged the exclusive identity of the Palestinians. For Israel, the Palestinians are either Arabs pretending to be something else, or Jordanians who flaunt a fancy name. But these are only words like Israel calling the West Bank by the mythic Biblical names of “Judea and Samaria”.
More dangerous than the fantasy of claiming that Judea and Samaria are part of Eretz Yisrael (Greater Israel) is the Israeli tactic of fragmenting the West Bank into 165 “islands”, where the Palestinians live, and 230 settlements for Jews.
More than 500,000 Israelis have moved into the West Bank excluding East Jerusalem, where an additional 220,000 Jews reside. Another 20,000 Israeli citizens live in settlements in the Golan Heights, captured from Syria.
In addition, the West Bank is criss-crossed by military roads and riddled with check-posts and watchtowers manned by the Israeli military. There can be no movement in the terrain without Israeli military clearance, and reports indicate that Palestinian fields, farms and olive groves are not safe from the depredations of armed Israeli vigilantes. No power can or will compel the Israelis to dismantle the elaborate and extensive security structure they have been allowed to erect since the 1967 war. They might as well be asked to remove the mobile all-weather air defence system called the Iron Dome that protects Israel from the fusillade of Palestinian rockets and missiles. The task for the global community is to ensure that Palestinian autonomy is not extinguished by these pressures.
