Who is right in the Middle East conflict? The answer is easier if you don’t draw the line between Israel and Palestine, good and evil. It’s about how we all want to live.
We humans like simple stories. The hero here, the devil there. Oppressed against oppressors. Maybe that’s why it’s easy for us to stand with the brave Ukrainians. To support the courageous women in Iran. Fears for the population in Afghanistan after NATO’s withdrawal. But the latter only for a short time. The fact that Pakistan is in the process of deporting up to 1.7 million refugees to Afghanistan is of no interest to the world at the moment. Our compassion has already moved on, and perhaps the story is becoming too complicated.
Unfortunately, conflicts of this type tend to last long and are very complicated. “Good and evil have rarely been clearly divided in human history,” says the historian and author Yuval Harari (“A Brief History of Humanity”) these days. in countless interviews to explain. Victims in one situation could be attackers in another and vice versa. This is relatively banal, but many people have difficulty accepting it.
In conflicts as complex as the Israel-Gaza war, victims and perpetrators are reversed again and again in the public narrative. Should we even have compassion for Israeli victims while the Palestinian population suffers? Can we be relieved when kidnapped children return to Israel when children die in Gaza every day? These are, sorry, cruel, cold questions.
There is no contradiction in mourning children and innocents on both sides of the conflict, quite the opposite. If this is difficult for us, for whatever reason, we have to make the effort to take a closer look.
Under the microscope
Because so much has happened since then, let’s remember again: The trigger for Hamas’ attack on Israel is, among other things, the advanced talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia. If these two countries had actually signed a peace treaty, it might have changed the Arab world and enabled new peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
Neither is in the interests of the terrorist organization Hamas and its ally Iran. So the attack on October 7th was not a freedom struggle, nothing post-colonial, whatever. No matter how loudly this is shouted at demonstrations around the world and how small the atrocities openly committed and proudly documented by Hamas are talked about. The goal of Hamas and its allies is to maximally destabilize the region.
One of the bitter details of the terrorist attack in Israel is that the attacked kibbutzim in the south of the country are a left-wing stronghold and the residents are passionate peace activists. One of the special details is that the relatives of the hostages and those killed are with them are the loudest voices calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. Which is why, although overall there is significantly more support than rejection for the hostage agreement with Hamas, they are not only criticized but also threatened by the right-wing camp in their own country: The hostages appear to radical, extreme forces in Israel as an annoying obstacle to their wishes to fight the war their way. The discussion culminated in the dream of being able to imprison her so that she could have peace of mind.
A few kilometers further, in the West Bank, radical religious Jewish settlers are trying to use the current atmosphere to illegally occupy additional areas, including by force. There are dead and injured. So are those who have worked for reconciliation all their lives to blame for the fact that a group of radical people are taking advantage of their situation for their own agenda?
What about the Israeli army, which seems overwhelming compared to Hamas? Given their actions in Gaza, don’t we need to talk about proportionality? Yes, and this happens every day, every hour under the eyes of the global community. What can you do in the fight against terror? What does the right to self-defense entail? These are questions that have rightly been discussed critically again and again since October 7th.
What about the population in Gaza? Aren’t there mostly children living there? And isn’t the population as a whole innocent, oppressed by the occupying power Israel and used as a protective shield by Hamas? Or do we mainly see supporters of the terrorist organization celebrating the massacre of Jews on the streets? More than half of Gaza’s population is 19 years old or younger. The Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip ended in September 2005 and Hamas took control in June 2007. There are people in the population who cheer for Hamas as well as others who suffer massively from the terrorist regime.
There are currently images of demonstrations against Hamas in southern Gaza. They cannot currently be independently verified, but “such protests give rise to hope that forces other than extreme forces may determine the fate of the Palestinians in the future,” writes journalist and human rights activist Düzen Tekkal. It is feared that the demonstrators will expose themselves to massive danger. Images of a lynching against two Palestinians who were considered collaborators with Israel are making the rounds on social media. They cannot be independently verified either, but they are a concern.
How do we want to live?
Why it is so important to look closely may become more apparent when redrawing the line in this and so many conflicts around the world. All of these conflicts are about ways of life. Do you want to live a free, tolerant, empathetic and cosmopolitan life? Or do we allow the opposite, a society controlled by an elite, however defined, with harsh rules against everyone who does not conform to an arbitrarily set norm?
There is already talk about what will happen next in the Middle East after this Israel-Gaza war, and people are thinking about how the war between Russia and Ukraine could come to an end. What we all need is a world in which neither terrorists nor dictators nor radical populists with strange hairstyles and their respective followers make us suffer for their worldviews. We need a world in which women and minorities can lead safe and self-determined lives.
For Israel and Palestine, this means that after the end of the war, talks with Saudi Arabia must be resumed and there must be prospects for the people in Gaza – otherwise terrorist groups like Hamas will win again and again. Israel itself will have to reforge the cohesion in its society that was already lost before October 7th, in the weeks of protests against judicial reform and Netanyahu’s right-wing nationalist government.
There are realities in which good and evil can be clearly assigned. Hamas is unquestionably evil through and through. Conversely, this does not mean that everything the Israeli government does is right and “good”. She allowed herself to be lured into a trap by Hamas; the fight against terror, as the terrorists calculated, is affecting civilians, including thousands of children. This is causing anti-Semitism to flare up around the world. At the same time, not fighting terror is not an alternative. Because then not only would the threat to Israel continue to increase, the status quo with Hamas also offers no prospects for the Palestinian population. Constantly looking at sources of conflict and considering perspectives that go against your own beliefs and feelings is tedious, exhausting and painful. You have to practice it.