An Israeli historian said in an article in Foreign Affairs magazine that the Israelis consider October 7, 2023 to be the worst day in the history of their country, and likened it to the Holocaust, due to the unprecedented military attack that occurred during it. With the same logic, the Palestinians consider the Israeli war on Gaza to be the worst event they have witnessed. Since the Nakba, such a large number of them, which exceeded 34 thousand, had never before been martyred.

Historian Tom Segev confirmed that the Palestinians consider the Israeli attack part of a grand plan to occupy all Palestinian lands and force them to abandon Gaza entirely, an idea that was actually raised by some members of the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

He continued that since the first Zionists began envisioning a homeland for the Jews in Palestine in the late 19th century, their leaders and their Arab counterparts realized that reaching a settlement between them was impossible, and therefore David Ben Gurion - the first prime minister of Israel - kept repeating that there could be no peace in Palestine. He declared, “There is no solution to this problem. There is a gap between us, and nothing can fill that gap.” He concluded that what was possible was to manage the conflict rather than solve it.

In the months following the October 7 attacks, Netanyahu was accused of trying to manage the conflict instead of ending it, and that his grave mistake was not that he attempted to manage the conflict, but rather that he did so in an incompetent manner, with more disastrous consequences, because managing the conflict was the only real option. Available to both sides and their international interlocutors, according to the author.

The irrational nature of the conflict - according to Tom Segev - was the main reason why it could never be resolved, as it was fueled by religion, myths, violent fundamentalism, Christian prejudices, illusions and symbols, rather than on concrete interests and calculated strategies, and thus world leaders would not be able to deal with a crisis without Empty conversations require urgent action to better deal with the present.

The conception of the fathers of Zionism

The writer reviewed long paragraphs from the history of the conflict, the land, and the movements undertaken by the fathers and theorists of Zionism. He continued that Ben-Gurion believed that the future of the Jews in Palestine was based simply on obtaining the largest possible amount of land, if not necessarily the entire region, and populating it with the largest possible number of Jews and the least possible number of Arabs.

Ben-Gurion often rejected the "easy solutions" that he attributed to some of his colleagues, such as the idea of the possibility of encouraging Jews to learn the Arabic language or even the possibility of coexistence between Jews and Arabs in one state.

In 1917, the Zionist movement achieved one of its most important successes when British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour announced that the United Kingdom supported the establishment of a “national home” for the Jewish people in Palestine. Balfour's policy was part of a strategic British plan to wrest the Holy Lands from Ottoman control.

The Israeli historian explained that Balfour was a devoted Christian Zionist, who was committed to the idea that the people of God must return to their homeland after two thousand years of exile so that they could fulfill their biblical destiny, highlighting that he was looking forward to being recorded in history as the man who made this messianic transformation possible. .

The Israeli writer stated that the large migration of Jews to Palestine led to great Arab discontent that culminated in the Arab Revolt between 1936 and 1939, in which the Palestinians rose up against the British colonial administration through a general strike and armed revolution.

Partition plan

Then, in an article in Foreign Affairs magazine in 1942, the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann called for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. Weizmann’s proposal contained a map of the Land of Israel with biblical borders extending to the eastern bank of the Jordan River, and he proposed unlimited Jewish immigration to the new state.

He continued that by the mid-sixties, a new generation of Palestinian refugees grew up on the legacy of the Nakba and the dream of return, and they founded the Palestine Liberation Organization, but Israel’s surprise attack on Egypt in June 1967 led to a major victory for the Israeli army, and destroyed the Egyptian Air Force on the ground, replacing Existential Israeli fear is a sense of almost uncontrollable triumph.

Despite Israel's victory, the 1967 war reinforced the basic tensions that had been driving the Arab-Israeli conflict for a long time, as the Arab countries renewed their refusal to recognize Israel's existence, and the Palestinians' longing for their lost homeland intensified, and the language of weapons never stopped.

In 1979, Egypt signed the peace agreement with Israel, without requiring it to give up any part of Palestine, and with a similar logic, Jordan followed Egypt's example in 1994.

Containment or disaster

The Israeli historian added that Netanyahu - like Ben Gurion and other Israeli leaders - does not believe that the conflict can be resolved, but he has proven to be less skilled than his predecessors in managing it.

The writer reminded that the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict is full of futile peace plans that varied from a single, bi-national state, to envisioning a two-state solution that has seemed reasonable over the years, and which may allow the Israelis and Palestinians to control their destinies, and in some cases with some form of international supervision over the places. The disputed holy site of Jerusalem.

He added that over the decades, successive American administrations have sponsored such initiatives, and the “Deal of the Century” came at the hands of the administration of former US President Donald Trump in 2020, leaving the Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem under complete Israeli security control.

However, Jewish settlers did not support it, and there is little reason to believe that the efforts of President Joe Biden's administration to develop a post-Gaza peace plan will be more successful.

The writer pointed out that the common flaw in these international peace initiatives is the failure to deal with the inability of the Israelis and Palestinians to adopt a permanent solution.

Israeli historian Tom Segev concluded that if a century of failure had made it clear that reconciliation between the two sides was unlikely to take place in the foreseeable future, the war on Gaza revealed the horrific catastrophe that could result from mishandling the conflict.

He added that the United States and other leading powers must do more to ensure that Palestinians and Israelis are able to find a safer and more tolerant life, instead of wasting efforts and money on developing very unpopular peace plans.

Source: Foreign Affairs + Aljazeera