It’s Not Our Circus

I’m glad that hostages are being exchanged in the Israel-Hamas war and that there’s a ceasefire but I want to repeat some themes I’ve touched on before. Let’s start with this report by Alyssa Donovan at WGN:

CHICAGO — Protesters marched down the Magnificent Mile on Friday to draw attention to the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters rallied on Michigan Avenue as they looked to catch the attention of Black Friday shoppers. Some of those who participated in the march said it is important to keep the focus on the war in the Middle East as many people’s attention now turns to the holidays.

Israel and Hamas agreed to a four-day-long ceasefire on Wednesday, but protesters on Michigan Avenue said it was not enough and called for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and an end to the occupation

Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. Any occupations by Israel of Gaza now are a direct consequence of Hamas’s attack on Israel and Israeli civilians.

Friday’s crowd grew to about 1,000 protesters by noon, and briefly caused a portion of Michigan Avenue to shut down to traffic.

It’s unclear to me how that promotes the Palestinian viewpoint. It is, however, clear to me how that contributes to the decline of Michigan Avenue as a destination.

I’ve checked British, French, and German news sources. I found no reports of demonstrations there. Indeed, there was relatively little about the Israel-Hamas conflict in their news.

Why is the U. S. paying so much attention while our European allies devote so little? Raising the U. S. profile, as President Biden is doing by repeatedly emphasizing how much attention we’re paying and how hard he, personally is working on it, is puzzling to me: the Europeans have a lot more stake in peace in the Middle East than we do but you would never know it based on their news coverage. My conclusion is that they think that maintaining a low profile is in their interests..

Why isn’t similarly maintaining a low profile in U. S. interest? I honestly don’t see any net political advantage for the president in it. It will be interesting to see what the polling information after the weekend tells us. Perhaps President Biden is focusing on it because he thinks it’s the right thing to do. Just to make my views clear, I think it’s very rare for politicians in the upper echelons to do anything for any reason other than domestic political gain.

Meanwhile, at Outside the Beltway James Joyner muses over what will happen in the conflict after the ceasefire:

The destruction is likely to get even worse once the fight moves to the south. And, given a perfectly reasonable and just war aim of destroying Hamas, I believe the killing is proportionate to the military advantage, as required by international humanitarian law.

The problem, though, is tying the military strategy to the political one. Aside from “Hamas won’t be able to kill Israeli citizens any time soon”—a goal I certainly share—it’s not obvious what the ultimate war aim is. What is the better state of peace?

It continues to appear to me that the Netanyahu government has not figured that out. Not so much because they’ve given it no thought but that there are no acceptable answers.

The “two-state solution,” while logically the only end state that can possibly lead to long-term peace, is a fantasy. Israelis have maintained a Zionist state since 1948 and intend to keep it. Even if we could somehow persuade the Palestinians to abandon a goal of a state from the river to the sea,” it’s inconceivable that they’d settle for one that didn’t include Jerusalem. A single state where Arabs and Jews live together in perfect harmony, presumably while having a Coke and a smile, is even more absurd.

Let’s consider some outcomes. First, there’s the “two-state” solution. Any notion of two liberal democratic countries co-existing side by side, one the present Israel and the other composed of the West Bank and Gaza, is a fantasy. What would exist is an Islamist state composed of the West Bank and Gaza, engaging in episodic (at the very least) attacks on Israel from within its borders on the one hand and an imperfectly liberal democratic state in the present Israel, pressed to continue to support and defend Israeli settlers within the Islamic state. In other words the best case scenario is one of mutual tension just short of war, occasionally spilling over into actual conflict. That doesn’t sound like a benign outcome to me. How about you?

A “one-state” solution in which Israel occupies the entirety of the area of traditional Palestine from the west bank of the Jordan River to the Mediterranean would be even worse. Israel could not grant voting rights to the populations of the West Bank and Gaza and continue to exist.

Worst of all would be a one-state solution in which the present state of Israel ceased to exist and the Palestinians held control of the entire area. Whatever else it would be, it would not be either liberal or democratic.

On that basis it’s clear why the Biden Administration support Israel as consistently as it does. Every even remotely benign outcome includes the continued existence of the state of Israel.

I think it would be even better if the U. S. to pressure Israel not to provide financial support or defense to Israeli settlements in the West Bank but that seems to be unworthy of consideration.

The comments at OTB are interesting. The first comment completely takes the Palestinian side. Later on there’s reasonably good comment that completely refutes it. There are several questions that go unanswered:

1. Why are we as involved as we are?
2. Why aren’t Egypt and Jordan taking any flak? Egypt is signatory to the same international conventions on refugees as we are but has not accepted a single Gazan refugee since the conflict began.