You’re not following the news, Roger. The desperate situation that led Hamas, itself desperate to survive as leaders of people they’ve failed is a result of the Palestinian Authority refusing yo pay salaries in Gaza in order to squeeze them into submission. Egypt has also blockaded Gaza. Hamas is an Islamist group that declares it won’t recognize Israel. They are at the forefront of this effort. Their soldiers are at the border. Israel is doing what any other country on Earth would do. But the key pint is that the PA is most responsible for the truly unlivable conditions there today.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-palestinians-reconciliation/pa...
12
During the exact same days of the "peaceful" protests organized by Hamas, while young Palestinian men were being urged by the wealthy Hamas leadership to risk their lives by rushing the border fence, Hamas operatives were digging the longest tunnel yet under Gaza and into Israel.
The BBC reported last week that the Israeli military found the tunnel and made it impassable, after it had penetrated under the fence and into Israel.
This went completely unreported on the NY Times, as did the 10+ rockets that Hamas has launched (peacefully?) into Israel since January 1 of this year.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-43775110
13
From your own paper, Roger...
https://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/11/world/middleeast/mystery-lingers-wher...
"...a former P.L.O. finance minister who quit under a cloud in 1996 and now lives in London, told The Associated Press that Mr. Arafat's financial empire was worth between $3 billion and $5 billion at the time...
"...He said that in the 1980's, he gave Mr. Arafat a check for some $10 million every month from the P.L.O. budget, to be used to pay fighters and their families. But Mr. Arafat would never account for his spending, citing national security...
14
I echo David's words . Israel must abide by international law and turn away from being an occupier nation . This horrible and unjust occupation is only sewing more and more hatred against the Jewish State and Jews all over the world . How can a nation , formed imperfectly after the defeat of Nazi Germany , be so insensitive and cruel to helpless people who have been displaced from their homes , using s degree of military force that is disgraceful ?
Netanyahu is depending unrealistically on Jews worldwide to support his rabid militarism . The tide is turning ; more and more Jews and non-Jews are being shocked and dismayed by Israel's barbarity . As a child I used to help collect funds for the United Jewish Appeal , because the cause for a Jewish homeland , after the horrid treatment of Jews by the Nazis , seemed noble and just . Little did I know then that Palestinians were dislocated from their homes for the formation of the State of Israel . Intelligent people of good will on the Palestinian side and the Jewish side must work together tirelessly to find justice and fairness for all of these people . The two-state solution seems like a just solution along with continuous diplomacy to right the wrongs of the past and bring peace at long last in the region.
Israel , end this hated occupation . Now ! Netanyahu,
change your warped ways and stop counting on Jews worldwide to support your inhumane ways . Jewish ideals call for peace and justice . . .for ALL . Shalom .
10
How is it that since the recent Palestinian Gaza demonstrations began, the NYT photographs I've seen show single Palestinian youths either throwing stones or holding slingshots?
Yet, 29 Palestinians died. However, the only aggressors depicted are Palestinian kids.
10
It's worth adding to this excellent commentary on excessive force that the New York Times' headlines have called all of the recent killing "violence," as if there was some comparable level of threat and response, instead civilians being killed by soldiers.
7
Insanity at the wall. Insanity in Israel — and Gaza, too. But what is war itself if not insanity, initially organized but thoroughly disorganized once battle is joined because “no plan survives contact”, as Gen. Helmut von Moltke, no stranger to war, observed? Joseph Heller wrote about it, the insanity of war, at some length in his “Catch 22”. So what is new under the sun?
By those lights the Gaza story, as sad as it is and might become, is nothing new or particularly surprising given the blood-soaked history of that region. When Vespasian besieged Jerusalem in 70 AD to crush rebellion there, before his legions destroyed the city and slaughtered or enslaved its population they surrounded and blockaded it. Jerusalem starved to death before he conquered.
As miserable as life in Gaza is for its besieged population it isn’t starving. Hamas should thank its stars that it isn’t confronting an enemy as ruthless and indifferent to human suffering as Vespasian and his cruel legionnaires.
During fraught negotiations to end the Great War in 1918 the head of the German delegation telephoned Berlin to report the Allies’ harsh terms and ask for instructions. Germany’s situation was dire. The Second Reich fell after the navy mutinied but the new republic simultaneously confronted Marxist revolution and a disintegrating army. The new Foreign Minister told him to make peace while there was still something left to save. Pity no one can give Hamas similar instructions and make them stick.
4
Between 1948 and 1970 over 850,000 Jews exiled from Muslim and Arab lands primarily driven out by persecution and antisemitism. In many cases their property and possessions were left behind. They went to Israel for self government and safety. Palestinians are digging tunnels into Israel not to shop at the local mall but to kill Israeli men, women and children. If they did manage to cross into Israel would there be more bus explosions and acts of violence against Israeli citizens? Of course. They are also the party that has rejected peace overtures for over 70 years. Walked away from the table.
13
Roger Cohen’s comparison of the Gaza fence with the Berlin Wall is false. East Germans were fleeing a brutal Soviet dictatorship hoping for a better life in West Germany. Residents of Gaza are trying to get through the fence so they can impose Hamas’s fascist exclusionary Islamist ideology on both the Jewish and non-Jewish citizens of Israel. Big difference that Roger Cohen willfully obscures.
18
While agree with much of Mr Cohen's article, I must take issue with a couple of points. "Israel haters, and Jew haters, have a field day". From my personal perspective there must be a clear separation between justified hatred of Israel's illegal, inhuman behaviour, and anti-Semitism, which in common with all right minded people I deplore.
Secondly, Mr Cohen repeats Israel's propaganda piece which says that Palestinians left their homes as a result of Arab nations declaring war on Israel, when he knows full well that Israelis in 1948 committed just as many atrocities as Arabs, and drove out those Palestinians.
Israelis complain that Arabs are just terrorists, firing rockets into them fro Gaza. However I ask you, if you were a young man in Gaza, imprisoned (and there is no other word for it) in Gaza with no hope of employment, or indeed any meaningful future, would you not respond with violence.
I am glad that directors of Mossad and other Israeli security agencies are speaking out. Israel is at a fork in the road. It can choose a decent effort for peace, or remain a pariah state, thieving land and oppressing a people.
8
Israel has broken my heart. After falling in love with Israel in my admittedly naive, unabashedly ignorant youth in the 1950s, and since 1968 watching from afar while it squandered all that love and goodwill through its ironic bullying and abuse of its Palestinian neighbors, I have come to the awful conclusion that most Israelis are as bigoted and cruel as every other nation and people. In short, I have fallen out of love.
Israel's embrace of right-wing extremism, albeit under the guise of fundamentalist Judaism and nationalism, is something I will never understand. If anyone should know that ethnic and religious bigotry is morally repugnant and unacceptable, it is the Jewish people, especially those who had to leave their nations of birth because of anti-Semitism. Yet it is now the Israeli people who are arguably engaging in anti-Semitism--only the Semites they persecute as "inferior" are their Palestinian neighbors.
Sadly, there appear to be no Israeli leaders possessing the moral fiber, strength and courage of a Yitzhak Rabin. There seem to be only ineffectual cowards and an electorate that has abandoned the principles of human decency and justice in favor of more land-grabbing and disproportionate blood-shedding at the behest of those willing to commit ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and crimes against humanity.
Will this nightmare ever end? And how many must die, be maimed and tortured, dispossessed of their property and humiliated daily before it ends?
6
And who enables this insanity to continue? Without the United States providing support (militarily, politically, overtly, covertly), this slaughter would have stopped decades ago. Someone once said "To the victor go the spoils." What Israel has won, with our complicity, spoiled long ago. The rot only grows worse.
8
Dear Roger Cohen,
Equating the present Gaza Fence situation with Berlin tells me that you, first had a conclusion and then you wrote an article to justify your faulty conclusion.
For a moment let us leave aside the larger issues of the territories and deal specifically with the Gaza Fence issue.
Hammas knows that Israel will not allow a breach of the fence and is using this to create negative optics against Israel.
So 1,000 Gazans cross into Israel. Then what?
If you are aware of other non-lethal options to stop people from approaching the fence, would you be so kind and share?
12
"There’s no point mincing words: the right of return is flimsy code for the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state."
You are admitting here, that ethnic cleansing was a prerequisite for the creation of the Jewish state, as without expulsion there would not have been, and still would not be a Jewish majority. Does a state have the right to do such a thing, in order to create a majority for its preferred ethnicity? And is it honest to then frame the desire of the expelled people to return as an act of 'destruction', as if THEY were the ethnic cleansers in this history?
"It’s consistent with the absolutist use of “occupation” as defining Israel itself and with the view that the sea is a pretty good place for Jews to end up."
You are jumping from a state with approximately equal percentages of Jews and Arabs, to a fantasy of Jews being driven into the sea. That is actually what literally happened to the Palestinians at Jaffa in 1948. A case of projection?
8
Smart, compassionate American Gentiles have turned against Israel. They'll never admit it publicly (they know the instant fierce 'anti-Semitism' charge they'll be branded with), but it's true - and the reason is exactly what Cohen says. Eventually this will reflect in the voting booth.
8
Israel complains about the rise of antisemitism. The world is not blind, and I mean not just the West. Israel has shown the world that "Might is Right"and with a powerful sponsor you are free to do as you wish in the world. israel is the only country in the Middle East that has bombed all its neighbours .But the West is OK with that.
The State of Palestine should be imposed by the UN ( not the US ), as Israel was imposed on Palestine . By force if need be . Or be banished from the International Community. Half a century is enough.
6
I love the misreading of Yeats. The Palestinians' hearts have grown brutal?
2
“
Shabtai Shavit, another Mossad director, from 1989 to 1996, said: “Why are we living here? To have our grandchildren continue to fight wars? What is this insanity in which territory, land, is more important than human life?”
While I shudder to take issue an Israeli and former director of Mossad, it seems clear to this non-observant Jewish Baby-Boomer, that the very real situations illustrated in the book/film “Ship of Fools” make a contrary case that, when push comes to shove, a safe sovereign land can be the equal of human life. Never forget! Never Again!
3
Hamas is understandably trying to provoke Israel into over-responding to violent border protests - but to what end?
Israel will never allow hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into the country, regardless of whether their ancestors once lived there.
How about just once Hamas publicly offer to recognize Israel as a sovereign state and promise to give up all attacks and attempts at violence in exchange for Israel easing the Naval blockade and other steps to raise the quality of life for Gazans?
Wouldn’t that be preferable?
10
It is disgusting. I always admired the Israel state in the past, their desert-to-flowers history. Now it is flowers-to-blood. Now it is apartheid, in the same appalling policy comdemned all around the world in Mandela's time. Unfortunately, as Mr. Cohen pointed out, their Mandela's have been murdered.
5
I fear that the opportunity to negotiate a two-state deal with the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank has played into both Netanyahu's and Hamas's hands. Both benefit from the so-called status quo. The deal will eventually be off the table if Israel does not take the lead in making it, and that will require a new Prime Minister. Where is the Israeli opposition? Is the only way to get rid of Bibi to haul him out for crimes of corruption?
1
I hope to read a follow-up piece outlining the solutions posed by the former Mossad leaders.
3
The NYT spends an awful lot of time berating Israel and its policies towards Gaza. If only your opinions and your opinion writers could spend as much energy writing about the of the destruction of the resistance in Syria or any other disputed regions in the world. it seems Israel has been fighting for its existence since its inception. Just a question: If Israel had lost the 1967 war would the world and its "leaders" have demanded that their land be returned? Or, would the world have "gone forward" and not noticed, or cared, for that matter?
Why is it not one middle eastern country has come forward ever, and said, let us help the Palestinian cause. We will grant them some land. We will help them establish a foothold to help form a state?
What is the plan? Open the borders? Destroy Israel?
How about we pick on someone else? Surely Iran, Syria, N. Korea, as well as many other "state actors" are displacing or using violence to advance their agendas, against those they deem enemies or dangerous.
12
Two weeks ago, I got a digital sub to the Times and have been reading it every day (previously I read it less frequently). In that time, I have not seen one article or opinion piece on the war in Yemen and only a couple on Syria. There has been an average of one a day on Israel, since Hamas decided to heat up the border to bring attention back to this area and deflect public attention from the Fatah-Hamas feud which is causing suffering to Gazans through electricity blackouts. The death of any innocent civilian is a tragedy and I support an independent investigation into the events at the border. But I have no illusions about Hamas and these protests are not nonviolent. And who is the partner - Hamas? The weak and elderly Abu Mazen whose government praises terrorists and whose last speech was full of lies and distortions about history?
13
My uncle was a Holocaust survivor and of the first generation of Israeli Jews. I met him 18 years ago on my first trip to Israel. I remember so well, sitting by his garden in a suburb of Tel Aviv. He looked out and said “I fought in 1948 and in every war until I was too old. And then my sons took over and fought. I hoped my grandsons would not have to fight, but they have. When will it end?”
He had no answer. I can’t answer either. I don’t live in Israel. I won’t have to face the consequences of any answer I have. Still, as a Jew. As a supporter of Israel and someone who cares about Jewish tradition, I find the current situation untenable. I blame the PM but it is the people who voted for Netanyahu. I fear they are trading their wish for safety for what they must know is the ‘right thing to do”.
Hamas is a terrorist organization; they take money from food and schools to use for guns and tunnels; they use children as shields. All true. But what is the answer? What did my uncle and cousins fight for? It can’t be for keeping Palestinians in Gaza in a prison.
We keep saying we want peace. We pray for peace. Shalom means peace. Maybe it’s time to take a chance for peace. Maybe my uncle’s great grandchildren will be able to live in a Jewish Israel without war.
1
I think the weakness of Mr Cohen's post is that the Arabs never really accepted a two state solution or any Jewish state in any boundaries. They have made it clear, in 1947, 1948, 1967, 1973, in 2000, and ever since including the Gaza election of Hamas that getting rid of Israel, and all or most of its Jews is the goal.
Israel's IDF may or may not have overreacted to the Gaza fence situation, impossible to tell at this distance, but the Arab rejection of any Jewish state remains the fundamental reason for the deaths, the conflict, and the difficulty of finding a solution.
14
The best summary of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict I’ve seen in a long time. Imagine that the past 70 years represents the future for Israel. There has to be a better way.
Men with six foot long deadly slings, molotov cocktails, and explosives trying to storm the border are not "unarmed protesters" and the fact that most of those killed have been members of armed militias demonstrates the fact that the Israelis have not been shooting live fire at random "protesters" but rather armed attackers. Some of their civilian human shields have also been hit, but that is what happens in the fog (or smokesreen) of war.
12
Hats off to this author. These days, it is an act of courage to dare criticize Israel no matter what it does and I think that he is extremely even-handed in this article.
1
How about the fence between Gaza and Egypt? Clearly, Israel isn't the only country in the region confronting the problem of Palestinian terrorism.
9
fact is that Hamas is consciously putting these demonstrators in harm's way and a slingshot, a knife or even a rock are lethal weapons
9
The right of return is not code for the destruction of Israel. It is the right to get back the homes and territory taken from them by the Israelis.
5
RE:"Palestinians lost their homes after Arab armies declared war in 1948 on Israel, which had accepted United Nations Resolution 181 of 1947 calling for the establishment of two states of roughly equal size — one Jewish, one Arab — in British Mandate Palestine."
-------
Roger Cohen uses the above statement to suggest that Palestinians lost their moral and legal claim to ownership of their lands-- again, assertedly because Arab nations declared war.
But, even if there's some intuitive something to this, it won't explain why other nations' declaration of war somehow legally and morally deprived Palestinians living within the newly-declared State of Israel of their land.
Also, wholly apart from back-and-forth about the declarations of war, we know that there was ethnic cleansing of Palestinians residing in the newly-declared State of Israel. Ethnic cleansing cannot justify deprivation of land rights.
6
Mr. Cohen, Can you at least give lip service to the lack of Palestinian leadership and the battle between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, which enslaves Palestinians physically and psychically, and is the primary source of their despair? https://www.vox.com/world/2017/8/22/16114696/palestinian-hamas-israel-in...
Israel's right to defend its border and to keep its citizens safe includes the right and duty to prevent the chaos of Palestinian life (and the chaos of so much of the Middle East) from seeping into Israel.
You can debate all you want about the appropriate level of force, but you can't debate that Israel is surrounded by enemies, and that there is no reliable partner for peace. Imagine yourself as a citizen of the State of New Jersey, and the States of New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Delaware and Maryland were all sworn to the destruction of your state. That's the life Israelis live. Amazingly, Israelis thrive. How come those other states (Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Palestinians, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, etc.) can't provide peace, tranquility, stable representative government, and opportunity for their citizens? Please let me know when that column is coming.
13
Many commentators incessantly refer to Hamas and its vow to destroy Israel. This is getting tiresome.
Prof. K. Hroub, the Cambridge University scholar considered a world leading authority on Hamas, says the 1988 Hamas Charter, including this oft-quoted phrase, was the work of "one individual and made public without appropriate Hamas consensus.”
When Hamas won the elections in 2006 they excluded the old 1988 Charter from their political program. In 2010 Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal stated that the Charter is "a piece of history and no longer relevant, ….”
In 2014, by joining the Palestinian unity government, Hamas adopted all previous agreements and all of the principles set out by the US and the Quartet for peace negotiations with the State of Israel.
Whenever Hamas and Fatah start to mend fences and talk peace agreements with Israel, Netanyahu & Co. sees the peace prospect as a major threat to its colonization plans and initiates aggression in the West Bank and/or Gaza (eg. 2014 Gaza).
7
The fact remains that if any other country did what Israel is doing and has done, it would be the target of severe sanctions and other forms of international outrage. As long as this double standard persists, nothing will change and innocent Palestinians will continue to be murdered.
11
The expressed goal of this latest Hamas attempt to put one over on its rival, the PA, is to breach the internationally recognized border with Israel. In English, that is not a protest but an invasion.
Pretending these are non-violent protests is political rhetoric, not an objective statement of fact. I don’t recall either Ghandi or Dr. Martin Luther King embedding terrorists among civilians, allowing all manner of weapons or using incitement as part of their non-violent protests.
Israel's restraint has been shown by the fact that some 80% of the dead have been claimed as members by various terror groups, a sufficiently embarrassing state of affairs that Hamas has put out guidance to end that practice for the time being. If that now constitutes "indiscriminate" shooting, then that word now joins "apartheid," "colonial," "racism," and "ethnic cleansing" as having been emptied of their meaning by anti-Israel partisans and used instead as rhetorical cudgels against the Jewish state. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan observed when, as the US ambassador to the UN denouncing the “Zionism is racism” resolution, cheapening the language of human rights only serves the interests of dictators and illiberal rulers. We have been warned.
7
On a side issue, you can be perfectly confident that a nation with the best hacking skills on the planet and deep interest in the US election and billions in ongoing aid would never interfere with our elections. That nose rubbing between Trump and Netanyahu is nothing, ignore it. The newlyweds on a honeymoon thing between Saudi Arabia and Israel has nothing to do with nuclear weapons or money, ignore ignore. It's just a poor little beset upon nation of honorable ancient Jews, never hurt a fly, never would. And these protestors are after all on their lawn.
1
Hamas is understandably trying to provoke Israel into over-responding to violent border protests - but to what end?
Israel will never allow hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into the country, regardless of whether their ancestors once lived there.
How about just once Hamas publicly offer to recognize Israel as a sovereign state and promise to give up all attacks and attempts at violence in exchange for Israel easing the Naval blockade and other steps to raise the quality of life for Gazans?
Wouldn’t that be preferable?
7
The Palestinians have officially recognized the State of Israel in several past agreements. In addition, in the spring of 2014 when Hamas officially joined the unity government with Fatah, it accepted all previous agreements and adopted all the principles set out by the US and the Quartet for peace negotiations with "the State of Israel”.
How about, just once, the Likud Party publicly offer to recognize Palestine as a sovereign state.
6
When will we learn that religion has no place in government. Israel is no better than other middle eastern countries that continue to believe that religious devotion can somehow be molded in to governmental policy. It can't. In time, there will be one country in historic Palestine without religious affiliation. Just like our founding fathers anticipated here.
6
I do not see any move for Hamas to recognize Israel or to admit it is a defeated nation and sue for peace. This column is nonsense. In prior centuries the Israeli arm would decimate the enemy and impose a peace. They have only held back because of international pressure to accommodate the Palestinians . If Mr Cohen were honest, he would admit that if Israel threw down their arms they would be overrun and murdered, while if Hamas threw down their arms, there would be peace.
To divide Jerusalem is a fantasy similar to letting the camel get his nose under the tent flap
10
Excellent piece. Stomach turning Israeli overreach in its use of excessive violence has over the years soured my support. Some undoubtedly call this anti-semitism, but that is a dishonest distortion of the truth of a view which I share with increasingly large numbers of observers who watch Netanyahu at work on making war, not piece. Ever since the 1980's I have watched him with concern and growing fear, and my concern and fear have become more and more justified. He embodies what makes Israel its own worst long term enemy.
5
The last, best, binary choice for Israel is either a two state solution, or a democracy. Which is it to be? An Orwellian state of permanent war will only result in a constant stream of dead Palestinian children, and Israel an isolated, right-wing, pariah state, reflexively branding backlash as antisemitism, increasingly excluded from the community of civilized nations. Who would want to live that way? Why? What purpose can it serve, other than consolidate power in the hands of those who benefit from war?
4
I do not understand all the reasons why -- but I do note that the little nation-state of Singapore flourishes, as do Luxembourg and multi-lingual Switzerland. What secret may lie therein that might be applied and helpful to Gaza?
2
yes, this is like Berlin; but what first came to mind is Britain in India.
1
Gaza isn't an "open-air prison". It's an open air terrorist base. Hamas turned it into one. Roger Cohen doesn't understand the difference. That's insanity.
The "solution" is for Hamas to give up it's military wing and let the former security arrangements at the border crossings resume. Then their will be no blockade, and no prison - as there weren't before Hamas took over.
11
After decades, there's psychosis on both sides. PTSD comes to mind. And it turns out that the one player long deemed to be the honest broker who would compel the parties to forge something workable has been nothing of the kind. Accordingly, it's time for the international community as a whole to do so, assuming that leaders have the stomach to withstand the vitriol guaranteed to ensue. Whether human beings really are more important than territory remains to be seen. What IS evident is the fact that some lives really are cheaper than others.
3
Israelis are, unfortunately, not aware of the adverse consequences of victory. The more total the victory, the direr are the consequences. Once you take it all, you own it, and owning millions of destitute Palestinians will not make Israel richer, safer or more powerful.
3
Frank, you need to ask yourself if the Palestinian Arabs remain so destitute, where have the billions of dollars in no strings attached aid gone? I suspect you know the answer. The billions that connected PA and Hamas rulers have stashed away are not the result of business acumen but of decades long embezzlement.
7
“There’s no point mincing words: the right of return is flimsy code for the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state."
If the Jewish people held the desire to return to their lost homeland for 2,000 years, why does Mr. Cohen believe the Palestinians would give up the desire to return to their lost homeland after a mere 70 years? The sad irony is that no one can understand the Palestinian yearning for their lost homeland more than the Jewish people.
9
A Palestinian refugee is defined by UNWRA as any resident of Mandatory Palestine who arrived, whether legally or not, before 1946 (two years before its termination).
The actual "homeland" of these refugees, as opposed to a prior home (which is an altogether different concept) is recorded in their clan names - none of which refers to the Holy Land.
So, the situations are in no way comparable.
4
My family lived next door to Jews and we had an Armenian family living upstairs from us in Jerusalem. In 1948 three armed Jewish (there was no Israel yet) men came to our door and told my grandfather and the Armenian family to leave “or they could not be responsible for what would happen” to us. At that time the British forces had left, so there were no police or any authorities to provide protection. Within an hour, our families had fled, taking only what could be carried. They locked the doors and windows, thinking they would be gone for a few days until things settled down. This is the story of most Palestinians. You can talk about the “Arabs” but remember the indigenous Jews were Arab, too. They spoke Arabic, and were good neighbors to their Christian and Muslim communities. My father still speaks some Hebrew learned from his classmates.
The reality of Palestine is that it was an out and out expulsion of the Christian and Muslim communities living there. Although there were massacres and destruction, we are fortunate not to have met the same scale of destruction and fate of other indigenous peoples, such as the Native Americans or European Jews. In some small measure, we are grateful for this. However, the loss of dignity, the loss of home , land and livelihood, and the grinding poverty and injustice we still
13
What is it about the lead photograph of the Palestinian version of peaceful protest that reminds me of the non-violent protests of Ghandi or Dr. Martin Luther King? Precisely nothing.
Why Cohen does refuse to take Hamas at its word, that the plan is to keep moving the tents ever closer to the border and seek its breach on May 15? Just because it shows what Israel is really facing and would demolish his argument is no reason to be so patronizing toward terrorists. Then again, he also fails to inform the reader that some 80% of the dead have been claimed as members by their various terror organizations. That sounds like pretty accurate "indiscriminate" fire to me.
13
Anyplace else, we'd take it as pretty basic that civilians displaced by a war get to go back to their homes at war's end, rather than having those homes given away to civilians of the winning side.
3
History confirms the opposite to be the case. Returning home afternoon losing a war you started was certainly not the post-WWII experience of Germans who had lived for centuries throughout Eastern Europe. In 1945, they were forcibly expelled and out of about 12 million, some 1-2 million are estimated to have died in the process. Or, one might consider the population exchanges involving millions after wars between Greece and Turkey or the India-Pakistan partition. A similar population exchange took place after 1948 when some 800,000 Jews who lived for centuries in Arab countries were made destitute and expelled, compared to the estimated 650,000 Palestinian Arabs who fled a war they had initiated. Somehow, though, that episode doesn’t seem to count.
A more recent example of population displacement is, of course, in the formerly Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
Generally, countries do not countenance the existence of potentially hostile groups in their midsts. That Israel's Arab population constitutes 20% speaks volume of Israel's self-confidence as a liberal democracy and of its continued devotion under exceptional circumstances to the rule of law.
9
"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results."
The current government of Israel does not fall into this trap. It does the same thing over and over again, but it does it with more force each time. Still ...
Those supporting that policy in comments here should ask themselves - If we continue the current policies how will the situation be different in 5 years? ... in 10 years? ... in 50 years? ... in 100 years?
What realistic goal can be achieved by these policies other than "the heart’s grown brutal from the fare."
1
I've been reading pieces about Israel/Palestine for some years now, and recently returned from there. I can at least say that comments from both sides seem more informed than they used to be. I'm not sure if we should thank the Times for that, or just the unfortunate length of time the situation has been sitting there, going nowhere—as it is likely to continue to do.
"What is this insanity in which territory, land, is more important than human life?”
The insanity, Mr. Cohen, is any of the world's religions when their moral codes are subverted by the extremists within them. It has happened many times in the history of all religions, some more than others.
1
I understand -- oh, do I ever understand -- the author's frustration with the current situation.
What's missing in this piece, is a vision of a desirable future, _and a realistic path to reach it_.
There's a story that someone asked the Pope about solutions to the impasse. He said:
. . . "Well, there are two solutions -- one realistic,
. . . and one that requires a miracle."
. . . "What's the realistic solution?"
. . . "The Messiah will come, and all mankind will
. . . live in peace."
. . . "And the miraculous solution?"
. . . "That the Israelis and Palestinians will sit together,
. . . and work out their differences."
I heard it many years ago, and it's just as sad now, as it was then.
2
Cohen says that the crowd was "mainly unarmed protesters". Let us correct that to "only a few were carrying guns openly". When I watched videos, others had other weapons and most of those in the front line were throwing rocks or (as in Cohen's photo) firebombs. Those can maim or kill.
Also, has anyone forgotten how the government of Iran seized the American Embassy there in 1979 and held the Americans they captured hostage for 444 days? First they sent in "demonstrators" with no obvious weapons. The US Ambassador ordered the Marines not to fire. Well, it turned out that some of the "demonstrators" had concealed pistols, and more heavily armed Iranian forces followed them. At Gaza these folks were trying to destroy part of a legal border fence, as they had done before, so that they could get into Israel.
12
Why does everyone seem to forget that the Palenstinians, who had no actual land prior to 1948 (owned by the Ottoman Empire, including Gaza which was part of Egypt) and were largely Arabs from all over who had simply migrated there recently in order to benefit from the economic progress by the Jewish immigrants prior to that time (as demonstrated by the British who held the international Mandate for Palestine) within the past single generation), are welcome in Palenstine (determined by the Mandate to be all of what is now Jordan, the southern portion of Syria, and all of the area west of the Jordan) if they will agree to PEACEFUL living? That's all they need do, and seem to never be willing to. Then what is to be done with the United Nations mandate for two states? That seems to have been forgotten, or rather, universally rejected by the Palestinians and all other Arabs from the beginning through to now, instead favoring war and death to Israelis instead of peace of any kind. As the saying goes, "inconvenient truth."
12
We just spent $11,000,000,000 on Camp Humphreys in South Korea. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/12/04/u-s-military-base-s...
so that US troops will be comfy preparing for a conflict that cannot happen because no side in the area wants it to happen. A total waste of US tax money.
We have military in 150 nations around the world. Why is it we cannot enforce separation and therefore statehood between Israel and a Palestine defined by ethically determined borders? I'd put US Marines in the West Bank and Gaza tomorrow. I can think of no place where the political and justice bang would be bigger for the military buck.
2
This sounds nice, but do you truly want the US marines drawn into the Israel-Palestine conflict? They would be immediately under attack by both sides.
Mr. Cohen,
I deplore Israeli persecution of the Gazans, but a two-state solution is demographically impossible given present borders, with Israel separating the two Palestinian communities. To create a two-state solution people of all ethnicities must relocate, separating families and lifelong friends.
1
I have always been a proud Jew and proud of Israel. However, Israel's actions toward the Palestinians has reached a tipping point. I would love to make my first visit to Israel...but not until the the Israeli government changes its policies and practices.
What you've neglected to mention is that Hamas is still promising genocide, and the Israelis are defending their border: what part of 'border' is it so difficult to understand?
As long as Hamas can keep their prisoners idle, impoverished, and angry, they can continue selling them a dream of genocide and filling their Swiss bank accounts. According to the World Bank, the Palestinians receive $2.6B in international aid every year--with no infrastructure--no roads, power plants, or water treatment plants--to show for it. That money goes to arms, tunnels, and payments to terrorists; Hamas doesn't want peace, and it doesn't really want its own state. Hamas wants to stoke a culture of victimhood and live on welfare; they don't care who dies.
And for all the wailing and gnashing of teeth in the West--peace is not in their interests, either. After all, the West is getting rich selling the bullets to both sides.
12
I want to start this comment by saying that I still support the two-state solution. In fact, for all the angst about delegitimization of the State of Israel, Israel is in fact confirmed by the highest authority we have, international law. But, arguably, its legitimate status is contingent upon creation of that Arab State that was part of the original resolution.
And where is that Arab State supposed to be planted when settlements take over the West Bank? Moreover, yes, Israel is the occupier, after war, of the West Bank, but has no right to annex territory (any more than, say, Russia has a right to annex Crimea).
There is another way: Rather than complaining about its negotiation partner, Israel could withdraw the settlements from the West Bank, build a link between Gaza and the West Bank, and let the Palestinians get on with building the Arab State, all without requiring advance declarations.
3
On Thursday the Times published on page A5 Israel's Declaration of the establishment of the state of Israel
"The state of Israel ...will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants ; it will be based on freedom justice peace ; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion race sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion conscience language education and culture"
5
The founding fathers are not sleeping well these days.
1
All great, but were the Arabs included in the writing of that document? Did they have a voice in what the nation would be? Can you really create an inclusive multiethnic society through a process controlled solely by one ethnicity and excluding the other ethnicity?
3
Thank you so much for this piece, which reflects my thinking so eloquently and knowledgeably. I've watched Israel's turn to the right and toward religiosity with increasing dismay and fear. Fanaticism is full of conviction, to paraphrase Yeats. For me to feel a part of Israel again, I have to see compassion and humanity extended to the Palestinians, as well as an effort at recompense for the lives and generations lost. They deserve a chance to achieve their goals and dreams too, on an equal footing with Israelis, or my respect for the Jewish humanism I was always so proud of becomes meaningless.
9
I am 83 years old. I can remember when South Africa and Northern Ireland were absolutely unsolvable and impossible to solve. Now bright college students have no sense at all that there was a big problem.
Israel-Palestine are at that stage. It is now possible to have substantial American and Russian troops as peacekeepers. Now that the Syrian War is over, it is possible to get Iran out if Russia and the US support it in dividing Afghanistan and protecting the Farshi-Tajiks as Biden proposed. Trump has earned Israeli trust with steps like the embassy. Let us end the nonsense.
1
Why not dot the i? This is an Israeli leader desperately trying to stay in power rather than be sent to jail. He is doing everything to arouse chauvinism to keep himself in power. The United States could stop it in five minutes with a threat to press for South African like sanctions for aparheid.
We have had enough of this utterly mad confrontation. Today DNC's insane law suit against Russia and Trump is beyond the utter depth of what is possible. Cannot the NYT and responsible Democratic leaders decide it is time to get away from the past? The same is true of Israeli politicians. They should have Netanyahu an Agnew deal.
If the Democrats would ever do anything positive, maybe Trump would respond. If not, his chance of re-election, now quite high, would collapse.
Israel has half the population and half the territory of the Netherlands. The last Israelis quoted are right. The Israeli people deserve the happy life of the Netherlands.
2
Respectfully disagree completely. This is a problem without solution and Netanyahu's grip on power is a symptom, not a cause. I live in NJ and am certain that the problems look different in Israel and the Palestinian enclaves
I would so like to disagree with you. It is impossible, especially for a Jew, to defend Israel.
10
Consider today's tweets from Iranian General Hossein Salami to Israel: “Don’t have hope in US and UK; when they arrive, you won’t be there… Smallest goal will be your existence. You can’t bear. When you escape, you’ll have no way but to the sea.” In an earlier tweet Salami warned, “Hands are on the trigger and missiles are ready and will be launched at any moment that enemy has a sinister plot… North and west of Israel are at the intersection of fire; you will not escape. You live in the dragon’s mouth.” This is what Israel faces 24-7. The Gaza demonstrations at the fence are orchestrated at least to some degree with Iran. Is it insanity? Of course it is. Having to spend a huge percentage of your national product on defense is insane, but necessary. Having to require every man and woman to do military service is insane, but required. It is also real and so long as Israel is faced with such threats, every response is essential and important. A final note - walk the streets of Jerusalem, ride the train to Tel Aviv, you'll see more loaded M16's in a day than you'll see AR15's in the US in twenty-five years. Why, constant infiltration from the West Bank and Gaza, not to go to bakery, but to kill Israelis. Find out what it is like to be stalked by Palestinians just because you are not Palestinian. When your neighbor comes to kill you, you do not submit.
27
Cohen declares, "Israel has the right to defend its borders," yet in many other columns in this paper he has decried as racists and fascists various European political parties and countries that have decided that they too have the right to defend their borders (and with far less violence than Israel has employed recently in Gaza). A touch of selective vision and hypocrisy is obviously helpful in the opinion business.
9
So let me get this straight:
-Cohen wants a two state solution,
-Hamas has staged these riots for the right of descendants of Palestinian refugees to "return" to Israel, calling for and essentially forcing a one state solution, a violent one at that (Cohen's peaceful Palestinians keep calling for the death of Jews at these riots).
-So Cohen, are you for a one state or two state solution? You can't have it both ways.
15
It is clear, he is for two, and not for one. Read again and you will see it, it is in there.
It's a shanda for the world.
2
To answer Shabtai Shavit's question, the Jews are perhaps living in Israel because they have no other place to go. To fix that, Trump should grant all Jews in the world asylum and thereby make it clear to all of them regardless of where they are living, in Israel or Europe or anywhere else, that they can come here and become Americans. Trump surely has the power to do it and it clearly would be justified. Jews have been and still are in much of the world under siege. And it would do penance, like nothing else can, for the fact that America denied entry to a boatload of Jews trying to escape Nazi Germany. And it would be good for us. Jews are generally intelligent and productive and would make America stronger and more prosperous. And it would be better for the Jews, even the Israelis. They would be free to do here everything they are now doing in Israel, other than kicking the Palestinians around from time to time, which neither we nor they should value even a little bit. Of course, in time it might mean the end of Israel as a Jewish state. If large numbers of Jews and Israelis accept the offer, Israel might not have enough people to sustain itself. And if we have granted them all asylum, many Americans might well wonder why we continue to support a state when doing so arguably violates our Constitution, and in particular the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
Trump should propose it and see what the reaction would be.
1
Bob Richards
I like your idea that the US should offer sanctuary to the Jews. However, in the past there have been other countries that have offered sanctuary to the Jews, but when times turned bad, they used the Jews as scapegoats so even though I love America, I think that it's important for there to be an Israel.
2
Please Roger, PLEASE!
What's your proposal?
What's your solution?
What do you suggest?
Did you read the Hamas Charter? Did you hear Hanieh speaking in Arabic? Not only he's building tunnels instead of schools and hospitals with the millions he receives from all over, he screams that the fight is to conquer ALL ISRAEL ... from the river to the sea.
What do you suggest? That Israel "tears down that fence" and let the 1.9 million execute Hanieh's plan?
Please: re-write the piece an add your solution or.....
32
You are a smart guy Roger and bring up some good points about history, but you are very wrong about what is going on now. How can you take such a disingenuous view of the protesters now? How can you ignore the fact that for ten years the Gazans have had ample opportunity to build a functional nation but instead have opted to keep poking the bear of Israel to no good end? Why is that ok? What is Israel supposed to do when faced with the onslaught of millions of human bodies whose corrupt leaders couldnt care less if they are killed or maimed while projecting their propaganda in cynical and non-sensical "right of return" marches. Would you Roger, go to the barricades and urge calm unarmed, promising what in return if they went home, better sewage treatment, more jobs, how could you deliver on that? And if not would you invite them to come and sit for a while and talk tikkun olam all together in the fields and hope everyone then goes home for prayers and Shabbat, you cant be that naïve my friend. What is your solution then instead of criticizing Israel for actually being the only party here that is acting with common sense for their survival.
20
So if you and you family lived a few minutes from the fence, what would you have your police or border patrol do in your town? This is not rhetorical, but meant as a clarifier.
16
Bingo. That's how you gotta think about this. Great clarifier.
1
Hummm, Cohen says "Israel has a right to defend its borders," but he has never said that Italy, France, Germany, Hungary, the UK etc. have a "right to defend their borders." In fact he's denounced those who dare suggest that these European countries defend their borders as racists and fascists. Why the difference, Mr. Cohen? Just curious about this?
7
Well, one difference is that the migrant/refugees fleeing to Europe have no interest in destroying those countries - even if a small subset among them might harbor such delusions. Nor, given the relatively huge imbalance in numbers, is any takeover plausible. In contrast, that is the announced goal of both the PA and Hamas, they only differ on the schedule. I hope that clarified things for you.
5
If we have spent 10% of the Money we squandered on wars in the Middle East on compensation of Palestinians who lost their land because of the establishment of Israel and allowed 10% of them to return we will have peace. Terrorists grow among people who are disenfranchised. Satisfy the needs and aspirations of 99% of that population and they will be your ears and eyes and will stump any terrorist among them. Like the Mossad leaders I believe strongly that it is not the peaceful demonstration of few hot headed Palestinians that constitutes the existential threat of Israel. It is the continuation of the status quo that will.
Palestinians should accept the fact that Israel will never disappear and Israelis should accept the fact that one way or another they evicted the majority of Palestinians from their lands to build their country. In the short history of humanity this happened often.
As a Jordanian American who witnessed the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians arrive in my little town of Amman 70 years ago and changed it forever I believe we can have peace. Look what happens in South Africa.
10
Israel has the right to defend its border but the USA does not according to most. Why is that?
9
1. Palestinian protesters are trying to destroy the fence to get into Israel and kills Jews. People from East Berlin among people from West Berlin in peace.
2. Question: Why aren't the Palestinians protesting at the border with Egypt, throwing stones, burning tires, etc?
If the Palestinians wanted to have a country in the west bank and gaza, living in peace side by side with Israel, it would only have to stop the violence. Israel would clear settlements out of the West Bank as it did in Gaza.
26
Consistently Roger Cohen writes fairly and sympathetically about this tragedy for two peoples and points to reasonable resolution. We need repeatedly to hear his message to retain hope.
5
You’d have to be hopeful bordering on naïve to believe that if there were two states that hostilities like this would diminish: you’d have to believe it would be any different. Moreover, unless the former directors of the Mossad imagine that all Arab citizens of Israel would immigrate to a Palestinian state (or they have some plan for their expulsion), the demographic projection remains the same.
4
The EU cannot successfully mediate this tragedy
3
Good and fair article. Unless you blind or full of bad faith, you can only acknowledge that the Israeli army is committing the worst crimes, including cold blood assassinations, against civilians. The pro-Israel argument, saying that you can't differentiate a civilian who protests from a terrorist who is hiding among civilians, does not stand. Shooting a person in the back while the person was walking back towards Gaza, the opposite direction of the fence, is nothing less than a crime, whether this person is a civilian, a member of Hamas, a rapist, or a vegan … it does not matter! You cannot shoot people who are disarmed and who are not threatening you, and there is no good justification, even to the most pro-Israel person on earth, for it. The whole word saw it happening. The whole world knows that the Israeli army is committing the most blatant and serious crimes in complete impunity and with the full support of the Israeli Government. How much longer will the world accept it?
9
The creation of the State of Israel was one of the major mistakes of the 20th. century. It really is a story for the long run. In fifty years...in a hundred years...in two hundred years, there will be no State of Israel.
10
700,000 palestinians were expelled from their homes in 1948, and to this day live in squalid conditions, unable to return to their homes. Whether or not this puts an end to Israel as a jewish state should be completely irrelevant. After all it was Israel, who chose in 1948 and in 1967 methodically and systemically massacre and expel Palestinians from their land.Christians, Muslims, and Jews lived peacefully as neighbors in Palestine for thousands of years before Jewish ethno-nationalists came over en masse in the 20th century and kicked them off of their land.
14
Dear Brian:
No one who knows anything about facts says 700000 palestinians were "expelled". There are radio broadcasts of Arab leaders encouraging them to leave; in his more sane days even Abbas told the story about how his father gathered the family up and moved them to get out of the way. The "massacres" are largely mythological, and there were no such events at all in 1967. And your vision of intercommunal relations in the 19th century are, well, fantastical (my family lived in Jerusalem from the 1850s). Where did you learn anything about facts?
4
Thank you for this important piece. Israel is the worldwide face of Judaism, and this brutal response to nonviolent protest is bad for Jews everywhere because it accomplishes is to stoke antisemitism. Netanyahu cares only about keeping his fragile right wing, ultra Orthodox coalition together, and nothing works better for him than violent confrontation with Palestinians.
125
Throwing rocks & Molotov cocktails & rolling burning tires is VIOLENCE! Attaching a Molotov cocktail to a kite is violence.
22
Non-violent protest definition according to Webster's Political Progressive Dictionary: throwing fire bombs, trying to break down the border fence and enabling a mass attack on neighboring farm communities, waving placards vowing to destroy Israel and the death of Jews, trying to plant IEDs, burning tires to create toxic fumes that would waft into Israel, sending in terrorist operatives obscured by the smoke of the burning tires and as supposed innocent demonstrators, firing sling shots at Israeli troops which in case you never read the story of David and Goliath were once considered and still are lethal weapons. And I thought progressives were smarter than Republicans. Who knew?
13
All nations were established by conquest, and are defended by actual or threatened force. Tribal violence seems to be coded in the Human genome.
5
As always, Mr. Cohen loses his message of need for compromise by using propogandistic misleading terms. "Open air prison"? Israel and Egypt vigorously guard their borders, surely, but neither is responsible for administration of Gaza. As Cohen mentions, Israel unilaterally withdrew in 2005 and has been met with a leadership that refuses to acknowledge its existence except by means of threat, tunnels, rockets and violence.
The leadership (Hamas) even routinely kills Fatah members and diverts any finances that may be used to ease conditions to the terror industry. None of this is new nor original, but when Cohen refuses to acknowledge the true conditions, he loses any moral high ground.
30
According to international law, when a country controls land, air, and water access to another country, that country occupies the 2nd country even if it has no troops in the country doing so. Israel fits this description with respect to Gaza.
Gazans cannot leave for medical treatment, to attend college, or visit family without Israeli permission. Isn't that imprisonment in Gaza?
3
What you cite is a recent interpretation by the ICRC whose purpose was to stretch the internationally recognized definition of "occupation" clearly set forth in international conventions (boots on the ground and control of the local government are essential elements) to make Israel a continuing occupation occupying power notwithstanding its complete withdrawal in 2005.
Under this novel approach, which Is plainly inconsistent with accepted international law, the US is still the occupying power in Cuba.
The Gaza strip has been nothing but trouble for years. Let's solve the whole problem by making the entire strip a Park. No building allowed. Nothing but native plants, alcoves, benches, etc. If this seems to simplistic, think about it. If you make it all a public park it could be a place where anyone could go and be at peace with the natural beauty of the area. Just a thought.
1
Not a word about 70 years of corruption on the other side - leaders who live lavishly while their people rot! Even if suddenly there were to be a change how many would agree that the Leaders of Gaza and West Bank will run a viable accountable government which serves the interests of their people. Not even the people of Gaza and West Back believe that.
13
Talk about corruption. I've lost count of the number of recent Israeli leaders and family members charged and/or convicted of corruption and/or crimes.
5
Good point, Greg. In every democracy, including France where former President Sarkozy is the latest in a rather long line of French politicians who have been investigated and, in many cases, charged and convicted of corruption, there is accountability.
The problem SridharC was pointing out is that the PA and Hamas kleptocrats have no such fear of being held accountable for their large scale embezzlement of public funds, unless for some reason you call the unseemly public fight over Arafat’s billions between his widow and the PA a form of “accountability.”
If the leaders are corrupt, then why punish the innocent families, making them live in a no-future zone in poverty and lack of opportunity year after year? See their children grow up without the education and jobs they are eager for, while they watch the Israelis becoming more and more prosperous --- and more and more opressive?
The sense of fairness that we all have is just repelled by this disparity. Some people on this board sound like they are so frightened of the Palestinians, you would think they were a nuclear power with massive, well-equipped armies trained to a nonce. Oh, that's Israel.
The only killing being done is being done by Israeli soldiers, and yet these fearful people here take every angry threat as if were actively being carried out. In their fear, they commit and excuse atrocities. Ever since Netanyahu came to power, the human rights situation has been eroding. And now it turns out he was enriching himself illegally too? Anybody who believes in the Old Testament should be running for cover about now.
3
Well said, Mr. Cohen. I would like to add that it is important to remind ourselves that no nation, including Israel, has a “right to exist”. Nations continue to exist when they learn to make peace with their neighbors.
5
David, I think you may have hit upon the reason there is currently no State of Palestine.
2
Roger, have ever tried looking at the causes of these events for once rather than the effects? I say this because if you did, then you will understand why the IDF did what they had to do. The IDF pretty much knew that this wasn't going to be a peaceful march especially if it was going to be lead by Hamas, a group that is against using non-violence. Let's not forget that a good number of these protesters either had rocks other objects ready to throw at the IDF and other Israeli civilians, which already tells us that it wasn't going to be peaceful at all. However, you continue to fall for their PR campaign when someone such as myself can see right through this all. The reason why Israel has such barriers isn't because they are trying to intimidate or humiliate the Palestinians, but it was because of the number of terrorist attacks they did. Had that never been the case, they wouldn't even need to have such security measures. If the Palestinians should be protesting something, it should be why neither head of the PA even wanted to talk peace with Israel as well as why Hamas constantly mistreats them as second class citizens not to mention placing them into harm's way whenever the IDF fires back. Of course that will probably never happen, because they will probably get killed if they ever do that considering their authoritarian rule in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In reality, this protest was most likely another intifada in disguise.
25
Tai, have ever tried looking at the causes of these events for once rather than the effects? Why do you think the Palestinians are demonstrating and fighting? Could it be that they don't like being cheated and treated like subhumans?
1
Everything you write is true, as is the concern of the leaders of Mossad.
However, my question is : with whom are you going to talk? Hamas? Hezbollah, Abbas?. Everyone of those are committed to the destruction of Israel.
This can be settled easily. The Palestinians have to recognize Israel's right to exist.
That is at the core of everything that is going on.
Or, just declare Gaza and other territories and Independent state, and lets see how effective they are at governing or curbing the attacks on Israel.
I will never understand the value of a proportionate response. If someone is trying to kill you, then you do whatever it takes to stop them short and long term.
26
She
Where have you been?
The Palestinians have (many times) formally recognized the State of Israel. Israel has never recognized the State of Palestine.
In 2014, by joining the Palestinian unity government, Hamas adopted all previous agreements and all of the principles set out by the US and the Quartet for peace negotiations with the State of Israel.
1
Dear Shp, the Palestinians have recognize Israel's right to exist many times. But has Israel recognized the Palestinians right to exist ? Yes of course, probably by building every day more settlements beyond the 1967 border in what the world calls the occupied territores.
2
I don't know where Mr. Cohen draws the confidence to judge a situation and cast blame when he isn't on the ground. If he wanted to be intellectually honest, he should ask himself what he would do if he were the Israeli commanding officer charged with deterring armed violent protestors trying to breach the border fence between Gaza under the rule of the terrorist group Hamas and the democratic State of Israel. So far, the significant majority of the fatalities were known members of the terrorist gangs of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
After levelling his uninformed criticism of Israel's tactics in dealing with Hamas orchestrated violence, Mr. Cohen conflates this Hamas event with the ultimate need for a two-state solution. There, a majority of Israelis agree with him. But Hamas does not. Hamas, along with their marchers, chant for a one-state solution "from the Jordan River to the Sea" as they try to illegally and violently breach the border fence with Gaza and Israel.
Hamas also just tried to assassinate the Vice President of the Palestinian Authority. Notice that the PA hasn't said much about the Hamas fatalities at the border fence.)
Unfortunately, your column can only unwittingly strengthen Hamas which is the last thing I think you want. Let the Israeli army do what they to best to quell this ersatz uprising.
25
Excellent work. I agree that Israel has a suicide pact in place. But, who will be their "partner" in order to resolve it? What international force must step in to get back to the 1967 borders? Will the Palestinian state be governable?
2
Mark
Why the 1967 borders?
The 1967 borders are the 1949 cease fire lines. Both Arabs & Israelis said that these were not to be considered permanent borders.
People used the results of World War 2 to reset the borders of Europe. No one said let's ignore World War 2 & let's ignore World War 1 & let's go by the results of the Franco-Prussian War. However, when it comes to the Jewish State, people say we should ignore the Yom Kippur War, we should ignore the Six-Day War & we should ignore the 1956 War. Why do people treat Israel differently?
5
m1945
"Why do people treat Israel differently?"
Because after WW2 the UN agreed that their would be no more acquisition of territory by means of warfare and established the Geneva Conventions.
1
Mr. Cohen needs to see the film "Foxtrot"
It could hopefully open his eyes as to what is the reality of Israel, a country perpetually having to fight in order to exist.
Thelma Bogante
9
Nothing can be accomplished by living in the past. The reality is that the leadership of the Arab world has largely come to terms with the existence of Israel. Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia have all accepted Israel and work with it. Syria is too embroiled in its own civil war to be a threat. Non-arab Iran, seeking influence in the region, seeks to capitalize on Arab resentment of Israel's perceived mistreatment of Palestinians, but is not in a position to threaten Israel. The Palestinians themselves are not an existential threat anywhere except, possibly, in the voting booth.
3
David:
easy for you to decide who is and who is not an existential threat. Unfortunately Israel is not dealing with Egypt Jordan or Saudi Arabia, but rather with Hamas.
How is it possible for Roger Cohen to complain about Israel keeping tunnels from allowing Hamas to infiltrate across the border?
1
Forget the two-state solution. Israel needs the land and water from the West Bank Jordan River proximity for its growing population - so do the Palestinians - Israel will continue to act in its best interests.
I used to think the two-state option was the solution, the honorable solution. It looked good to USA and Western European spectators. But Israel saw the endgame differently. We humans are complex, but predictable.
The endgame, in my view, is escalating conflict until something breaks unleashing the genocidal impulse in the greater Middle East. It could be an attack by Iran on Israel. Israel will prevent Iran, or any other Middle Eastern state from attaining a nuclear capability. They cannot prevent it eternally
The Jews suffered a genocide and learned, and internalized, important lessons. Among them, that neither appeasement nor wishful thinking deter one's enemies. The German Jews thought the Christian Germans were their friends. They were indeed. Until they weren't. Same genocidal dynamic in Rwanda, in Yugoslavia, in Turkish Armenia.
Land, religion, and race form core human identity. I think these primal forces will continue to drive the region towards equilibrium. That equilibrium will be attained at great human cost.
5
What a load of nonsense. Are you so ignorant that you don’t realize that Israel is defending itself against violent attempts to breach its border, or ate you lying deliberately?
21
Exactly what violence are you referring to. All I've heard about is rock throwing, tire burning and the like that is not particularly threatening and does not justify killing unarmed people.
2
It's calumny to say that the right of return, and the terminology of "occupation" to describe 1948 on, mean pushing Jews into the sea. That is not the Palestinians' goal. Refugees' return to their homes, as Israel agreed to in UN 194 in exchange for recognition, and equal rights (yes, it absolutely means putting an end to Jewish privilege) are not "stomach turning." There will be one state with equal rights and return for refugees. It's great that Cohen recognizes the evil of Israel's indefensible massacres, but he needs to show whether he sides with "Jewish state" supremacists and separatists, or the cause of true civil rights.
7
Interesting perspective on history.
General Assembly resolution 194 was passed by a majority of the UN general assembly; it was not accepted by Israel in the interpretation given by the Arab League (something about reading what is written as opposed to what you wish they had written), and is nothing other than a recommendation as the GA has no other authority.
General Assembly resolution 181 was passed by a majority of the UN general assembly; it was not accepted by the Arab League, and is nothing other than a recommendation as the GA has no other authority. Having rejected 181 the Arab League went to war...and lost.
Why do you focus only on the one resolution, not the other, and misunderstand what they sig
Peter, unfortunately for your argument, the PA “phased plan” to eradicate the Jewish state that was developed by Arafat and the PLO (which he referred to when justifying the Oslo Accords to his Arabbrethren) says differently. Of course, the Hamas Charter calls explicitly for Israel’s destruction. Closing your eyes to these realities doesn’t help reaching sensible conclusions.
2
When I view the news through my dark glass, and see variations of the same thing, I tend to form opinions as to what I see. That’s apart from whatever mental understanding I may have of the historical, religious, geographical, and economic underpinnings here involved. I see and hear a mob of extremely angry, hostile people bashing themselves against a flimsy fence guarded by a modern military force intent on containing them. Recalling the incredible struggle over civil rights in the US, I wonder if anything would have been accomplished, had protesters behaved that way. Instead, their willingness to calmly march against power that beat them and sometimes killed them could be seen by anyone, and won over a reluctant POTUS and the general population. By then, of course, there had been Gandhi.
The world will not fully support whatever just claims the Palestinians have until they can truly peacefully demonstrate, talk, and reason. But Gandhi, MLK, and Rabin were killed and bedlam resumed.
3
I lived through the civil rights protests and and tell you they were not all peaceful, non violent love fests. There were plenty of rocks thrown, heads bashed, tear gas grenades, etc. Mobs are hard to control, especially when attacked.
1
Israel, through it's folly, has created an untenable situation. The well established settlements stretching deep and wide into the West Bank make any 2 state solution an impossibility. The sooner both sides wake up and realize that the only sane solution left is a one state solution with equal rights for all, the better for all concerned. We have been watching this painful charade for about 70 years now. It's time for it to end.
6
The settlements improve the chances of a 2-state solution.
Palestinians claim that if they don't get enough land, then Palestine won't be economically viable.
If they ever agree on a border, settlements on the Palestinian side of the border could become part of Palestine & the settlers could become Palestinian citizens. Because the settlers are generally wealthier than the Palestinians,
the presence of settlers would help the Palestinian economy.
3
After enduring decades of suicide bombs, it is not the IDF’s responsibility to determine which of the people invading its borders are armed or unarmed. It has a right and responsibility to make sure they don’t cross the border.
14
If you endorse a two-state solution, then you endorse the continued second-class status of non-Jews within the borders of Israel, and the second-class status of Jews (who now live all over the West Bank) in Palestine. That is not a solution that is compatible with justice. The only just solution is a secular, multi-national state, from the Jordan to the Mediterranean, one that is neither exclusively Jewish nor Palestinian. The road to that solution is very difficult, but until all responsible parties endorse it and start taking steps in that direction there simply is no hope for peace and no hope for justice.
6
David A.
Second class?
Khaled Abu Toameh, the journalist who reports for the Jerusalem Post, U.S. News & World Report and NBC News, put it: "Israel is a wonderful place to live ... a free and open country.
Arab women in Israel live longer than Arab women in any Arab country.
Arab babies in Israel have lower infant mortality than Arab babies in any Arab country.
Hadassah University Medical Center in Israel established a registry for Arab donors of bone marrow and stem cells to facilitate life-saving transplants. The registry at Hadassah Hospital is the only one in the world for Arabs and will no doubt save the lives not only of Arab Israelis but also of some citizens of Arab countries, not a single one of which has a registry of its own.
1
Roger Cohen says that "Palestinians lost their homes after Arab armies declared war in 1948 on Israel," as if it explained or justified anything. Palestinians lost their homes because they were refugees from a war. Perhaps some hoped to return with triumphant Arab armies, as the Israeli narrative suggests is true of all of them; certainly some were intentionally driven out by the Israeli forces (as Israeli historians have well documented), many were just trying to avoid bombs and bullets and keep their children safe--just like refugees everywhere.
I don't much care whether Egypt or Syria or Israel was right or wrong in 1948; it has nothing to do with the Gaza fence.
5
The Gaza fence is not a response to Egypt and Syria's actions in 1948. It is a response to Hamas's actions today.
2
This is not a peace march by a bunch of flower children. The goal of the "protests" is to threaten the physical integrity of the fence and the border and to draw fire, so that the inevitable bloody corpses of teens can be held up on the front pages of websites as propaganda set pieces. Hamas is losing its steam and its purpose, and is ginning this up because it has no other purpose or strategy, and certainly doesn't care about peace. If every "responsible" Palestinian politician declared readiness to recognize Israel within the 1967 lines with equivalent land swaps and lined up behind a version of the Saudi proposal the moral momentum toward peace would even overwhelm the Israeli right. But there is no threat of that happening in our lifetimes, and certainly not within the short lifetimes of the Palestinian youth who are being cynically sentenced to death by Hamas' political antics.
11
I believe a couple things in thsi essay are very important.
1- Arab world lost interets to palestinian cause. It means Arabs used Palestine since 1948 as a falg to gather opposition against Israel. It seems anymore 20th century story , out dated.
2- Is real's impunity over palestine , is also a clear indicator. palestine misery will be perpetual.
Because Muslim world focus moved , Palestine is all alone itself.
3
The solution is very simple. Hamas must renounce its stated goal of israels destruction, unarm, remerge with the West Bank and pla, and sit down and recognize israels legitimate right as a sovereign nation and negotiate across a table on erasing all blockades and then the final status of a two-state solution.
Or they can keep up the armed struggle, digging tunnels to a infiltrate, kidnap, murder, while they send civilians mixed with known terrorists to breach the border. You can't have both.
13
What goes unmentioned is the proxy war involving Israel, Iran and Hamas. And Hezbollah to the north. How does something that never existed erode, and by that I mean Palestinian desire for a two state solution.
1
I do not understand how the Gaza Fence can be characterized as a border, as both sides of the fence are territories occupied by Israel. Hence, Israel's activities are not defending a border.
4
What you're saying is that Israeli troops are firing on people that have already broached the border.
What would any country do if a mob of people tried to enter their country illegally?
9
Thank you Roger for a well balance view of the Palestinian/Israeli dilemma. Hopefully Bebe will come to the end of his presidency and a new more balanced approached will be found to this outrageous miscarriage of human rights.
4
There was no peace before Bebe because Palestinians don't want peace.
The conflict has provided great wealth for Palestinian leaders. Arafat’s net worth was $1 billion. Abbas’ met worth is $100 million. Hamas’ Khaled Mashaal, head of Hamas’s political wing, net worth $2.6 billion. Ending the conflict means ending the money.
1
This situation has been going on since 1948...Believe it or not, people, Palestinians and Jewish Israels have been killed on a yearly basis.The status quo is the present situation, ie; Israel defending borders,Palestinians provoking and getting shot.There isn't any solution until the Palestinian leaders decide they will recognize Israel an an entity, and then make compromises. Israel won't respond to anything less. Mr. Cohen is a dreamer by trying to shame Israel into granting concessions that will tear apart the state.. Nothing new about his opinions..
5
Cohen calls Israel’s reactions to violence on its borders disproportionate, because more Palestinians are killed than Israelis and cares nothing if Palestinians, some armed, mass along Israel’s border.
Consider 100,000 Mexicans, some armed, massing along America’s border demanding the right of return to Texas, which they feel was stolen from them. Our military would use whatever means necessary to secure the border.
Consider Cuba firing missiles into Florida. America would place an embargo on all imports into Cuba, regardless of the impact on ordinary Cubans to make sure America was safe.
Consider that the British, incinerated 20,000 civilians in Dresden in WW II and tens or hundreds of thousands of others in the course of the war.
Consider that America dropped 2 atomic bombs (and incendiaries) on defenseless cities in Japan killing hundreds of thousands of civilians, whose military was no where near American soil, to save the lives of soldiers still fighting and to avoid an invasion of Japan, getting more killed.
So, what is disproportionate and when are enemy civilians safe? When Germany, Japan, Hamas and others make wars, supported by their citizens, then those citizens cannot and should not be safe. Rocks kill, IEDs kill, knives kill. America, the richest and most powerful nation has invaded countries, when the enemy was far from us, to keep Americans safe. Cohen would deny Israel the same right.
If Gazans live in peace no one dies!
12
I continue to believe that the only hope for a solution (other than the unacceptable destruction, expulsion, or permanent oppression of one of the two groups) is for there to be two states—one for each people—but for the land to be shared between the two states in federation. The citizens of each country would be free to live and work across the whole land of Israel/Palestine. This accomplishes the goal of each people having its own state, but resolves the thorny problem of the fact that the populations are already too mixed to be easily separated and that any division of the land is likely to produce one state that is too poor, fragmented, and small to become anything but a failed state. There would be many complexities to be ironed out in establishing such a federation, but at this point in history I believe it is the only hope for an acceptable, just, and fair solution. Anything else will be a human rights disaster.
5
I like your vision, which is sort of a twist on “one land, two ‘virtual’ nations.” A federation is a good concept, and easier to understand. What about right of return?
2
Maybe right of return becomes irrelevant if people can work and live anywhere within the territory. Palestinians could not expect to get their old homes back, but there'd probably have to be some kind of compensation to allow them to purchase new homes. On the other hand, Jewish settlements in the West Bank could remain. One goal is to avoid forced population transfers. At the same time, the Palestinians are so disadvantaged economically that they'd need assistance to have a reasonable chance of finding employment and homes on semi-equal footing with the Jewish population.
Maybe the right of return becomes irrelevant if citizens of both states are free to live and work anywhere within the territory of Israel/Palestine. Palestinians would not be able to reclaim their ancestral property, of course, but they would likely need to given some kind of compensation or financial assistance, not only to make up for what they lost, but more important to give them the means to escape their current poverty and purchase new homes. The flip side of this is that Jewish settlements in the West Bank would remain. Part of the logic of this solution is to avoid the need for forced population transfers.
Is Israel still a Jewish State? I don't know, but if it is then I am no longer a Jew.
10
"You never will be missed".
7
Mr Cohen needs a little historic background and a little more of an understanding as to what the right to return means to those following a Hamas guideline of “freeing” the land from the River to the Sea. Did I mention a Hamas Charter goal of eliminating all Jews everywhere, and that presumably also includes those working at the NYTimes. Plus, what constitutes a non peaceful act? Flying a kite with a bomb on it? Throwing Molotov cocktails or enormous rocks?
As to history, 70 years ago, the UN approved by a majority vote an Israeli state on part of the British Palestinian Mandate. When Israel declared itself a star on May 15, five surrounding states attacked to push the Jews into the Sea. Some Palestinians fled their homes, while a smaller group was pushed out. If you think only Jews pushed out people during a war, read about other wars. Look at the eleven Israeli settlements destroyed during the war. Israel’s actions differ from the Nazi attempt to destroy all Jews and to confiscate all their valuables to be given to good Nazis. In addition, compair both evictions to what happened to the centuries old Jewish communities in the Arab states around Israel, pushed out by their governments. This is more a parallel to those Palestinians who were forceably removed from their homes, but not to those who just fled the war zone.
All who fled what is now Israel and all the generations born since are refugees. Not peaceful folks join the refugees’ request for all of Israel’s lands
12
This column starts out reasonably enough, but then we're told that any kind of reckoning for the events of 1948 can only mean dumping Jews in the sea. What's stomach turning to me is the largest open air prison in the world next to a complacent population with a corrupt leader.
5
Roger: While you claim to "know a disproportionate military response when you see it" you apparently don't know terrorism when you see it. The only thing you find "stomach turning" about the Gaza marches is that they are in support of the demand for the right of return of Palestinians to what is now Israel. You make no reference to Hamas as being a terrorist group or using women and children as shields. Maybe you need a new prescription so you can see better.
16
I only read down to the phrase “existential threat [that] Israel claims...” Claims? As if at one time or another, surrounding Arab neighbours, notably the Palestinians, have not sworn to destroy Israel, to drive the Jews into the sea. The tone is the same as deniers who talk about the Jews “claiming” there was a Holocaust. Once I saw this word choice I knew the extent to which reading Cohen’s piece deserves my busy reading time.
19
The insanity of Roger Cohen is amazing. His last quote of Shabtai Shavit is most telling of his personal philosophy. There should be no Israel. Let the Palestinians have the land. Is this home land that we have yearned for, for two thousand years is not worth it. Let all Jews go back to where they have been treated so well like England where Mr Cohen was raised ( how many years we were not allowed to enter and/or live in the Kingdom?) or perhaps the rest of Europe where we were massacred by the millions over the milleniu8ms and to this day we are hated or maybe Saudi Arabia where we once were numbered in the thousands and with the rise of Islam were massacred there too.
Yes Mr Cohen, let us go to where Jews are safe and they are allowed to practice their religion ( The religion of leftism) in peace.
Yes, Mr Cohen, Israel should not defend itself, after all. If a person wanted your property, you would invite them in, have a cup of tea with them and then let them take what they wanted. You would make no effort to protect yourself or your property!
24
If the world or rather Germany, owed Israel a state, thusly does Israel owe Palestine a state.
5
George Jackson
Palestinians have oppressed Jews for centuries.
Why does Israel owe the Palestinians anything?
6
From what I have read by Palestinians and people who have visited, they are controlled by the Jewish nation and left without any control over their lives. It reminds me of how many Black people in the USA are forced to live.
6
Methinks that your reading is impoverished.
I recently returned from Haifa. A mixed city, people traveling freely where they wish; I lived in a neighborhood where Moslems, Christians and Jews (of all colors) lived together, learned at the same universities, lived in the same dormitories. The Arab list is the 3rd largest party in the parliament.
The occupied territories? They are, clearly, different; you wouldn't have them any other way. Most of the population lives outside the control of the Israeli Army. Multiple times over the years there were offers to extend statehood to an Arab nation in Palestine. No such offer was either accepted, or responded to.
Perhaps if one accepted that the Palestinians are actually capable of independent action--and have made choices which have lead them through the years--one could approach the problem differently.
3
”Deteriorate into an Apartheid State”? Clearly when it comes to the Occupation-Israel already exists as an Apartheid State.
When they periodically suppress Palestinian revolt with overwhelming force it is savagely described by Israelis as
“mowing the lawn”. This latest round of violent suppression is probably seen by some as “taking out the
trash”.
Palestinians are seen as and treated as less than human.
Israel gets a pass because of the horrific crimes of European Christians. This must end.
How long will the world turn away from the brutal treatment of the Palestinian People by the Apartheid State of Israel.
We are all cupable.
9
For those who opine the 1, 2, or 3 state solution, or oppose the so-called "occupation," it is quite simple: Arabs/Moslems refuse the concept of Jews living amongst them in any way as reiterated in a 2015 poll. Commissioned by The Washington Institute and conducted by a leading Palestinian pollster, the poll comprised face-to-face interviews with a standard random geographic probability sample of 1,200 adult Palestinians, yielding results with a 3% statistical margin of error. "60 percent of those polled, including 55 percent in the West Bank and a commanding 68 percent in Gaza, reject permanently accepting Israel's existence and instead suggest their leaders "work toward reclaiming all of historic Palestine, from the river to the sea." Further "...those amenable to a two-state solution view such a move as “part of a ‘program of stages,’ to liberate all of historic Palestine later.” In the meantime, Palestinians have been engaged in a full time program of cold blooded murder against innocent civilian Jews incited by the ruling PA/Hamas. Nothing more need be said...
18
The insanity reached its zenith when an Israeli tank fired a heavy artillery shell at, and killed, an unarmed Palestinian farmer in his field. If this isn't a war crime I don't know what is.
14
I agree with the former Mossad leader’s statement. There will be one state. It will be Israeli, and if Hamas has its way with its citizens, there will be no Palestinians left to suffer apartheid. I see genocide, committed by Israel and its partner, Hamas leadership, who will no doubt end up in other Arab nations, swimming in funds not spent for their people.
1
News from the Rialto
It’s a fence fest, I say, hip-hip-hooray,
A hullabaloo as we march today
To reclaim our homes when we ran away
From our just desserts and now cry, oy vey;
Too late and too bad, you lads had your chance
To recognize Israel, still live in your manse,
Raise been sprouts and cabbage and lower your lance,
But not in your lifetime to give peace a chance,
So sons of the desert live and be well
Behind Gaza’s fence, a right prison cell;
You could make improvements, build and do tell
What you’ve accomplished - a final death knell.
5
When you use scriptures to draw boundaries, how could you seriously expect to create an heaven? We know the future, the construction of USA and Australia shows us. Jews are not better, not worse, and as all the western societies, they are going to the far right of the political field, with all the consequences
7
April 20, Roger: Hitler's birthday. A good time to contemplate the Jewish obsession with their biblical homeland. And tell me who doesn't regard territory as sacred in international affairs. Would we in the US sit idly by as thousands of Cubans voted with their feet to live in Manhattan? Nonetheless, I appreciate the frankness of your eye witness account.
3
The Gaza Strip has a population density 33% less than San Francisco's and includes 25 miles of prime Mediterranean coastline. If Gazans were to look upon Gaza as a gift from Allah and develop its potential (instead of being angry for what they lack), perhaps Israelis would be less likely to worry about Gazans breaking down (or tunneling under ) the wall to butcher the Jews who live in the Negev. Just a suggestion!
23
rigt.
perhaps a solution would be to have France annex Gaza and turn it into Provence, South.
it is amazing to visit Herzlia, Tel Aviv, and other seaside Israeli communities, or even Lebanon between paroxisms, which are hard to distinguish from places like Santa Monica, and then consider Gaza, and how little they have, managed to do with it. guess they should study real estate.
3
The Nation of Israel has a collective post trauma disorder, they and their supporters commit crimes against humanity in the name of justifying their nation. There are some people posting here approved by NYT, advocating the killing of innocent people because it’s too much work for Israel to parse them out from terrorist. I was raised to be a supporter of Israel but I am not anymore.
9
Roger you need to remember history.You would need to be an idiot to go back to Europe,to Poland or Hungary and even France.It is not the State of Israel I'm worried about it is the people.People started hating the Jews in the Middle East before a state was born.Hamas was building tunnels not to have a sentimental look at long gone ancestral homes bbut to kill innocent who live what was uninhabited dessert.The hole in the fence is not a short cut for a holiday visit but to kill survivors who escaped Arab lands and the killing fields of Europe.
13
A couple of points: the Palestinians lost their land after more than 50 years of gradual Zionist encroachment. By the time the UN came into existence, the two peoples had been fighting over Palestine for decades, the indigenous Arabs feeling -justifiably, in my view - that they were being displaced by a group of aggressive European colonizers. The Holocaust changed the equation on this for Europeans but it did not negate the previous decades. Second, Zionist forces began ethnically cleansing their part of Palestine right after the 1947 UN resolution that divided Palestine, giving the best parts to the Jews, but still leaving the population in that area about 40% Palestinian. The war started long before 1948. In terms of the modern era, there is absolutely nothing new about what is happening. People have pointed out for decades that Israeli intransigence and land theft would result in an apartheid state. This was obvious. Israel's vast superiority in military power renders obscene any presentation of the Palestinians as a "threat" to Israel. Israel is a threat to itself; the Palestinians are a "threat" just by existing, thereby standing as a testament to the violence and injustice inherent in Israel's founding. It's time to stop the false equivalency and it's time for Israel to stop hiding behind an ill-fitting cloak of victimhood. The powerful cannot be the victims of the weak. The Palestinians are pathetically weak. They are also in the right.
10
Shaun: Although your History is inaccurate in significant respects, including viewing the Palestinian Arabs as indigenous to the land (they are not, as even a quick look at their clan names would confirm) while the Jews somehow are not, you have given a good theory of why Australia and New Zealand, to pick two states that are actual examples of white European colonization, should return all their lands to their actual indigenous peoples and, if one follows your logic, return to Europe.
Nothing you wrote applies to Jews returning, with the consent of the international community in 1922, to one quarter of their historical homeland. If you are really interested in Justice, then you need to explain why giving 99.75% of the lands the Allies liberated from Ottoman control over to Arab rule is insufficient so long as Jews have their homeland. We are all interested in your view.
8
Those westerners who are not Jews, but who have supported the Zionist struggle for a Jewish state from the beginning, are alarmed and disgusted.
The aggressively expansionist state of today bears no resemblance to the inspiring and inspired nation of 1948, 1956, 1967 or even 1973.
Today’s Israel is now championed by the Likud party of Benjamin Netanyahu and by the Hasidic population descended from people who remained safely in Brooklyn or upstate New York or Cleveland until the hard nation-building work was done by others.
Have the Palestinians outside the official borders of Israel committed acts of war and terrorist violence over the years? Of course. Were the Palestinian leaders corrupt and stupid? Absolutely.
When only one side has the tanks and jet bombers and strafing fighter jets, the losing side needs wise strategists who can rally international support. The ruling power needs to weaken that support by demonizing the Palestinians. If a Yasser Arafat had not existed, the Likud extremists of Netanyahu would have invented one.
The deadly sniper fire which rained down upon rock-throwing Palestinian youngsters in Gaza speaks volumes.
Every American and every Israeli Jew who loves Israel must condemn a policy which will destroy Israel.
11
dsw
"aggressively expansionist " ???
In the past 30 years, Israel has annexed ZERO territory.
6
How do make peace with a people that pay a generous stipend to those that murder your infants in their cribs? And declare those murderers to be great heros?
20
Hah, by this standard, the US would never be a party to a peace treaty with any of its enemies.
1
Any people kicked out of their homeland in war have a right to return. It is basic human rights. Israel must pay for rebuilding the 450 villages in Palestine that it demolished and allow Palestinians to return. And tear down that wall Mr Netanyahoo.
10
Israel has gone to the dark side...the country and leaders needs to censored by the international community!
8
Shameful, inhuman. Those are the words describing Israel's conduct.
All other comments/explanations are defensive rubbish.
11
Two thoughts:
1) Just what are Israel's borders?
2) This apartheid insanity will stay as long as the US, my country, supports the far right in Israel. The day America stands for its principles and stops financing Israel, Israel will have to get serious about the horrors of apartheid. It happened in apartheid South Africa, when South African black people were herded onto Bantustans.
If I were boss, America would just leave the Middle East, and let it solve its own problems, and it would.
Just like Southeast Asia when we helped them achieve peace, by our leaving the Vietnam War.
Hugh
6
It would be easy to pick some nits with what Roger Cohen says here, and I honestly prefer Gideon Levy's statement in this same issue of The Times. Even so, some of the most complicit in Israel's crimes against the Palestinians are we American Christians, who pay not a shred of attention to what our tax dollars have done to promote this current catastrophe--and without which dollars it could not continue. At least Mr. Levy and Mr. Cohen bring our attention to this insane cruelty, while we hollow American Christians in our complicit spiritual sloth permit this imposture of a White House to pour salt in the wounds. A Moslem friend of mine spoke thus of this ongoing atrocity: "God is watching!" If Christianity or Judaism mean anything they mean at least this--and that this cruelty will not be tolerated indefinitely.
6
It is high time that the EU injects some sanity. The EU must formally recognize the State of Palestine based on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as it's capital. It must also initiate a UN long term iron-clad commitment to the security of both the State of Israel and the State of Palestine. Aggressions by either state to be under severe international penalty.
106
Look at the courage Western Europe showed in countenancing the break up of Yugoslavia and its consequences. The motivation was not there and the willingness so weak that instead the United States intervened in a matter fully in the ambit of Europe. A long
term iron-clad commitment from a UN that countenanced Rwanda and the Congo and Darfur? There is no track record to show that the UN has the ability or the resolve, not since the Korean War.
19
UN guarantees and peacekeeping are worthless. Count the 100,000 Hezbullah rockets in Lebanon, placed there right under the UN's noses after the UN went in to stop the rockets.
19
Yes, the Europeans have a great track record of going around the world and drawing borders. It has worked out beautifully for Syria, Iraq, Kurdistan, and many others. Importantly, once they make the maps, they really go all out to make secure peace.
11
A most depressing situation. Lately, I can't help drawing comparisons between Zionism and Aung San Suu Kyi. Nationalistic liberation movements are heroic when they are fighting against oppressors. But once they triumph, if they can't give up the nationalism, they are bound to deteriorate (as nationalism always does) into oppression.
7
The day may well come when Israel's behavior finally shifts American public opinion enough so America no longer wields its UN veto power on Israel's behalf. If that day comes, UN sanctions will shortly follow. At that point, because of the "facts on the ground" Israel has created, the only solution will be a single state with civil rights and voting rights for all.
Every dead protestor makes that future more likely.
7
Sharon and Netanyahu have both counted on the "facts on the ground" being irreversible and therefore a great strategy for land theft. International public opinion must not accept this ploy. We must demand full justice under international law.
4
Cynical Jack
What is the chance that a single state, which will be majority Arab, will have civil rights and voting rights for all?
Is Gaza a democracy? No!
Is the West Bank a democracy? No!
Israel was ranked 29 out of 167 on The Economist's Democracy Index.
That's better than Belgium, Greece, Cyprus & at least a dozen other European countries.
The highest Arab state is Tunisia which is ranked 69. Palestine is ranked 108.
So what is the chance that a single state will be a democracy? ZERO!
2
Winning. Bullying. Greed.
Israel and Trump. Three drivers. Total disgrace.
Israel is an active and deliberate bully that seeks to "win" for the sake of winning (i.e., Palestinians can never get anything, and they better be fully cognizant of that powerlessness, every moment of their lives).
Like Trump undercutting Obama's achievements and much else, it's all about destructive winning that has nothing to do with merit, morals or rightness. Destroy the other party and "win." Yippee!
Trump is our president.
Israel "is," what we lunatically are told on a regular basis: "the only real democracy in the Middle East;" "our only real ally in the Middle East."
These claims would be laughable were not the consequence of their seeping into our polity so poisonous: making us a full party to Israel's calculated destruction of the Palestinian people.
Like Chalabi and the neo-cons in the run-up to the Iraq invasion, now the Kurds or the Saudi prince in ascendance waiting, Israel has a breathtakingly powerful public relations and lobbying effort, at least when it comes to us. The rest of the world, with media and politicians more willing to consider every legitimate viewpoint, has an entirely different take.
Of course the world must still be scratching its head on how the people of America elected Trump to be their president.
Logic, reasonableness and clarity often are not apparent. The old adage. "common sense is the rarest commodity," remains apt. Let us keep being fooled.
7
The question to whom belongs the Holy Land, and which of the "Tribes" was there first at the beginning, 3000 years ago, is pointless. Same could be asked by the Indians in America, the Aborigines in Australia or the Maoris in New Zealand.
Fact is that Israel is currently the dominating power in the Region, in military and economic Terms, take it or
leave it.
But Israel must have an interest to bring peace to
the Region after 70 years of turmoil and unnecessary
bloodshed, so the time for serious bilateral negotiations is long overdue. Whether the Outcome is ONE democratic Nation (never mind the fear of Arab
overpopulation in 100 years??) or a 2 Nation solution,
must be decided by the 2 Parties affected, ON EQUAL TERMS. Why so complicated, both Parties, consist of Human Beings on this Planet for only a very limited period of time.
Israel, representing currently the dominating side,
and bear so much intelligence and talent,
must stretch out their Hand in pursue of peace on equal Terms, also in their own Interest.
In wider Terms the Situation reminds me somehow
of Slavery and Equal Rights in the early stage of American Independance. It took a long time, but it was somehow solved .
Peace can only be appreciated by People who experienced war, but some never learn.
6
Shooting people who are on their side of a fence is murder; shooting people who collapse a fence and enter your country is self-defense. The distinction is most apparent in the video of Israeli soldiers joking around while aiming at and killing an unarmed youngster on the other side of the fence.
8
It is always funny to see a country trundling into brutality to keep up an occupation. To shoot people nearing a fence considered a "border" without being it in reality is so grotesque and smells of such contempt for life. Does Israel realize that this is the wrong way to impress the world of its "power".
6
When I was a child in a left-wing Jewish family, I assumed all Jews were humanistic, supporting civil rights, workers, the oppressed over the oppressors, the weak over the strong. Ok, that was naive, but what made Jews different was we tended to care about the well being of those not in our tribe. Concern crossed borders, in part because there were no borders to cross.
Some of these values were held by some founders of Israel, though far from all, but that has fallen by the wayside, perhaps inevitably when one starts up a state on other people's land and they fight back. The same would have happened if the U.N. had decided to start a Jewish state in say Brooklyn and Queens. Would Christian New Yorkers and Americans have reacted any different than Palestinian Arabs?
Now we can act like any state- brutally enforce our will, have selective empathy, not care about people outside our borders.
A nation is gained; a soul is lost.
12
I was raised similarly and share your sentiments and views. But you do realize how loaded it is to say “on other people’s land.” Consider this: if in X number of years Tibetans get to return to historic Tibet and re-establish their state, would they be returning to other people’s land?
3
Suppose that the British have been ruling Brooklyn & Queens, but now they're going to leave & suppose that Gypsies fleeing the Nazis came to Brooklyn & Queens & said that they've been persecuted for centuries & would like to have their own country which would be a refuge for Gypsies. It could be a tiny country, a democracy, majority Gypsy, but not exclusively Gypsy. Would you kill them?
2
I think the situation is very different. The Chinese statistics from 2010 (thanks Google) stated that 90% of the population of the Tibetan Autonomous Region are ethnic Tibetans. This is not about historic Tibet. Re Israel, there were twice as many Muslims as Jews when Israel was founded in 1948 as a Jewish state, and the proportion of Muslims were even greater the preceding decades, as Jew began to enter in greater number to escape the horrors of the Nazi regime and/or the hope of establishing a Jewish state.
The Jewish claim to the area is based on thousands of years ago, the Tibetans claim is based on...now.
"the right of return is flimsy code for the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state."
One of the strongest reasons Israel needs to withdraw from most of the West Bank, by agreement if possible, unilaterally if necessary, and try for some accommodation or international agreement on Gaza is because a single state, no matter how it came about, would inevitably be a Palestinian state where Jews were a minority.
4
We see the result of Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. President Bush’s written policy statement on which Israel relied was immediately repudiated by President Obama once he took office. All the talk of how the world would side with Israel if it were attacked from Gaza proved to he just that, words.
Now your solution is to repeat the process in the West Bank and hope for a different outcome?
3
Palestinians in Gaza are first and foremost victims of Hamas who has shown over and over again they prefer futile armed resistance to building a peaceful and prosperous Palestinian state.
Of course, there are no elections in Gaza, so it is impossible to replace the failed leadership without raising an army.
12
Take the net sum of defense and multiply it by 10.
(Israeli cost of border and Gaza defense per year + U.S. cost of Israeli military support)*10 years
Divide that into two.
Give half of it to Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Sweden, whoever, in exchange for social support for immigrants.
Promise $X,XXX of the the other half to any Palestinians, payable on the condition they leave Israeli occupied territory within the year; strongly encourage emigration to the first state.
See who is left. Re-evaluate the situation.
...
...
I'm grasping at straws here. There has to be some solution to this problem.
Desperation breeds suicidal violence. When you lock people up in a garbage-strewn pressure cooker with no hope of employment, escape or even enough potable water, you invite an explosion. And you bring shame to a nation whose claims of being "the only democracy in the Middle East" sound increasingly hollow.
16
So you should complain to Hamas for creating the situation. The blockade is a reaction to Hamas policies, and the Hamas' refusal to abide by internationally recognized security arrangements at the border crossings. Before Hamas got rid of the arrangements, and started lobbing rockets at Israel, there was no blockade.
17
Does the ruling party Hamas have any responsibility for the well-being of the citizens of Gaza? The Palestinians are among the highest per-capita recipients of international aid of anyone on Earth. Where does all that money go?
12
DH, I think you should check the actual history following Israel's withdrawal.
My grandfather used to say that much of the world's problems come down to religion. Though he was Jewish and led our Passover seders in Hebrew, he aged into an atheist. Maybe he was right.
9
Israel withdrew from Gaza so it would have a geographic area to bomb. As was heard from several Orthodox men seated on a nearby hill watching exploding bombs shot into Gaza, "its time to mow the lawn".
Fanatic religious zealots cause these problems, for the sake of THEIR gods. Its supremely difficult to see an end to it.
6
Palestinians fired thousands of rockets & mortars at innocent Israelis. The purpose of Israel's attack on Gaza was to stop the rockets & mortars.
11
And there you have it: two views distilled in a few words, and the result: impasse leading to more violence.
The original reason for why Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip was that they can start peace talks with the Palestinians. Seeing that it only lead to numerous rockets being fired at them, they now see that they can no longer do any more preconditions. This is the very reason why Israel won't do the same with the West Bank or Golan Heights.
7
Mr. Cohen, where is this insanity you talk about? I suggest it lies in the US Congress. It is here that international law and human rights are being systematically ignored. Sanity would have the United States of America as the champion of these principles and morals.
4
There was a time when Israel truly was a light unto the world but that time is long past.The two state solution is dead. There was a time when it may actually have been possible, but the neo-facist Netanyahu regime, true to his promise, has made it finally impossible, after the murder of Rabin made it nearly so. The only solution now is a single state for all of the land that Israel now rules. That includes the occupied West Bank and Gaza. Jews are now a clear minority in that land again. The only question is whether that state will be a legalized (in Israel's opinion) apartheid or a democracy. There are now no other choices. I guess that makes Israel the winner.
4
A 2-state solution is still possible.
A one state solution consisting of the West Bank, Gaza & Jordan would make a lot more sense - same language, same culture, same religion, same ethnicity.
3
Spend some time in Israel and the west bank - you'll find a thriving, industrialized country similar to the west, and a very poor neighbor where donkeys are still used for building projects. The contrast is sometimes shocking, mainly in the wealth of Isreal and the poverty of the west bank. The poverty, however, is largely chosen by intransigent behavior based on the insistence, and fantasy, that Israel will be destroyed. But, there would be peace tomorrow if the Palestinians would stop trying to kill the Jews. Understand what is happening there - many Palestinians, Arabs and Iranians want to destroy Israel. When they say drive the Jews into the Med, they mean it, it isn't the flowery talk of the middle east. They view Israel as a western, capitalist, imperialist operation of Europeans, and they reject the Jews being there. While it is hard to see the poverty, and Gaza is much worse than the west bank, the answer, which the Palestinians will not consider, is stop trying to kill the Jews. If your neighbor comes to kill you, what will you do? You'll lock him up. That is why Gaza and the West Bank are large, open air prisons.
43
If your "neighbor" is continuously bulldozing your homes and villages and replacing them with settlements intended to house exclusively its own people, what would YOU do?
1
Another column written strictly from Israel’s point of view. No quotes from Palestinians, no discussion of Palestinian’s right to a state, talk of Jew-haters and Israel-haters but no such concern about Palestinian-haters or Arab-haters and on and on.
Until we start seeing Palestinians as equally human with equal aspirations as the Israelis, the oppression, injustice and violence will continue.
10
Armed, militarized men should not shoot unarmed people of different ethnicity just because they are in reasonable fear for their lives! Oh wait, they can, here in America. But it's just not right when it happens in Israel.
4
I have lost interest in this never ending series of challenges and counter challenges. The blood of millions is already soaking the deserts of the middle east, how many martyrs from both sides have tried and failed.
Good luck to the people of Israel and Palestine, I hope they find that elusive peace which none of those alive today have known. The situation does remind me of the apartheid situation South Africa faced in the sixties through the eighties. I am not quite certain that worked out that well for South Africa.
1
And then the leaders of Israel get very upset and defensive if anyone dares to criticize them.
4
After 70 years one would think that both sides would take a deep breath and try something new, this obviously is not working.
1
Thank you for this good piece.
"Israel has the right to defend its borders" --- Cohen is a great thinker and writer, as we all know. However, a little hasbara slips through. We must always remember that Israel has no declared borders. Israel has never declared borders. Never.
Israel wants it all, no Palestinians. Get them all to Jordan. Only then will this country define its maximum border.
4
Except for the borders declared in the peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, the border demarcated by the annexed Golan Heights and the UN’s blue line (accepted by Israel) marking the border with Lebanon, I guess you’re right.
The only remaining territorial adjustment that needs to be made is what Israeli land will be relinquished for a peaceful State of Palestine to emerge. When the PA and Hamas show a real interest in peace, then we will have our answer.
2
When you claim that Israel has no right to use force against "mainly unarmed protesters", you intentionally mislead by deleting detail and context. Were the protesters who were shot armed or unarmed? Does the fact that armed protesters were surrounded by unarmed protesters mitigate the goal of Hamas (to infiltrate Israel, kill and kidnap Israelis and end the Israeli state)? Was the plan for a "peaceful protest" ever meant to be peaceful, or was it to gain world attention for Israeli perfidy?
As for the fence itself as the cause of "inevitable" violence, again you mitigate its purpose and who caused it to be built. You soft sell the 2005 withdrawal and its aftermath, despite the fact that the expected peace dividend led to unmitigated violence instead of peace talks. The Palestinian abandonment of Oslo is the #1 reason Israelis are abandoning the two-state solution. They see peace with the West Bank as a suicidal, Gaza-like threat.
I'm not a fan of Netanyahu and can make a case for his removal from power. However, the only inevitable violence is the backward-looking Palestinian leadership you cozy up to.
15
So many of the shrill comments are devoid of any historical context. Here are a few facts to mull over:
1) In the 1880's the total population of what we call Palestine was about 300,000. It was ruled by the Ottoman empire and divided into administrative divisions called Sanjaks. It was not an independent nation or country or territory.
2) In 1874 the British Consul did a census and reported that Jews comprised 50% of the population of Jerusalem. 10,000 out of 20,000.
3) In present day Israel, all citizens have equal rights. Right now the Arab Joint List is the 3rd largest party in the Knesset.
4) Palestinians in the West Bank are not Israeli citizens and therefore cannot vote in Israel. However they can vote in elections for the Palestinian Authority. Abbas, however, is not holding elections, so he's now 14 years into his 4 year term.
And the list goes on and on....
25
"In 1874 the British Consul did a census and reported that Jews comprised 50% of the population of Jerusalem. 10,000 out of 20,000."
What you neglect to say, is that Jews also compromised only a couple percent of the entire population of Palestine at the time. Nice obfuscation.
Jewish refugees from the Austrian Anschluss that I met in Albuquerque in the early 60’s (two who knew Hannah Arendt) taught me to be a “student of the Holocaust (and which I remain to this day).
Like Arendt, they were not strong supporters of the State of Israel because they feared that Jewish nationalism could be as dangerous to Arab neighbors as Germany’s “national socialism” was to Jews.
I hope my friend’s fears aren’t being played out in this on-going clash between Palestinians and Jewish settlers.
I will concede that this debate is one that should only be between Israelis and Palestinians, and Trump’s non-diplomatic crew should be forcibly excluded from, but at least let the debate be a non-violent one.
1
"Jewish nationalism could be as dangerous to Arab neighbors as Germany’s “national socialism” was to Jews."
Could the same concern be expressed in regard to the Arab side?
5
When you read Cohen’s column, try the following: every time he says “Israel”, insert “with the diplomatic, political and military support of the USA” right after.
Only then do you get an understanding of how this prolonged atrocity has come to be.
4
The USA also gives economic and military support to all the nations surrounding Israel; Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon and of course Saudi Arabia.
4
There's another, more accurate word for a "mostly non-violent demonstration". It is a "violent attack". If a group of young men are approaching your position, and some of them are shooting at you, while the rest are only throwing rocks, most people would consider that a violent attack.
10
One of the best and most honest commentaries on this topic. Thank you!
Israeli snipers have killed and injured scores of unarmed civilians.
Even a photo journalist dressed in a vest that says in large letter "Press" was murdered, and that despite the fact that the Israeli military sniper would have been able to see that he is from the press observing the chaos and not armed.
Bullets against unarmed protesters who live in an open air ghetto- some only throwing rocks - is murder, pure an simple.
As a member of the tribe, I have stopped visiting Israel, and country I deeply loved, but which has under its arch-right Bibi government coalition lost its morality completely.
4
Do you also plan to stop living in the US because you might disapprove of Trump?
4
I suspect the answer might be 'yes', if trump also succedes in completely destroying this country's morality.
Can anyone, ever, consider that perhaps Israel is doing the best it can in a horrendous, no win situation? Silly to "choose land over peace"? Well, Israel hasn't. It accepted the partition (after DECADES of negotiation) giving the larger part of the British Mandate to the Arabs (Jordan.) Israel gave up Sinai, and Gaza, and withdrew from southern Lebanon. The last did not bring peace to Lebanon. Egypt didn't want Gaza back, that's why it's an isolated (quarantined?) enclave. That maligned fence is an international boundary with a hostile, murderous government. There really aren't any simple, "good" solutions, and in any event Israel isn't free to choose any given the unreliable, chaotic other side. The situation is horrible; it's heartbreaking that Israeli teenagers must become soldiers ad "prison guards" just so their country can survive. But let's have some compassion for Israelis who do not flaunt their casualties like trophies.
20
It is tiresome to repeat, but what is always left unsaid is the 800,00 Jews of the Levant who were expelled in 1948 except for their real estate, wealth, and belongings. Those lands have remained effectively Judenfrei. If they can return in safety and with religious freedom (should they so choose), then it is time talk about accommodation of Arabs of the Levant in what is now Israel.
12
A valid, I suppose, historical point, but meaningless in terms of solutions.
Michael, this historical point, as you call it, supports the view that a population exchange has already taken place (see Turkey-Greece and India-Pakistan as earlier and far more murderous examples). So, this straightforward historical point knocks out the legally baseless claim of any “right” of return from any future peace agreement.
I still hold out "hope" for some kind of two state solution, but with Israelis, right, left and center mostly in agreement about how vigilant they have to be to survive, a true solution is far off because if you were an Israeli what lesson would you learn from seeing Syria disintegrate, or Lebanon effectively Balkanized by Hezballah's army on your Northern border, or the inability for Hamas in Gaza to even consider beating their swords into anything resembling plowshares, or Iran's march westward through Iraq into Syria or its instigating of conflict in Yemen or Saudi Arabia's response? And what of Jordan, tiny Jordan trying to stay balanced amidst the chaos? Yes, try thinking like an Israeli for a day. It won't make you excuse their sins, but it might make you more understanding of their actions.
3
Roger, it's always been disproportionate force, in your opinion. Aren't some protestors using disproportionate force by sending burning kites over the fence? By trying to cut into the fence, and some succeeded several weeks ago? Why are they never angry with their corrupt leaders, who promise them an all or nothing solution? Do you ever question why Palestinians, sadly a majority, have never doubted they will one day destroy Israel in its entirety, and have it all for themselves?
And then you can ask, was it really disproportionate force at the fence? I ask a different question. Why aren't the Israelis more hateful than they are? Instead, see how many are actually empathetic to their miserable situation. How the Palestinians have become twisted by their leaders, and by the Arab world that used them as cannon fodder against the Jewish state. None ever educated them to see reality, and work on a compromise.
12
At long last, all the history and injuries and bloodletting and recrimination and cynicism have to give way to this simple reality:
The past cannot be undone.
What has happened has happened.
Now is now.
There is only forward.
Israel has a simple task.
Stun the status quo.
Stun the world.
Lead a credible peace effort boldly, with imagination and good will. Become the leader for peace that can capture the minds and hopes of all in the region. Show the way, confident that the economic and military strength of the nation, and the strength of the democracy, will bolster the effort.
Have faith and optimism that will capture the hearts and minds of the average person - Israeli or Palestinian.
Out maneuver Hamas and the fanatic group of messianic Israelis.
*Render the radicals irrelevant!*
Fill the dry desert void of despair and doubt with an oasis of rational humanity.
A plan!
A plan to move forward.
A first step toward well established steps.
(A return to the concepts of the Oslo Accord 1993. It's still the answer at its roots)
And, with the wealth of the Israeli nation along with this nation and of others, an offer of some restitution. Something the decedents of the fifty year occupation / economic choke-hold can bank on - an incentive, a gesture of recognition of the troubles endured.
We would be in year 25 of peace and the good it brings if the Oslo Accord was done in 1993.
Today, now, let's give a gift to children who will thank us in 25 years.
4
I think I read all the comments.
Yours is the only sane one.
1
Excellent analysis. I just read Herman Wouk's sequel novels, The Hope and the Glory, and reinforced my respect for the cause. But to defeat the devil countries sometimes become the devil as a reaction. Now Israel is run by a bunch of authoritarian Republicans.
Mr Cohen accuses the Israelis of using "lethal force against mainly unarmed protestors". The logical fallacy, parroted from Hamas talking points, is that using force against mainly unarmed protestors is equivalent to using force against exclusively unarmed protestors. This is precisely how Hamas planned it - a small violent contingent embedded in a large peaceful protest. The violent contingent had the purpose of drawing fire, giving the illusion of Israelis firing on "mainly unarmed protestors", which Mr Cohen dutifully swallows and disseminates, playing right into the Hamas strategy of employing the Western media as useful idiots. He also dutifully parrots the figure of 1,000 injured without the word "allegedly", as if Hamas is a reliable source, without allowing that many or most of those "injuries" could have been from non-lethal force like tear gas. He also fails to ask how plausible it is that the Israelis could have shot 1,000 people and managed to kill only 35 of them. That would mean 96.5% accuracy in shooting without killing, which would indicate fabulous restraint, not to mention superhuman skill, on the part of Israeli sharpshooters. Frankly, their services would not be needed to shoot holes in Mr Cohen's arguments.
12
Neither side has the luxury of giving up on a peace resolution. Sadly, both sides are steadily deconstructing it. Hopeless and despair reigns...on both sides. But Israel has power so no matter how much the world may continue to wrongly blame her and enemies afflict her, her only hope is to relentlessly push for reasonable compromise while holding firm to rightful existence. There just is no other way but holding to Hatikva.
1
Donate to b'Tselem in Israel, or another humanitarian/human-rights organization. Not only do they struggle for survival, but they are constantly under attack by the extremists who run Israel.
1
Sending civilians too close to the fence is aggression. Firebombs, burning kites, fence cutters-all aggression. This isn't a civilian peaceful demonstration. This is their precursor to war, beginning with the attempt to overwhelm Israeli forces by forcefully marching in. The goal? Not freedom, as some cynically suggest below. But to murder as many Jews as they can.
These Palestinians live in a time warp. They will wait until they can have it all. Peace, concessions, sharing the land-all anathema to them, taboo, forbidden.
Israel lives in reality, and the reality of millions wanting you dead is sobering. But they cannot reason with people who are unreasonable. Stop the sea embargo? Iran will arm them to the teeth.
Roger, what would you do if your battalion is covering the border fence, and you see hundreds trying to destroy that fence and storm in? Be honest, if you can.
14
Nobody ever mentions the obvious solution, the only one that will replace a century of strife by a constructive peace, with dignity and security for both people. A Federation of two sovereign states - Israel-Palestine - with each its own parliament, cabinet, secure borders and thriving culture and economy. Israelis would be responsible for all military matters, which means that Palestinians do not have to worry about any predatory moves by their unstable neighbors. Palestinian refugees who wish to return would do so in the new Palestinian State and would be compensated by Israel and the international community. The two populations have lived and worked together since the beginning of the 20th Century and they will continue to do so forever, whether they are at peace or at low intensity war with each other. Jerusalem - the City of Peace - will one day be the capital of this new Federation and its founding States. This simple solution would turn the page and evacuate the conflict. It is amazing that practically no politician ever mentions such a possibility. I will keep posting this reminder, despite the lack of interest so far - including on the part of the NYT readers - until it begins at least to be considered and seriously debated.
1
I support your vision. Not trying to rain on your parade, but the first time Israelis forbid an allegedly former Hamas killer to enter the federation, it will begin to fall apart.
2
The Palestinians have to renounce violence and agree to live peacefully--and then DO IT. They have to be willing to accept YES for answer and end this destructive cycle of conflict. It is only a change of heart and mind that will end this. Not guns or rockets or nukes.
10
The US should have one goal in regards to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: total dis-involvement.
We need to stop supporting either side. No more 'aide' to Israel in the form of weapons.
No more diplomatic involvement. No more fake peace processes.
This is not our problem. It never was. Israel must come to terms with its neighbors. The Palestinians must come to terms with Israel.
I am tired of reading about this issue. The United States has no reason to be involved. Our involvement does not benefit any US citizens one iota.
We must pull-out of the Mid-East. We should invest heavily in solar and wind capacity.
1
“Why are we living here? To have our grandchildren continue to fight wars?"
The correct answer is Auschwitz. Virtually all Europe participated in killing Jews. Anti-Semitism is again acceptable in Europe. The Palestinians who could have had a state 70 years ago, opted then and now for the destruction of Jews. Iran, which historically had good relations with Jews, has vowed to destroy Israel and is using Palestinian surrogates to achieve its goals.
When Hamas orchestrated the current demonstrations, they knew that some of its people were going to die. It was worth it to win over the support of the Roger Cohens of the world.
The answer to the question posed is that Israel is "choosing life".
12
Not a good idea to quote long-denounced former Mossad and other security chiefs-a strange phenomenon that no one rational can figure out.
It also does not seem to bother RC that a few of these paid and armed killers embedded among the crowd got to the perimeter of an Israeli town two or three Fridays ago, and the deepest and longest tunnel next to an infiltration point was discovered and destroyed.
To the commentor who wrote in about the Turkish ship, I took care of a couple of passengers from that so-called aid group that attacked Israeli soldiers and started the fight. Those passengers were not benign.
8
Unless the humanity of the Palestinian people is recognized and the billions of dollars in U.S. weapons and support is withdrawn, Israel will sink ever further into barbarism and infamy. The irony of the truth is hard to miss.
1
Good thing Assad hasn't tried this in Syria. Someone would then be required to call it a war crime.
4
The bullish taunting between Palestinians and Israelis is the outcome expected after years of abuse by the dominant Apartheid-type promotion of the extreme right wing of Israel, to be 'thanked' to Netanyahu's hypocrisy, all to stay in power...in spite of his alleged corruption. What Israel needs, and Palestinians deserve, are enlightened leaders seeking solidarity among neighbors, away from violence, and be honest about rational ways to solve a deeply emotional conundrum. Real strength is not measured by how many one can kill but by how many one can embrace, even love, as human beings in search of meaning and relevance. Is that too much to ask?
1
The Palestinians have a right to resist the occupation, by whatever means are available to them.
In 1974, resolution 3314 of the UNGA affirmed the right "to self-determination, freedom and independence [...] of peoples forcibly deprived of that right,[...] particularly peoples under colonial and racist regimes or other forms of alien domination" but noted the right of the occupied to "struggle ... and to seek and receive support" in that effort.
In December 1982 UNGA resolution 37/43 was adopted which confirmed "the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle”.
2
It is depressing, but not surprising, to witness such large numbers of Americans who have been brain-washed by the pro-Israel Hasbara machine. There are reports that many hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent in the US to establish and maintain the pro-Israel narrative. As a result far too many Americans have the following twisted beliefs:
Israel is “just defending itself”…. when in fact it has been the aggressor and has frequently been so aggressive that it’s actions are under investigation as war crimes.
The Palestinians are engaged in “acts of terror”….when in fact they are simply resisting the illegal occupation of their lands and the abuse of their human rights, resistance by all means at their disposal being entirely in accordance with UN Resolution 3314.
The only way to solve this conflict is by “”direct negotiation between the two parties” ……..when in fact it is well-known that Israel is in multiple-violation of international laws and resolution should come from the international courts.
Critics of Israeli policies and actions are anti-semitic …. when in fact they are just supporting Palestinian human rights and international law, and/or trying to protect Israel’s long term future.
Iran is a “state sponsor of terror” ….. when in fact Iran is simply supporting those resisting the illegal occupation of Palestinian lands.
2
All the negative and anti-Israel comments here, including that of the column itself, intentionally forget the history of the area in which the Arabs got nearly 90% of the Palestine Mandate and have been implacable about having it all ever since.
Ironically, the Arabs’ most notable characteristic is that they have been at war not only with Israel but also with each other pretty much all the time, even before there was an Israel! Their complaints against the Israelis are nothing compared to the indignities and inhumanity they have suffered at the hands of the other tribal communities and nations in the area that actually share their Arab identity.
13
A good piece of writing Mr. Cohen, but, once again, you go out of your way to avoid any mention of international law. Under international law the occupation/blocade must end and Palestinians granted a fully independent state based on either the 1948 or 1967 borders.
166
This is completely untrue. The final status must be negotiated by both parties. The outcome has not been preordained.
17
Greg
International law says no such thing!
Israel has absolutely no obligation to end the occupation until the Palestinians agree to live in peace.
Furthermore, the 1948 borders were the cease fire lines of the 1948 war & both the Arabs & Israel insisted that those cease fire lines were NOT to be considered permanent borders.
18
Final status agreement is one thing. Occupation and blockade are quite another. They are in contravention of international law, most especially UN resolutions.
What Golda Meir once said still seems to be true: When Palestinians love their children more than they hate the Jews, then there will be peace. Israel gave back all of Gaza (remember, Egypt didn't want it after the six-day war) and got nothing in return. They forcibly removed thousands of Israelis who had lived there for years. So what did Palestinian leaders do? Instead of taking the opportunity to better the lives of its people, they turned it into a terrorist base, launched thousands of missiles from schools, hospitals and homes, and sent murderers through tunnels to kill or capture any Jew they could find. This new "uprising" is their fault.
13
I read many comments castigating Mr. Cohen for focusing on Israel's military actions without describing Palestinian violence against Israelis. These comments do not address the more important issue. It is not that Israel's actions are unjustified. Rather, it is that those actions hurt rather than help Israel's long-term interests. As the last few paragraphs of Mr. Cohen's essay conclude, both sides are responsible for the current impasse and both sides are obligated to find a way to a just and lasting peace.
1
Some time ago, Israel unilaterally granted Gaza a good measure of autonomy. Gaza promptly elected Hamas as their government and it has been unending violence ever since.
What lesson or effect does this have on so-called peace negotiations?
11
"....Israel unilaterally granted"
the thief does not make grants to the victim.
"...good measure of autonomy"
with the notable exceptions of imports, exports, electricity, sanitation, fishing rights, agricultural rights near their border, travel and freedom of movement for medical care, etc. etc.
2
Gaza is a de facto prison. Who can blame the inmates that they are trying to escape.
The children who grow up there have no future. They cannot go anywhere to get a good education and build better lives.
Now, don't get me wrong, I do not advocate that Europe or any other country should just let in waves of refugees and add the Palestinians to it, because that solves nothing. The Syrians and the Palestinians are needed where they came from, to rebuild or build their own future.
Exporting the problem only recreates the problem elsewhere. That is the root cause for the rising anti-semitism I am reading about in Germany. That had been very much under control since the war, more so than in the US, but the fact that it is now driven by refugees and the fact that it is politically incorrect to criticize them for it will lead to a broader reawakening of anti-semitism I fear. You cannot vilify one group and tacitly tolerate another doing the same thing. All I am hearing from the politicians so far is lip service.
We all need to get together to create tolerable living conditions for all the people in the world. Unfortunately, that requires leaders who are more than just showboats. Both in the US AND in Europe.
5
"nearly 1,000 injured"
Not "injured." Shot. Shot in ways that mangle, permanently crippling injuries. They blow great holes in limbs, holes that don't just heal up and go away.
12
I will pass away before the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is resolved. My mother told me that her father told Zionists in the 1930s that creating a Jewish state in the Middle East would be a disaster for everyone. My mother said that he advocated for a sort of Jewish "homeland" should be carved out of the Arizona desert or the Florida swamps, just as the LDS had created their "homeland" in Utah.
Eight-five years latter, look where we are.
3
Israel was created where it is because that is where so many Jews wanted to go. Few wanted to go to the Arizona desert, and any who did were free to go.
The problem is what they did when they got there, specifically what they did to the people they found already there. That was a choice, not something inevitable, not the only possibility. A different choice will have to be made, sooner or later.
6
In 1948, we should have done what we had the right to do - given over 78% of NJ for the Jewish homeland by pushing all NJ residents into Bergen and Camden counties and making space for Jewish immigrants to form a new nation. All parties including the US as a whole would be much better off now. We had the right to do that and I wish we had.
While I agree with your second paragraph I certainly don’t agree with your first. Jews wanted to go to Israel for the same reason that Tibetans would return to a Tibet run by Tibetans if in 1,000 years the global community created that opportunity.
However spot-on his criticism of Israel’s policies on the West Bank is, Cohen does not suggest an alternative to defending the Gaza border nor does he explain how this defense can be conducted without lethal force. The analogy drawn to the Berlin Wall is specious — those that would breach the Gaza fence would do so not to join Israel, but to destroy it.
12
This comment presumes that defense of the Gaza border as a permanent solution is possible and desirable. It isn't.
The open air prison cannot be the permanent solution. Therefore, what is needed is to end the fence, not to defend it.
6
It presumes no such thing. The border may or may not be permanent, but the war’s permanence, undesirable as that is, is Hamas policy. When that policy is amended, then the blockade (a tool of war) will end.
As for Gaza being an open air prison, it would be so even with no blockade, albeit a more comfortable one. Hamas wills it so.
By and large I agree with this very sad story. Where are the Kings, Gandhis and Mandelas in this region?
Israel shoots them. They target those who look like leaders among the peaceful, not just those who look violent.
7
Palestinian moderates are summarily killed by Hamas.
To be a moderate in their eyes is to be a collaborator.
The allusion to the Berlin wall has little to do with this conflict - it was meant to keep people in.
The problem with the tragic Palestinian story is that victimhood is central to their leadership business model. There were plenty chances for peace. Unfortunately, the Israeli religious right is growing fast and chances for peace are diminishing at the same pace.
7
Um, aside from feeling that Cohen knows what he is talking about, I should point out that the Gaza fence is also there to keep people in.
The Berlin Wall was built by the Communists to keep people IN their territory. Had it been built by theWest, it would have been to keep people OUT of theirs.
If the Gaza fence were built by Hamas, it would be to keep people IN Gaza. It was built by Israel, though, to keep people OUT of Israel.
Hope that helps!
Arafat characterized the wombs of the Palestinian women as a biological weapon that would create the Palestine state. Either this time or in the next few years all the Palestinians have to do is start marching into Israel. Israel can kill 1000, 2000, 20 thousand but at some point world opinion and the soldiers themselves will balk and there will be a one state solution. There are millions of Muslim soldiers being produced and without any realistic hope for the future life becomes cheap. Israel will be predominantly Muslim just like Germany will. There is no other stable solution as long as the standard of living difference is so great. Why would Palestinian or Syrian or African youth not want what the western world has?
I don't recall people from the West shooting at East Germans trying to cross into freedom.
119
That's interesting. I recall an East Germany that was feverishly possessed by a bankrupt, totalitarian political ideology, one might have almost called it a religious devotion, in Communism. that East Germans were looking to drop like a bad habit when they reached a civilized country like West Germany. Somehow I don't think that's an analog for the situation with Gaza.
36
The Palestinians are not trying to cross into freedom. They're trying to exterminate the Jews.
48
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/ddr-geschichte-der-mauertoten-...
During its time, 327 "Germans" were murdered by "Germans", either shot or shredded by mines trying to cross wall to "freedom" - Reagan, 1987 Berlin: Behind me stands a wall that encircles the free sectors of this city, part of a vast system of barriers that divides the entire continent of Europe. . . . Standing before the Brandenburg Gate, every man is a German, separated from his fellow men. Every man is a Berliner, forced to look upon a scar. . . . As long as this gate is closed, as long as this scar of a wall is permitted to stand, it is not the German question alone that remains open, but the question of freedom for all mankind. . . .
General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate.
Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate!
Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!
Roger: Quoting a former Mossad Director, you ask: "What is this insanity in which territory, land, is more important than human life?" If this is indeed “insanity” it is not confined to the Middle East. Was Patrick Henry “insane” when he is reported to have said at the Second Virginia a Convention in 1775: “Give me liberty or give me death”? (Oops, I forgot. You’re British so maybe you do think Patrick Henry was insane)
4
I’m pretty certain that those who condone what Israel has done to Palestinians would be outraged if it were Jews who had been herded into Gaza and were being shot for approaching the fence; if a Jewish minority were living in as second-class citizens inside Palestine; and if Jewish refugees had been ethnically cleansed from Palestine, their land confiscated and forced to live under a debilitating military occupation for decades.
Mr. Cohen states that, “There’s no point mincing words: the right of return is flimsy code for the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state.” Yes ... and the end of Apartheid in South African was also the “destruction” of South Africa as a racist white state. But few would argue that South Africa today isn’t a more just and better off country.
19
@Ken, no "Palestinians" were "herded" into Gaza, they were already there. The Jews were forcibly expelled from the Gaza settlements. Any resemblance to a stockyard is from the explosive internal population growth - 340,000 people in 1970 are now nearly 2 million, with 45% of them under age 14.
12
Roger Cohen seems to assume that the purpose fo Israel is to keep Jewish leftists feeling good about themselves. In reality, no one in Israel cares what he and others like him think of them. Israel will make peace with its Arab neighbors when they are ready for it. Right now, they aren't.
21
Fair or not, the world has long had damning stereotypes about Jews, and Israel too often reinforces them by assaulting Palestinians and mistreating them in myriad petty and not-so-petty ways.
Worse, Likud Jews are the greatest proponents of the occupation and oppression, and Israel keeps re-electing the worst scourges of the Palestinians, revealing the lie often repeated that Israel's behavior toward non-Jews is the fault of a small group of extreme right-wingers.
At this point it is too late for Israelis ever to redeem their good name, even if they rid themselves of the their theocratic and political extremists.
13
It may be too late for Israelis, but it is not yet too late for the world's Jewish community.
3
Maybe reproduction will settle this. Israel's assertion that God gave them this land becomes less and less accepted by the young. Israel keeps re-inventing hatred of what Israel is doing by doing more and more of the same and then claims it's anti-Semitism.
Israel must be shared by all its people.
6
Israel is, in fact, shared by all of its citizens...right up to the government where there are Muslim legislators. What Jew is a legislator of a Muslim country? A Muslim is more free in Israel than any Arab country; that's why they don't want to leave - because of freedom of travel, they would certainly be allowed to do so.
11
Unless an Israeli Palestinian wants to marry a non-Israeli muslim or Christian. The chances for them to settle in Israel together are almost nil.
Thank you Roger for a column that is long overdue: Many readers don’t want to hear it but Israel is creating problems not only for itself but for Jews worldwide.
15
So Jews living anywhere have the right to return to the land where their ancestors lived 2,000 years ago, but Palestinians do not have the right to live in the land they have been living in continuously since 635 CE, until they were expelled in 1948. Ralph Bunche who mediated the creation of Israel out of Palestine in 1948 said he could not offer the Palestinians justice, but could offer them peace. Well, they were living in peace prior to the creation of Israel. Insanity at the border, yes, but also murder. A few years ago a 13 year old girl strayed too near the fence and was shot from an Israeli watchtower. The commander then went down to "confirm the kill," and emptied his clip into her body. Such is the hate. The stones the Palestinians in Gaza throw cannot reach the Israeli military. Israelis will still thrive and be the dominant political force even if a one state solution comes to pass.
20
The Palestinians could have had their own country several times already, but that isn't what they want - the want all of the land of Israel, and that isn't going to happen. If Hamas gave up their guns and missiles and desire to kill Israelis, Egypt and Israel would open the border crossings - remember that Hamas used shipments of cement and steel to make tunnels to kill Jews, not to build schools focused on STEM. As for "open air prison"? Well, the leadership of Hamas seems to live pretty well...the pictures are out there.
10
What we are seeing in Gaza is lawlessness. If there is no enforcement, there is always lawlessness. The Palestinians have no real weapons to defend themselves. And Israel has Uncle Sam in its hip pocket, so there is no fear from the international community. Look at the timidity of this country! President Johnson cowered in the White House after Israel attacked the USS Liberty and killed American sailors. And what did Obama do? He had Samantha Powers abstain on a vote sanctioning Israel. He did this within days of the end of his presidency. Israel is the mouse that roared. Remember that Sheldon Adelson has his very own, one man republican primary!! That's power! And AIPAC is feared. With Uncle Sam in it's hip pocket, Israel can kill at will. The US tacitly supports these murders, and pays for the weapons, too. Shame on us.
10
The Palestinians (in Gaza) have no weapons to defend themselves? They have thousands of rockets. But defend themselves from what? Israel isn't coming back to Gaza - Israel could wipe out Gaza in minutes and hasn't. When Gazans love their children more than they hate Jews, there will be peace. It is that simple.
As for America - when America abandons Israel, a true democracy, America is done. And you Hero Obama, he started that process, the end of America, by abandoning Ukraine, who we were required to defend by treaty.
5
The original sin of the state of Israel is the notion that a state founded to be a Jewish state through the disenfranchisement, ethnic cleansing and replacement of non-Jews with Jews is legitimate. The way to salvation for Israel is to finally accept the rights of the Palestinian refugees, including their right of return, and forthrightly declare Israel to be a state of all its people, forsaking all favoritism toward Jews.
17
ROGER Surprises me by describing the Palestinians as "unarmed civilians," begin attacked disproportionately by the Israelis. From videos I saw, they used not a small number of sling shots, which an be lethal. Look at the story of David and Goliath (who was, if memory serves me, someone from Palestine). Tragically, it is Bibi being Bibi who orders the use of disproportional force. While I agree that, if the Iranians try to insert themselves into the demonstrations by arming the Palestinians with weaponized drones among other other things, that the Israelis must defend themselves. But not by engaging in military violence. Gold Meir, asked when the Palestinians would stop killing the Israelis, she said that would happen when they love their own children more than they hate us. Could the same question be asked about the Israelis? When with the Israelis stop killing the Arabs? Will it be when they love their own children more than they hate the Arabs? If the level of violence used by the Israeli army is disproportionate, then its leaders must answer that question, also. If only as an exercise in logic and fairness.
4
Cohen is right that Israel doesn't seem to know what it wants (it appears that they would like to keep these people in camps for eternity which is unsustainable and immoral) and that they have chosen land and a made-up deity over human life.
Where Cohen goes wrong is lamenting the destruction of the "Jewish state." This is akin to MAGA Americans lamenting the loss of the white European state in America. What place does a pure ethno-religious state have in the 21st century? Why should this be a goal for anyone?
Jewish people, like all people, must be protected wherever they go in the world -- whether Israel, Europe, or America. At the same time, what right do they have to trampel on the human rights of the indigenous people they have colonized?
The Zionist dream -- that of returning to a land their ancestors may have left 2,000 years ago -- meant destroying the people and the culture that had supplanted them thousands of years ago. It was a European colonial project and a crime.
Now they have the difficult task of making this created state for all the people who live on this land. But starting from the racist premise that only Jews have a right to be there isn't going to get us anywhere but continued ethnic cleansing and apartheid. And people have had enough of that.
13
As usual Roger Cohen falls back on the 70 year old double standard talking points where Israel is over reacting to supposedly peaceful Palestinian demonstrations. Cohen still doesn't understand that force is the only language the Palestinians respond to. Don't patronize me by repeating your insincere reassurance that Israel has a a right to defend itself but....... because it's insulting.
10
"Cohen still doesn't understand that force is the only language the Palestinians respond to."
It is the only language the Israelis use.
4
Once you say that the only language an entire population understands is force, you have reached the point where you have completely dehumanized them. When we see oppression and suffering around the world (Syria, Myanmar, Congo, etc) and we wonder how it can happen, the answer is that those in power (with the support of their war machine) have convinced themselves that military force is the only language the people being oppressed understand.
2
Thank you, Mr. Cohen. The scales seem to be falling off of the eyes of many people surrounding Israel’s ongoing and brutal occupation of Palestine. Many human rights supporters know Palestinians pay the toll of “an eye for an eyelash.” Statistics from Israeli groups like B’Tselem prove this reality.
Statistics alone do not tell the full story. Israel has constructed a system that violate the human rights of Palestinians. For example, Israeli settlers appear in civil law courts while Palestinians as young as 12 face Israeli military courts where the conviction rate is over 99%.
Israeli settlements (illegal under international law) have access to first-world medical, road, water and electrical systems. Meanwhile in Gaza, the hospitals are inadequate, the water is undrinkable, electricity is available for only a few hours a day and raw sewage is pumped into the Mediterranean as a result of Israeli bombing in 2012 and 2014.
The March of Return focuses on Palestinians right of return to the land where their ancestors have lived since before recorded time.
Mr. Cohen refers to this as a “flimsy code for the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state.” This statement reflects his lack of understanding that international law and the Geneva Conventions entitle refugees to return to their homes taken from them since 1948.
Israelis must decide whether they will continue down the road towards the world recognizing it as an apartheid state or as a democracy.
10
Well said. More and more people are now referring to international laws as the basis to resole this conflict.
1
There can be no two-state solution. There can only be one state between the river and the sea because Israelis want land on the west bank, and Palestinians want the seashore.
Let us remember that Jews and Arabs lived together in peace for many many years. The problems came when Israel became a Jewish state. If this is the definition of Israel, then people who are not Jewish are by definition second-class citizens.
With one state where every citizen has equal rights and responsibilities, both Jews and Palestinians could have a homeland. I admit that this would require a level of trust, even love, that does not currently exist.
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Well-reasoned thinking, Ms. Dixon.
Unfortunately, the US has lost it's standing to make such an international argument since we've lost our ability to put your idea of "loving one another" into practice at home.
19
There were problems pre Jewish state. Problems as in Muslims attacking Jews. Saying all the problems were caused in 1948 is quite disingenuous.
40
Tom... Muslims(Arabs) were feeling the influx of the settlers from Europe and the intentions were for a "return" of European Jews to this land long before the Holocaust, though it intensified after. 1948 made Israel legitimate in the eyes of the (Western) world within the armistice lines ( the green line) but the Arabs objected and were not ready to accept this.
Why is it that the NY Times has not reported on the 10+ mortars and rockets that have been fired into Israel from Gaza since January 1?
Why is it that the NY Times did not report that in the last week Israeli security forces found the longest tunnel yet, leading from the middle of Gaza all the way to the border, and INTO Israel?
Every day from the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 Hamas has been on the offensive, attacking Israel across Gaza's border.
Almost a million Jews were expelled from North Africa and the Middle East, the lands and wealth confiscated, during the years on either side of Israel's creation. They were absorbed into Israel with no "right of return". Why won't those same countries compensate by helping the displace Palestinians create new homes and communities instead of subjecting them to 3 generations of chaos?
The day Hamas stops digging tunnels and launching rockets, they can start rebuilding Gaza.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-43775110
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"Why is it that the NY Times has not reported on the 10+ mortars and rockets"
Nobody was hurt. They are reporting on hundreds and hundreds more who are badly hurt and killed.
4
No question, it's a human tragedy. However, as Abba Eban said years ago, "The Arabs have never lost an opportunity to lose an opportunity." The 1947 UN plan was accepted by the Jews and FIVE Arab armies invaded. The Six Day War in 1967 was precipitated by Nasser when he declared a blockade of Israel's sea lane to its only southern port. Israel left Gaza years ago and today sends extensive supplies every day into Gaza including cement which Hamas has used to build its terror tunnels (not as it was intended for rebuilding homes for its civilians,) but rather under the Gaza border into Israel for only one purpose, to try and kill and kidnap Israelis. Realize that in the last number of months Israel has discovered five newly dug terror tunnels from Gaza into Israel and destroyed them. Has the NYT prominently reported this to its readers, or reported it at all? It's a tragedy for the average Gaza resident, but Hamas controls Gaza and its sole aim is to destroy Israel. Even Abbas cannot come to terms with Hamas and his Fatah organization is at everything but a shooting war with Hamas, their "brother Palestinians".
15
The Israelis are missing a fair share of opportunities here too. Most of all, the Israelis are using their time of maximum strength to mistreat instead of to make the most favorable possible peace. As a result, when they must inevitably make peace, it will be on less favorable terms, and they rue the day they followed Netanyahu down this dark path.
5
The 1947 plan was accepted by the Jews because they gained by it.
The Arabs did not accept the UN plan because they lost by it.
What part of that is hard to understand?
4
There was no peace before Netanyahu.
Every offer Israel made was turned down.
Cohen is far too harsh toward Israel and tolerant of Hams. First, Gaza is only a prison because Hamas has made it one. When Gaza was ruled by the Palestinian Authority, which is willing to negotiate with Israel and prevent terrorist attacks, Israel permitted Gazans to enter Israel. It only changed that policy when Gaza came under the rule of Hamas, which uses Gaza as abase for missile attacks on Israel and openly proclaims its desire to destroy it. Second, the use of civilian human shields in the most recent Israel-Hamas conflict is not controversial--it is an established fact. It is also evident that Hamas fighters have participated extensively in the current border disturbances and have recruited civilians for this purpose as well. Cohen also neglects that these have not been peaceful protests, and have included lobbing Molotov cocktails and rocks over the border.
Israel doesn't rule or lay claim to Gaza, and would like to live in peace with its people, but under Hamas, this is impossible.
17
"Gaza is only a prison because Hamas has made it one."
No, that was the plan Sharon had when he very proudly did a unilateral withdrawal behind that fence, explaining they would be kept behind it as his solution to what to do with those Palestinians.
4
My eternal gratitude to Mr. Cohen for remembering that some things in the world do actually matter; the sanctity of life above all else.
There is no price worth paying to sacrifice one’s own humanity.
14
Remember when "News" referred to something that was new. Not to make light of the current situation, but the world is a big place, and I would like to learn about something new. This current conflict is noteworthy, but let's expand our horizons as there really is nothing new to be learned here.
2
The something "new" is the present day killing of innocents in Gaza right now. When something as important as the future of Israel as an admired and supported country it needs to be written about or the public just forgets and moves on. Syria is pretty old news too, does the world need to be kept up to date? Yes. I am an older person and the Holocaust happened before I was born. Old news yes but Poland"s resolution denying any Polish involvement is news. Today people have short attention spans and we need people like Mr. Cohen to remind us of what we need to know to understand a current situation. The comments by Mossad directors was important for me to read.
is Hamas strategy shame? The prejudice is clear. You expect so little of them, you don't even bother to scold them for their shoving people in harm's way, of not building schools but rather tunnels and arms. Their path of violence is not something reprehensible?
The prejudice of low expectations. Let's berate the Israeli's because we can expect better. The Hamas gets a pass. Got it.
32
The Israeli blockade of land, air, and water prevents the import of construction materials to rebuild schools, hospitals, houses, sewage treatment plants, etc. destroyed by Israeli bombs.
This RC editorial says nothing new and solves nothing. It pushes buttons on both sides of the divide. RC is more outraged at Israel's fence then at Hamas that uses it's civilians as canon fodder. Israel is trying to contain the insanity of Hamas whose sole mission, so they say is the total destruction of the Jewish State. RC sounds like a hired defense attorney for murderers by empathizing with the Hamas cause. What doesn't RC understand about Hamas being a criminally insane violent and despotic rulers whose only interest is to rule over the citizens of Gaza with an iron fist. If Gazans are being killed and wounded blame Hamas not Israel. To be kind to Hamas at Israel's expense is insanity and supports Hamas terror.
18
Canon fodder? No one from Hamas is forcing civilians to angrily protest the occupation of their lands and illegal settlements by Israel.
Israeli soldiers with a massive advantage of force are killing civilians with regularity. Not a single IDF service member has even been injured. Why are snipers shooting at reporters and civilians from a distance? I could see if if a mob was 20 feet from the border barrier and about to climb it. Hamas is a terrorist organization, but that doesn't excuse killing civilians, however angry and even misguided they might be.
Cohen is nowhere defending Hamas.
He is talking about the Palestinian people.
Do you always accept being identified with what your government does?
I’d say give them Arizona, it would be cheaper, but the Israelis would start a fight with New Mexico.
I grew up in the 1960s in a Jewish neighborhood, I remember the old men with numbers tattooed on forearms.
I was a supporter of Israel. No more.
8
There was a long article a couple of days ago about the excessive death rate of Black American women. Surprisingly, it turns out to have little to do with their immediate circumstances or their lifestyles. It appears to be a residual effect of the horrors of slavery that is carried in their subculture and possibly even in their epigenetic makeup.
For similar reasons, the foundation of the State of Israel turns out to have been a terrible mistake. The inevitable conflict with the Palestinians perpetuated the stresses of the horrors of the holocaust so the Jews could never recover from their past.
The outside world is not free of guilt for the holocaust or for the foundation of Israel. It is time for them to stop in and impose some kind of compromise which respects the rights of all, including all the refugees. As Mr. Cohen said, this does not seem to be compatible with the continued existence of a Jewish State. The Israelis will be better off without it. But their security must be guaranteed.
5
The conflict wasn't inevitable. The British incompetence in leaving Palestine helped fuel the war, and the surrounding Arab states invaded not because they wanted to defend Palestinian rights but rather because they were vying for leadership and power amongst the Arab community. For that matter, if Arab notables hadn't sold large tracts of land to Jewish settlers then there might not have been a large Israeli state. People forget that Jews didn't take Palestinian land before 1948 -- they purchased it from Arab owners more interested in earning a buck than taking care of their poorer neighbors.
5
"For similar reasons, the foundation of the State of Israel turns out to have been a terrible mistake." Really??? So where exactly the Jews that survived Holocaust were supposed to go? Back to their countries in Europe that were soaked with the blood of their people. No one can guarantee the security of Jewish people except for the state of Israel. Israelis and Jews will never again trust their security to the ineffective international organizations...
Now of course I am not saying that Israel is perfect and it does not have serious problems....
5
"The state of Israel turns out to be a terrible mistake"?? The Indians might say that about America and the First Nations might say that about Canada, too? Were they terrible mistakes? Interesting that millions would like to live in America, Canada, and for that matter Israel, and those 3 countries have by far improved the world in outsized ways.
The fact that there are dozens of Muslim countries, multiple christian countries, a few Hindu and Buddhist countries, and you reject the one Jewish country? Think about it. And while you are, personally reject all advancements that have come from Israel - start with the components in you mobile phone.
From Spain, to Morocco, to Iran, Germany to America, Jews cannot count on the good will of other nations, we need our own, and that is, and will forever be, Israel.
4
Still having trouble washing that (invisible)blood off my easter/passover frock.
2
Unfortunately, not everyone understands that that is sarcasm.
1
I wish there were six Palestinian leaders, who were able to speak publicly, with the bona fides to be able to join hands with the six past heads of Mossad. Those latter leaders can speak openly--their counterparts, not so much. But maybe, one day, a start can occur behind closed and locked doors?
2
Every time I decide to stand up for Israel in a casual argument with friends, Israel goes ahead and does something incredibly embarrassing and stupid and thuggish. Shoot up a boat full of activists bringing supplies to Gaza (or at least not having the brains to avoid a clear setup to make the army look like soulless killers), beg Trump for succor when Obama isn't even out of office yet, or shoot unarmed protesters at the Gaza border.
Natalie Portman, proud Israeli and Jew, just refused to travel to Israel to receive the Genesis prize. While this is not a claim she will boycott Israel, the implication is clear: young Jews are sickened by the Jewish state's claim to represent them.
I don't boycott Israel, but I really understand now why people do.
19
Mr. Cohen's friends in Hamas have killed the two state solution by showing the Israelis what happens when you give land to Palestinians; you get terror. If the Palestinians of Gaza, empty of Jews for over a decade, were to use the vast amount of aid they receive for schools, laptops and beach properties, it could serve as a beacon for the violent Arab world, instead they use all their (our) money to continue their genocidal war against the Jews. This is partly because people like Mr. Cohen apologize for the Palestinians' nihilistic behavior. He calls violent molotov cocktail throwing terrorists 'peaceful demonstrators', any self defense from Israel is 'too much' and he never ever asks Palestinians why they turned down the 2 state solution he claims to support, in 1948, 2000, 2008 and in 2014.
Now the Israelis know what would happen if they were to evacuate the west bank, they would get Gaza writ large. Don't blame Israel if it doesn't want a second Gaza as a reward for turning over land it won in a defensive war.
34
"when you give land to Palestinians; you get terror"
If you chain a dog and torment it, you'll get a dangerous dog. That isn't because of the dog.
5
so electing hamas and using aid for terror tunnels rather than civilian infrastructure was something the Gazans were forced to do?
Mr. Cohen says: “Palestinian belief in two-state compromise has also eroded over the past two decades.” Eroded? That belief has NEVER existed. Since the UN voted in November 1947 to partition the land into two states, all Israel received was REJECTION. For Example:
1979-Camp David Accords offered the Palestinians autonomy. They rejected any discussions.—-1993-Oslo led to the groundwork for a Palestinian state. Response was the worst wave of Palestinian terrorism to date.—-2000-Camp David Summit saw Barak offer 95% of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to the Palestinians for an independent state. Arafat said “NO.”—-2001-In a replay of Camp David, Olmert offered at Taba a peace deal to Arafat, who rejected it.—2006-After Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, the Palestinians could have declared the beginnings of a state there. Instead, they launched thousands of rockets at Israeli civilians.—2008-Olmert offered 99.5% of the West Bank and Gaza and East Jerusalem, but Abbas refused to even sit down to discuss the offer and rejected it.
Unfortunately those Palestinians who want to live peacefully with Israel are held hostage by their corrupt ‘leaders’ (Hamas in Gaza and the Palestinian Authoritiy in the West Bank) who have said “NO” to every offer Israel has made over the years to allow for a Palestinian State. To paraphrase the late Abba Eban, “The Palestinians have never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”
29
How many of the offers included the right of Palestinians to return to the lands they and their ancestors owned in Israel? How many of them were consistent with international law regarding occupied lands?
1
Yeats line “We had fed the heart on fantasies, the heart’s grown brutal from the fare.” Apt.
There is parity between the Israeli claim, now and increasingly, for all the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, and that same land that Palestinians call "The Occupation" meaning the same. Israeli's though have the better propaganda machine (at work here in the US) and more importantly, the might. They, it seems, discount their own growing and pervasive extremism. At the same time the Arab states seem to have abandoned the Palestinians.
There will not be two states I think. And I dread visiting this "holy land" as is.
3
I have lived in Israel and witnessed parents who are terrified to put their children on a public bus or send them to a mall, or any public place because of suicide bombers . Mr. Cohen , to quote Golda Meir, " Peace will only come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us". You may substitute Hamas for "Arabs" if you choose.
51
Israel has been acting like trauma victims for most of its existence -- overreacting defensively. So many of us are saddened by this behavior, which is backfiring worldwide and actually creating a new form of anti-Semitism. However, that was Hertzl's plan, it was part of his Zionist vision. They would be at constant war with the Palestinians, who they treated like residents of Poland's ghetto in the 1940's, and would have to align themselves with however the world power was at any time, for protection. He called his vision "The Iron Wall". When will we learn that walls are not the solution, cooperation and honesty is.
6
The "Iron Wall" phrase and idea was not Herzl's, but rather by Jabotinsky, the leader of the so-called "Revisionists", forefathers of today's Israeli far right. Bibi Netanyahu 's father was for a time Jabotinsky's secretary. So you can see were that comes from.
2
Actress Natalie Portman, who was born in Jerusalem, was due to be awarded an important prize by the government of Israel but has now rejected it, "because of recent distressing events." She apparently was referring to Israeli killings of unarmed civilians in Gaza.
She is representative of younger American Jews, both famous and ordinary, who are giving up their Zionist beliefs and faith in Israeli justice.
11
There was a long article a couple of days ago about the excessive death rate of Black American women. Surprisingly, it turns out to have little to do with their immediate circumstances or their lifestyles. It appears to be a residual effect of the horrors of slavery that is carried in their subculture and possibly even in their epigenetic makeup.
For similar reasons, the foundation of the State of Israel turns out to have been a terrible mistake. The inevitable conflict with the Palestinians perpetuated the stresses of the horrors of the holocaust so the Jews could never recover from their past.
The outside world is not free of guilt for the holocaust or for the foundation of Israel. It is time for them to stop in and impose some kind of compromise which respects the rights of all, including all the refugees. As Mr. Cohen said, this does not seem to be compatible with the continued existence of a Jewish State. The Israelis will be better off without it. But their security must be guaranteed.
2
"I don't think that there is any bigger obstacle to peace than the settlement activity that continues not only unabated but at an enhanced pace."
James Baker, Secretary of State, testifying before the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on foreign operations.
May 23, 1991
http://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/23/world/baker-cites-israel-for-settlemen...
14
Buried deep in this column about the "insanity" of the Israeli response is this: Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005, in a supposed "land for peace" deal. Within 24 hours, Hamas began firing rockets over the Israeli border. The only Israeli insanity would be again trusting Hamas.
www.newyorkgritty.net
25
There's literally nothing more dangerous on this planet than a man with God on his side.
5
Or woman.
As Anna Baltzer, an American Jewish activist for Peace in Palestinian occupied lands, has pointed out many times - the Palestinians are treated differently in every respect than the Israeli Jews. Their auto license plates and roads are different. Gaza is fenced in and the Palestinians are actually in an open air prison.
The fact is that Israel is a nuclear power, their economy is #14 in the world. The U.S. has poured hundreds of Billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars into Israel.
There is little doubt now that Israel is an Apartheid state. A rogue state that has defied numerous U.N.
resolutions. Mr. Cohen refers only to #181. It seems that the only solution to the Israelis occupation and treatment of the Palestinians is B.D.S.
231
No occupier has ever treated the occupied the same way that it treats its own citizens, but no one has ever called that Apartheid. If Palestinians had not attacked the Israelis, there would be no occupation.
If Israel were to end the occupation of the West Bank, Palestinians would fire thousands of rockets & mortars from the West Bank just as Palestinians fired thousands of rockets & mortars from Gaza after Israel pulled out of Gaza.
50
Is there any point at which a reasonable American can conclude that your "rockets & mortars" argument is a pretext? You've been demonizing the Palestinians for 50 years. Another 50?
Jim, please define apartheid before you even use that term. As someone who was born in Israel and have been back there many times, I have never seen anything there that is remotely apartheid. The only reason why Arabs and Druze in Israel continue to live with each other in mainly by choice, not by force of the government. They do have the same rights as the Jews, plus they can even vote and run for political office. How about you tell me how minorities in the rest of the region are being treated, and then you can talk about Israel. The only reason why the Gaza Strip feels like an open air prison was mainly because the Palestinians made it that way. Until they start talking peace and giving up on terrorism, the security barriers will stay. They were only placed because of the terrorist attacks they got in the past and they are only placing this to prevent any others from occurring. BTW, why didn't Egypt make the Gaza Strip into a Palestinian state in the 20 years they had the land or even Jordan with the West Bank especially with no Jews even living there at the time? I find it both funny and strange on why they were never forced to create a country for the Palestinians yet the world pressures Israel a lot for this.
40
“Israel has the right to defend its borders, but not to use lethal force against mainly unarmed protesters ...”
How can you separate the unarmed protester from the armed militant? I don’t think this is possible. If you want to see Israel destroyed and over run by different militias, that will surely happen if the Israelis follow your advice.
131
Maureen, since the crowd was unarmed, and the goal was peaceful resistance, it would have been better not to assume the worst especially since violence begets more violence. Not wise on Israel's part and Israel looks bad.
15
Peaceful resistance does not include using slingshots to hurl rocks at soldiers. Nor does it include flying burning kites over the border to set fire to wheat fields. It does not include trying to damage the border fence, or trying to sicken Israeli soldiers by burning tires next to the fence.
The goal may have been peaceful demonstrations, but that's not what transpired on the ground.
1
I will grant you it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between the two. However, most times it's not. e.g. Someone shot in the back while fleeing.
Ethical people and governments do everything possible to differentiate between physical threats and over reaction to a situation.
This current evil policy may be the death of Israel. It has already killed it's image as a moral, humane state.
20
wow. what an original article! I never realised that the security establishment supports a two-state solution. right-wingers eh? and trump- ruining everything as always. ahh thanks for this refreshing take. will never look back. cheers Roger you're a leg
2
Thank you, Mr. Cohen, for these words:
"This is the conviction for which Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin died, assassinated by an Israeli agent of the Messianic fanaticism opposed to all territorial compromise that has steadily gained influence since 1967. There is no partner if you’ve chosen God over several million people you’d rather not see. But if you look, there is."
And God IS those people as truly as God IS the Israelis. Oneness. Someday perhaps we will have the wisdom to acknowledge this. Seventy years may not be long enough for us humans to gain wisdom, but one day......
6
Nice perspective Cohen. It is amusing how these people have whined for decades, yet are doing the very same thing they say they suffered from. Some people will never learn.
2
"When snipers shoot to kill civilians approaching a wall, there are disturbing echoes for anyone who has lived in Berlin. "
That's a simplistic comment that might come form someone who doesn't know what's really going on.
The people being shot at in Berlin didn't want to kill the guys with the guns.
If the guys in Gaza wanted peace, they could start by announcing they won't shoot rockets at Israeli civilians any more, a practice they started when the Israelis left Gaza.
Your job as someone with a soapbox is to explain the difference between Berlin and Gaza.
If that job is too hard for you to do, quit your job.
The world is woefully ignorant about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and you are exacerbating that.
66
Why stop at what the Palestinians should do?
Why can you not demand that Israel stops all building in the occupied territories, even in established settlements and start dismantling all the 'hilltop settlements' - immediately?
5
What should the Palestinians do? How about accepting one of the many peace treaties that have beem offered, renounce violence and start building a worthwhile state.
1
What have the Samaria and Judea settlements have anything to do with Gaza?
1
If the Palestinian Arabs were actually interested in building a functioning state of their own rather than setting their sights on destroying the Jewish on one, as Cohen eventually concedes toward the end of his article, they have had many opportunities and there is no reason that it could not look like Costa Rica (only a police force, no army) and its rulers focus on giving its people economic opportunities. That would make “Palestine” a rogue among Arab states where there is no real democracy among themselves.
Cohen nowhere mentions Abbas' recent observation about "two states": Jordanians and Palestinians are one people with two states. That might be one of the few truthful statements about the conflict he’s ever made. It speaks volumes of the bankruptcy of the Palestinian “cause” and its true annihilationist face.
Rather than recycle criticisms of how this latest PR stunt is being handled, why doesn’t Cohen suggest what Israel should in fact do, accordingly to him? That he cannot bring himself to mention that some 80% of the dead have been identified by terror groups as members or by eliding the obvious violence in these “protests” whose goal is to breach a border (which in any other circumstance would be called by its correct name: an invasion, as it was when Marocco sent tens of thousands of civilians across the border to lay claim to Western Sahara) suggests either a lack of intellectual integrity or some larger agenda replete with rules only applicable to Israel.
17
Israel unilaterally built a wall. I would have more respect for Israel as soon as there are no civilians living on the other side of that wall.
4
This event of turkey shooting Palestinians unfolded for one reason only, Netanyahu's legal difficulties. It shows the lengths this man is willing to go to distract from his political troubles. What next another bombing campaign?
6
It seems to me that Jewish history wants to repeat itself. In the first and second centuries CE, there were four major Jewish sects, the Sadducees, the Pharisees, the Essenes, and the Zealots. The Zealots were the driving force in the disastrous revolts against the Romans that effectively drove the Jews from Palestine. Again, the Zealots seem to be in charge.
6
Israel is a democracy, so if they wanted different leadership -- they could vote it into power at any time.
1
You keep using phrases like "mostly non-violent mass demonstrations" which is part of the problem. Did you also protest the Palestinian use of terror weapons (uncontrolled rockets) in attacks on Israel civilians? Probably not as anti-Israeli attackers seldom do. While the partitioning of the Middle East was heavy handed so was the ejection of the Jews millenia ago. The here and now of it is that Jews have a homeland and are going to defend it with their last breath. It is the price the rest of world must pay for what happened in the last century.
12
"...the rest of the world must pay..."? No, it's the Palestinians who pay. The rest of the world complacently moralizes.
2
You seem to be saying that the ejection of the Jews thousands of years ago was justification for the ejection of the Arabs by the creation of Israel.
That's not my idea of moral equivalence.
2
@Jerry Engelbach: not at all. It is the ejection of all of the Jews in all ARAB NATIONS in the last 40 years -- including confiscation of their land, houses, businesses and cash.
I wonder looking at the image here, yet again, taken from a perfect angle, with the man taking a photo on his smartphone in the background whether this protest, as has always been the case, setup entirely for the media and paid for by their leadership in cold hard cash.
Who wants to getup in the morning and risk being shot if there's nothing in return? The sad fact is I suspect, that these events are staged and fully paid for. Anyone who is shot and killed will have their families looked after financially.
I am convinced that the Palestinians, as do the Israelis, want to wake up in peace, educate their kids and have a meaningful life. The Palestinian leaders do not. They are too busy with the long view as is mentioned in the article and have ample funds from sympathetic donors to continue on that path to push the Jews into the sea.
10
Robert: much is made out of US support for Israel, but the Palestinians get billions from sympathizers, including all of the oil rich Arab nations -- the idea that Palestinians are poor is provably ridiculous. The problem is their leadership spends the money on tunnels and rockets and not on things that would help the average Palestinian family.
2
Both sides are to blame for the stalemate between Israelis and Palestinians, but as the one who dominates the region Israel bears more responsibility to lay down a path to peaceful coexistence. Palestinians have only one practical tool to fight the occupation and that is peaceful demonstrations. Those are bound to become larger and more frequent in the future. The heavy handed Isareli response creates more sympathy for Palestinians world wide. Palestinian frustration will eventually erupt into another bout of useless violence to be ruthlessly suppressed and another generation of Palestinians will grow hating Israel. How many generations of Palestinians Israelis willing to accept as furious enemies that have the sympathy of most of the world?
7
Throwing molotov cocktails and rocks is not a peaceful demonstration.
1
"but also focused on reigniting international interest in Palestinian claims of a right of return to homes they were driven from in 1948. There’s no point mincing words: the right of return is flimsy code for the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state."
Let's imagine that 10,000 "unarmed" Gazans break through the fence (fence and not wall). The distance between the fence and Israeli kibbutzim and moshavim is a matter of minutes. What would those "we want our 1948 homes peaceful Gazans" do in the 60 or so towns, cities, moshavim and kibbutzim in the surrounding area? Hold a picnic? The Israeli army at that point to defend Israel would have to kill many more.
So what Mr. Cohen says is that Israel should not take violent action against unarmed Gazans, but what about those armed members of Hamas with them?
This is a bad PR scenario for Israel, but the security disaster potential is greater.
Hamas blatantly seeks the destruction of Israel. This is just one more ploy.
1948 is over. No do-overs, no pushing the clock back. If Hamas prefers to get people killed and waste money on tunnels and rockets, Israel can take the PR beating. We'll manage without Natalie Portman.
213
Right, and then even the people who are not anti-Semites will end up despising you. You can see where this ends.
38
With all due respect Joshua, this is a "slippery slope" argument. It has some basis in truth (and perhaps understandable), but is also an exaggeration. Most of the Gaza demonstrators were not engaged in terrorism when they were shot and certainly did not pose an immediate threat to Israeli life or property. I'd also argue (and hope) that American support is ultimately dependent on the perception that Israel is a Western-style democratic state.
46
The recent demonstration was against the existence of the fence and not an attempt to break trough it.
33
The Palestinians believe THEIR land was taken from them by the British and given to the Israelis. They forget that their ancestors took it from the Byzantines, whose predecessors, the Romans, took it from the Jews, who still celebrate their own conquest and displacement of the Canaanites.
History has been an unending series of wars and displacements, but we are finally arriving at a stage of social development where we can see (thank you, Dr. Pinker) where that might someday end.
There are six million Israelis. They have a right to live freely and securely in the home they've built.
But the Palestinians deserve a chance to build free and secure homes and lives for themselves, too.
That will never happen until the Palestinian economy, which is still virtually nonexistent after 70 years of the status quo, becomes productive enough to provide for the population's needs. A hungry people dressed in rags and without jobs will never be reconciled to the facts on the ground. And, frankly, the Palestinians probably won't be able to build much of an economy without a LOT of help from the rest of the world.
Give the West Bank and Gaza special status to export goods without tariffs, duties, or any kind of corporate taxes and Apple and GM will rush in to provide jobs.
That will only be one small step, but after 70 years of going nowhere even one small step would be something.
24
This is what the people of Gaza need. Unfortunately, so long as Hamas continues digging tunnels into and launching rockets towards Israel, expect the status quo to remain.
Why is it there has been no reporting of the 10+ rockets launched into Israel since January 1, or the discovery last week of the longest tunnel yet, from Gaza under the border fence and into Israel?
11
First of all get your history right. The name Palestine isn't even a Muslim name let alone in their vocabulary. It was the name Philistine in Latin given by the Romans, whose empire fell long before Islam even existed. The Byzantines weren't Muslims either, but rather Christians, and their empire also fell before the existence of Islam. The only remote connection Palestine has with Muslims was that they never changed the name, but that's about it. Other than that, they have no relation with the original Philistines considering that they went extinct since ancient times due to their nomadic culture, which was also long before Islam existed as well. However, Jews can trace their roots all the way back to Israel as the land was originally known as Judea, which meant Land of the Jews.
4
I've heard the "right of return" described as a pretext for the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state.
But this "right of return" was to be included in the final status negotiations that were part of the Oslo Accords.
The emphasis here is "negotiations." The PA puts forth the "right of return", the Israeli's object and put forth a counter proposal. Any number of counter proposals have already been discussed and tentatively agreed to in the several negotiations since Oslo.
They include border adjustments that favor the Palestinians, a swap of some settlement territory, including the infrastructure or simple monetary compensation.
There are Jews who lost property to the Germans or to Communist governments in Eastern Europe that have opted for monetary compensation rather than the actual return of their property.
This is not an intractable point, but it becomes one if there never are any final status talks or there are so many concessions demanded by Israel before any talks that there is nothing left to negotiate.
We are very close to the later, especially with Netanyahu's proclamation that there will never be a Palestinian state on his watch.
When one party has won and has all the power and the other has nothing except dying memories, neither side feels any imperative to negotiate.
This is where the US should come in, but under Trump, we know it won't. What is left is apartheid and apparently many Israeli's are willing to accept this.
14
The number of Arabs displaced by Israel is somewhat smaller than the number of jews (effectively every last one) who were expelled by all the moslem states in the Middle East following 1948. The only place where Arabs live in peace with the right to vote is in the state of Israel. The reason Gaza is quarantined by Egypt and Israel is that they always bring in weapons to use against their neighbors when given the chance.
15
When Hamas says" Palestine from sea to sea" They mean what they say and you had better believe it because your life depends on it! An equal number (if not greater number) of Jews were violently expelled from Arab lands..many with just the 'shirts on their backs'. They had no compensation for homes and assets stolen to this day. They went on with their lives, establishing new lives in Israel or other Western lands
4
"There are Jews who lost property to the Germans or to Communist governments in Eastern Europe that have opted for monetary compensation rather than the actual return of their property."
Opted? You've got to be joking? The Jews, or what remained of the surviving families of The Holocaust, weren't provided the legal means to reclaim the vast majority of the properties that were "stolen" from them in countries like German, Austria, Poland, Bosnia-Herzegovina, etc. Both Western and Eastern Europe shrugged off the property loses of their Jewish citizenry as the inconvenient spoils of (a lost) war.
What do you think would have happened if a Jew knocked on a door in Warsaw in 1949 and said,
"Hey, this is my ancestral home, and I've come to move back into it."
12
A few years back I decided to research the history of this entire political feud, using a variety of sources to ensure I was getting the least biased version of events. This was just for my own edification – it had occurred to me that my views on the issue really were not as objective or fleshed out as they could be.
I wound up more or less shell shocked by what I learned. I am in no way anti-Semetic, but I honestly thought Israel had a more compelling, justifiable claim on the land. It's a little bewildering to realize it's entirely about scripture; it's beyond bewildering that Israel's founders received joint military support from the U.S. and U.K. to invade and "reclaim" the land in question with no better justification than their ancestors owned it several thousand years ago. The only comparison I could think to make is if Native American Nations united and attempted to stage a coup on the U.S. with the assistance of, say, Russia or China in today's world.
But they've been there for generations now, so it's not like that leads you to any firm conclusions about what should or should not happen next. It only makes me able to fully appreciate the terrible, terrible sadness of the entire situation. Both sides have inherited a mantle they didn't deserve, for different reasons.
96
You are grievously misinformed. You need to read up on the British Mandate, the Balfour declaration, World War II, and United Nations resolution 181.
14
Your research is still a bit lacking. Here are a few key points. A dozen or more countries were created with newly drawn borders in the wake of the world wars - Jordan, Pakistan, Iraq, Libya, to name a few. Somehow the only one that is illegitimate is the Jewish state. Following the UN partition plan, 5 countries with no geographic relation to the land attacked Israel and swore its destruction. Iran, nowhere near the disputed territory, declared its intention to destroy Israel. Finally, when Jordan held the West Bank and Egypt held Gaza, there was no public outcry, no threats, no wars. See a pattern?
20
Thank you, Januarium. I did the same thing over 30 years ago and found the same thing:
Biblical scripture, secret agreements, lots of $$$ from the US and hot air.
Like Israel, I was born in 1948. I was raised fundamentalist. The Bible said, and so I agreed.
Until I became atheist. Now I see the creation of "The State Of Israel" as one of those monstrous fabrications that people do in the name of religion. It only makes it worse that, historically, that Palestine was only one of three options.
Our money goes to fund Israel's army and Jared Kushner makes his deals with one of Israel's biggest crooks.
What part of this has my agreement?
None of it.
I now view Israel as I view Gitmo - an illegal construction that experiments on people illegally held hostage, in violation of all of our laws and ethics.
Bombing?
Shutting off of water and electricity?
Really?
21
Yes, shooting unarmed civilians is not civilized, and should not occur. On the other hand, how do you force someone to negotiate ? Especially a Palestinian Arab (by the way, I seem to recall that Jews were called Palestinians at one time). Aren't the Gaza Arabs adamant in their demand that Israel cease to exist ? Didn't they empower and support Hamas, a group which thinks almost nothing of killing unarmed Jewish civilians ? Mr. Cohen is right to criticize the Israel leadership, but he hasn't said what he would do if he were in charge (if I were in charge, I would abdicate).
10
If they had rocks or other objects ready to throw, I wouldn't consider that being unarmed. This is like saying it's wrong that someone drew a gun at you when you had a knife. However, keep in mind that anything can be used as a weapon even if it's something that doesn't shoot bullets. Nonetheless, the IDF did give several warnings before firing at them, and Hamas along with their supporters continued to refuse and attack them, which lead to the shooting. I really suggest looking at the causes for once rather than the effects.
4
This is in response to some of the comments here along with the article itself. I think that Israel's claim that they have a right to defend themselves has become hollow. In the recent demonstrations, all the people that were killed, were unarmed, except perhaps for rocks. Please tell me how rocks are any defense against assault rifles. A journalist in a flak jacket which clearly stated that he was a journalist was killed and medical workers have been injured. How were they a danger?
To claim that all the women and children and even the men were all supporters of Hamas is ludicrous. Where is the proof of that? I'm sure many people there don't support the government just like many people here don't support Trump. In the documentary "The Gatekeepers" six former heads of the Shin Bet were interviewed and everyone of them said that they have come to see the occupation as wrong and that it should end. One would think that they know what they are talking about. Netanyahu, with the expansion of the settlements, has just made things worse. But then again, the same old mantra, that Israel has a right to defend themselves will be used. No matter what the Israelis do, we support them, no questions asked. That too should stop.
73
The claim that "all the people that were killed were unarmed" is demonstrably untrue.
9
First of all, where is the proof that this protest was going to be non-violent? If it's being lead by Hamas, then it most likely won't be. Just throwing rocks is proof that they were ready to make attacks. Others had cocktail explosives ready to throw at either the IDF or Israeli civilians. It's very likely that the others in the protest could have been used for human shields that Hamas has a history of doing just to make themselves look good when they really aren't. As for that journalist you mentioned, it was found out it was nothing more than a cover up to look innocent. In reality, a picture is worth a thousand words, but I'm one of those who knows what really happened and taking those hurt doesn't change the fact that Hamas is a terrorist organization. BTW, mentioning of settlement expansion isn't even relevant to what's going on in the Gaza Strip, but many of those so-called expansions are just new construction for what's already there in the West Bank. Until there will be a Palestinian state, both the West Bank and Gaza Strip are considered disputed territories with no defined borders. Keep in mind that there were numerous chances to negotiate a Palestinian state, but both Arafat and Abbas refused on that, and that was even with more liberal Israeli PMs such as Barak and Olmert, both of the Israeli Labor Party, in 2000 and 2008.
8
A very thoughtful observation, as always.
Unfortunately the recent incidents are another nail in the coffin of a two-state-solution and both sides are happy to hammer it in. On both sides you find about 30% of hardliners who have no interest whatsoever to find a compromise solution. Unfortunately those on the Palestinian sides are the clever ones as demography works in their favour. And they will happily sacrifice two or three more generations to reach their goal.
It is beyond me why the Israeli government plays along. What happened in Gaza is a point in case. Forget the tired David vs. Goliath narrative. Hamas has snipers, Hamas has tanks, helicopters and fighter jets. Sounds ridiculous? Not at all. They are simply using the Israeli arsenal. Hamas wants civilian casualties to turn international opinion against Israel. Every shell landing in Gaza, every bullet finding its target is a victory for Hamas.
Commanding IDF officers should tell their soldiers that they should think twice before pushing the button or pulling the trigger as Hamas wants them to do just that. The latest casualty figures at the fence seem to indicate that they didn't.
2
Let’s not forget the fact that some Palestinians have habit of blowing themselves up packing nails in suicide vests to kill as many Jews as possible and their leaders like to build tunnels of terror to try and enter Israel and cause death and destruction.
These are some of the reasons Israel doesn’t want violent individuals who might be hiding in the crowd to close to the wall.
People who live on the Israel side to have a constant fear for their lives especially with the thousands of bombs launched over the years by Hamas, and crossing the fence will only prove tragic for both sides.
Despite many moderates on both sides there is unfortunately no easy or real solution and no will for a real peace from Hamas.
31
The author refers to "proportionate response". There is no such thing. A soldier is not going to know the outcome of the battle or the war until it's over, and until then the only thing that matters is whether the objective is achieved. The only measure of force is "enough to achieve the objective". This APPLIES TO BOTH SIDES .... the only conclusion is that Hamas' objective is to create casualties on their side for propaganda and Israel's objective is to demonstrate to their voters that there is no danger from Hamas invading across the fence. This is why the situation keeps occurring - the leadership of BOTH sides has no incentive to stop. The current situation meets their objectives.
8
Thank you, Mr. Cohen, for reminding us that we Americans share credit and blame for what happens here. Our present President has given up on brokering a 2 state solution. The Nov. election has an effect on the whole world. Vote!
22
A peaceful solution was always a long-shot, even though these contending parties have come relatively close several times under inspired Israeli leaders and one funny Arab with a beard and a mouth.
However, two peoples want the same land. How many times in history has this confrontation of very basic and opposed interests ever been resolved peacefully? It has ever been thus: they fight, with whatever means they have to fight, until one wins and one loses.
4
On a personal level , it is perfectly reasonable for a Palestinian to have the RIGHT to return to the house her family was driven from .
8
Joseph:
If Israelis recognized a Palestinian "right of return", there would be no Israel in one year, unless they did immediately what they're likely to do soon anyway, which is to impose an apartheid disenfranchisement of Arab Israeli "citizens". And if it were to happen, Israel necessarily would become a police state to control a far larger population of Palestinians within its borders.
They'll never recognize a Palestinian "right of return", and, given the attitudes of those currently in power, this is unlikely to end well.
2
Not if that person was driven from their home by their own leaders, who, at the time ; 1) exaggerated the violence and viciousness of the defending Israeli army for the sole purpose of forcing their own people to flee, so that 2) Arab armies of 5 nations could later come in, easily and swiftly destroy the new Jewish state and take over the country. This exaggeration of Israel’s barbarism has been used by Arab leaders for decades. Over the years, Israel has been accused by Arab leaders of spreading AIDS among Palestinians, selling their organs and even attempting to reignite the ‘blood libel’ whereby Jews require the blood of Muslim children (in Europe, it was historically, the blood of Christian children) to bake their matzahs. This method is nothing new for Arabs, when dealing with the Jews.
5
Roger, it seems to me that what the Palestinians are doing or aim to be doing makes sense from their point of view. Non-violent or mostly non-violent mass demonstrations, despite the loss of life, often work if they get the world's attention. (I'd also argue that we should recognize that the Palestinian actually do have legitimate claims and grievances). The Israeli government can only respond with force and violence and restricting coverage and criticism in Israel and (indirectly with its most adamant supporters) the U.S. This has worked in China after Tienanmen but not in apartheid South Africa, British ruled India or Protestant- dominated Northern Ireland. The long view may be that Israel, the West Bank and Gaza are, as a practical matter, more like the latter group of situations.
19
Non-violent? Molotov cocktails (which sounds benign but actually consists of fuel in bottles that set people on fire), burning tires and stones rain down onto Israelis at the border. Meanwhile rockets are shot into Israel from Syria and the stabbings of Israelis continue.
8
In response to the rockets fired into Israel by a relatively few militants, Israel counters by killing over a thousnd innocent people.
I don't think that has worked really well, do you?
1
Mr. Cohen fails to mention that (since 2007) Egypt has also blockaded access from Gaza into their country due to their fear of [internationally recognized terrorist organization] Hamas, which seized control of the territory at that time. Egypt is rightfully discomforted by Hamas's close ties to Iran, as is Israel.
Mr. Cohen fails to mention the $Billions that have been diverted from humanitarian aid sent to Gaza that has been used to build underground border tunnels for exporting terrorism and importing smuggled goods, into Israel and from Egypt, respectively.
Mr. Cohen fails to mention that peaceful demonstrators don't bring lethal Molotov cocktails to a face off against armed military personnel...unless they're hoping to provoke bloodshed.
Mr. Cohen fails to mention that, like Yasser Arafat, the current Palestinian political leadership, in Gaza and the West Bank, have been enriching themselves while their constituents contend with impoverished existences. Where have the billions of dollars worth of economic aide gone that has poured into Gaza from the U.S., the Arab League, European nations, NGO's, and international charities since 2005?
As usual, in order to skew an editorial, Mr. Cohen fails to mention quite a lot of inconvenient fact.
183
Given the venal corruption of the present Israeli PM and the moral corruption of Israel that the Occupation has created, to worry about the venal habits of the Palestinian leadership is to change the subject. The problem right now is that Bibi holds on to power by "mowing the lawn" and sowing fear. The Israelis are too strong and the Palestinians too weakk for the Gazans to pose any real threat to the existence of the Jewish state. We, as Jews, have a moral responsibility to call it like it is. It makes no sense to pretend that the ex-leaders of the Israeli defense and intelligence establishment are misguided. The current policy is a disaster for Israel, no matter how you slice it.
45
To reinforce your point, at least 2 of the Hamas leadership have personal wealth measured in the BILLIONS of dollars, and several have wealth measured in the many millions.
No mention has been made in this article or the Times of the 10+ rockets that have been launched into Israel since January 1, nor the discovery last week of the longest tunnel yet, going from Gaza under the border fence and into Israel.
26
Israel receives billions from the U.S. about $130 billion thus far. Israel receives more aid from the US than aid to all other countries combined. That is one of the reasons the U.S. is considered Israel's enabler, and Americans are the targets of hate.
24
I cannot express how much I love the Contributions of
Roger Cohen, his subjects, his choice of narrative
(some of the sophisticated words I even have included in my own vocabularity - still trying to polish up my English).
But most of all I appreciate and respect his
interactions as to the Israeli vs Palestine relation -
very objective and fair to the end, no leaning in favour of the Israeli side, fair reporting to the last Detail.
This as a German, knowing the sensitivity in respect of Israel, I admire even more, as to my Knowledge Mr. Cohan is of Jewish descent.
Mr. Roger Cohan my full respect.
53
I live in Israel, two children served in the army, now my oldest grandson. Amen. I agree with you absolutely, as do so many Israelis.
115
Elinore: if this is a majority opinion amongst Israelis....then you can vote in the kind of government that will happily hand over land to Palestinians and create a Palestinian state. So why has this not happened?
3
So the underlying solution is finding Palestinian leadership that is creative, unified and pragmatic. I would strongly suggest that is a tunnel too far.
34
With this conflict there is light at the end of the tunnel. Unfortunately there is no tunnel.
I regret to say that with two parties intent on destroying the other there will be no solution. As Mr. Cohen says, 70 years is a long time for hate to fester. Generations on both sides have grown up with it and many, on either side, have embraced it. Neither side can look to the rest of the world for help because the world, increasingly occupied with other, more pressing issues, no longer cares. Israel and the Palestinians will sink or swim together.
12
Yeah but the State of Israel will manage to retain my US tax dollars somehow.
2
Mr Cohen waxes eloquent and thereby misses the fundamental issue. Is it true or false that the Palestinians use women and children to shield armed and violent men? It seems to me that Israel’s right to use violence depends on this issue alone. The rest of Mr. Cohen’s argument is window dressing.
37
I see no women or children in any of the recent photos about this current strife.
5
Mr Cohen waxes eloquent and thereby misses the fundamental issue. Is it true or false that the Palestinians have legal right to the lands and natural resources of the West Bank and Gaza?
It seems to me that the Palestinians have the right to use violence to defend their legal rights (as per UN Resolution 3314).
3
If Hamas uses innocent people to shield its militants, that does not give Israel the right to kill the innocents.
If criminals used your family as shields, would you kill your family to get at the criminals?
4
I always respect Mr. Cohen's opinions. But what is Israel to do in the face of Hamas's planned mass incursion into Israel? I think Israel is acting with restraint now in order to prevent what would be much more bloodshed later.
The article states that Palestinians lost there homes when Arab armies declared war in 1948. That is true, and I would add that the Arab states and Palestinian leadership forced Palestinians that wanted to stay to leave. Israel did not force them to leave, and in fact wanted them to stay.
40
" Palestinian leadership forced Palestinians that wanted to stay to leave. Israel did not force them to leave, and in fact wanted them to stay."
False. This is a favorite excuse to explain away the taking of Palestinian homes but this has been disproven. One source that contradicts this claim comes from none other than the Israeli army. In a report, the army finds this great exodus was due to the Arabs fearing for their lives due to the massacre at Deir Yassin days before by the Jewish para-military group, the Irgun.
18
my grandfather, a newly minted officer in the brand new israeli army, remembers riding a jeep through arab villages and shouting into a megaphone "we strongly advise you to leave!!!" in broken arabic. So there. inconvenient fact.
16
The myth that Israel wanted Palestinians to stay in 1948 was proved false by Israeli historians who documented Ben Gurion’s Plan Dalet, which was a strategy for clearing the land of as many Arabs as possible in order to establish a Jewish majority in the new country. That led to 531 Arab villages being destroyed and at least 31 confirmed massacres. The 750000 Arabs who became refugees either were expelled or fled for fear of their lives. The UN said they should be allowed to return immediately. That was 70 years ago.
24
It is very hard, indeed, to see how two states can be formed. Who imagines that the Gaza strip and the West Bank can form one nation. That would be like giving native Americans Connecticut and Ohio (though less total land) and calling it a country while someone else controls the land in between. Add to it the fact that Israel with its wall and settlements has carved out pieces of the West Bank.
What solution is even possible at this point? Without a two state solution, Israel is in real danger of losing its Jewish majority. Though the settlers may have large families, more progressive Jews do not. The Palestinian population will, sooner or later, out strip the Jewish population both in Israel proper and in the territories.
25
By 2040 the USA will lose it's white , anglo saxon , founding father majority . So what ?
4
A three state solution? The Gaza’s and West Bank Palestinians have little in common with each other. Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island....
3
Amen on demography playing a key role in diluting the Jewish identity of Israel.
1
The Israeli Palestinian problem is ruled by violence on both sides. It's just the Israelis are much better at violence than the Arabs.the motivation on both sides is dominated by religious and ethnic fanaticism. The Israelis claim a 3000 year old text gives them the divine right to control the land and the also Arabs claim divine holy sites and ethnic based authority.
When the conflict ensued in 1948, violence erupted. The Arabs lost. It erupted again and again. The Arabs continued to lose. Hamas still proclaims that violence holds the key. Israel responds with even more violence. The situation has deteriorated to the point that Gaza is, as Mr. Cohen accurately describes, an open air prison, and Israel shoots down the inmates if the get too rowdy near the prison fence.
Arab leadership is weak, incompetent and divided. The major Arab powers have abandoned the Palestinians because they have their own dictatorships to take care of and don't need the distraction. Their hold on power is not enhanced by getting bogged down with the Palestinians. Israeli leadership has been taken over by religious fanatics emboldened by Trump and the evangelicals.
So where do we go from here? How do you close down an open air prison without opening it up and letting the inmates out?
Something has to give. Hamas should step down and allow new leadership to break the impasse. I say this simply because they hold the weakest hand. Israel isn't leaving.
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Religion, the gift that never stops giving, straight from the Stone Age.
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Its residents have chosen to make Gaza “an open air prison.” The Israeli/Egyptian embargo is motivated by defense, not malice. All countries who would passively accept their neighbor shooting thousands of rockets into their towns - please raise your hands.
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I am afraid that all the logic in the world fails at the emotion of Palestinians seeking what they lost and religious parties in Israel yearning for a biblical empire that did not survive its founders, David and Solomon. There is no rationale that can compete against fear and mistrust on the Israeli side and inculcated perpetual hatred on the part of the Palestinians. A plague on both of their houses!
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Agreed. There is no "good guy" in this situation.
And there won't be as long as both sides continue to think God is on their side.
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perpetual hatred on the part of the Palestinians"
I remember than in one the parcels of land the Israelis gave to the Palestinians there were a number of plant nurseries and small manufacturing businesses left intact. The Palestinians burned them down instead of using them to put some of their people to work.
There is no way their leadership will allow their people to think kindly of Israel no matter how much it hurts them. The leadership wants the hate to continue.
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So Israelis are guilty of "fear and mistrust," while Palestinians are filled with "perpetual hatred."
Your choice of words betrays a lack of objectivity. Why can't you imagine that Palestinians are simply yearning to be free and to live a life of dignity and equality.
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This piece glosses over the fact that Gaza is ruled by Hamas, which is supported by most of the population of Gaza and has vowed to destroy Israel, hence the fence. Hamas has attempted to make good on its pledge with rockets and mortars over the fence and terror tunnels under it. The latest tactic it is employing are calls for the masses, led by trained Hamas military fighters, to assemble behind the black smoke of hundreds if not thousands of burning tires and overrun the border. By virtue of this maelstrom of confusion Hamas has created, some civilians among the fighters have apparently been shot, but most of the casualties have been fighters. While I am bothered by the loss of civilian life, I do not blame Israel for these deaths, I blame Hamas, because this is exactly what Hamas wants.
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Your points, while valid, are symptoms. Cohen is going for the root cause.
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Very good. And correct. As usual, Roger Cohen is little more than hypocrisy and bluster. The snipers on the borders know who they need to shoot--and the majority they have shot are probably Hamas criminals. And they do have the goal of burning the tires to make enough smoke so that they can then overrun the border. That is a victory for Hamas, and other arabs can spew garbage about Palestinians showing the world how to be "men". Also laughable to see the choreographed "bearing the wounded martyrs" parades after someone is shot. Maybe hamas (and Roger) will somehow understand that not even the arab world is interested in this Hamas "dumbshow" any longer. One can note that the fields on the Israeli side of the border are cultivated and producing something. While the same land on the Gaza side is strewn with garbage. Is that because the men pictured here prefer to get a hamas handout to playact instead of working the fields? This abrupt change when crossing the border was evident 30 years ago also. Do you want to blame all these years of abject failure on Israel, Roger? Hamas wants you to.
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Check it out. Members of Likud have also called for the annihilation of the Palestinians. So, both sides have agents who call for the other`s destruction. Enough of the name calling. Dialogue. Dialogue. Dialogue.
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Aahhh, blut und boden. Fits nicely with the Israeli embrace of lebensraum. What's next ...... "Euphrates or Bust"?
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Roger, this is an excellent, heartfelt editorial. Perhaps you will be heartened by my reminding you that Jared Kushner is a smart, fine young man and he will soon find a solution to the long-standing problems that are prevalent in the region. Oh, wait.....
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The question will always be whether one has the right to defend oneself at all costs ? ( even if they are clearly denying the human rights of others in the process )
imagine if I put up a wall around my house and decided to shoot anyone that comes even close to it. So what gives the right of a state to do so ?
Lines on a map ( a piece of paper ) are a man made construct, just like the idea of time itself. The lines have changed dramatically over the course of history, whereas usually to the victors go the spoils. God ( any God ) had nothing to do with drawing those lines and has nothing to do with whom should live within a set of them.
Having said that, the ONLY way going forward as a civilization, is for there to be an understanding that we ALL give up ALL of those lines and work as one populace.
The insanity is haven drawn lines in the first place.
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I respectfully disagree. Neither lines nor time are inevitably an arbitrary construct of human calculation. In the same way physics renders time relative to the force of space and gravity, national lines are a product of geography, politics and history. Note that history is a byproduct of time. However, I emphasize geography as a major determining factor in the present peopling of the earth. Natural borders exist and people will fight to defend them. This is true since the origin of humanity. Arguably earlier as apes are territorial as well.
Entertaining an alternative is to abandon the abstract concept of ownership entirely. We can play around with that idea as a hypothetical. I wish Ursula K. LeGuinn had done a book on the subject. However, the idea is not grounded in reality. Quite frankly: You're dreaming.
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Lines on a map protect the culture of the people within those lines. Without them there wold be no controls as to who would enter. The successful nations would be overrun with those less successful and bring them down to the ruination they're already in.
"Good fences make good neighbors".
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Given your belief that ownership of property is an abstract concept, when in the neighborhood, we’ll just stay at your house. Better stock up; we are big eaters.
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