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ceasefire
The Gaza War Won’t End by Imposing a "Solution" on Palestinians
The place to start is to demand a cease-fire and end the crippling occupation. Palestinian views should be heard. The burden should be placed on Israel and its policies that created this mess and not on victims.
Nov 18, 2024
One century ago, when Western European powers were planning to carve up the Arab East, the US attempted to convince them to take a different path. Supporting the belief that the peoples recently freed from colonial rule should have the right to self-determination, the US sent a commission of prominent Americans to survey Arab public opinion to discover what they did and did not want for their future. The commission concluded that the overwhelming majority of Arabs rejected division or partition of their region, European mandates over them, and the establishment of a Zionist state in Palestine. What they hoped for was a unitary Arab state.
The commission report also warned of conflict if the planned partition moved forward. The British Lord Balfour rejected these findings saying that the attitudes of the indigenous Arab population meant little to him, especially when weighed against the importance of the Zionist movement.
In the end, Lord Balfour got his way, and the dire prediction of the US commission has been borne out. The Arab East was partitioned, and a Mandate was established in Palestine, which the British used to foster Jewish immigration leading to the establishment of Israel. Since then, Palestinians have been dispossessed, displaced, and subjected to unceasing violence. Because they have resisted, the last century has been one continuous conflict culminating in the unfolding genocide in Gaza and crushing repression on the West Bank.
At present, the problem faced by the Palestinian people is that during the past three decades they have lost even more control over the circumstances of their lives. Since signing the Oslo Accords, Israel has taken steps to make impossible the establishment of a unified Palestinian state in the territories they occupied in 1967. The Israelis have severed what they call East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank, distorting its economy and forcing its population to become dependent on Israel for employment and services. In the West Bank, the Israelis followed a plan to expand settlements and use “Jewish only” roads, infrastructure, checkpoints, and security zones to divide the Palestinian territory into small controlled areas. Gaza has been de-developed and subjected to economic strangulation for decades. It too has been cut off from the rest of Palestine. The dream of what had been hoped for after Oslo has been crushed.
Still, the Western world pays little attention to the needs and aspirations of the Palestinian people. Instead, led by the US, plans are being put forward to govern the future of the Palestinians without the consent of the governed. What is being proposed is a Gaza ruled by a “reformed” Palestinian Authority, with security provided by an Arab-Islamic force, and nothing more than a commitment to negotiate a future two-state solution. The proposal is a non-starter for two reasons.
Despite being designed to meet Israel’s needs, Israelis themselves have rejected the terms of this “day after” concept. They refuse to leave Gaza or allow Palestinians to return to areas of Gaza from which they have been “cleansed.” The Israelis also reject the role of outside forces to provide security. And they are refusing to entertain any discussion of a Palestinian state that involves connecting the divided Palestinian areas, especially if that includes ceding land, removing settlers, surrendering security control, or expanding the role of the Palestinian Authority.
More importantly the “day after” plans fail to take into account Palestinian views.
Instead of prioritizing what Israel (or the US) wants or requires and imposing plans on the Palestinians to meet Israel’s security needs, a shift is needed to an approach that challenges those Israeli policies that have led to Palestinian displacement and anger; distorted Palestinian political and economic development; and made it impossible to build Palestinian institutions that can earn respect.
The place to start is to demand a cease-fire and end the crippling occupation. Palestinian views should be heard. The burden should be placed on Israel and its policies that created this mess and not on victims.
There are some encouraging signs that public opinion in the US is shifting in a more pro-Palestinian direction. Americans are more supportive of Palestinians, and more opposed to Israeli policies that violate Palestinian rights. They are receptive to changing policies that would help Palestinians. But this where the conversation gets stuck, precisely because there is no clear Palestinian vision for the future and no leadership that can articulate it.
With this in mind, a group of Palestinian businessmen commissioned Zogby Research Services to measure the impact of Israeli policies in Gaza, the threats facing those on the West Bank, and to ask Palestinians what they identify as the best path forward to achieve their rights and peace.
What the poll reveals is that despite the different circumstances the Israelis have imposed on the Palestinians in each of the three regions under their control, there remains the common threads of identity, desire for freedom, and unity that continues to bind them together. What they want is that the knee of the Israeli occupation be lifted off their backs so that they can finally have freedom and independence in land of their own. Because they have lost faith, in varying degrees, with the performance of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, they favor: holding a popular referendum to elect a new generation of leadership that can advance a new vision for Palestine; unifying the Palestinian ranks to create a functioning government that can earn respect and recognition; while continuing to hold Israel accountable for its crimes in international bodies.
Of course, all of this must be developed further, but it is the better path to take precisely because it recognizes that instead of continuing to impose “solutions” on Palestinians, the place to begin is to ask them what they want, listen to what they say, and then work to make their aspirations a reality.
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'Across the Board, We Need Peace,' Says UN Chief as War Rages in Gaza, Lebanon, Sudan and Ukraine
"We need peace in Ukraine," U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said, speaking before Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Oct 24, 2024
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, speaking in Russia on Thursday, called for peace in Ukraine and "across the board" as wars also rage in Gaza, Lebanon, and Sudan.
Guterres spoke before Russian President Vladimir Putin and other leaders from "BRICS Plus" countries gathering in Kazan, a city roughly 500 miles east of Moscow.
"Across the board, we need peace," Guterres said.
"We need peace in Ukraine," he added. "A just peace in line with the U.N. Charter, international law, and U.N. General Assembly resolutions."
After the speech, Guterres renewed his call for a cease-fire in Lebanon and Gaza.
"We need a cease-fire in Lebanon—as we need a cease-fire in Gaza and the immediate release of all hostages," he wrote on social media. "Escalation after escalation is leading to the unimaginable for the people of the region."
We need a ceasefire in Lebanon – as we need a ceasefire in Gaza and the immediate release of all hostages.
Escalation after escalation is leading to the unimaginable for the people of the region. pic.twitter.com/YhwLkSbXzV
— António Guterres (@antonioguterres) October 24, 2024
Putin presided over the closing ceremonies of the BRICS conference on Thursday, saying the group provided a counterbalance to the "perverse methods" of the West. Brazil, Russia, India, and China formed the group in the 2000s, with South Africa joining in 2010; BRICS recently expanded to include a number of other developing countries.
The conference drew the largest gathering of international diplomats into Russia since Putin's forces invaded Ukraine in February 2022, escalating a conflict that had begun in 2014.
Ukraine's foreign ministry criticized Guterres for attending the conference and noted that he did not attend Ukraine's global peace summit in Switzerland in June.
"This is a wrong choice that does not advance the cause of peace," according to the ministry's social media account. "It only damages the U.N.'s reputation."
Guterres has repeatedly called for a cease-fire in Gaza in the last year. The Israeli government declared him persona non grata earlier this month, barring him from entering the country on the grounds that he had not strongly condemned an Iranian barrage of missiles into Israel—an accusation Guterres denied, saying he did forcefully condemn the Iranian attack.
For U.N. Day, celebrated annually on October 24, Guterres issued a video statement calling for the world's nations to keep the "beacon of hope" that is the U.N. "shining."
The U.N. has had only limited success in stopping or slowing the wars in Ukraine, Gaza, Lebanon, and Sudan, which are among many dozens of conflicts across the world and have brought mass death and destruction.
The total number of Ukrainians and Russians who've died since February 2022 has reached roughly one million, The Wall Street Journalreported last month.
In Gaza, more than 42,000 people have been killed by Israeli forces in roughly the last year, following the Hamas-led October 7 attack that killed about 1,200 Israelis. More than 2,500 people have been killed by Israeli forces in Lebanon over the same period, including 1,900 in the escalation that's occurred in the last five weeks, according to Lebanon's health ministry. Dozens of Israelis have also died in that conflict.
A U.N. official said last month that the death toll in Sudan, which has been ravaged by civil war since April 2023, is at least 20,000 and could be much higher. The country is facing the prospect of a large-scale famine, with Save the Children on Tuesday raising the alarm that conditions there are worsening.
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As a Rabbi, I Am Praying With Protest This Day of Atonement
May our prayers on this Yom Kippur be in the streets.
Oct 11, 2024
The famous rabbi, Abraham Joshua Heschel, was once asked by a journalist why he, as a religious leader, had come to a demonstration against the war in Vietnam. Heschel answered: “I am here because I cannot pray... Whenever I open the prayer book, I see images of children burning from napalm”
Now, as we approach this evening's Yom Kippur, the day when Jews traditionally reflect on the past and repent, I see the horrifying photos of Israeli and Palestinian children, women and men, who have been killed over the past year. The images of the dead and the brutal way in which they were killed, haunts me and I feel called to pray through protest as Rabbi Heschel once did.
The first anniversary of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel was just five days ago and tonight we will remember the over 1100 Israelis who were killed, the 247 who were taken hostage, and the 97 Israelis still held as hostages in Gaza. It is not new for Jews to mark tragedies. But, this year, for the first time in more than 3,000 years of Jewish history, Jews will observe Yom Kippur as Israel continues a year long attack on Gaza that the International Court of Justice ruled is plausibly a case of genocide. Scholars like Raz Segaland Omer Bartov, and Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on Occupied Territories, agree.
“Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods.” —Rabbi Heschel
I was raised in a passionately Zionist community in Apartheid South Africa. My father was a leader of the Jewish community and the Judaism that I learned from him, in my Jewish Day school, and my Zionist youth movement, inspired deep loyalty to Israel no matter what decisions its leaders made. Despite this, I began to question Zionism. In 2003, I was one of the founders of Rabbis for Human Rights North America. In that role, I learned first-hand about the systemic injustice of daily life in Palestine, by trying to stop Israeli home demolitions. I also learned from Israeli and Palestinian activists about the Nakba, when thousands of Palestinians were displaced from their homes in 1948.
Today, I know that I’m complicit in Israel’s war as both a rabbi and an American. However I am not alone. All Americans are implicated in today’s atrocities. The United States has sent more than 50,000 tons of armaments and military equipment to Israel since October 7th. More than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed. Recently, reports of mass terror, rape, and abuse in Israeli detention centers have been added to the list of war crimes and atrocities. Israel has also destroyed schools,mosques, cultural centers, libraries, important historical heritage sites and more throughout Gaza.
As Americans, we must face the truth of our complicity with this horror. And, like Rabbi Heschel we must take bold action to end it, instead of simply praying for change. As Heschel said, “Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods.”
In the wake of October 7, I have followed Rabbi Heshel’s example, and prayed through protest, at several actions organized by Rabbis for Ceasefire and If Not Now. Here are four suggestions for how we can all take action in this new year: 1) Educate ourselves about the history of the Palestinian people, especially about the Nakba in 1948. 2) Support calls for an immediate ceasefire. The violence on both sides endangers everyone. 3) Demand an immediate arms embargo to end the supply of American bombs that have enabled the genocide. 4) Support a negotiated settlement that guarantees freedom, equality and justice for all who live in Israel and Palestine.
As the Palestinian journalis Ahmed Moor writes, “Hope for the future, such as it is, is fixed in a vision that requires the end of Jewish supremacy in Palestine.” May our prayers on this Yom Kippur be in the streets. May we end the genocide and advocate for equality, freedom, justice, and safety for all who live in Israel/Palestine.
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