Two months into the Israel-Hamas war, over 18,000 Palestinians and 1,200 Israelis have been killed while around 136 Israelis remain hostage. More children have died in this war than in any other over the past several decades. According to the UN, 1.7 million Gazans have been expelled, most for the third time. First forced to flee Israel to Gaza, then forced to flee the bombardment of northern Gaza to southern Gaza, where they have been bombed again, they are now being forcibly herded into a supposedly safe zone measuring six kilometers.
Israel’s brutal and massively disproportionate retaliation to Hamas’ murderous rampage on October 7 has drawn much condemnation but little action. Security council vacillation on calling for a cease-fire forced secretary-general Guterres to invoke article 99 of the charter, which requires the security council to meet urgently, for the first time in four decades. But the U.S. vetoed the council’s resolution for an immediate cease-fire.
Former prosecutors of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which began investigating war crimes and settler violence in 2021, argue that both Hamas’ attack and the Israeli retaliation can be considered genocide and crimes against humanity. But the ICC’s current chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, visited the Rafah crossing four unbearable weeks into Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. He visited Israel and the West Bank only a few days ago. He is yet to visit Gaza. Small wonder Palestinian human rights groups refused to meet him.
Men walk through the destroyed streets of Gaza. Photo: WHO
Now, while violence escalates with even more sickening instances of brutality, and the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank continues, international policymakers have started talking about ‘the day after’. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu plans to turn most of north Gaza into a military buffer zone after his war cabinet decides that Hamas has been destroyed, and refuses to check settler expansion in the West Bank.
US President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris have opposed his plan, but agree that security for Gaza and the West Bank should remain with Israel until a lasting solution is found. But Israel’s security control is the root cause of the problem, which is currently exacerbated by Egypt’s refusal to open its borders to Gazan refugees.
As peace activist Avi Shlaim has repeatedly stressed, successive Israeli prime ministers used control over Palestinian security to undermine the 1992-1993 Oslo accords through settlement expansion. They encountered little resistance from the US, UK, Europe or the Arab countries. Writing in 2011, the Pakistani columnist Irfan Husain, whose selected works I have been reading over the past few weeks, commented bitterly that Palestine’s Arab neighbours and the larger comity of Muslim countries had abandoned the Palestinians; in doing so, they failed their own people who overwhelmingly supported the Palestinian right to self-determination (Irfan Husain, A Life Lived with Passion, 2023).
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The failure of the Oslo accords and the fragmentation of the West Bank into isolated hamlets under constant threat from settlers is clear indication that an incremental process will not work. It may be that an interim arrangement is necessary to allow cooling-off before political negotiations for a lasting solution begin. If so, security will need to be in the hands of an international peace-keeping force. The Netanyahu administration will be extremely reluctant to accept such a force, but the US has sufficient power to pressure it into agreement.
What could a lasting solution comprise? Most countries favour a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders, which the bulk of policy analysts suggest is dead; some peace advocates suggest a binational state.
Partition has rarely been a desired outcome, even in countries that acceded to it, and it has had mixed results as the least bad solution, often resulting in entrenching rather than overcoming hostility. Given that it appears to be the only feasible solution, however, are there any lessons on how to minimise its negative outcomes?
‘What if’ analyses are rare in South Asia, but Irfan found that one plus of partition was that it had benefited Pakistan economically. The flow of Muslim elites from India brought intellectual and technical expertise which combined with liberal economic policies to develop what had earlier been underdeveloped areas. A similar inflow might well occur in the Palestinian territories if the occupation ends, with the benefit of stability for Israel. But much will depend on whether Israel will resume employment of labor from Gaza and the West Bank, whose wages make up close to a quarter of both economies.
Large areas of the Gaza Strip have been destroyed by missile strikes. Photo: WHO
The India-Pakistan negatives are more numerous. Pakistan – as Reginald Copeland foresaw in the 1940s – invested ruinous amounts in security, a problem that might not occur in the Israeli or Palestinian case, since the former will save by ending the occupation and the latter will most likely depend on neighbour or international security guarantees.
In both Pakistan and India, Husain wrote, fear of “the other’ drove persecution and ‘robbed us of our humanity”. The two could not settle disputes that were counterproductive for both, such as the troops-guzzling, financially exorbitant and ecologically damaging Siachen conflict. Had pre-partition economic interchange, freedom of movement and channels of communication been kept open between both countries post-partition, at least at the level of civil society, the two polities might have cultivated tolerance, without which “a constitution and all the trappings of democracy are worthless” Husain wrote.
It seems odd to discuss a long-term settlement when the need of the hour is to wrest a ceasefire and provide humanitarian aid. But even if this horrifically brutal war ends soon, violence will recur as long as the occupation of Palestinian territories continues. As of now, all agree that neither a two-state nor a binational state agreement will transpire without coordinated and substantive international pressure, of which little has been seen.
Union external affairs minister S. Jaishankar reiterated his support for a two-state solution a few days ago. But the Modi administration is yet to join or contribute to the increasing number of countries demanding an immediate ceasefire and end to the occupation. That is in sharp contrast with not only most of the countries of ‘the Global South’ but also the countries that underwent colonialism and oppose it now. Worse, it ignores the opinion of millions of Indian citizens.
Radha Kumar is a writer and policy analyst.
