Tag Archives: Gaza

West Bank August 2001

A clipping I cut out of a newspaper shows a little boy about five or so, his face scowling, waving a toy rifle. He is dressed in a children’s set of army fatigues. The caption states:

“A Palestinian boy holds a plastic gun as he steps on an Israeli flag with ‘Death to Israel’ written on it in Arabic during a demonstration against the Israeli blockade of the Palestinian territories in the West Bank town of Ramallah Friday . . .”

The date of the newspaper is August, 2001. Almost a quarter of a century ago, as the picture evidences, places in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank showcased similar problems besetting those areas as today. I wonder what that young boy is like now, at about 28 years old, perhaps, if he’s still alive.

What kind of adults will the children of the West Bank, Israel, and Gaza have become twenty years from now? To pick one side or the other in this part of the world as either the guilty perpetrator or the innocent victim is a futile exercise. You can, if you want, place blame on Palestinians, Israelis, Americans, Europeans, and, no doubt, others. We could certainly go back to the Nazi’s, or the pogroms for centuries against Jews, or the European conquest of lands in the Near East in the past century or two. Add others, then take your pick. Finding villains is easy.

Should we despair? Listen to Desmond Tutu, leader of South Africa’s struggle to free itself from European control: “Peace comes when you talk to the guy you most hate.” (The Atlantic, 2009.)

Exiting Gaza

“After decades of failed international engagement in Gaza, we owe it this time to the Palestinians, Israelis and Egyptians—and to ourselves—to get this right.” (Yair Lapid, speech to Israeli Knesset, October 16, 2023, as reported in “A Positive Exit Strategy From Gaza,” The Jerusalem Strategic Tribune, by Robert Silverman, October 2023.)

In his speech, Mr. Lapid outlines steps for achieving a real victory. “The real victory comes not from defeating our enemy but from achieving a better place for Israel and our Palestinian neighbors.”

Further, “Instead of taking the easy way out of town by dumping Gaza on some set of beguiling expatriates, the multinational governance team should be prepared to work with the local Gazans to build governance capacity—over the course of years.”

Mr. Lapid calls for withdrawing the Israeli Defense Forces as soon as possible. They would be replaced by a multinational force “with two separate missions . . . under a single head.”

One mission would be a multinational force “to maintain order and begin training a new Gazan police force . . .”

The other mission would be “a multinational civilian governance to help the Gazans rebuild economically and begin the process of governing themselves politically.”

Israeli-Palestinian issues became a tangled web due to the interests of numerous groups, nations, and historic events over centuries.

Mr. Lapid’s suggestions would seem a fair start toward a practical solution.