THE CURSE OF HISTORY

What is the historical context of the latest conflagration in the Holy Land? To read the opinion columns in the Times and Telegraph , you might be forgiven for thinking of it as an inconvenience endured by north London Jewish schoolchildren. On television meanwhile, it would appear to be the unacceptable justification for Israel's " wholesale destruction" of Gaza (Channel 4); or something to do with an organisation (Hamas) "proscribed by the UK government" (BBC); or a completely irrelevant aspect of a humanitarian disaster in one of the most densely populated places on the planet (ITV). By contrast, government spokesmen in London seem to think it has got something to do with the right to protest in the UK, in which they appear opposed to the Metropolitan Police which has its own "Islamic experts"(sic). In Scotland meanwhile, the main narrative arc has been defined by the disruption of the travel plans of the First Minister's parents-in-law. Quite so.

Yet very nearly two thousand years divided the building of the Temple of Solomon and the eruption of Islam into the Holy Land in the Seventh century. In between times, Christians also staked a claim to land the size of which is out of all proportion to the global and cultural significance attached to it. Of this in the UK, we are almost almost wholly and wilfully ignorant.

In 1995 as part of the Oslo peace accords, Israel (then led by Yitzhak Rabin) agreed to hand over 40% of the West Bank to Palestinian control that was just short of full sovereignty. By which stage, both the PLO and a number of Arab states including Egypt and Jordan had fundamentally recognised Israel's right to exist in peace.  Even the former implacable hostility of Syria had been somewhat mollified. In the Oslo II settlement, Rabin too acknowledged the need for an eventual Palestinian state so that the two sides could separate "out of respect for each other rather than in enmity". In 2000 at Camp David in the USA, his successor Ehud Barak was prepared to concede 92% of West Bank territory and all of Gaza to the Palestinians. A deal was also offered to the Syrians for a return of the Golan heights, captured by Israel during the Six Day War. Ultimately both deals foundered on the vexed question of the status of Jerusalem ( the Israelis offered a return of East Jerusalem and for shared sovereignty of the Western half ) and the line of the frontier with Syria once the Golan had been restored. In both cases, Arab and Palestinian maximalist demands scuppered the chance for a long lasting settlement. It would be fair to say that in seeking an accommodation with its Arab neighbours and the Palestinians, the Israelis had been taking far more of a risk (exchanging land for a mere paper promise of peace ) than were their counterparts. Indeed Rabin paid for this risk with his life - he was assassinated by a fellow Jew who opposed any concessions to the Arabs. But the fundamentals of the conflict had radically changed. By recognising each side's right to exist and to enjoy a home they could call their own, the Arab Israeli conflict was turned from an existential question into a political one.

Scroll forward two decades and the Palestinians are back to Square One and Syria has been consumed by a vicious civil war which has been going on since 2011. In the West Bank Palestinians are represented by an increasingly defunct and corrupt Palestinian authority and in the Gaza strip by the Sunni Hamas. Among their diaspora in the Lebanon, they have thrown their lot in with the Shi'ite Hezbollah. It would also be fair to say that the latter two are Islamic death cults united by an incoherent yet murderous plan for "jihad" which has the avowed aim of not only erasing the state of Israel but also of driving the Jews out of the Holy Land. 

Has Israel been as guilty of squandering a peace which had been so tantalisingly close?  Its politics have been increasingly dominated at the margin by right-wing and fundamentalist interests which are suspicious or hostile to any accommodation. Its current Prime Minister Netanyahu has a history of resiling from commitments to the Palestinians made by his predecessors. More seriously, the increasing Jewish settlement of the West Bank since 2000 in the form of armed redoubts has been a complete breach of good faith and been condemned not only by the UN but also by the Israeli Supreme Court - one of the reasons perhaps why Netanyahu has recently tried to trim its sails, to massive public protest. Indeed, the regressive policies of the various  right wing Likud administrations of Benjamin Netanyahu have arguably placed Israel in one of its most perilous positions both on the ground and geo-politically since its war in the Lebanon in the nineteen eighties.

In all that time however, Israel has remained a democracy and need take no lessons from the Arab world about governance, economic diversity, and the rule of law. Arab support for the Palestinians is paper thin and behind all the rhetoric, there is a great deal of fear in the former so-called " front line " states of the destabilising nature of the Palestinian diaspora in their own countries, as Jordan and Lebanon can attest from bitter memory. Perhaps it is the sham of Arab "solidarity" which has increasingly driven the Palestinians towards Islamic fundamentalism. It is a rich irony that their main state sponsor would now appear to be Persian Iran, which has its own history of bloody warfare against its Arab neighbours, most recently with Iraq across the decade of the nineteen eighties. Iran continues to de-stabilise the region, supporting wars by proxy in Syria and Yemen and by continuing to undermine the fragile stability of Lebanon and Iraq. In these conflicts the Palestinians are now mixed up in the barely contained antagonism between Sunni and Shia Islam, an enormous handicap in the quest for their own statehood.

Yet the state of Israel is also riven by inter-Jewish tension. The ultra-Orthodox and Haredi traditions are not at all reconciled to the Israeli state in its current form. This is a community over 1.5m strong, but it has exerted a dis-proportionate influence over the political right in Israel. Indeed back in 1995, Rabin suspected that at some point, concessions to the Arabs might spark a civil war in Israel itself.

Since the foundation of Israel in 1948 the USA has been the major influence in the region on account of its super-power status and long association with the Jewish diaspora. Its role as a "force for good" (in its own estimation ) is not without tarnish. GW Bush will one day be fairly judged as one of the most disastrous presidents in US history, not least in the sphere of foreign policy and in his ill-judged "War on Trrrr" in the wake of 9/11, which led to the US losing two long costly wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan. But overall, the good faith of the USA has been evidenced by the vast expenditure of political and economic capital in both the broking and underwriting of various peace attempts. By contrast, the Arab states would rather wash their hands, although it is the USA which has been serially accused as acting always as Israel's cat's-paw.

How will the current phase of Arab-Israeli conflict end? The murderous attack by Hamas on 7th October 2023 against Israeli civilians has had a galvanising effect on Israeli society - even the Haredi are joining up, whatever their reservations about the secular state. But the retribution meted out on the Gaza strip will only take Israel so far. At some point, it is conceivable that it will treat with Hamas and Hezbollah, in the same way it came to terms with the terrorist PLO, despite vowing never to do so. A two state solution remains the only realistic option, despite the huge problems that will need to be surmounted, not least the status of Jewish settlers on land occupied since the 1967 war. But given the implacably horrific nature of the current phase of conflict, this may be decades away. The main worry is surely the appetite of the USA for further engagement and material support for peace initiatives. There is a great deal of exasperation in US policy circles at Israeli settlement building and more for the refusal of the Arabs to take some responsibility for peace in the region. There are signs the USA expects Turkey to take a greater role - did not the Ottomans at least keep the Middle East in a state of inanition?

The latest religious iteration of the struggle has profound implications for societal cohesion in Europe. Muslims form a large and politically significant proportion of the citizenry of the UK, France and Sweden. In the new world of moral relativism, the greatest danger is for irrationality, ignorance and intolerant fundamentalism to gain an increasing share of the public debate. Anti-Semitism is on the increase. A reasonable mind, while deploring the carnage, must surely wonder why those demonstrating against Israeli "oppression" of the Palestinians cannot bring themselves to call for a release by Hamas of its hostages. In the minds of many of these protesters, the murders of October 7th are a case of Israel getting what was coming to it. When might this logic be turned against the very states in which they now live? Indeed does not the Manchester bombing of 2017 and various other atrocities of the past two decades on the streets of the UK suggest it has already done so?

Rishi Sunak's current aspirations for the the education of the UK's schoolchildren is to keep them learning Maths until 18 and to stop them smoking. He might be better off if he can find someone to teach them (and his ministers) some history.