‘This twilight war involved two entire communities, two peoples, two tribes, two nations, fighting each other without a frontline, neither one really made any distinction between civilians and soldiers… Relations between Israelis and Palestinians became so thoroughly politicised that after a while, there was no such thing as a crime between them, and there was no such thing as an accident between them — there were only acts of war.”
Thomas Friedman wrote that 25 years ago in his book From Beirut to Jerusalem — published not long after the first intifada uprising. What followed the events in the book was the radicalisation of Hamas, the Oslo Accords, the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin (strangely, I still remember exactly where I was when the news arrived), the death of Yasser Arafat, the second intifada, the change of heart of Ariel Sharon and Ariel Sharon’s death, which derailed many hopes — despite or because of all of that, Friedman’s words written in 1989 still ring so true.
It’s time to re-read that book, written by an American Jew, and Edward Said’s The Question of Palestine as well as the poems of Mahmoud Darwish. It’s also time to pray for Gaza. Pray for a ceasefire. Pray for the two-state solution (or three, with Gaza and West Bank separated). Pray for the world to remember the Holocaust and the Nakba — the Palestinian exodus — as well as the massacres of refugees at Sabra and Shatila. Pray for the safety of children as the Israeli ground assault begins (Gaza has one of the highest birth rates in the world, that’s why children are everywhere). Pray, above all, for the moderates to speak up and for the hardliners on both sides to calm down.
But praying can resemble wishful thinking. Praying is to cling to a dream that keeps being dreamt after 66 years. It’s almost naive, desperate and impossibly utopian, especially when the prayers come from half the world away in my (happy) country that knows no war or occupation.
On Tuesday, a large group of Thais, mainly Muslim, staged a protest at the Israeli Embassy, rightly calling for a stop to the disproportionate attacks on Gaza that have killed more than 200 people — and that’s before the ground invasion.
On Thursday, a popular Thai newspaper published an article from the Israeli ambassador, which called for Thai people to stand behind Israel in its fight against the terrorists who threaten the life of all Israelis. The persuasion didn’t work.
The last time Israel moved into Gaza in the 2008-2009 Operation Cast Lead, more than 1,100 Palestinians were killed. The death toll on the Israeli side was 13. This is the number released by the Israeli Defence Forces.
Hamas, who must share the blame for the clashes, love rockets: Between 2000 and 2008, they fired more than 12,000 of them into Israel, killing 30 people. That’s how accurate, or inaccurate, their homemade weapons were.
So we’re here again. Every time rockets are fired from Gaza and Israel responds with its much more precise version, we’re struck by despair at one of the world’s longest-running conflicts that takes place in one of the oldest settlements of human beings on Earth. The occupation, the blockade, the belligerent Hamas, the dawdling Fatah, the Likud coalition that refuses to back off, the political power-play on both sides — all of this is a vicious cycle that only feeds into the fire of radicalism and hate, which feeds back into the vicious cycle of endless hell.
The Palestine-Israel conflict is relevant because it has stood for decades as a symbol for other “Muslim” conflicts in different parts of the world, from Xin Jiang to Pattani (though not Iraq). It is not a “religious” clash; the Palestinian movements have always been nationalist, with a tinge of Marxism. It was only when Hamas came to power that it took on the Islamist character, and that’s only in Gaza and not the West Bank. That’s not so much different from our own southern tension, with its history of disenfranchisement and oppression.
Similarly, too, the escalation of violence is fired up by the clique of extremists only to be punished by military over-reaction and cynicism. When the voice of extremism drowns out the more moderate or less politicised one, the result is what Friedman wrote 25 years ago: there are only acts of war.
Gaza is sadly stuck in it. If we in our happy country can’t stop the devastation in our dreams or with our bleeding hearts, at least we can learn from them.
Kong Rithdee is Deputy Life Editor, Bangkok Post.