Stop Pouring Fuel to Israel-Palestine Conflict

At a time when peaceful solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict is still a distant dream, a bigger tragedy is spreading—the dangerous attitude of world leaders that continue to attack the problem instead of finding ways to solve it.

For so many years since 1967 the UNGA and UNSC have used their authority only to give Israel a logical reason to beef up its diplomatic and military defenses against Palestine, because condemnations and curses massively directed at Israel so far were ineffective and futile because people assume that such harsh words could incapacitate Israel. They cannot!

A counterproductive outcome has consequently been the result, because psychologically, for a nation surrounded by so many adversarial Arab states, the need for well-guaranteed survival cannot be bargained with diplomatic persuasions, let alone with continued multi-pronged attacks.

It was this kind of awareness that has, among other things, motivated America’s 45^th President Donald Trump—on January 20^th next year will be its 47^th—to apply a different remedy—the Abraham Accords which have brought in the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan as Israel’s partners instead of foes, ushering in a new atmosphere of regional stability.

Unfortunately, the efforts were abruptly destroyed by Iran-backed Hamas’ miscalculated and suicidal military campaign of Oct. 7, 2023 that not only has brought untold suffering to its own people, but at the same time blocked the then growing hope for normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

If the Oct.7 attacks had not taken place, the endeavors for normalizing US-brokered Saudi Arabia-Israel relations might have encouraged other Arab states to join the noble mission for creating a peaceful West Asian region to benefit many countries therein. Iran-backed Hamas has no one else to blame for the mess including the Gaza catastrophe; and it is now too late to reverse the hands of time.

The hope of creating a two-state solution has now become a very remote dream, because the UN lacks clarity in diagnosing the real cause of the conflict. For a two-state solution to become reality, the utmost priority is for Hamas to revise its Aug.18, 1988 Convention that calls for total obliteration of the Jewish state from the so-called “land of waqf” where the entire state of Israel is situated.

Nowhere in human history has a compromise been reached when the warring parties refuse to lower their demands. Demanding Israel’s complete obliteration is not a way to a peaceful solution; it only emboldens the only Jewish state to apply its ancient patriarch Moses’ legal philosophy of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”

A better way to approach the situation is to eliminate enmity, and nurture good neighborly relations by promulgating a common rallying cry for mutual coexistence so that thousands of Palestinians can go back to work in Israel and the tragically devastated Gaza may be rebuilt to benefit the Palestinians at a time when neighboring Arab countries don’t know what to do.

By now I guess many Palestinians might have thought that it would have been better if the Oct. 7 attacks had not taken place, so that the merciless retaliation had not been the outcome to send millions of Palestinians into endless suffering.

But it’s too late now. The only remaining hope for Palestinians to return to a normal life is to encourage Israel to terminate the military campaign by returning all the hostages.

You cannot expect to have peace by continuing to attack your enemy. This is also true for Israel. Peace can only return to that region when Israel treats all its neighbors as friends instead of foes. And there must be a reason for it—one that would make Israel trust its neighbors.

Seen from Indonesia—which is home to the world’s largest Muslim population—continued strife against Palestinians only angers the Muslim world. Because many Muslims feel the pain every time the IDF attacks the Palestinians—and this is undebatable, because to the Muslims, this is a matter of ideological principle.

Israel will not gain any more benefit by continuing to attack Gaza now that Hamas has apparently been crippled. Continued suffering in Gaza may only isolate Israel from the rest of the global community and this should not be the end result. Therefore, Prime Minister Netanyahu needs to present a compensation concept on post-war Gaza in order to tame the widespread hatred of the Muslim world.

During Donald Trump’s presidency, the Abraham Accord needs to be expanded, because there is no other way available for the region to return to normalcy at a time when Israel is being compelled to fight a seven-front war at the same time.

Moderate Arab states need to look far ahead to an era of lasting peaceful coexistence as prerequisite for greater prosperity in the region; and not join warmongering elements to exacerbate the already tragic misery of the Palestinians.

Diplomats standing on UN podiums must stop pouring fuel to the fire and begin using a different approach to the conflict, because using the same old ways of attacking Israel only increases the suffering of Palestinian civilians now that more than 44,000 people have reportedly perished.

State leaders need to realize that attacking either side in the war is not the right way to end the war; it only causes the hatred and enmity to explode and spread beyond the region as is now the reality—and this will get worse if they don’t change their long-held counterproductive paradigm.

If you cannot find solution in one way, you need to find a better way to reach the goal. Using the same old paradigm of condemning and cursing Israel while failing to offer concrete concepts for solution is the worst kind of diplomacy in human history. And, alas, that is exactly what the UNGA and UNSC have been doing to date!

If you really want to end the war, care about the tragic fate of the Palestinians, and if you really wish to help alleviate their suffering, the right thing to do is stop pouring fuel to the fire and begin using a different approach.

Sit down at the negotiation table and narrow the differences, bridging the divergences; and find common grounds for creating a new atmosphere of peaceful coexistence. Enmity cannot end the war; it only fertilizes and aggravates it.

That is what the UN should have been doing, and unfortunately even the UNSC is still attacking the problem instead of solving it. Conflicting remarks by UNSC member states’ top diplomats prove it. They don’t offer concepts for solution; they only attack one another to create even worse diplomatic battles and aggravate the situation even further.

But if the UNSC is unable to solve the Palestinian crisis due to continued absence of new approaches for creating peace, it only means that the world authority is indirectly allowing the Palestinian suffering to linger on, and its existence is now being questioned. [***]