Why is the West obsessed with peace?
For months, western politicians and media have been obsessing about ‘a political solution” to the war in the Middle East. ‘We will not falter in our pursuit to peace,’ declared the UK Labour government’s statement on the first anniversary of the 7 October massacre. The mantra was echoed by the erstwhile Conservative government Middle East minister, Tobias Ellwood. “Military successes aside, what political outcomes is Netanyahu working to?” he asked on Sky News.
For the West there is only one desired outcome: ‘peace’. The latest example of this line of thinking was the BBC’s 45-minute programme: ‘Today Debate: What path to peace? ”
Peace at any costs, it seems. Israel must be forced to pocket whatever military successes it has achieved. ‘Take the win’, to coin President Joe Biden’s phrase.
The dominant narrative reveals a distaste for war bordering on pacifism. War is so old hat! The world said goodbye to war in 1945. The postwar global order must safeguard the peace. Short of total victory, a ceasefire today means Israeli surrender, while Hamas and Hezbollah would be allowed to fight another day (and commit more 7 October massacres), and the Islamic Republic of Iran be permitted to continue to destabilize the region.
The media ‘s reporting of the war downplays the magnitude of the threats facing Israel, a tiny country whose entire population could fit into the city of London. I’ve yet to hear any mainstream media report that the Israelis decided to go into Lebanon after they had discovered Hezbollah’s plan to enter through tunnels and commit a 7 October-style massacre on the residents of the Galilee. The year-long barrage of rocket fire (Hezbollah has fired 12,000 missiles) on Israel has hardly been mentioned. Viewers were only made aware when reporters have found themselves crouching in a bush for fear of being hit by an incoming missile.
Politicians and western diplomats lecturing the Jewish state have a glib answer: the ‘two-state solution’ between Israel and the Palestinians. It’s solution which, they say, has been a non-starter mainly because Israel has rejected it.
There appears only one actor in this conflict. Israel is the one which needs to be restrained. On no account must it be allowed to ‘escalate’ the war. It must be forced to sign a ceasefire, dragged kicking and screaming to the table. It is Netanyahu who is the obstacle. Yet even al Jazeera has reported that Hamas has been the party torpedoing ceasefire negotiations.
Israel’s enemies have been infantilized. No one is pressuring Hamas to agree to anything.
Leaving aside the fact it that the Palestinians have rejected the two-state solution on at least five occasions, they never say, ‘two states for two peoples’. As the astute intellectual Einat Wilf says, if we listen to them carefully, they have never recognized a Jewish state in any size. Even the ‘moderates’ of the Palestinian Authority insist on the rider of ‘the right of return’, the mass return to Israel of millions of Palestinian ‘refugees’ and their descendants: in other words, the Palestinians want two Arab states, one in place of Israel.
It is lazy thinking to apply the tired old paradigm of the ‘two-state solution’ to the jihadis of Hamas. After 2005, they had a state in all but name in Gaza. Their charter does not mention a Palestinian state, and they declare in no uncertain terms that they want to destroy Israel.
Moreover, the framing of ‘Israel versus the Palestinians’ beloved of the media cannot apply when Israel is waging war on Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iran. The two-state solution cannot apply to Lebanon, which has no real quarrel over land with Israel. Neither can it apply to Iran which has no territorial dispute with Israel.
On the other hand, how often have you heard the media state Iran and its proxies’ real intentions – to eliminate the Jewish state? And wasn’t it the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah himself who said that it was easier to destroy the Jews if they all congregated in one place – Israel?
The stark truth is that there can be no compromise with jihadis who want Jews dead. But it is a truth that cannot be ever spelled out, because it contradicts the narrative that ‘there are two sides with equally valid claims’ to this conflict.
Peace must be a long-term aspiration but it will only happen when the Iranian regime renounces its desire to annihilate Israel, and when the Palestinians are ready to re-order their priorities by making Gaza into the next Dubai – by accepting Israel as a Jewish state.