You can keep your Masada complex

In modern times, we don’t need a siege. Stiff tariffs will do. The world governments, rather than encircling the country, have cut us off. We find we are not, as we were led to believe, key to a deal with Saudi Arabia. America can wrap it up and tie it with a bow, all without so much as our pinkie to hold the knot. Ditto the off-again-on-again Iran nuclear deal. They can also make a sweet deal with the Houthis that stops them from shelling international ships while allowing them to keep lobbing missiles at Israel.

The Europeans are, if not completely pro-Palestinian, at least against the continued trauma and destruction in this war, signaling they will not support a “forever war” nor will they condone the reoccupation of Gaza. They openly support peace-loving organizations, something the Israeli government is trying to halt. Their diplomats do not speak of using force, but the word “pressure” seems to be a growing part of their vocabulary.

China and Russia are our friends until they aren’t. They have bigger issues, and we hold no keys to these. Erdogan, in Turkey, finds he can openly dis Israel and still be BFFs with America’s president.

Rather than encircled by an enemy, we’ve been left hanging from a crooked limb.

What will we choose to do?

Contrary to what some would have us believe, we have a few choices.

The first choice involves ending the war. We enter into a ceasefire, exchange hostages and prisoners, and immediately begin negotiations with Hamas, who, despite our vilification of them (deserved), are the only ones we have actually negotiated with over the course of this war. To end the war, we will need widen our reach. While Egypt and Qatar have been intermediaries up to this point, we can make them active participants in creating a temporary plan for Gaza that will include the Palestinian Authority and other Arab partners. This is an option that has been discussed from the beginning. We nearly agreed to it.

That option includes the creation of a Palestinian state – a move that is beneficial to Israel, but costly to Bibi and the right-wing that is propping up that figurative limb with a pile of rotting manure. That is, it is an agreement with huge potential benefits that costs us little beyond figuring out how to resettle a few hundred thousand people within our already overcrowded country. But it is costly to Bibi. That apparent price is not a bad thing, when bargaining. But if he sets the price too high, he will nix the deal.

There is a time to fight, and a time to lay one’s weapons down, and the time has come for the second

The second choice involves agreeing to a cease-fire under the terms offered by the Americans, Egyptians or Qataris, who are still, barely, invested in a peaceful ending to the war. This ceasefire involves the release of some of the hostages, but not all. We nearly agreed to it, but were haggling over numbers. By the time we’ve finished haggling, their value drops, as fewer, at least according to either Trump or rumor, are alive. Negotiations to end the war are not explicitly included in this option, but the long ceasefire will make it harder to enter Gaza a third time. At the same time, America, Europe and others can step up the pressure on us to accept a peace process. That process will also, in the long run, result in a Palestinian state (see above).

The third option, which are heading toward, is to reoccupy Gaza. We imagine that rotting limb to which we’re clinging to be Masada – the fortress where Jewish zealots held out against the Roman forces a few thousand years ago. We’ll hold out against America, against the neo-Romans, against the world, because we are so convinced of our own right. And when they cut us off completely, we’ll commit suicide rather than give in to the governments that actually rule our world.

Already, some young men are backing down off that rotting hill, refusing to take part, not just in a suicide mission, but in a war that is being prolonged because of the cost to one man, rather than the cost to the nation as a whole. They are young men who believe, along with Kohelet so beloved of the right, that there is a time to fight, and a time to lay one’s weapons down, and the time has come for the second.

The fourth option – one that is still on the table – is to attack Iran on our own, without America, possibly igniting a regional war. Do I have to explain to you that in this scenario, we might not even have time to commit suicide before we are killed?

On Friday, I attended a peace conference, an annual event in the calendars of peace organizations. The main hall of Jerusalem’s International Conference Center was packed to overflowing, and T shirt sales were brisk. I did not stick out among the gray-haired women, but diplomats, media, young people, parents with children and students were there. Soon after I got home, the air-raid siren sounded as another Houthi ballistic missile headed for our borders.

Two bookends to a bus ride past orderly golden fields, green verges and hellscapes of black, twisted trees on black, burned ground. Two questions about the future I see for my country, about the way I want to live, the way I want my home to exist.

They are both a reminder that we do have choices. We may not have control over whether the army will reoccupy Gaza next week, but we can refuse to believe the lie when we are told we have no choice. We can support those who refuse to participate in this act; we can keep speaking for better choices, refusing to enter into a suicide pact with our government. We can remind them that when the time comes, sorry Bibi, but we’re with the Romans.