I applaud David N. Myers’ courage in pointing out the (currently very unpopular but) obvious in a recent opinion piece: that as long as Palestinians live under an unjust military occupation and blockade, Israelis will not live in peace (“The Hamas attack tore off Israel’s veneer of invincibility. Is there a sustainable path forward?” Oct 11).
When violence occurs, the easier path is to call for revenge or to dehumanize others – promising “mighty vengeance” (Prime Minister Netanyahu) and referring to fighting “human animals” (Defense Minister Gallant). What is more difficult – and much more important – is the work of analyzing why the violence occurred and how to prevent it from happening again.
The attack on Israel by Hamas was not caused just by Iran supplying arms, or by a senseless hatred of Jewish people, or by “pure unadulterated evil,” as President Biden characterized it. It is also the result of forcing hundreds of thousands of people off their land, taking over their homes and villages, and pushing them into refugee camps for 75 years.
It is the result of blockading 2 million people living in a 140-square-mile area (the Gaza Strip) for 16 years, controlling the movement of all goods and people in and out, and periodically bombing them while they are trapped there. It is the result of years of constructing illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land in the West Bank (now reportedly housing 700,000 settlers), yet denying permits for Palestinian families to build on their own lands.
It is the result of illegal settlements diverting water from Palestinian towns and of erecting checkpoints through which Palestinians must pass to visit family, go to work or get medical help. It is the result of Israeli soldiers in the West Bank standing by while settlers threaten and attack Palestinian people, burn their houses and cars, and destroy olive trees on their farmland. It is the result of arresting and detaining Palestinians for months on end without charge or trial or even disclosing the evidence on which the detention is based. It is the result of Israeli soldiers shooting Palestinians who are unarmed – or unarmed and wearing a vest clearly marked “Press” while reporting from a refugee camp, as the journalist Shireen Abu-Akleh reportedly was.
Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, “Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself.”
King hoped, like many of us, that this yearning would manifest itself in nonviolent action. What happens when that avenue is blocked? During the First Intifada in the 1980s, Palestinians used boycotts, strikes and mass demonstrations to protest the military occupation, which Israel met with mass arrests and killings.
During the March of Return protests, an unarmed mass mobilization in Gaza in 2018, Israel sent snipers to maim and murder civilians, including children. In 2022, Israel raided and shut down the offices of seven Palestinian human rights organizations. I could go on: Nonviolent Palestinians have been met at every turn with Israeli violence. We should not be surprised when some turn to the only strategy left.
There is a simple way to end the violence between Israelis and Palestinians: Ensure that everyone from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea can live in a just, free and democratic society. As Breaking the Silence, an organization of former Israeli soldiers dedicated to telling the truth about the military occupation, put it:
“Our country decided – decades ago – that it’s willing to forfeit the security of its citizens in favor of maintaining control over an occupied civilian population of millions, all for the sake of a settler-messianic agenda.”
Israel can be secure, or it can continue its siege of Gaza and its military occupation of land in the West Bank. It cannot have both.
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