Eyes on Gaza
If there’s one thing that’s evident about the ever-sickening situation in Gaza, it’s that the ordinary suffering citizen is getting little help from Hamas or Israel or apparently anyone else. According to the New York Times, even the U.N. refugee agency in Gaza can obtain only a portion (in volume and range) of its much-needed supplies from across the Israeli blockaded border. To make matters worse, armed Hamas police have recently stolen some of the essential supplies—food and blankets—from a U.N. distribution center in Gaza City. And now the U.N. has temporarily suspended sending any supplies into Gaza because of a second Hamas theft of ten vehicles loaded with flour and rice.
The latest war in the region ended January 18 when Israel and Hamas each declared separate ceasefires. During 23 days of bombardment and ground fighting, 1300 Palestinians (mostly civilians) and 13 Israelis (3 civilians) died. The disproportionate death toll tells the story of military asymmetry, but not of the human tragedy.
In addition to loss of innocent life on both sides, there are almost 5,000 Palestinians injured, 21,000 homes lost and 50,000 people displaced. More than a million citizens of Gaza are sealed off from help, struggling in what some have described as the world’s largest prison. Infrastructure and agriculture are wrecked. Schools, factories and hospitals are severely damaged or destroyed. Palestinian sources within Gaza claim that 60% of agricultural land has been destroyed and 80% of this year’s produce has been obliterated. Financial loss in the agricultural sector is said to be $170 million. It may take 20 years for Gaza to get back to where it was on December 26, 2008, the day before the latest war started.
People around the world, among them journalists, commentators, bloggers, scholars and government leaders have decried the Israeli attack on Gaza. International Herald Tribune and New York Times columnist Roger Cohen wrote in The New York Review of Books (February 12), “I have never previously felt so despondent about Israel, so shamed by its actions, so despairing of any peace that might terminate the dominion of the dead in favor of the opportunity of the living.” Reflecting on the peace and reconciliation that France and Germany, and Germany and Poland have achieved in the years that have followed World War II, Cohen wonders why it is that Israelis and Palestinians cannot make the same turn in their collective thinking.
It isn’t that there are not willing participants in the peace process on both sides. It isn’t that moderate voices do not exist in the Palestinian, Arab and Israeli and Jewish worlds. It isn’t that the outlines of a peace deal are not already on paper. It isn’t that there is not broad international support for peace in the region.
What does it come down to then, the resolution of this seemingly impossible impasse of brothers on the same land? Israeli writer David Grossman gave the clue in the first few days of the Israeli bombardment—“We must not forget, even for a moment, that the inhabitants of Gaza will continue to live on our borders and that sooner or later we will need to achieve neighborly relations with them. . . . Restraint, and our duty to protect the lives of Gaza’s innocent inhabitants, must remain our commitment today, precisely because Israel’s power is almost limitless compared to that of Hamas.” His remarks go to the heart of the issue. They speak to the fundamental morality at the heart of any resolution—a universal value that all share.
To his credit, President Obama touched on this when he said in an under-reported comment at the February 5 National Prayer Breakfast,
“No matter what we choose to believe, let us remember that there is no religion whose central tenet is hate. There is no God who condones taking the life of an innocent human being. This much we know.”
We know too that whatever our differences, there is one law that binds all great religions together. Jesus told us to ‘love thy neighbor as thyself.’ The Torah commands, ‘That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow.’ In Islam, there is a hadith that reads “None of you truly believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself.” And the same is true for Buddhists and Hindus; for followers of Confucius and for humanists. It is, of course, the Golden Rule—the call to love one another; to understand one another; to treat with dignity and respect those with whom we share a brief moment on this Earth.
Coming to practice this fundamental value requires a further step. We all find it difficult enough to admit when we are wrong, but the next most difficult thing to do is to change and go the other way. What some thoughtful people are recognizing is that with a repentant heart (turning to go the right way—shub in Hebrew, tawbah in Arabic), the Israeli-Palestinian and broader Middle East conflict can echo Europe’s remarkable post-war reconciliation.