In the interests of both full disclosure and clarity, I need to preface this post with a few qualifications. Long before I had the good fortune to marry my wife (who is Jewish, as are my stepchildren), I was and still am an unqualified supporter of Israel's right to exist and to defend both its existence and the lives of its people. I recognize the obvious truths about Israel's Arab neighbors, especially the Palestinians within its border: they do not share my view, and have sought for decades to destroy Israel and Israelis by any and all means. I do not believe there is any cure for the hostility that most Arabs feel for their brothers and sisters in Abraham.
But that does not change one simple truth stated years ago by Gandhi: an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. That is the more true when one is fighting a war in which the other side defines martyrdom as victory. And a successful war strategy cannot depend on creating as many martyrs as possible.
The current level of conflict has come about for two reasons: Israel's current Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, does not want a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the Palestinian people have elected terrorists to represent their political interests. As long as either of those reasons continues to exist, there will be no end to the current level of violence; as long as both of them exist, the violence will continue to escalate--and, given the centrality of Israeli-Palestinian interests to governments around the world, no one can safely predict where it will stop.
Netanyahu, like most conservative Israeli politicians, believes that he can solve the problem by escalating the violence of Israeli responses to Palestinian attacks to the point at which no Palestinian terrorist is safe. This is worse than madness; this is literally suicide. Even if the Israeli armed forces could systematically kill every member of Hamas, or similar groups, it would only have the effect of expanding the violence beyond Israel's borders. Every Muslim willing to die for his or her faith would have been handed a excuse for doing so--regardless of where they are on the planet. This would not simply endanger Jews all around the planet, although it would certainly do that. It could endanger everyone on the planet, if one or more terrorists gains the use of a nuclear device.
Neither Netanyahu nor the Israelis would have to worry about any of this, however, if the Palestinian people would stop putting their futures, and the futures of their children, in the hands of terrorist organizations. As long as they continue to elect leaders who are content to conduct politics by weaponizing their own people, and cannot see that they are helping to perpetuate a nightmare with no end, they will have no help from outside their borders--perhaps not even from their fellow Arab nations, who could offer much in the way of practical help but systematically refuse to do so.
There seems to be little that outsiders can do to help, except offer to mediate, which the United States has tried to do over and over again. We should, of course, continue to do so. But our commitment to helping in this regard has to be conditioned on two principles: acceptance of a two-state solution, and a commitment to ending terrorism that is enforceable, even if that means that renewed suicide bombing would give the Israeli government--and, perhaps, ours as well--the right to re-occupy and police the Palestinian territories.
Until all of this is in place, however, it will continue to be an eye for an eye. Let's hope and pray that the world is not blinded in the process.
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