2023 and another Simchat Torah holiday arrived. This time, like most secular Israeli Jews, I did not go to a synagogue but assumed that it would be a day of rest and relief marking the end of the annual marathon of the fall Jewish holidays. But before I could put on my bathing suit to get ready to go to the neighborhood pool, suddenly the wail of air-raid sirens pierced the air. It didn’t make any sense.
I looked at my computer news site Start.co.il, and it was real. I didn’t hear the first rocket alert at 6:30 a.m. but was awake for the second one at 7:30. Then I saw that there was an attack against the kibbutzim near the Gaza border. When I heard the name Kibbutz Be’eri, I immediately called veteran peace activist Vivian Silver to see if she was all right. No answer. I knew that she had just been one of the organizers of the joint March of Hope initiative during the Sukkot holiday in Jerusalem and near the Dead Sea, co-organized by Israeli Women Waging Peace and their West Bank Palestinian partner, Women of the Sun.
Only later, after it had been assumed that Silver was among the 251 people taken hostage by Hamas, would it become clear that she had been murdered on October 7 in her kibbutz home.
Silver was one of the 1,200 Israeli killed on that day, the majority of them civilians – men, women, and children, Jews and Arabs, foreign workers, as well as 364 young people at the outdoor Supernova electronic music festival. Virtually every Israeli knows one of the victims.
Soon it became clear that there had been a major intelligence and conceptual failure. An assumption that Hamas wouldn’t attempt such an attack, similar to the expectation that Egypt and Syria wouldn’t attack on October 6, 1973. And where was the army, considered the fourth- or fifth-strongest army in the world, with an estimated arsenal of anywhere from 80 to 200 nuclear weapons (according to foreign sources)? Well, a few of the divisions that were supposed to guard the southern border had been transferred to the West Bank on the eve of the holiday to protect messianic religious settlers who wanted to pray on the holiday near Palestinian villages. Others were on leave because of the holiday. And even some weapons had been taken away from the kibbutz local defense units because “they weren’t needed.”
In addition, the military relied on the billions of dollars poured into building underground barriers to prevent Hamas and Islamic Jihad from tunneling under the border into Israel, not expecting that they could break through the land barriers. Comparisons have already been made with the reliance on the Bar-Lev Line of fortifications along the Suez Canal against the Egyptians in 1973, and the Maginot Line which the French thought would protect them against the Nazis in World War II.
It can be added that Netanyahu once said that he never visited those kibbutzim because they don’t vote for him. It was well known that many of the kibbutz members were active in supporting the rights of Palestinians in Gaza. They participated in the Road to Recovery initiative which brought Gaza Palestinians needing medical assistance to Israeli hospitals. And the Other Voice initiative enabled members of the kibbutzim and nearby towns like Sderot to carry out a constructive peace-oriented dialogue with Palestinians in Gaza as depicted in the powerful 2022 documentary Other Voices by Nigerian-born director Ose Oyamendan.
By 2024, the Israeli streets and social media platforms would be filled with a picture of Netanyahu’s head, with the caption “You’re the head, you’re responsible.” His primary responsibility, which he refused to admit, was that he had, in fact, promoted a policy of divide and rule. Despite giving lip service to the idea of a two-state solution in his Bar-Ilan University speech in 2009, when forced to do so by president Barack Obama, he had done nothing to advance that goal. On the contrary, his own party, the Likud, declared unanimously a total opposition to the establishment of a Palestinian state. And the first sentence of the platform of the new most extreme Right-wing government in Israel’s history established after the November 2022 elections stated that “The Jewish people has an exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the Land of Israel…” Netanyahu relied on his divide-and-rule policy – strengthening Hamas by allowing Qatar to pour in an average of $30 million a month to prop up the Hamas rule over Gaza, while weakening Mahmoud Abbas’s PLO and Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, to ensure that there would be no address for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
All of this assumed that Hamas would play by the rules, perhaps periodically sending rockets into Israel, most of which would be intercepted by the Iron Dome.
Well, on Saturday, October 7, 2023, Hamas stopped playing by the rules.
Hamas was founded in 1987 as the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, which believes that all Arab states should be run according to the Sharia (Islamic law). Its founding charter stated “that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgment Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered; it, or any part of it, should not be given up.” It also stated that “The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said: ‘The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews, when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say, ‘O Muslims, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’”
So it was clearly against the right of the State of Israel to exist alongside a Palestinian state, and it was also antisemitic. The charter recognized the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as a brother organization in the struggle (Hamas is not a member) but rejected its secular character and support for a democratic secular state, since it asserted that “We cannot give up the Islamic identity of Palestine.”
After winning the Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006, Hamas took over total control of government of Gaza after a vicious civil war with Fatah, which included throwing Fatah activists off roofs of buildings and shooting them in their kneecaps so they couldn’t walk again. In 2017, Hamas published a revised version of its charter, which expressed support for “a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus.” However, they did not express a willingness to recognize the existence of the State of Israel. They also removed the clearly antisemitic elements in the first charter, saying that “Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion.”
At the time, Hamas proposed a hudna (long-term ceasefire) with the Israelis, even up to 50 years. However, the Israeli government, perhaps understandably, said it would only agree to a full peace agreement with the Palestinians like Israel had with Egypt and Jordan.
Was that a mistake, a missed opportunity on the part of Israel? Perhaps. Then again, the fact that Yasser Arafat didn’t accept Ehud Barak’s offer of 91% of the land at Camp David 2000, and that Abbas didn’t say yes to Ehud Olmert’s even more generous offer – weren’t those mistakes as well?
Israelis and Palestinians share responsibility for missed opportunities.
On September 30, 2021, a few months after one of the periodic Israel-Gaza mini-wars, Hamas organized The Promise of the Hereafter Conference at the Commodore Hotel in Gaza City, which dealt with plans for the day after the conquest and destruction of the State of Israel and the establishment of a Palestinian state in its place. In April 2024, senior Fatah members based in Cairo told Haaretz journalist Shlomi Eldar that they thought the Hamas people were crazy when they came to them suggesting they assume responsibility for professional roles in the new Palestinian state that would replace Israel.
We now know that Hamas was preparing the October 7 attack for more than a year. Was their goal to strike a blow at the Zionist enemy, to prevent a normalization agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia, to demonstrate that violence, and not diplomacy, was the only way to successfully struggle for Palestinian rights? Probably a combination of all of the above and more. And they knew that the Israeli response, with its superior force, would be deadly for the Palestinians in Gaza. To my mind, one of the most astonishing comments about the situation came from senior Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzouk. When asked by a foreign reporter why Hamas didn’t use its extensive tunnel infrastructure to protect the Palestinian civilians from the Israeli attack, he responded, “The tunnels are for the Hamas fighters. It’s the UN’s responsibility to protect the civilians”!
That leads me to the Israeli response. All Israelis went into a collective state of shock on October 7. The worst, most deadly day in Israeli history since the establishment of the state in 1948. Over 1,200 people killed, over 2,500 wounded, 251 hostages, southern kibbutzim and towns overrun for a few days, and over 150,000 people displaced from their homes.
As for me, in Tel Aviv, I didn’t feel the brunt of it, just the almost daily rocket attacks, most of which were intercepted by the Iron Dome defense system. I couldn’t go down to the building shelter because my wife was suffering from an advanced case of dementia, confined to a hospital bed in the living room, unable to move, so I had to make do with standing in the stairwell near a solid wall. Our 32-year-old live-in Indian caregiver, Jyoshtna, would always be the first one to race down to the shelter. Being of Nepalese background, from Darjeeling, she was the one who informed me that 10 Nepalese agricultural students working on southern kibbutzim were killed by Hamas on October 7. A rocket did hit and demolish a small two-story building near my son Adi’s apartment in the Florentine neighborhood of Tel Aviv, and one wounded woman was extracted from the rubble. The first floor contained a restaurant but, since it was Saturday, it was closed. My cousin Laurie said that she always felt that Israel was a safe haven for the Jews after the Holocaust. Now that belief had been shaken, a feeling shared by many Israelis.
It was clear that Israel was going to respond militarily. The army had to make up for its intelligence and strategic failure on October 7. And the government, which had a total systems collapse in the first few days while all support for the families affected by the attack was provided by civil society, felt it had to order a retaliatory strike against Hamas to reassert Israel’s deterrent capacity. And many Israelis were also feeling a primordial rage for revenge.
Although I agreed that it was necessary to demonstrate Israel’s military strength, I was against a ground invasion of Gaza. And I was in good company, together with Prof. Yagil Levy, Israel’s foremost academic critic of the military, who was a lieutenant colonel in the army. When I was editor of WIZO Review, the publication of one of Israel’s leading women’s organizations, he served as its executive director and told me “The ladies don’t know it, but I’m even more left wing than you are.” And also The New York Times’ Tom Friedman, whom I had interviewed for New Outlook when he was the paper’s bureau chief in Jerusalem. Friedman has written some very astute articles since the crisis began and considers Netanyahu “the worst leader in Jewish history, not just Israeli history.” Yet I have no doubt that the overwhelming majority of Israeli Jews supported the ground invasion.
In October I wrote an article titled “100 Eyes for an Eye. Enough Is Enough!” As Joseph Conrad’s Kurtz said in the novel Heart of Darkness and Marlon Brando echoed in the film Apocalypse Now, “The horror! The horror!” And that applies to both what Hamas did on October 7 and what Israel has been doing in Gaza since then.
As the fighting entered its sixth month, it was clear that this was not just another typical Hamas-Israel round of fighting. The devastation in Gaza was immense, and by March at least 32,000 Gazans were killed, the majority being civilians, men, women and children, with at least two-thirds of the 2.3 million population displaced from their homes. Much of international public opinion was understandably aghast at the level of death and destruction, while most Israelis didn’t see it since, with the exception of Haaretz, the mainstream electronic and print media within Israel were focusing on our pain, stories about those who died on October 7, the hostages and their families, the displaced from their homes in the South and North, and about young soldiers who were dying almost every day.
Perhaps the killing of the seven international aid workers for Jose Andres’ World Central Kitchen, who had been providing food to both Palestinians and Israelis, will be a turning point in the perception of Israelis about what is happening in Gaza.
Personally, I was happy when South Africa brought the war to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, not because I think that Israel was guilty as charged of an “intent to genocide” but because it enabled Israelis to see images of the terrible impact of what the IDF was doing in Gaza. And yes, both Hamas and Israel have committed war crimes.
Both the Israeli and the Palestinian societies are in an extreme state of trauma. Israelis have been haunted by images of the Holocaust, and Palestinians by images of the Nakba. Each side is focusing on their own pain, and there is almost no ability to feel empathy for the other people’s pain. But that’s what we urgently need to cultivate, mutual empathy for each other, Martin Buber’s “I and thou.”
Two examples of how Israelis have been reacting. As my friend Esther put it, she felt like she was in an emotional fog, a lack of energy to act in the way she had when participating in the pre-war weekly demonstrations against the extreme Right-wing government’s judicial overhaul. While Katya, who had been a member of Banki, the Communist youth movement, felt so angry at all the Palestinians that she couldn’t contemplate the possibility of peace with them in any foreseeable future. That’s what some people are calling “the sobering up of the Left.”
I and many of my friends and colleagues don’t share that attitude. I feel I have energy because I’m involved in and have access to platforms and frameworks which enable me to act and express my views about the situation, and to try to create change. At Palestine-Israel Journal, there was some natural tension between Israeli and Palestinian editorial board members after October 7. We were about to publish an issue devoted to democracy, the main topic on the pre-war Israeli and Palestinian agendas, when the fighting started. We managed to add a joint editorial to the issue titled “Amidst the Horrors Lies an Opportunity for Peace.” And within a few weeks, we added “A Joint Israeli-Palestinian Call for Peace,” co-signed by Ziad AbuZayyad and myself. And my colleague Ziad suggested we open a WhatsApp group for all 15 Israeli and 15 Palestinian members of the editorial board, and we have been having a lively exchange of views ever since the war began. This includes our one editorial board member from Gaza, independent businessman Ali Abu Shahla, who was wounded by IDF fire. I have also written in The Times of Israel, Haaretz, and The Nation, and have participated in many Zoom discussions and webinars, either as audience or speaker.
I have been participating in the monthly Middle East Working Group Zoom discussions organized by the London-based Next Century Foundation, with the participation of Palestinians, Egyptians, Lebanese, and knowledgeable Brits and Americans who have been involved in Israeli-Palestinian affairs. There I found myself having to reassure Palestinians that despite what they hear from the racist, messianic ministers like Itamar Ben-Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich, and their associates, in many ways the mirror image of Hamas, Israel had no serious intention or ability to drive the Palestinians out of Gaza.
And no serious intention to reestablish Jewish settlements in Gaza. And I tried to be reassuring by reciting the poll numbers which repeatedly indicated how unpopular Netanyahu and his government were with the Israeli people.
The fact is that crisis, and this is a major crisis, creates an opportunity for change. That also gives me energy. Ignoring the Israeli-Palestinian question or managing the conflict no longer works. The two-state solution has returned to the international agenda, and it will also be on the agenda of the next Israeli elections.
While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has no clear end game for what should happen after the war ends, President Joe Biden has stated clearly that the two-state solution is the only option. He has a fairly detailed plan calling for a long-term ceasefire amounting essentially to an end to the fighting and the return of all the Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. This would be followed by an interim regime to govern and start the rebuilding of Gaza with the aid of Arab allies via a “Middle Eastern Marshall Plan.”
A necessary component would be a revitalized Palestinian Authority to gain the confidence of the Palestinian people minus Hamas control, with a clear path to a demilitarized Palestinian state based on the West Bank and Gaza, with East Jerusalem as its capital and an agreed-upon solution to the refugee problem in accordance with the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative. Also critical would be a diplomatic separation of forces on the northern border with Lebanon in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 1701. I support all of that. And Saudi Arabia now clearly states that it will only normalize relations with Israel if there will be a clear path to a Palestinian state alongside Israel based on the West Bank and Gaza, with east Jerusalem as its capital. The question is whether Biden will be ready to go beyond lip service statements to action to promote his very constructive ideas. At the Israeli Policy Working Group, we have been discussing how to promote progress toward at two-state solution in the international community in general, with a focus on the EU.
And while the slogan “Palestine will be free/from the river to the sea” is very popular in pro-Palestinian solidarity rallies around the world, the slogan should be “Both Israelis and Palestinians should be free/from the river to the sea.”
My favorite background music radio station 88 FM has been regularly playing versions of “Blowing in the Wind” by Peter, Paul and Mary, Joan Baez, and, of course, Bob Dylan. “How many times must the cannon balls fly/Before they’re forever banned?” and “How many years must a people exist/Before they’re allowed to be free?” And sometimes they follow it with a song by Aviv Geffen, the popular singer who didn’t serve in the army that Yitzhak Rabin embraced before he headed down the steps on November 5, 1995, – Shir Tikva (Song of Hope):
“We’ll bury the guns/and not the children/let us try, until it will be good.
We’ll capture the peace/ and not the territories/ let us try.”
Along with Billy Joel’s new song “Turn the Lights Back On,” there’s a new song by Israeli singer Yoni Bloch that the DJs like to play: “Bein Hayam Ve’hanahar” (Between the River and the Sea):
“Like small winds of hope/between the river and the sea…
We will raise an empty glass/in honor of the distant peace/
And more beautiful days to come.”■
This is an edited extract from the writer’s new book, Eye Witness in Israel/Palestine – From Utopia to Dystopia? The writer lives in Tel Aviv and is Israeli co-editor of Palestine-Israel Journal (www.pij.org), the only joint Israeli-Palestinian publication.