On the morning of 19 October, I received an email circulated by the director of veteran’s affairs at the City University of New York, where I teach. “Due to recent dire events overseas,” the email read, “there is a possibility that the Department of Defense might activate varied servicemembers by or before November 1, 2023.”
Is the United States about to blindly march us into yet another catastrophic war? This type of information didn’t come only from my university, either. NBC News has also reported that about 2,000 US troops have been ordered to prepare to deploy to support Israel. While some get ready for war, shouldn’t the rest of us be pushing for alternatives to violence, especially before we find ourselves in a global conflagration beyond anyone’s control?
This would be the sane choice, but western politicians, governing through cliches, appear resolved to allow Israel to continue pounding Gaza. In the emergency Cairo summit of world leaders assembled to address the violence in Gaza and Israel, the best the British foreign secretary, James Cleverly, could come up with was to call for “discipline and professionalism and restraint from the Israeli military”. Cold comfort, indeed. Meanwhile, the US’s commitment to empty platitudes has been even worse. “American leadership is what holds the world together,” Joe Biden said from the Oval Office on 19 October, as the world falls apart in front of our eyes.
The violence in Gaza continues at a ferocious pace. As of Saturday, 4,385 Palestinians had been killed since Israel began bombing the territory, according to the Palestinian ministry of health, and 13,651 had been injured. The dead include 1,756 children and 967 women. More than a million Palestinians have been displaced in the last 10 days, according to the United Nations, which also voiced concern not only for the welfare of the injured but also for the estimated 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza. With numerous health facilities bombed beyond use throughout the territory, where are these women supposed to turn?
Aside from cutting off supplies of food, water, electricity and medicine to the entire population, Israel has also targeted schools, universities, churches, mosques, hospitals (in addition to the disputed al-Ahli hospital bombing), refugee camps, the Rafah crossing, and even bakeries. Bakeries. Does Israel really think bombing bakeries contributes to its self-defense? I suppose there must now be such a thing as Hamas flour that must be eradicated?
The madness of these actions is matched only by the mad belief that a relentless and merciless bombing of innocent people somehow punishes Hamas and brings Israel peace. In fact, it’s precisely the opposite, but such Alice in Wonderland thinking is repeatedly expressed by Israeli leaders, spokespeople and supporters. And what this position fails to acknowledge is that Palestinians being denied a homeland and a nation of their own has always been at the heart of the issue. The only durable solution to today’s violence is found not in the payload of a US-manufactured bomb, but by squarely addressing this dispossession and by treating the Palestinian people as equals. Eventually, that will require negotiations grounded in justice and ultimately reconciliation. Neither Hamas nor the Israeli government are capable of delivering this.
Instead, we have a looming ground invasion, which would be a catastrophe for Palestinians, Israelis, and the entire region. And when a ground invasion does commence, you can be sure that a ceasefire will also be infinitely harder to procure.
That’s why a ceasefire from all sides, along with the immediate and safe return of all the hostages, is necessary now. This is hardly a difficult concept to grasp. That less killing of civilians is better should be self-evident, and I desperately hang on to the belief that most people in the world understand this. But we should pay attention to those who don’t seem to care.
On 18 October, Brazil proposed a security council resolution calling not even for a ceasefire but merely for “humanitarian pauses” in Israel’s bombing of Gaza. The US, in a sole vote, vetoed it. In the US Congress, over a dozen House Democrats signed on to a ceasefire resolution put forward by Cori Bush, the Missouri congresswoman. The Democratic lawmaker Josh Gottheimer called the members of his own party “extremists” for calling for a cessation of hostilities and a de-escalation of the violence. The Republican side is even worse. Republican candidates for president, from Trump to pretty much everyone else on the ticket, are linking support for Palestine to, yes, illegal immigration. Don’t ask me to make sense of this. It’s a Republican worldview.
That Republicans are tin-eared and hard-hearted is hardly news. But we also shouldn’t let Democrats narrow the fundamental issue of Palestinian dispossession into one principally of humanitarian concern. While the needs for survival are presently acute, the question is not about letting 20 trucks or 100 trucks through the Rafah crossing. After everything they have suffered, Palestinians deserve freedom, not just aid.
That’s why calling for a ceasefire is absolutely necessary but is also definitely not sufficient. If the result of a ceasefire is a return to the status quo, all we have produced is a recipe for the worst cycle of repetition, which puts everyone at further risk. Instead, we should listen to South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa. Speaking for South Africa at the Cairo summit, Ramaphosa called on “all state actors to desist also from providing weapons to either of the two sides to this conflict” and for “a United Nations-led negotiation process towards resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict”.
What Ramaphosa is implying is that the United States can no longer lead the way in resolving this issue. For decades, the United States has tried to pass itself off as an “honest broker” between Israel and the Palestinians, while at the same time supplying Israel with both its advanced weaponry and the political cover required during its continued encroachment on Palestinian territory.
We shouldn’t accept this contradiction any longer. The United States cannot say it’s working for peace and war at the same time. Congress ought not to quash calls for ceasefires. And vulnerable populations like my mostly working-class students must not be called into military service over this. True global leadership at this moment means de-escalation and forging visions for a just future for all. But without demanding a ceasefire in the immediate future, the putative US commitment to peace rings hollow and feels more like it’s been overshadowed by its own and very real addiction to war.
Moustafa Bayoumi is the author of the award-winning books How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America and This Muslim American Life: Dispatches from the War on Terror. He is a professor of English at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. He is a contributing opinion writer at the Guardian US
