The endlessly simmering conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, exploding into unbridled warfare this week in the embattled West Bank city of Jenin, threatens a broader, more far-reaching catastrophe.
How much closer now is a third intifada or, worse still, a wider Middle Eastern war drawing in Israel’s sworn enemies, Hezbollah and Iran? Paradoxically, it is both sides’ chronic weakness that has prevented this larger calamity so far.
Weakness is what they have in common – apart, that is, from the tortured, contested land of Palestine itself. It’s evident the Jenin incursion by Israel Defence Forces (IDF) is meeting fierce resistance and, as a consequence, it may last longer than thought. For Israel’s army, there’s a risk of troops getting bogged down. For Palestinian militants, facing airstrikes, drones and armoured bulldozers, it is, as ever, an unequal fight.
Overnight, thousands of residents of Jenin’s old 1950s refugee camp find they are displaced again. The UN suggests Israel is acting illegally. Meanwhile, Hamas in Gaza threatens terrible vengeance and tensions soar. It’s the old “cycle of violence”. Once again, the wheel turns.
It all seems numbingly familiar, except perhaps for terrified young families caught in the chaos. Israel’s security chiefs view Jenin as a “safe haven” for terrorists that must be eradicated. Armed Palestinians there say they are protecting communities from daily attacks by the IDF and Jewish settlers, in which hundreds have died in the past 18 months.
Both have a point. Yet both cleave weakly to the same old script, repeating past mistakes, scheming fresh horrors, and forever bound together by mutual fear, intransigence, and a sorry failure to reimagine the future.
Who now, like murdered Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1993, has the courage and vision to cry, “Enough!”? Thirty more futile years of blood and tears have elapsed since then. Before it’s even over, the outcome of this latest confrontation is already clear: more misery, hate. More death – and another dead end.
Whatever the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, may say, this nationally destabilising assault is no show of strength by Israel, more the opposite. It will not eliminate terror, as rightwingers claim, nor radically alter the balance of fear. It could trigger a wider, uncontainable crisis.
This week’s actions merely highlight decades of myopic, destructive policymaking, to which Netanyahu has contributed more than most. As in 2002, the battle of Jenin will create more “martyrs”, raise more recruits for terror, leave Israel less, not more secure.
Facing trial for corruption and a national revolt over his anti-democratic judicial “reforms”, Netanyahu, is the embodiment of current weakness.
He has forfeited Joe Biden’s support: the US president deliberately shuns him. Diplomatic advances in the Arab world are now imperilled as condemnation pours in. Thanks to Netanyahu, Israel’s standing as the Middle East’s exemplary democracy is questioned.
Where Israel’s prime minister is weak, his far-right backers are reckless – and dangerous to boot. Parliamentary support from national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, finance minister Bezalel Smotrich and their allies keeps Netanyahu in office. In return, they and their hardline settler friends gain platforms from which to promote inflammatory, anti-Arab policies and opinions.
They are not shy of using them. IDF commanders say the action in Jenin is limited in time, sector and aims. But Ben-Gvir has other ideas. He says Jenin should be “a military operation, to take down buildings, exterminate terrorists – not one or two but tens and hundreds, if necessary thousands”.
This is the language of war crimes and ethnic cleansing, not legitimate counter-terrorism. Yet that, it seems, is what extremist settlers contemplate when they talk of outright annexation, mass evictions of Palestinian West Bank residents and thousands of new Jewish homes.
Weakness and division stalk Palestine’s leadership, with paralysing effect. Mahmoud Abbas, 87, the Palestinian Authority president, is unpopular and incompetent. Elections for a successor are long overdue. Key Arab governments have turned their backs on the Ramallah rump.
Sure enough, the resulting power vacuum has been filled by local West Bank groups of young militants, exemplified by the so-called Jenin brigades, pursuing armed resistance for lack of a credible political process. They in turn are vulnerable to manipulation and exploitation by extremists in Hamas, Islamic Jihad – and Iran. And so, inevitably, violence spreads.
There’s no doubt Israel’s security concerns are real and pressing. There’s no doubt, either, that relentless IDF raids and settler encroachments have aggravated and inflamed the West Bank, thereby threatening Israel too.
The one leads to the other. It’s not rocket science, as they say in Gaza. Just how long do an enfeebled Netanyahu and his dangerous allies think they can keep a lid on it before it all blows up? Or is this, in fact, their plan?
There was a time, a few years ago now, when a US secretary of state or a UN or EU peace envoy might have ridden to the rescue, might have stepped in to bridge, or at least calm, the deepening gulf. But inertia, like weakness, is catching.
There are no peace plans now; the fabled two-state solution is but a sad memory. A wobbly Biden has battles enough with Russia and China, and domestically, too. Europe is preoccupied by Ukraine. Beijing is not yet a serious player. The UN has less clout than ever.
While little appetite remains for international peacemaking and mediation, there’s even less, in these hard times, for understanding, forbearance and compassion. For Israelis, there is no sure safety net now, no saving them from themselves. For Palestinians, there never was.
And so, amid an ever-rising body count and ever-diminishing hopes, the risk of devastating conflagration inexorably grows.
Simon Tisdall is a foreign affairs commentator. He has been a foreign leader writer, foreign editor and US editor for the Guardian
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