Pretty much, because the situation is not one where a simple change in policy on one side or the other can really address the underlying problems. On the tactical level, there are things that can change, like not firing rockets or sending suicide attackers into Israel and, from the other side, responding in less collaterally destructive ways and loosening the most egregious of the oppressive controls on the Palestinians. But the problem of “Israel” and “the Palestinians” would still remain.
This is a pretty unique situation. Sure, other people have struggled for what they believed was their rightful homeland against what they believed was an oppressive occupier. But the Palestinians are very different from the Viet Minh, or the Algerian National Liberation Front, or any number of other anti-colonial, anti-oppression movements. For one, they aren’t being occupied by a European state as a colony, but rather are being forced to share a plot of land with a group drawn from many different places that constituted itself as a practical nation only once it got to Palestine. Hence, there is no place to send the colonizers, as they see them, back to. The Israelis are quite right when they say, “go back where?,” as they were effectively pushed out of Europe, mostly, one way or another, particularly up to 1948. Another difference is that the Palestinians have not gone away, and are still living right where they started, albeit on only a portion of the land they claim. There is no where for them to go, either, not and still be Palestinian and not Jordanian, or Egyptian, or whatever, assuming anyone would have them. A fair number of Palestinians, quite a lot actually, refuse to drop their refugee status even when they can get access to many physical benefits of, say, Jordanian citizenship, because to do so would admit that the cause is lost. The refugee camps resist transitioning into anything else because each year when they have to re-certify or whatever with the UNRWA, they reaffirm their status as Palestinians.
One can argue, certainly, that after more than half a century it’s time to give up the ghost and move on, but one can also see how Palestinians can’t just walk away from what they see as a continuing injustice. One can also see how Israelis, most of whom have grown up now with Israel as a fact of life and as their home as well, might resist fundamental changes to their environment at the behest of people that, in the day to day nature of things, they experience often not as neighbors but as terrorists or other hostile actors. Of course, you could also argue that after half a century of something that is clearly, for everyone outside of Israel, not working, the Israelis might come to see that something has to change, but that, too, is a hard sell, given the core of vehemently hostile and frankly murderous rage that still exists in segments of the Palestinian community.
Gaza is a symptom, not a cause. Stopping the blockade and somehow getting an international monitoring force in there, to make sure rockets don’t come in with the fuel and food, and that concrete and steel is used to build schools and apartments and not tunnels, might or might not work (neither side trusts anyone else, HAMAS has little incentive to create an environment where people don’t feel angry enough to join their ranks, and Israel has serious issues about abandoning control to anyone), but even if it did, the basic problem would still remain. Now, it’d be a hell of a lot better I think for all concerned if something like that could evolve, even if it wasn’t the be-all and end-all of solutions, but let’s not fool ourselves into thinking there’s a solution to the overall problem that’s clear and simple.
Even if you believe Israel should never have been created and was built on theft from the get-go, can you seriously argue that all those Israelis who have been born there since–in a state the UN itself sanctioned, as a Jewish state specifically, for better or for worse–should have pull up stakes and go–where? Even if you believe the Palestinians have, overall, been their own worst enemies and have forced Israel into measures like the security fence and the Gaza blockade, can you seriously argue that the day to day oppression of average Palestinians is anything but unacceptable and unsustainable?
I’ve come to think that there are only two paths out of this. One is the two-state solution, but that would absolutely require a withdrawal from most of the West Bank, the cession of East Jerusalem to the PA, and an enormously complicated international effort to facilitate and guarantee security and access for all parties to communications and transportation outlets, and a long-term effort to manage water and population that would be an epic challenge. Demographics, too, are a challenge for the other path, the one-state solution, which few in Israel or Palestine seem to really want, as it doesn’t give either party the whole enchilada. How can you have a Jewish state with a majority Arab and Muslim population? How can you say it’s truly “Palestine” with a constitution that would effectively be heavily Western and full of guarantees for the people you have argued for a century or more have been stealing your land? But from an outside perspective, a unified, secular, constitutional state of Israel-Palestine, with power sharing and protections for each group, seems attractive, if still woefully impractical. Over time, the former Israelis would become a small minority and we’d have other problems I’m sure.
The third path, the continuation of the status quo, seems unsustainable ethically on all sides, but sadly, that doesn’t usually stop anyone. One reason Palestinians resort to violence is that, unlike most national liberation movements, this one doesn’t have a clear endgame, or a clear time frame. It seems like the Forever War, with a cause that’s too deeply rooted to give up and a foe too deeply entrenched to defeat. For the Israelis, their entire history has been built on a “never again” sort of appreciation of threats, and their government, security apparatus, and even general mindset to some degree are pretty conditioned to go from crisis to crisis; there really isn’t any precedent for anything else.
tl;dr, I have no idea how to solve any of this on a macro level. Perhaps all we can do is work on the micro stuff and try to keep the body count down.
