Dr. Ariel Zellman

On the record

As an Israeli academic with some expertise in interstate and intrastate conflict, I think it is important to go on the record on several issues regarding the ongoing Gaza War. These are AND statements, not BUTs. Nor do they attempt to address the totality of the cluster fuck that is this conflict.

Hamas is an explicitly genocidal organization whose brutal intent to murder as many Israelis as possible, while ensuring the highest number of Palestinian civilian casualties possible in any Israeli response, has been on proud public display well before and certainly since October 7th.
The current Israeli governing coalition is led by a self-interested corrupt narcissist whose machinations to decompose this country’s democratic institutions are directly responsible for the extreme and unprecedented internal political upheaval Israel has experienced. These conditions made Hamas’s butchery on October 7 not only possible but significantly more likely.
The current Israeli coalition government includes parties and leaders who are openly fascist in their political ambitions and ideologies and have expressed genocidal pretensions and/or aspirations toward the civilian population of Gaza.
These figures exercise zero direct decision-making power over Israel’s military campaign, however they have veto power over major political decisions, severely degrading Israel’s credibility with int’l legal and humanitarian organizations, allies, and its moral standing with foreign audiences.
Israel’s military campaign against Hamas & co is explicitly and resolutely not genocidal, yet Israel’s near-wholesale abandonment of restraint in targeting leadership and fighting forces has inflicted previously unimaginable levels of violence upon Gaza’s civilian population and infrastructure
This has also severely imperiled the delivery of desperately needed humanitarian aid, and only further compounded its credibility losses on the international stage.
The majority of Israelis are morally outraged at the current government, its failures to secure the release of our hostages let alone the obvious lack of empathy of our leadership for them and their families, and are regularly and loudly protesting, demanding democratic accountability.
Even with all these points, in the past months, Israel has offered increasingly generous, deeply politically costly (vis-a-vis domestic audiences) ceasefire/truce/negotiation terms that Hamas has subsequently and without remorse rejected, in order to ensure this disaster of a war will continue.

These posts were initially published on my Bluesky feed on 1 May 2024, with mild editing for content and consistency.

Initial reflections on the ICJ

Initial reflections from this Israeli political science scholar on the ICJ measures decision:

1) At present, the court is basically calling on Israel to not commit genocide, ensure provision of humanitarian aid to Gaza, and provide a report on the measures it is taking to this effect.

2) The provisional ruling, as announced, rests on reports from the UN Secretary General, the UN Human Rights Council, and UNRWA

3) The court cited statements by prominent members of the Israeli government regarding its intent to destroy Hamas and committing to a changed reality in the Gaza strip

On points (1) I find very little with which to disagree, and if you take note of those of Israel’s ad hoc representative to the court, Aaron Barak, neither does he. Israel remains firm in its assertion that it is not committing genocide, is doing what it can under tremendously difficult circumstances to provide humanitarian aid to the obviously suffering population of Gaza, and at least nominally intents to take action against those incredibly irresponsible voices in Israel that are calling for exactly the opposite.

On point (2) as others have mentioned, it is galling to say the least that these are the voices upon which the court appears to be basing its provisional measures, but as President Donahue repeated multiple times, this is a decision about provisional measures, and is not subject to the same evidentiary requirements of actually determining whether genocide is taking place.
Where I and many other Israelis are deeply concerned is that the “evidence” will not be impartially collected or considered if these sources are any hint of from where the court’s evidence will be gathered.

I have little confidence that Israel’s report to the court, which will be due shortly to the ICJ, will be taken seriously. But I am also deeply concerned that the sitting government will simply reject the requirement to submit such a report. This would be deeply arrogant and foolish even if the outcome seems predetermined. It would also be altogether inconsistent with Israeli before toward international legal institutions up to this point. So, I am hoping to be proven wrong.

As to point (3), I found the court’s choice of statements to be puzzling. The choice to ignore the statements of strident racists like Ben-Gvir and Smotrich and highlight those of Gallant and President Herzog (among others) feels like it is about demonstrating genocidal intent is mainstream. However, anyone with any understanding both of the context of the statements in which these comments were made and of the direct intent of the statements themselves, can easily discern that they are explicitly about targeting and (wanting to) destroying Hamas, not to commit genocide. A belief that there is a large population wishes you dead and the open expression of that belief does not constitute genocidal intent. If it did, then not just Hamas or PIJ but the Palestinian Authority, Fatah, and “moderate” Mahmoud Abbas would be guilty of genocidal intent.

Regardless, as an observer of the court’s decision and having been no way involved, I cannot say what the future will hold from the ICJ. I am anxious but remain hopeful that Israel will take the responsible legal course of action while quadrupling its efforts to avoid civilian casualties.

These posts were initially published on my Bluesky feed on 26 January 2024, with mild editing for content and consistency.

Making Things Worse

****UPDATE: I am relieved to report that the Israeli Police blocked the March of the Macabees from taking place. The protesters had violated the agreed terms of the march, bringing with them inflammatory signs and the obvious intent to incite violence. They were met with horse-mounted police forces and water cannons. You can read about it here.

Meanwhile, I am leaving the original post below as the deeply worrying dynamics I wrote about are still very much in effect. This is not the first time that ultranationalists have attempted to incite broader chaos during this war. Settler violence in the West Bank targeting Palestinian civilians, private property, and public institutions are at an all time high. The blocking of this march will very likely be used as a justification for more.

Thankfully someone in the Israeli Police (or perhaps higher up the political echelon) had the responsibility and initiative to hold the marchers to account. The real threat that violent ultranationalists pose to Israelis and Palestinians alike is only magnified by Israeli political instability and the ongoing Gaza War. The only solution to this threat in the interim is the establishment of a responsible government not beholden to these elements.****

*Original post below:

This evening’s (1st night Hannukah) planned March of the Macabees through the Muslim Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem is a disaster in the making. The potential for immediate violence is high and regardless will be used to justify WB rioting and terrorism while the Gaza War is ongoing.

The organizers are prominent ultranationalists who have declared their ambitions to remove the Waqf and “restore full Jewish control to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount.” These are not state actors but are closely linked to Nat’l Security minister and Otzma Yehudit party head Itamar Ben-Gvir.

Opposition head, MK Yair Lapid has condemned the march as a violent provocation and blatant attempt by Kahanists to set more fires and cause more death and destruction. Other members of Knesset have argued that protests that are likely to open another front in the war cannot be tolerated.

Police have limited participants to 200 and said they will change the route or shut it down altogether if large numbers engage in “inflammatory chants or signs of incitement”. But the track record of the Israeli police on annual ultranationalist Jerusalem Day flag marches is far from encouraging.

This march is occurring with the Gaza War ongoing during a severe regime crisis stemming from the current Israeli government’s failure to prevent the 7 October Hamas invasion and rape, massacre, and kidnapping of Israeli civilians and likely impending collapse of the governing coalition.

As Andrea Malji and I demonstrate in our article in Politics, Religion & Ideology, these factors often contribute to a perfect storm of high levels of societal violence targeting minority sacred sites – more religious democracies in regime crises facing violence from the targeted minority.

Extremist societal actors often engage in religious violence in these contexts to boost their political influence and to weaken more moderate political and societal actors. They do not operate in a vacuum; violence by the targeted minority makes extremist agendas much more politically salient.

It is however the responsibility of a state’s political leadership to recognize these dynamics and not be controlled by them. Case in point, PM Netanyahu knows exactly what Ben Gvir and company are trying to accomplish, but refuses to absorb the political cost to his coalition by stopping them. 8/n

With a horrific war ongoing and extremist actors in Israel (and among the Palestinians and ME at large) eager to make the crisis worse, it is beyond time for responsible leadership. Establishing Israel’s war cabinet w/ Gantz and Gallant and w/o Smotrich & Ben Gvir was an important first step.

Reformulating the Israeli governing coalition to make it not dependent upon its most extreme partner is even more important intermediate step. This would require from Netanyahu to place the good of the country and region at large above himself.

To say that this is unlikely is a gross understatement. While democratic elections in the heat of war are not happening, government dissolution led by disaffected members of Likud and other coalition parties and establishment of a temporary caretaker national unity government may be possible.

This post was originally published to Facebook and Bluesky on my personal accounts on 7 December 2023.

A Convergence of Bad Options

In this long thread, I address moves in the past 2 weeks from actors pushing for resolution to the current Gaza war that will ensure its continuation. In particular, I will address Israel’s refusal to consider a permanent ceasefire, given other troubling statements from the current government.

Friday begins a 4 day truce, the initial release of 50 Israeli women and children Hamas hostages, 150 Palestinian women and teens held on terror charges in Israel, fuel & humanitarian aid to Gaza, and Israel halting drone flights over southern Gaza and limiting to 1000-1600 in the north.

Prior to this deal, there have been major protests worldwide demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza (which this truce is not), protests here in Israel and abroad demanding the release of Hamas’s 240 or so hostages kidnapped on 7 October, and disturbing rhetoric about next steps.

At the 11.11 Arab-Islamic Summit in Riyadh, Iranian Pres Raisi praised Hamas: “There is no other way but to resist Israel, we kiss the hands of Hamas for its resistance.” Turkish Pres Erdogan: “We cannot put Hamas resisters defending their homeland in the same category as the occupiers.”

Even as US President Joe Biden has argued that a revitalized Palestinian Authority should take control of Gaza, the PA has circulated documents claiming that Israeli helicopters bombed the Supernova music festival along the Gaza border on 7.10 to justify its war on Gaza.

Statements that have gotten much more attention have been from Israeli PM Netanyahu and others in his cabinet who have asserted that there should be indefinite Israeli military/security control of Gaza after the war, and have (publicly) refuted any notion of PA governance.

Beyond a refusal to countenance a ceasefire, MKs from the outwardly fascist Otzma Yehudit party and only slightly less extreme Religious Zionist party have denounced allowing humanitarian aid and fuel into Gaza and pushed post-war Israeli civilian resettlement of northern Gaza.

About a week ago, Avishay Ben-Sasson-Gordis wrote an excellent thread on Israeli opposition to a ceasefire, responding in part to an open letter that has been circulating by Political Scientists demanding a “ceasefire now” (CFN). It is excellent and well worth the read.

Many responses to Israeli opposition to CFN and calls for Israeli military control of Gaza have argued that these positions confirm what they have known all along, Israel is a fascist Apartheid state that is actively pursuing the extermination of the Palestinian people.

No one can convince them otherwise. This is a position they took before 7 October and it is a position they took on 8 October. Hamas’s atrocities in their rape, murder, kidnapping, and wanton destruction are treated, at best, as an unwelcome distraction from the true villain.

Others demand CFN given massive human suffering. Even if you don’t believe Hamas’s casualty estimates, 1000s of innocents have been killed, countless Gazans are homeless, and massive destruction has been wrought against Gaza’s already precarious civilian infrastructure.

From this standpoint, any opposition to a ceasefire is seemingly paramount to a war crime on its own. Israeli insistence that the war must continue even after the lull (not yet implemented) coupled with open calls for military occupation must therefore equal Israeli warmongering.

Taken in isolation, I accept and even empathize with this moral reasoning, even as my phone buzzes constantly with warnings about continued rocket fire from Gaza and from Hezbollah in the north (about 50 already today) and drone infiltration of Israeli air space.

This reasoning (any argument about the necessity, proportionality, or restraint of the IDF in Gaza and on the northern border aside) however ignores or trivializes that CFN, as formulated by its proponents, offers absolutely no constructive way forward.

It is concerned, rightly so, with immediate Palestinian suffering, but offers no solution for the long run. It presumes Hamas is a responsible actor that will rebuild the Strip and redress Palestinian suffering as it never has attempted in the past nearly 20 years of its de facto rule.

Alternatively, it accepts Hamas is a bad actor, but CFN will be the first step to ending Israeli rule in the West Bank and Gaza. After all the only solution is “political”. If the end result is a free Palestine “from the river to the sea,” all the better.

But criticizing those who want an end to (or more importantly those actually experiencing) death and destruction for not having a realistic plan to “fix” the conflict is, at least in isolation, both unfair and unjust. So let’s change gears.

What of Israeli opposition to CFN? Why the growing popularity of the reoccupation argument? Again, there is the small but politically powerful (in the current coalition) corner of Israeli society that sees this war as an opportunity to resettle Gaza and advance their messianic agenda.

A more important and generally shared motivation is moral outrage at Hamas atrocities, both those perpetrated on 7 October and those ongoing with continued indiscriminate rocket fire and murder of already kidnapped Israelis, coupled with a determination that this should never happen again.

A further, less emotional explanation, however, stems from the reality that CFN requires Israel to accept one of two entirely unacceptable outcomes to this war: a return to the status quo or worse, an empowered Hamas. See my previous long threads on these points.

CFN without addressing Hamas’s control of the Strip, its stated intent to continue to attack Israel, and its purely instrumental interest in moderation (i.e. rebuilding its military capacity) can only have one realistic policy response short of war, a draconian strengthening of the blockade.

The unimaginable alternative under these conditions, whereby Israel lifts the blockade and allows Hamas to do as it will, would do little to redress the humanitarian crisis (Hamas will continue to pillage international aid for its own gain), and would guarantee a more disastrous war.

Proposed alternatives at the moment appear little better. In response to a US proposal, Egypt has stated unequivocally that it will not take security responsibility for the Strip in Israel’s place. So too, it has rejected proposals to accept Palestinian refugees even on a temporary basis.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas has also made it clear that the PA would only accept control of Gaza under the framework of a larger political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a whole along pre-1967 borders with a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem.

However, an immediate negotiated end to the conflict is deeply unrealistic, whether under the current Israeli government or one led by the opposition. Given Abbas’s own rejectionist rhetoric, no such initiative is likely.

As significant, there are questions whether Gazans would accept Abbas or even the PA as legitimate. Abbas is deeply unpopular even among West Bank Palestinians and many believe the PA to be, at best, composed of self-serving kleptocrats and at worst, a willing tool of Israeli occupation.

Israelis are also deeply anxious about world opinion. Many world leaders whose judgment & support matter to Israelis immediately and sharply condemned Hamas’s massacre. Most notably the US, but also the UK and France offered clear & concrete support and diplomatic cover for an Israeli response.

As protests of the last few weeks and statements by various leaders indicate, this goodwill is running thin, further diminishing Israeli confidence that any international actor will provide for Israel the security conditions it demands vis-a-vis Gaza when this war ends.

It is in this context that Israeli military reoccupation of Gaza is gaining not popular support but public credibility. Facing two unthinkable options that would leave Israel insecure and without control over developments in Gaza, the third previously unthinkable option becomes plausible.

As I have argued previously, this policy would be would terrible and self-destructive. It would ensure that Gaza remain a space of constant violence with occupying forces and that West Bank unrest will further escalate to an intolerable degree, rendering any political solution impossible.

This is what Ben-Gvir and his Otzma Yehudit party (& Smotrich and the Religious Zionist party somewhat less so) are actively working toward: a situation in which Israeli-Palestinian violence becomes existentially threatening such that further draconian measures begin to appear necessary.

In sum, while an Israeli rejection of CFN makes a great deal of sense in terms of what is at stake and what the likely outcomes of such a policy would be, the policy choices that are being proposed in its stead will be similarly destructive.

This post was originally published to Facebook and Bluesky on my personal accounts on 23 November 2023.

Bad options, part 3

In my last two long threads on the Gaza war, I discussed two terrible options for the end of this conflict. The first was a return to the status quo ante and the second was a return to Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip in any way shape or form.

To my great regret, this second point demands repetition as more Israeli actors have been proposing versions of this. For one, there have been strident calls from particularly extreme members of the current Israeli government to expel, in whole or in part, Palestinians to Sinai.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that these same characters express no regret and often full-throated support to growing settler violence in the West Bank. This is ethnic cleaning in intent, plain and simple, and potentially genocidal in effect, regardless of Hamas’s atrocities.

More “reasonable” voices advocate transforming Gaza into Area B-minus. This references the Oslo Accords mandated division of authority in the West Bank into Area A under full PA control, Area B under PA civilian control and Israeli security control, and Area C under full Israeli control.

Even coupled with PA return to Gaza, this policy is deeply ill-conceived. It will not bring Israel the security it seeks; it will not succeed where every other policy Israel has implemented in Gaza has failed. Any Israeli control is a recipe for disaster, as I have already argued at length.

With that, let’s turn to no-go option three, any resolution to this war in which Hamas remains the sovereign authority in Gaza. If the end goal is to actually end the perpetual cycle of violence over Gaza, Hamas rule in Gaza must go, full stop. Here’s why in three acts.

1) Hamas has openly, loudly, and repeatedly sworn itself to Israel’s destruction. Hamas’s invasion, indiscriminate and wanton rape, butchery, and kidnapping of civilians, children, the elderly, Jews and Arabs alike on 7 October was not a one-off spasm of the oppressed throwing off their shackles.

Rather it represents a culmination of decades of Hamas’s ideological positioning, hate mongering, and violence intentionally and gleefully aimed at civilian targets. To quote Ghazi Hamad, the deputy Hamas Prime Minister in his interview on Lebanon’s LBC TV regarding 7 October:

“Israel is a country that has no place on our land. We must remove that country. We are not ashamed to say that with full force… The ‘Al-Aqsa Flood is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth because we have the determination, the resolve and the capabilities to fight.”

As long as Hamas controls Gaza, it will continue to attack Israel and provoke devastating Israeli counterattack after counterattack. Such violence, politically advantageous for Hamas, will continue to suck in regional actors into wider military conflicts over the bodies of countless innocents.

2) Hamas rule has been devastating for the people of Gaza. Hamas’s single-minded objective to transform Gaza into a fiercely armed bunker state from which they can continue their violent campaign against Israel’s existence has destroyed the lives and livelihood of Gaza Palestinians.

Whether you blame Israel’s longstanding and counterproductive blockade or Hamas for tearing up Gaza’s already meager infrastructure to build missiles, attack and smuggling tunnels, and bunkers for their soldiers, these processes will only worsen if Hamas remains in power.

Hamas’s half-million liters of reserve diesel fuel, appropriation of what little international aid trickles into Gaza, its leadership’s spectacular self-enrichment at the expense of impoverished Gazans, and violent suppression of peaceful protest are features, not bugs of the Hamas regime.

3) Hamas happily and openly uses civilian infrastructure including UNWRA distribution centers, schools, and hospitals to protect itself from Israeli reprisals. It has long been near-public knowledge that Hamas’s primary command center is located in Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital.

The reasons are transparent. In an interview on 28 November with Russia Today’s Arabic channel, Moussa Abu Marzouk, a prominent member of Hamas’s political bureau, responded as follows to a question about why Hamas has dug 500 kilometers of tunnels in Gaza but not civilian bomb shelters:

“We built the tunnels because we have no other way of protecting ourselves from being killed in airstrikes. We are fighting from inside the tunnels.” He then added, “Seventy-five percent of the population of Gaza are refugees, and it is the UN’s responsibility to protect them.”

So long as Hamas rules Gaza, it will continue to use it as a staging ground for violent attacks against Israel, it will continue to exploit and brutalize its own population, and it will continue to intentionally place them in harms way so civilians, not Hamas, bear Israeli retaliatory violence.

That said, there are at least three arguments against this position. Let’s go from the most specious to the most reasonable. The first comes from those who still believe that Hamas represents a legitimate, principled actor whose “resistance” to Israel demands global support, not condemnation.

This crowd is far from uniform, but rather varies from those who celebrate Hamas’s wanton rape, butchery, and kidnapping of civilians, children, the elderly to those who excuse it as a “natural” response of a “genocided”, occupied, colonized people. To them, I have nothing of value to say.

The second comes from those who argue that Hamas may be a bad actor, but it is the one the Palestinians of Gaza have chosen. If we believe in the rights of peoples to self-determination, then we must also respect those whom they select as their leaders.

This raises the glaring question, did the Palestinians of Gaza in fact “choose” Hamas? Here we must turn back to the last time the Palestinian Authority held elections legislative council elections in January 2006.

While technically winning the majority of seats (74/132), its 44.45% returns were barely greater than Fatah’s 41.43%, netting only 45 seats, due to how seats were apportioned. By this metric, yes Palestinians chose Hamas, but they really also chose Fatah.

A more relevant question is would Gaza Palestinians still choose Hamas? A July 2023 Washington Institute poll of Gazans is revealing: 70% support the PA retaking administrative control and Hamas giving up its separate army. 50% believe Hamas should stop calling for Israel’s destruction and accept 2 states.

Note too that the median age in Gaza is 18, meaning half of Gaza’s population wasn’t even born the last time a democratic Palestinian election was held. It also means 17 yr olds, who missed the opportunity to vote in 2006, are now 34. That’s quite a long time to be disenfranchised.

The third and best objection to Hamas’s removal is that the force required to dislodge or destroy them is so morally and mortally costly that the goal itself is unspeakably immoral. This argument goes beyond the simplistic both-side-isms that have characterized much of the punditry of this war.

It is not merely the assertion that Hamas atrocities cannot justify Israeli atrocities. It also comes from believing that Hamas’s violent removal will do nothing to address and will assuredly amplify the underlying sources of their ideology&violence. As such, Hamas’s removal becomes impossible.

My academic background is in the study of conflict and conflict resolution processes, not in military strategy. I have not and I will not muse on what I feel Israel’s military response in Gaza should look like. As I have commented often and elsewhere, I do not know the answer.

I would suggest that those who vehemently object to Hamas’s removal also have a distinct lack of imagination. The only (lack of) solution they can envision is the military one; complete devastation from the air and ground by the IDF and therefore a moral and practical impossibility.

This same myopia plagues those in Israel who see no option but this selfsame destruction and a return to occupation. In my final thread, I intend to explore some of these underappreciated and underexplored options, and suggest that there actually is a way forward out of this mess.

It is not one that will be embraced by either Israelis or Palestinians as it flatters neither of their sensibilities. However, I will argue how and why it represents the most productive way forward if we actually want to see an end to this brutal conflict.

This post was originally published to Facebook and Bluesky on my personal accounts on 2 November 2023.

Bad Options, part 2

In my last long thread on the Gaza war, I argued that to determine what reality must look like on the ground to ensure this conflict ends, we have to first be clear about which options must be off the table. The first was a return to the status quo ante.

In this thread, I will cover bad option number two, a return to Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip. For many, avoiding this terrible option is even more evident than the impossibility of returning to the status quo. For others, however, this idea still has considerable purchase.

For most Israelis, Hamas’s butchery is proof of the need to destroy this genocidal political movement. Atrocities of the past week and a half coupled with nearly two decades of rocket attacks, incendiary balloons, terror tunnels, & kidnappings have convinced Israelis that the status quo must go.

Demands by int’l actors that Israel moderate its response, not take the bait, recognize Hamas, avoid all civilian casualties, etc while condemning Israeli responses as uniquely criminal, disproportionate, expansionist, or genocidal have erased their credibility in the Israeli mainstream.

These emotions are particularly poignant as Israelis feel they have been given no “credit” for the 2005 Disengagement, Israel’s withdrawal of all 8000 Israeli settlers, 21 settlements, & all military assets from Gaza, with the v brief exception of the Philadelphi Corridor between Gaza and Egypt.

This does not mean the beleaguered Israeli left rejects peace with the Palestinians or that moderate rightists do not want to end conflict. Rather, the idea that any one else would credibly provide the security guarantees Israelis demand vis-a-vis Gaza has become utterly domestically untenable.

For a truly tiny minority of extreme right Israelis, who are disproportionately represented in the current Israeli government, this war also presents an opportunity to resettle the Strip and rectify the “historic mistake” of the Disengagement.

I’ll be clear. This urge to “retake” Gaza, no matter how necessary some in Israel believe it to be, is gravely mistaken if the goal is to end the constant cycle of conflict over Gaza. There are at least three reasons (aside from very important moral and legal ones) why this is unquestionably so.

(1) Israel has already attempted almost every repressive policy possible to rule Gaza since 1967; each and every one has failed to bring peace or quiet. Settlements built with the explicit intent to divide and weaken Gaza failed, military repression failed, external containment failed.

Nor, should I add, would positive inducements likely make a difference. Gazans have had decades to learn what Israeli rule entails and they do not trust Israeli carrots. In the end, they will violently resist it, whether or not Hamas institutionally or organizationally survives this war.

(2) Israeli control of Gaza will not improve its defense against other threats. Even if Israeli forces could sufficiently pacify local resistance, it would likely lead to sympathetic violence in the West Bank. It will also encourage further violence by Iran and other external bad actors.

(3) Israelis already demonstrated in 2005 that they are unwilling to pay the high costs associated with ruling Gaza from the inside. Any post-war occupation is necessarily going to be a long one, and the Israeli domestic appetite for long term investment in stabilizing Gaza will dry up rapidly.

Moreover, the amount of force necessary to “permanently” expunge the threat, is well beyond what the international community at large, the United States included, can accept. Nor will the vast majority of Israelis tolerate this level of violence in the medium to long term.

Next thread, bad option number three.

This post was originally published to Facebook and Bluesky on my personal accounts on 18 October 2023.

Bad Options, part 1

It is well beyond time to start talking about the “day after” in Gaza, what reality must look like on the ground to ensure another one does not simply start again next month or next year. If we care about ending this, first we must understand which options *must* be off the table.

The first and hopefully the least controversial is the status quo ante. This reality, which has prevailed since the 2005 Disengagement and 2007 Hamas takeover of Gaza, has been an unmitigated economic, humanitarian, political, and security disaster for both Israelis and Palestinians.

Israel’s blockade of Gaza, ostensibly to weaken Hamas and manage the threat it poses to Israel, has kept an already impoverished and isolated Palestinian population at the edge of humanitarian catastrophe, while Hamas has enriched itself by controlling the internal flow of international aid.

Severe limits on “dual use” technology imports (concrete, not yellowcake), which Hamas might use for military purposes, have led to them expropriating what little comes in to build smuggling/attack tunnels, tearing up sanitation pipes to built rockets, and other such military innovations.

Violence has erupted between Israel and Hamas almost annually, with rocket barrages of ever expanding range met with bombing and limited ground operations, resulting in untold damage to Gaza’s fragile civilian infrastructure, thousands of civilian deaths, and constant terror on both sides.

The open sore of the Gaza status quo is a political boon to all the worst, most extreme actors in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israeli radical right-wingers point to Hamas’s constant violence to justify why the only response must be more isolation, more punishment, and more violence. Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other armed competitors in the Strip enjoy a ready constituency of aggrieved and frankly oppressed Palestinians to whom their calls of “resistance” appear legitimate no matter the human cost.

Almost no one in their right mind would openly advocate a return to this status quo. However, it is also the most likely outcome because, relatively speaking, it is easy. Without more bold, forceful measures to create a new paradigm, we are guaranteed to go back to where we started.

Next thread, bad option number two. Please bear with me while I get this next one together. Being in the middle of a war is not ideal for writing, or living for that matter.

This post (with minor edits including a paragraph accidentitally dropped from the original) was originally published to Facebook and Bluesky on my personal accounts on 16 October 2023.

Justifications and False Narratives

In the past day or so, I have seen multiple academic accounts (on Facebook and Bluesky) magnifying the claim that Hamas’ Marches of Return along the Gaza border over the past few years were peaceful events and a strategy that they abandoned when the IDF started attacking protesters.

To call these events “peaceful” is a cynical misrepresentation of what actually occurred, peaceful only relative to Hamas’s butchery of the last week. On the assumption that people don’t know better, allow me to share stories from soldiers who were guarding the border during these protests.

These protests regularly involved stacks of burning tires, molotov cocktails and small arms fire, and gangs of hamas soldiers trying to pull down the walls and fences, with chains ties to their jeeps, trucks, etc.

These efforts were accompanied by shocking examples of human shields, including in at least one incidence bringing patients from the area hospitals in ambulances to stand in front of the rioters. Yet another horrific example includes children being pushed in front of the adults wearing false beards and holding toy guns.

Over the course of these riots, Hamas and PIJ operatives occasionally managed to breach the fence with weapons in hand, leading to extensive man hunts with fears that they were seeking to perpetrate precisely the violence they succeeded to commit in the past week.

As I have written multiple times here and elsewhere, this war is horrific, and crimes against humanity by Hamas are prompting new potential war crimes in the Israeli seemingly indiscriminate response. But let’s not pretend that Hamas ever embraced “peaceful resistance”.

This post (with minor grammatical edits) was originally published to Facebook and Bluesky on my personal accounts on 13 October 2023.

Anxieties aplenty

As an Israeli and a Jew, my heart has been breaking over and over again during the last week, waking up each morning to a new round of horrors; those already committed and those whose intent to commit are being announced.

I have had the privilege of waking every morning to seeing my wife and children, frazzled, depressed, and anxious, but alive. So many others have not. Our days have a zombie-ish normality; read the news, run to the safe room, email worried friends/family abroad, listen to the jets and booms overhead.

I do not know how much longer this war will last, and I do not know how many other states and terror entities will join in. I do know that thousands if not tens of thousands more people will die, adding to the tragic and horrific body count of this eminently avoidable war.

The value of human life in this war has rapidly descended into a numbers game and, I fear all too soon for most of the world, a distant headline about yet another ongoing war.

Many of my friends and colleagues have written their thoughts about how and why this war came about and detailing the terrible wrongs that have been committed and warning of those to come. This is critical, necessary, and precisely how platforms like this one should be used.

But I also see people slipping back into old patterns, claiming the intellectual high ground (we all saw this coming, no one should be surprised, etc), keeping score (how many Israelis versus Palestinians have been murdered), and justifying or excusing atrocities because of the other side’s actions.

Over the next few days, as our very troubled lives here allow, I am going to try to do something different. I am going to write about what the “day after” needs to look like in Gaza; what reality must look like on the ground to ensure another one does not simply start again next month or next year.

As a conflict scholar with expertise in this conflict in particular and as someone for whom the answers to these questions deeply affect me, my family, and my friends and neighbors, Israeli and Palestinian, I hope you will give them more than a passing glance or an upturned nose.

This post was originally published to Facebook and Bluesky on my personal accounts on 13 October 2023.