An Israeli-Palestinian settlement is possible – but not unless the international community wants it

TAccording to the latest World Bank report on Gaza, its economy is in "free fall"; border disputes are heating up again and seven Palestinians – including two children – were killed by Israeli forces on a particularly violent day in late September. There is even talk of the possibility of another major military confrontation between Israel and Hamas.

During his distinguished career with L & # 39; Independent Donald Macintyre has been a journal correspondent in Jerusalem for eight years. In the following excerpt from his book on Gaza, published next week, Donald traces the factors – including international negligence – that have pushed the impoverished and besieged Gaza Strip to the present.

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On a cold, gray Sunday afternoon in January 2003, we were in front of the Mahmoud al-Bahtiti engine repair shop, which was up until the night before in the Zeitoun neighborhood in the south of the city. from Gaza. The night before, Israeli tanks, backed by Apache attack helicopters, had climbed along the main north-south road of Saladin, dragging three buses – still motionless and skewed – setting fire to market stalls. destroying three houses identified by Israel. intelligence as belonging to the families of Palestinians who had launched attacks across the border.

Eleven of the 12 Palestinians killed that night were militants who had rushed to the streets to fire on their AK-47s on heavily armored Israeli troops. The incursion, which followed the firing of 10 home-made Qassam rockets into Israel, without causing any injuries, ended before dawn. Al-Bahtiti, 50, shook his head at the steaming ruins of his metal workshop, one of more than a dozen destroyed overnight. He shrugged and a brief smile appeared on his face. "Abu Ammar has declared that Gaza is the new Singapore," he said.

The sardonic joke – and characteristic of Gaza – hinted at Yasser Arafat's monumental prediction, nine years ago, of a rebirth of Gaza, and summarized how the expectations aroused by the triumphant return of the PLO leader in 1994 had disappeared. -The Bahtiti workshop. That day, in January 2003, the Israeli army announced that it had destroyed 100 towers used or that could be used in the future to make rockets. Al-Bahtiti insisted that he had never made a single rocket; its premises had only been used to repair the engines of the cars. Whatever the case may be, Gaza was not transforming itself into Singapore any time soon. What the Bathiti could not have imagined was the much worse economic and military destruction inflicted on Gaza over the next fifteen years.

They are just doing it for revenge. Destroy the economy of course. They use building rockets as an excuse to destroy the economy

Al-Bahtiti was the first Palestinian I ever met in Gaza. Almost 14 years later, I returned to Zeitoun to find him. It was surprising to discover that this stiff figure, looking younger than his 66 years with a well-trimmed beard, a blue open-neck shirt and the same sense of dry humor, was still in the Al Basateen street and continued to repair the engines of cars and trucks. as he had done for half a century.

But, he said, business has never been so slow. He had stopped complaining about the Hamas government because of the lack of electricity. Due to the shortage of work interruptions did not matter. "They can cut it as much as they want," he said. "Gaza is like paradise. There is no work in paradise either.

Al-Bahtiti had learned his trade when he left school at age 15, two years before the Six Day War, and started alone five years later. It was the years of opening the borders when it was almost as easy for Palestinians to get out of the Strip as for Israelis to buy fresh fish – or have their engine's cylinders repaired , their camshafts and their turbochargers more cheaply than in Israel, and just as reliable. In the words of Al-Bahtiti: "I do not praise Israel, I just say it was a fair life at the time."

Business has gone well during the Arafat years after Oslo, he said, but it has gradually deteriorated. In this case, he had been unusually unlucky; his workshop had been destroyed or badly damaged not only in 2003, but in each of the three wars since. In 2012, he had settled in Tel el Hawa, where his premises had been damaged during a strike in a nearby office of the Ministry of the Interior. "They never forget me," he says ironically. Did the Israelis think that he was still making rockets? "No, they're just doing it for revenge. Destroy the economy of course. They use rocket construction as an excuse to destroy the economy. "

Al-Bahtiti had always been with him at Arafat since that cold January afternoon. But after the three wars and the nine years of economic siege that followed Hamas's capture of Gaza, he thought he might have judged too harshly the Palestinian Authority created by Arafat. . After the elections, he said: "Hamas has not only been rejected, but also hated by most governments around the world. Subsequently, the Palestinian people in Gaza were treated in the same way as Hamas. We are all prisoners in Gaza, not only because of Israel, but also of Egypt and Jordan. Al-Bahtiti took up the lyrics of a teen song of the greatest Egyptian singer of the twentieth century, Umm Kulthum: "Give me back my freedom and let go of my hands."

Then he asked me a question. Given that Britain had issued the Balfour Declaration a century ago and that "we are still suffering from this declaration", would the British government's apology not be accepted? No, he was not trying to recover what was now Israel for the Arabs. He acknowledged that "the Jewish people took their rights after Hitler committed massacres against him. But who will give us our rights? Germany has always supported Israel so far, but Britain has surrendered its land to Israelis and they have never cared to give us our rights. "

Agreeing with him or not, al-Bahtiti touched a raw nerve. It was not wrong to trace the Palestinian experience to events in the history of the twentieth century, which culminated in the genocide of European Jews in the Holocaust. Al Bahtiti was also not wrong in internationalizing the problem by hinting that other countries, as well as Israel, had the responsibility to solve it, particularly the British who occupied the Palestine, before abandoning it to an unsolved conflict 70 years later. It is not a responsibility that these countries have exercised with distinction over the last decade.

In a thoughtful speech in Monterey, less than a year before the US-UK invasion of Iraq, Paul Wolfowitz, then Deputy Secretary General of Defense, said: "To win the war on terror and contribute thus to shape a more peaceful world, must speak to the hundreds of millions of moderate and tolerant people of the Muslim world, whatever their place of residence, aspiring to enjoy the benefits of freedom, democracy and free enterprise. These are sometimes described as "Western values" but, in reality, they are universal.

To win the war against terrorism and thus help shape a more peaceful world, we must speak to the hundreds of millions of moderate and tolerant people in the Muslim world, regardless of where they live, who aspire to enjoy the blessings of freedom and freedom. democracy and free enterprise. These are sometimes called "Western values", but are in fact universal.

It is striking that "the blessings" identified in this irreproachable doctrine were precisely those denied to Palestinians in Gaza. The international boycott imposed after the 2006 election results was hardly a blatant endorsement of democracy. The prolonged blockade, which apparently targeted Hamas for refusing to comply with the conditions imposed by Israel and the Quartet, has affected the civilian population much more than Hamas itself. Despite protests going in the opposite direction, it made it all the more difficult for Israel to escape the accusation that it was collectively punishing Palestinians in Gaza for their electoral choice, whatever their motives might be. and their lack of opportunities to go back.

In Gaza, it was a classic case, according to Sara Roy's memorable description, of sanctions applied to the occupied rather than the occupier. But it also recalled that for 50 years the Palestinians had had no influence over the choice of the government that ultimately controlled their lives, whether by creating their own state or giving the right to vote to a single state. binational.

The freedom of movement of the inhabitants of Gaza, as well as that of importing and exporting goods, had been restricted long before Hamas' electoral victory. But since the Six Day War, it has been much smaller in the last decade. When the British carried out their fierce bombardment of the Ottoman-controlled city of Gaza in 1917, those who fled were at least able to travel to other parts of Palestine. This possibility was not open to the vast majority of Palestinian civilians facing the three military assaults of 2008-2009, 2012 and 2014, which partly explains why, according to the Israeli human rights agency B & # In Tselem, 2,237 Palestinians killed in the three wars were non-combatants.

But it is the crushing of "free enterprise" that may have been the most striking consequence of the economic blockade of Gaza that the Quartet approach has legitimized. The creation of a buffer zone of 300 meters (at least) and the imposition of a limit of three or six miles in Gaza waters have had a devastating effect on the areas of the Gaza Strip. agriculture and fishing. It's hard to see how the collapse, the waking or – in times of war – the sheer destruction of hundreds of manufacturing companies, mostly owned by people without love for Hamas and having close relations with Israeli customers and suppliers, helped Israeli security. Not to mention the drift of the unemployed to work in Hamas, including its armed and paramilitary wings, as well as those hired to dig tunnels considered a threat to the security of Israel. What was eliminated in an instinctively entrepreneurial society was an economy whose living memory provided not only income, but also a measure of human dignity.

This point is underlined when older Palestinians speak, as did al-Bahtiti, of the "golden period" preceding Oslo for the companies and workers of Gaza. At first glance, Gaza had very little gold for Gaza between 1967 and 1993. It was a time often characterized by raids, arrests, bulldozing houses and citrus, deadly fighting, the seizure of land and water for Israeli settlements, the army sweeps refugee camps from house to house and all the other pressures that accompanied the constant physical presence in the streets of a military occupation . But the nostalgia of Al-Bahtiti for Israel's direct rule in Gaza illustrates how conditions, especially economic conditions, have deteriorated since then.

Israel imposed severe limits on Gaza's economy during the first two decades of the occupation, making it entirely dependent on theirs. But then Defense Minister Moshe Dayan's strategy, after 1967, partly to calm Palestinian nationalist sentiment, was to allow tens of thousands of Gazans to work in Israel and businesses to trade with him. From the beginning of the 1990s, this relative openness was gradually replaced by a policy of separation, which resulted in a 21st century blockade, which left Gaza practically without economy. Finally, the de-development was completed by three military assaults on the Gaza Strip in six years, which failed to dislodge Hamas but had a devastating impact on the civilian population. Without a major overhaul of Israeli and international politics, the attacks could very well be repeated.

It was too easy to blame Israel alone – as al-Bahtiti acknowledged. If Gaza was an open prison, Israel was not the only jailer. Palestinians in Gaza have also been abandoned by Egypt – in particular by President Sisi's prolonged closures on Rafah and the destruction of smuggling tunnels – and by Jordan, due to the strict transit restrictions imposed on residents of Gaza. Gaza (but not to those in the West Bank). They had been betrayed by the chronic failure of Fatah and Hamas in resolving their differences, subordinating the public interest of Gaza to theirs in a conflict that was particularly discouraging because the power they were fighting for was so circumscribed by Israel. . And, perhaps less discussed at all, they have been abandoned by the international community and Western governments in particular.

The "Quartet" for the Middle East, which in practice meant the United States and the European Union, could say that he had frequently called for the lifting of the blockade. So there was and after the episode of Mavi Marmara in 2010, during which Israeli commandos killed nine people aboard the Turkish humanitarian ship bound for Gaza, he persuaded the Netanyahu government to allow a much wider range of consumer goods. But this did nothing to revive Gaza's industry, as exports were still banned. There was also no lifting of restrictions that denied Gaza residents access to the outside world. In fact, there was no sign that the EU or the United States were applying a powerful leverage to Israel to end the isolation of the Gaza Strip.

In practice, Gaza seemed to share with North Korea – before the unstable court of Donald Trump – the status of a territory where the civilian population was suffering but where nothing could be obtained, if it did not happen. is to provide the humane minimum, as long as a pariah government was in place. in charge.

Yet this pariah status was attributed to the boycott of Hamas by Israel and its Western allies after the victory in the 2006 free elections. The international denial of contacts and funding then persisted for more than a decade, despite of a growing awareness, at least among some of the Europeans who had initially decided, that it was a mistake.

The question posed to the international community after 10 years during which the majority of the civilian population of Gaza lived in fear, poverty and despair while the political and military control of its leaders remained intact, was not both "why speak with Hamas" and "why not"? Perhaps the previous swing of Hamas between violent insurgency and exercise of political power makes it difficult to accurately assess the outcome of this engagement. But if the Quartet had set more realistic conditions – for example a long-term truce with Israel – would not have prevented the imposition of sanctions if Hamas had violated them; Indeed, it would have given Western governments influence over Hamas's conduct, which was sorely lacking. What were the benefits of this policy for Israeli, Palestinian, regional and global security? And why was it not redesigned in the light of the first official and public endorsement of a Palestinian state by Hamas at the 1967 borders in May 2017?

But, of course, the fate of Gaza can not be separated from that of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a whole. First, there can be no lasting end to this conflict, let alone the creation of a Palestinian state without Gaza. Gaza, with its 2 million Palestinians and its economically important coastline, must be part of it.

It should also be noted that Hamas, which now manages Gaza, did not come from nowhere. In 1995, Haidar Abdel Shafi, the most revered of all Gazans, fearing that the Oslo accords would be torn apart, remarked that Hamas would not dare to disrupt a "credible peace process". Abdel Shafi pointed out that the strength of Hamas – beyond the base of its minority support – has increased because of the failures of serial peace negotiations with the PLO. It would be unwise to assume that Israel and the West can now indefinitely postpone a "credible" peace process without, in turn, reinforcing the most extreme forces – whether they turn to Isis or not – that Hamas has so far contained in Gaza.

Americans were seen as supporters of Israel's support … [and the] Moderate Arabs who want to be with us … can not publicly show support for people who do not respect Arab Palestinians

One of the most prevalent – and unfounded – myths about conflict is that a peace process can only work if both parties want it and no outside force can bring it together if they do not. The opposite is the truth. The end of the conflict will simply not happen unless the outside world demands it, but exerts an irresistible pressure on the parties. In practice, this means the strongest party and the one who thinks they have the greatest interest in maintaining the status quo, namely Israel. , come to an agreement. There is little reason to be optimistic about President Trump's willingness to "go with the century" to continue on this path. His move from the US embassy to Jerusalem and his remarkable bragging that he took the city – a central issue in the previous negotiations – "off the table"; his cuts in funding to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, which suggests that he may also hope that the refugee issue will be removed from the debate "; and his reliance on an extremely pro-Israel right-wing Christian constituency does not allow him to believe that he is preparing an agreement that would even meet the Palestinians' minimum requirements.

After the liberation of Kuwait from Iraq by the US-led coalition in 1991, George Bush dragged a deeply resisting Yitzhak Shamir to the Madrid summit by suspending multi-billion dollar loan guarantees in the United States. Israel. The process that followed finally failed; but it was now an all too rare indication of the traction left to a given American administration. "The United States could stop [the settlements] so easily, "said Israeli liberal novelist AB Yehoshua in Haifa in 2005." Since the Six Day War, they said they were against settlements, and they did nothing.

The US interest in subsidizing Israel to the tune of more than $ 3 billion a year without harsh conditions is questionable, to put it mildly. Nobody thinks that the current terrorist threats that the West is facing – like that of Isis – were generated by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But in 2013, a former US general remarked that he "paid daily the price of the army" when he was responsible for the US central command "because Americans were perceived as a bias to support Israel "and that" moderate Arabs who want with us … can not publicly show their support for those who do not respect Arab Palestinians. "It was James Mattis, appointed Secretary of Defense by Trump in 2017

This is not the place to point out the historical reasons for this "bias", including the influence exerted by the funding of US political campaigns by the US Public Affairs Commission. But AIPAC has always been more representative of successive Israeli governments than American Jews. Indeed, a longer-term perspective of change suggests both a gradual disappearance of bipartisan support for "true or false Israel" among American Democrats, which most American Jews argue, and an attitude of much more critical of Israelis today. government policy in some young American Jews.

But Mahmoud al-Bahtiti was also right to focus on the Europeans. For the EU has firmly continued to channel its aid – at least 6 billion euros since 1994 – to the Palestinian authorities to mitigate the impact, at least in the West Bank, of a policy with which she says she does not agree but for which she has made no attempt. to exert a real influence. The EU has effectively subsidized the occupation by, for example, ensuring compliance with the Palestinian Authority's obligations in health care and education. However, imperfectly, she had the duty and the right to exert some influence in the conflict, beyond the pious declarations of her content. belief in a two-state solution.

$ 30 billion

One of the major obstacles, if not the main obstacle, to the development of an international plan for the rehabilitation of Gaza's infrastructure was the insistence of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on the fact that this should not happen before Hamas first accepts its terms of reconciliation of the two factions (Hamas and Fatah). including putting his armed security services under his control. On the political front, Abbas, who has also assaulted the Gaza economy with draconian sanctions, could have a trial; but, as usual, the main victims are not Hamas but the 2 million people in Gaza. The EU has the capacity to put pressure on Abbas to take another approach, but not the will; as far as Hamas is concerned, he does not even have the capacity, thanks to his 11-year boycott of the Islamic faction.

But the EU is also leveraging Israel. It is Israel's largest trading partner, accounting for about one third of its foreign trade, valued at about $ 30 billion, and governed by free trade agreements exempting Israeli exports to Europe's rights. customs. Yet, without even rebuilding such barriers, without even boycotting Israel, the EU could have a significant impact by differentiating – in a robust manner – Israel proper and Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, considered by the United States. 39; EU as illegal in international law, including by the ban on importing goods from settlements and secondarily from banks and other persons doing business with Israeli companies operating in the occupied territories.

Britain, whether still considered European or not, has a special historical responsibility, both because of the 101-year-old Balfour Declaration and its abandonment of Palestine by the warring parties in 1948. More a century after Balfour, Britain has amply fulfilled its first commitment to "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people", but failed utterly at the height of second – by ensuring that "nothing is done that could undermine the civil and religious rights of existing non-citizens". Jewish communities in Palestine ".

To hold – finally – the broken promise of the Balfour Declaration would be much more difficult if the conflict did not end the conflicts without serving the interests of Israel like those of the Palestinians. The most extreme champions of Israeli and Palestinian causes like to assert that it is a zero-sum game, in which any gain for the Palestinians is a loss for Israel and vice versa. But this is not the case. Since 2002, the League of Arab States offers Israel its full recognition, with all the related benefits, including economic, that this would imply, in exchange for a peace agreement with the Palestinians based on the end of the year. occupation started 50 years ago. Israel, for the first time since 1967, would have internationally recognized borders. The major Sunni Arab countries were eager for such an agreement because they thought that with Israel, armed with nuclear weapons, an ally, they could together form what they see as a necessary counterweight to the Iranian power in the region.

It is true that Netanyahu now believes, for whatever reason, to have already obtained an informal strategic regional alliance without reaching a fair deal with the Palestinians. For the Saudi government and its allies, thwarting Iran is a greater priority than a just peace for the Palestinians. Nevertheless, it is unlikely that they will try to force the Palestinians to accept a "deal of the century" that they do not want. And even if they did, it would not stifle the flame of Palestinian nationalism and the quest for independence and freedom.

And this quest itself remains a positive outcome – contrary to what the Netanyahu government believes – an interest both Israeli and Palestinian. A resolution would put an end to the morally corrosive effects of the occupation on Israeli society, including on the young soldiers forced to enforce it, and by solving the gross injustice of denying the civil and political rights of the Israeli occupation. Palestinians. This would solve the growing hostility towards Israel caused by the occupation abroad. And the dilemma highlighted by Ehud Barak's successive leaders at Ehud Olmert is inevitable: either he grants Palestinian independence on terms that a Palestinian leader can live – literally as well as politically -; or it presents itself as an apartheid state, faced with growing Palestinian demands for equal human rights and political rights in a single state, which would mean the end of the rule. Israel today.

As long as it prefers to "manage" the status quo, ie the subjugation of the Palestinians, it is hard to resist the conclusion that in the long run the greatest existential threat to Israel is not Iran or Isis, let alone Hamas, but Israel itself.

If a peace agreement is not reached after 50 years, we can no longer simply tell the Palestinians to wait for the relief until a mythical future in which it unfolds. Et cela signifie qu’il faut exercer une véritable pression sur Israël pour leur accorder certains des droits – des droits économiques au départ, bien que cela ne suffira jamais, sans droits politiques – qui leur ont été refusées depuis si longtemps. Cela s'applique à tous les Palestiniens, mais Gaza, confrontée aux conditions les plus dures, est le bon endroit pour commencer. que Israël ou l'Autorité palestinienne soient d'accord ou non. Il ne fait aucun doute que l’aide doit être répartie plus équitablement entre Gaza et la Cisjordanie, et il est difficile de voir comment elle peut être réellement efficace en l’absence d’engagement international avec le Hamas. Mais à long terme, ce que Gaza a toujours voulu et dont il a besoin, ce n’est pas une aide, mais une économie; la récupération de sa capacité à fabriquer, cultiver et commercialiser.

Un nouveau port maritime pour Gaza, qui pourrait attirer d'importants investissements du secteur privé, n'en est qu'un exemple. Cela permettrait non seulement au moins de restaurer le territoire en tant que plaque tournante du commerce et de créer des centaines, sinon des milliers d’emplois pendant sa construction, mais, selon les termes de l’un des sécurocrates israéliens les plus durs, Le Hamas aurait tout intérêt à ne pas ouvrir le feu sur Israël, ce qui risquerait de compromettre ce projet international ». Le port de mer est un bon exemple car une des raisons pour laquelle il a été rejeté jusqu’à présent – malgré un certain soutien, même au sein du Cabinet israélien -, c’est qu’il était l’une des revendications du Hamas à la fin de la guerre de 2014. Une politique internationale repensée à l'égard de Gaza doit renoncer, dans l'intérêt de son peuple, à la notion enfantine selon laquelle il ne faut rien faire pour lequel le Hamas pourrait légitimement prétendre à quelque crédit.

2500

L'alternative à une telle révision pourrait bien être une autre guerre ou des guerres. Trop souvent, les discussions à Gaza et en Israël se sont tournées vers la perspective d'un conflit armé et pas uniquement pour gagner un avantage militaire. Les deux guerres les plus calamiteuses avaient toutes deux été liées au siège; les tirs de roquettes cités par Israël comme la raison de son assaut de 2008 auraient pu être évités si le siège avait été levé. Et en 2014, le Hamas, coincé dans l'échec de son accord avec le Fatah, son isolement politique après la chute de Morsi en Égypte, l'arrestation de ses militants en Cisjordanie après l'assassinat de trois adolescents israéliens, l'assassinat de sept de ses Les militants de Gaza, et surtout les terribles conditions régnant dans la bande de Gaza, ont opté pour une guerre qui, comme le dit l'expert Nathan Thrall, "a eu une chance, si mince soit-elle, de relâcher les pressions". Dans la plupart des cas, les conditions économiques et humanitaires à Gaza sont maintenant bien pires que celles qui ont été à la base de la guerre de 2014.

Le siège était donc le facteur déterminant lors de l'irruption de Gaza le 30 mars 2018, bien que de manière totalement inattendue: les premières manifestations de masse non armées dans la bande de Gaza depuis la première Intifada. Des dizaines de milliers de Gazaouis – souvent des familles entières – se sont rassemblés près de la frontière, tandis que des centaines d'autres, principalement des hommes jeunes, lançant des pierres, des cocktails Molotov et des cerfs-volants enflammés, ont avancé sur la barrière de la frontière, sous le tir de tireur israélien de l'autre côté. Au moins 120 Palestiniens ont été tués, dont 62 le jour du point culminant des manifestations hebdomadaires, le 14 mai, alors que Jared Kushner et Ivanka Trump inauguraient la nouvelle ambassade des États-Unis à Jérusalem, transférée de Tel Aviv au mépris d'un consensus international de longue date. et le rêve des Palestiniens d'une capitale partagée dans cette ville binationale.

Du côté de la bande de Gaza, vous pouviez voir les panaches blancs de gaz lacrymogène contre l'épaisse fumée noire de pneus en feu, et entendre au-dessus des sirènes hurlantes des ambulances, leurs feux rouges clignotants, les fissures des coups de feu sporadiques. Mais à 50 km de la cérémonie de Jérusalem, Netanyahu, exultant, apparemment inconscient du nombre croissant de morts, le plus élevé en un seul jour depuis la guerre de 2014, ou de plus de 2 500 blessés parmi les Palestiniens (et un soldat israélien), a célébré l'ambassade passer à «un grand jour pour la paix».

Bien que cela ne soit pas à l’origine des manifestations – c’était l’idée de certains étudiants palestiniens diplômés locaux – le Hamas les organisa ensuite; du maintien de l'ordre et de la fourniture d'hôpitaux de campagne aux démagogues exhortant les jeunes hommes à se diriger vers la clôture depuis les tentes accrochées à la frontière. Certaines des personnes tuées et blessées étaient ses propres activistes. Mais beaucoup d’autres ne l’étaient pas, et il est inconcevable que la manifestation – également appuyée par le Fatah dans une rare manifestation d’unité – aurait attiré un tel nombre de personnes si ce n’était pour la misère de Gaza. Cela s'appelait «la grande marche du retour», affirmation du «droit de retour» de plus de 700 000 réfugiés déplacés par la guerre de 1948 qui a créé l'État juif, dans leurs maisons ancestrales dans l'actuel Israël. Ce thème était aussi alarmant pour les Israéliens qu’il s’unifiait à Gaza, où plus de la moitié de la population était constituée de réfugiés.

Mais cela reflétait parfaitement l’insistance sans faille d’Israël pour Israël comme une capitale «indivis et éternelle». It reflected the failure over three decades to reach the two-state deal for which most Palestinians had long hoped and which would have included an honourable compromise on Jerusalem and refugees. If Jerusalem was “off the table”, the Palestinians might argue, so too would be a compromise on refugees. In repeated interviews the jobless young men – “hopeless people with nothing to lose” as the Fatah-supporting Gaza writer Atef Abu Saif put it – routinely echoed the “return” mantra. But it became swiftly clear that what they wanted most was “to make our dreams come true, find a job and have the crossings open”, in the words of Mahmoud Mansour, 23, his elbow bandaged from an injury during a previous protest.

What was much more doubtful was whether the international outcry over the shootings, echoing that during the 2014 war would help to ensure that dream would indeed come true. It was hard to think of a better way of preventing, at least in the medium term, a further escalation. For another war cannot be ruled out. The deaths in the spring of this year triggered criticism from a minority of Israelis appalled that live fire, rather than less lethal crowd control methods, had been used against the protesters. But the relative ease with which many, perhaps most, Israelis accepted the deaths as inevitable matched the majority – 90 per cent in one poll – support for 2014’s Operation Protective Edge.

True, mainstream Israeli media coverage, with the notable exception of Haaretz, one of the world’s best newspapers, was highly supportive in the 2014 war. The revelation of the Hamas tunnels constructed under the border no doubt helped to sustain the war fever. But was the closure of Gaza itself a factor? Apart from soldiers in combat, most Israelis knew little of Gaza from the inside. Even those kind Israelis (and there were quite a few) who volunteered to drive to Erez to ferry sick Palestinians to hospitals in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv inevitably had little idea what lay on the inside.

In her fine book about living in the Strip in the 1990s, the Israeli journalist Amira Hass wrote “the Israeli point of view is best summed up by the local variant of ‘go to hell’ which is quite simply ‘go to Gaza’”. Yet even since then there had been an 11-year ban, ostensibly on security grounds, by the Israeli government on Israeli journalists reporting from inside the Strip, as many – Hass and her Haaretz colleague Gideon Levy among them – used to do with distinction. It made Gaza seem even more unfathomable and dangerous to its neighbour than it once had. It was tempting to wonder if the story of Samson, his deception and capture in Gaza at the hands of the Philistines and his final destructive act, had re-emerged from the depths of Israel’s collective subconscious; a biblical allegory to be played out again and again.

Certainly the right-wing Israeli commentators who blithely describe wars in Gaza as “mowing the grass” depict them as a routine event, necessarily repeated every few years. When in Milton’s Samson Agonistes the messenger arrives with the news that Samson – in perhaps the world’s first recorded suicide attack – has killed the elite of Philistine society by pulling down the temple of Dagon, the chorus glorifies him for dying “conjoined… with thy slaughter’d foes in number more/Than all thy life had slain before”. Such an epitaph may be bleakly accurate for IDF soldiers sent into Gaza and unlucky enough not to come out alive. But is it really one that Israel intended to keep writing for its young conscripts by regularly sending them to “mow the grass”?

War in Gaza is avoidable. There have been several public warnings from within the Israeli military that deteriorating humanitarian conditions in Gaza could “blow up” at any time, and those arguments were made even more forcefully to Israel’s political leadership in private. And the obverse was that radical improvement in those conditions was the best means of preventing such an explosion.

Gaza may not yet become Singapore, or want to. But it still has the talent, education, resources and geography to recover over time. If the international community, with or without the US, were to use the capacity it undoubtedly has to influence events, it could start by reaching for the one outcome for Gaza that hasn’t been attempted: lifting the siege and restoring a measure of enterprise, liberty and respect for democracy to its beleaguered and imprisoned people. As Umm Kultham sang, “Give me again my freedom and let go my hands”.

This essay was adapted from ‘Gaza: Preparing for Dawn’ (paperback published by Oneworld on 7 October 2018).