Is There Any Reason For Hope In the Middle East?

Photo by Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty Images

Despite a last-minute deal to once again extend a tenuous pause in fighting and the release of hostages, despair continues to blanket Israel, Gaza, and the broader world. 

The news out of the Middle East remains horrific, fraught, and in danger of getting worse. Hamas’s massacre, torture, and rape of Israelis — mostly civilians, many women, children, and the elderly — is still impossible to fathom. It was the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust and raised similar unanswerable questions about the capacity of our species to do evil. How can anyone murder the defenseless and innocent with such glee?

An Israeli response that targeted Gaza was always going to produce mass casualties, especially of civilians. Hamas’s survival strategy is to embed itself into the heart of Gaza — that means apartment buildings, schools, and hospitals. And in a population as young as Gaza’s, when civilians die, many of them will be children. The sheer level of death is heartbreaking to anyone with a heart. And it raises its own set of questions ricocheting from Israel to its allies in the West: Is this the best way to defend the Jewish state? 

The waves of sadness and danger from the war have spread around the globe. There have been spikes in antisemitic attacks and anti-Muslim violence. The tragic shooting of three young men of Palestinian descent in Vermont on Thanksgiving weekend appears to be another journey into the abyss the conflict has wrought. 

This war did not come out of nowhere. It is amplified by forces that stretch back years, decades, or even millennia, depending on your frame of reference. 

Without diminishing the scale of the tragedy or dishonoring the memory of those who have perished, are there any glimmers of hope amid the overwhelming darkness? 

Peace is almost always impossible to imagine during war. It seems foolhardy to dream of a resolution to a conflict endemic to a region that has long been a tinderbox. How can you say things could be even worse when they are already so bad?

But the truth is, it could be worse. Thus far the war hasn’t spread much. Egypt and Jordan, who have peace deals with Israel, are still trying to stabilize instead of escalate. Qatar has worked as an intermediary to negotiate hostage releases. 

There are increasingly urgent calls for a two-state solution, including from Arab countries. That would necessitate recognizing Israel’s right to exist. Meanwhile, the plight of Palestinians, particularly around Israeli settlement and imprisonment policies, is getting more global attention. All these efforts are required if we are ever to have peace. 

Much has been made of the rise of antisemitism in the United States, particularly on the political extremes — left and right. And it is worrisome. But for context, consider the resolution that recently passed the House with only one vote against it (from Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican). It is worth quoting the text in full:

Reaffirming the State of Israel’s right to exist.

Whereas the Jewish people are native to the Land of Israel;

Whereas throughout history and across the reign of multiple kingdoms, the Jewish people were persecuted and expelled from the Land of Israel, forced to live as minority diaspora communities in other lands;

Whereas Jewish diaspora communities were historically violently persecuted in, and in some cases expelled from, other countries throughout the Middle East, Europe, Africa, and Asia due to their religion;

Whereas the Nazis attempted to annihilate the entire Jewish population of Europe during the Holocaust, murdering 6,000,000 Jews during this time;

Whereas this genocide provided new urgency to re-establish a Jewish homeland for the Jewish people following the Holocaust, where they would not be a vulnerable minority, where they could freely practice their faith, and where something like the Holocaust could never happen again;

Whereas the modern State of Israel was established on May 14, 1948;

Whereas even after the establishment of the State of Israel, other countries and terrorist entities continued to attack Israel, reject its right to exist, and call for its destruction; and

Whereas Israel is the only Jewish State, and therefore, despite persistent external threats, the existence of Israel provides Jews a place to live free from persecution and discrimination: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the House of Representatives—

(1) reaffirms the State of Israel’s right to exist;

(2) recognizes that denying Israel’s right to exist is a form of antisemitism;

(3) rejects calls for Israel’s destruction and the elimination of the only Jewish State; and

(4) condemns the Hamas-led terrorist attack on Israel.

There need to be more statements like this, and for the rights of Palestinians, too. There needs to be pressure for peace. 

In a recent column, longtime New York Times journalist Tom Friedman, who has covered the region for decades and whose contextualization of the current crisis has become essential reading, wrote about “The Rescuers,” both Palestinians and Israelis whose common humanity points to a path very different from the divisiveness so ascendant today. It’s a wonderful read in full. Friedman explains: 

That’s the thing about this neighborhood: If you only look at one group or the other under a microscope, you want to cry — the brutal massacre of Jews, the harsh treatment of Palestinians by Jewish supremacist settlers. The list is endless. But if you look at their stories through a kaleidoscope, observing the complexity of their interactions, you can see hope. 

For those betting against peace, the odds are certainly in their favor. And it is definitely easier to stoke existing hate and cynicism than it is to build bridges of understanding. But it is also true that brutal conflict can lead to real friendship, as implausible as it may seem. 

It didn’t take long after the horrors of World War II for Japan and what was at the time West Germany to become two of the United States’s most stalwart allies. The French and the Germans fought incessantly for centuries, and yet they have joined in a European Union. Even in the Middle East, Israel has formed peace deals with countries that once sought its destruction. And it was the prospect of more ties between the Jewish state and the Arab world that encouraged terrorists like Hamas and actors like Iran to try to disrupt that momentum. 

The immediate future will likely see more war. There are real questions about whether any peace is possible if Hamas remains a potent force in control of Gaza, or if the Israeli attack continues to produce such high civilian deaths, or if settlements continue in the West Bank, or if the rival Palestinian group, Fatah, doesn’t clean up its corruption, and on and on. 

But there is also an emerging consensus that there needs to be a renewed movement for a two-state solution. It is stronger now than it has been in years. And despite the obstacles in the path to a real and sustained peace, such an outcome is not impossible. By any reasonable analysis, it is still only a flickering glimmer of hope, but it’s the best that we have.