Gaza: What Went Wrong And How To Fix It – OpEd

By Faisal J. Abbas

As we reflect on some of the tragic events of 2023 and how they could have been averted, one cannot help but remember a quote by the late British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. This is because he was spot on when he said: “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing — after they have tried everything else.”

The ongoing catastrophe in Gaza is a case in point. Rather than listening to the advice of its long-standing friends and partners in the region, the US administration opted to go with biased, bottomless support for Israel, which many politicians and observers are accusing of committing genocide. The conflict has now been raging for almost three months and more than 21,000 Palestinians have been killed, mostly civilians and particularly women and children. Meanwhile, the majority of Israeli hostages are unreleased and the Hamas leadership remains at large.

Needless to say, this whole conflict could have been avoided if Washington had just listened to the repeated Saudi advice. This was highlighted in the first Ministry of Foreign Affairs communique following Oct. 7. It stated that this explosion of violence was precisely what Riyadh predicted would happen as a result of the continued illegal occupation of Palestinian land and intimidation of the Palestinian people, especially by the current far-right Israeli government.

Also, had a two-state solution — an initiative led by the Kingdom since the Madrid Peace Conference of 1991 — been reached, then we might have averted the current crisis. Critics will say “but if anyone is to be blamed, it is the Palestinians,” adding the cliched — although somewhat true — statements of “they (Palestinians) never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity,” and “how can Israel negotiate with them if the Palestinians themselves are divided?”

Fair enough, but the Israelis are not innocent either. The constant building of illegal settlements and violations of international law every time negotiations were ongoing did not help. Not to mention the now open secret of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s survival policy of torpedoing any attempt to negotiate a Palestinian state by constantly undermining the legitimate Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and empowering Hamas, an entity it declares a terror group, in Gaza to further the internal Palestinian rifts and support the tainting of the just Palestinian cause with an extremist ideology.

So, where did the Americans go wrong? It started with the abominable early declaration that there were no red lines for Israel and the vetoing of a UN Security Council ceasefire resolution. Putting aside the horrific civilian death toll in Gaza, the massive humanitarian crisis and the severe devastation these positions have caused, the US administration has now contributed, if not absolutely guaranteed, that extremism and hatred will breed for generations to come. Not just in Gaza, but around the world.

After all, how do you expect a child who lost a parent, or both, a limb or his/her family to feel when they grow up? For all they know, they were out playing when the house they lived in was bombed indiscriminately.

Should Hamas not bear the responsibility for that, critics will ask, while adding that, if they (Hamas) did not do what they did on Oct. 7, this war might have not erupted. That could be an argument, but that child will certainly not engage in it. After all, the child did not see Hamas killing his or her parents. The child saw an Israeli plane dropping a bomb on his/her home, on a hospital and the local school. And then he/she would be told that, had Israel not been occupying Palestinian lands, Hamas would not have existed.

Then you have what my colleague Mina Al-Oraibi recently described, in an Arabic Asharq Al-Awsat column, as “the freefall of Western ideals.” This could not be any more obvious than when US Secretary of State Antony Blinken criticized Israel for not doing more to avoid targeting civilians, while in the month that followed the State Department itself bypassed Congress twice to ensure more weapons sales to Israel.

Then, when the Houthis (whose slogan has always been “Death to America … curse the Jews”) started attacking ships in the Red Sea as retaliation for what is going in Gaza, all of a sudden the US woke up to that threat. Even though the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen had been warning of it for eight years. Most recently, Yemeni Foreign Minister Ahmad Awad bin Mubarak told Asharq Al-Awsat’s Badr Al-Qahtani that “we have repeatedly warned of the danger of allowing an armed ideological group to undermine security and stability and threaten international navigation.”

It is ironic that the same legislators who removed the Houthis from terror lists and banned the sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia and criticized it for a war waged at the request of the legitimate, UN-backed government of Yemen are now wanting the Kingdom to join its Red Sea coalition. Alas, that ship has sailed. The hopes in the Kingdom are now focused on the ongoing truce in Yemen and the hope that it might turn into a permanent peace deal in the near future.

So, what next? Obviously, one wishes the advice was taken seriously at an earlier stage. Particularly because, as early as last September, there were serious talks of a Saudi-Israeli normalization deal that would have guaranteed the rights of Palestinians to their state. The longer the war continues and the higher the death count rises, the harder it becomes to achieve regional peace (let us not forget that Saudi Arabia also brings its Muslim and Arab League clout). This is because, naturally, the Palestinian demands will change and the cost to Israel is going to increase.

The immediate advice is for the Biden administration to listen to Thomas Friedman, who says America should give Israel some tough love. The White House should realize that the only person benefiting from the prolonging of the war is Netanyahu. This is a politician who I believe belongs behind bars, whether he is found guilty of corruption or held accountable for the undisputed crimes against humanity committed in Gaza.

A ceasefire must be agreed, hostages must be freed and an international aid effort to rebuild and treat the wounded in Gaza must be mobilized immediately. After that, there might still be hope for talks to continue. The Palestinians must also play ball and form a unified government under the legitimate authority in the West Bank.

Let us be hopeful that 2024 can see the end of hostilities and the birth — or at least the embryonic stages — of a Palestinian state.

• Faisal J. Abbas is the editor-in-chief of Arab News. X: @FaisalJAbbas