The Hamas attack against Israel on October 7, 2023, resulting in the capture and killing of approximately 1,400 innocent civilians: children, women and men, is rightly, and unequivocally, condemnable in the strongest terms by all rational minds. It violates international law, violates the laws of war, violates morality and it violates the basic consanguinity of the human family.
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Asserting its right to self-defence, Israel has responded too. It has relentlessly bombed Gaza, indiscriminately, killing approximately 4000 innocent civilians: children, women and men. The Israeli response is equally, rightly, condemnable in the strongest terms by all rational minds given its disproportionality. Israel’s disproportionate response, not the country’s right to self-defence, violates international law, violates the laws of war, violates morality and it violates the basic consanguinity of the humanity.

This article examines the key issues and options for a lasting resolution, that’s underpinned by genuine leadership; consistently demonstrable integrity, devoid of moral turpitude; equal rights; justice and a meaningful commitment to peaceful co-existence by both sides; and, crucially, their influential proxies.

Discourse: The eminent American jurist, Justice Benjamin Nathan Cardozo (1870-1938), presciently remarked in his Selected Writings, that “the thirst for vengeance is a very real, even if it be a hideous thing and states may not ignore it until humanity has been raised to greater heights than any that have yet been scaled in all the long ages of struggle and ascent.”

Ironically, Cardozo’s sentiments, the base appetite for revenge; oftentimes with catastrophic tit-for-tat wars; most unfortunately, in the 21st Century – when humanity is supposed to have evolved, advanced in intellectual sophistication, embedded enduring diplomacy, notwithstanding intermittent geostrategic collisions amongst superpowers and nations – still underpins the Israeli vs Palestinian crisis.

That is because the root cause of the crisis has not been addressed. What then is the root cause? This a complex question because there is no singular root cause. Plus, the responses to the root cause/s are vigorously contested causes by the opposing sides and objective neutral third-parties.

On the Israeli side, the contention is that: United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 of 1947 provided for the partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states; de facto and de jure, the state of Israel is a reality and has been since its founding 75 years ago on May 14, 1948; Hamas, the Palestinian paramilitary political organisation which controls Gaza, is a terrorist-organisation; Israel and its Western allies, argue that Hamas is committed to the complete annihilation of the state of Israel.
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Asserting its inviolable right to self-defence, the right to live in peace and security, Israel routinely strikes Hamas and those the country judges to be terrorists within and outside its territories; operating independently or in concert with proxies. Equally, America and Western allies routinely provide deep, extensive, intelligence, military and technical assistance, and more, to Israel as the country is a major geostrategic ally in the Middle East.

On the Palestinian side, the philosophical contention is that you cannot create something out of nothing. That is, the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, pursuant to the earlier British Government’s stance, enunciated in the Balfour declaration of November 2, 1917; when Palestine was under the jurisdiction of the Ottoman Empire during WW1 (1914-1918); viz “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities”; was a monumental fraud, because it took no account of the political and democratic rights of the autochthonous Palestinian people. Those were the people referred to in the Balfour declaration as the “existing non-Jewish communities.”

Likewise, majority of the Arab world, and swathes of the Global South, argue that Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory entails unlawful land annexations, development of permanent Jewish settlements (which have the effect of permanently altering the demographic configuration of Palestinian territories); sub-human apartheid policies against Palestinians and extra judicial killings of the latter. The contention is that resistance against illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories is necessary, right and lawful, under international law.

According to the United Nations Special Rapporteur’s, Michael Lynk’s, report of March 2022, which evaluated then 55-year Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory; with input from Israeli, Palestinian and international human rights organisations: “there is today in Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967, a deeply discriminatory dual legal and political system, that privileges the 700,000 Israeli Jewish settlers living in the 300 illegal Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.”

The inevitable consequence of these ferocious claims and counterclaims is, of course, conflict which has manifested in several wars between Israel versus Arab countries since 1948. Notably, the: 1947/1949 War of Independence; 1956, Sinai War with proactive UK and French military support for Israeli forces, against Egypt in the Suez crisis; 1967, 6-Day War against Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq; 1967-70 War of Attrition against Egypt, USSR, Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO); 1973, Yom Kippur War, Israel vs Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan; Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and Syria; 1978, Operation Litani, Israel vs PLO; 1982-1985, Lebanon War (1), Israel vs PLO, Syria; 2006, Lebanon War (2), Israel vs Iranian-backed Hezbollah; 1987-1993, Intifada (1) Israel vs Hamas; Intifada (2), 2005-2005, Israel vs Hamas; 2014, Operation Protective Edge War, Israel vs Hamas; 2021 Crisis; and it continues with the current 2023 Operation Iron Shields War between Israeli vs Hamas.
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These infernal dynamics with fatalistic consequences, for innocent children, men and women, on all sides, and further afield, raise striking strategic and pragmatic posers. How sustainable are these seemingly unending wars and shaky peace protocols, between Israel and its Arab neighbours? Does Israel’s acclaimed military superiority necessarily guarantee the country’s safety every time ad infinitum?

Can there be enduring peace in Israel and Palestine especially, and around the world, generally, without a genuine commitment to, and enforcement of, the rule of law? Will Hamas, Hizbollah, Iran, Syria and Israel’s regional enemies seize opportunities for peace, if offered by an honest broker, under a viable two-state solution once, devoid of dilatory tactics by interested third parties once and for all?

Furthermore, has America, Israel’s chief backer, and have Western allies, always acted conscientiously and equitably relative to its/their publicly stated aspirations for lasting peace and justice between both nations? Or, has America consistently pursued a programme of strategic duplicity on this intractable issue? That is, ostensibly advancing a theoretical commitment to lasting peace between both countries, when in fact, the United States is only practically committed to cementing Israeli’s hegemonic position as a regional Middle Eastern economic and military super power, in furtherance of American geostrategic interests? Huge questions!

The answers are not clear cut either and cannot all be addressed in this treatise! Notwithstanding, there are certain important fundamentals. First, Israel’s vastly superior military capability, in no way guarantees its eternal immutability from determined enemies. The evidence is the current Israeli vs Hamas war and the circumstances leading to it 19 days ago on October 7, 2023. Second, a perpetual state of war between Israel and Palestine simply creates anarchy, chaos and destruction on both sides over the short, medium and long term. Neither human development nor economic renaissance can ever sprout from a pernicious context. It clearly is not a viable strategy.

Third, despite their years of internecine skirmishes and wars, Yitzak Rabin (ex-Israeli leader, who was assassinated by a Jewish extremist); and Yasser Arafat (ex PLO leader) grasped the nettle of seeking lasting peace for Israel and Palestine on pragmatic grounds (despite virulent opposition from extremist elements on both sides). This was undertaken pursuant to the Oslo Accords executed in 1993 and 1995, in Washington DC and Egypt, respectively, with actively American participation under Bill Clinton’s leadership. The case for reactivating a similar peace process is higher, not lower, albeit subject to the vitally important rider that: there is a definitive, specific, timebound, end date for Israel’s definitive return to its pre-1967 borders. That is, reversing its de facto occupation of the Golan Heights, Sinai Peninsula, Gaza and the West Bank given Israel’s domination of the realm – skies, land and sea.

These will demand courage, political will and a spirit of give and take on all sides. This of course does not upend the military superiority calculus of the Israelis neither does it impugn definitive Palestinian statehood under a prospective two-state solution. It also offers a middle ground of meeting the competing interests of America and Western allies, and Palestinians, pan-Arab allies and moderate elements across the world. Whether Western powers will take this up is a known unknown given rapid advances towards a unipolar world order under American leadership.
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Unipolar because America’s most significant enemy, Russia, is currently battling for its own survival in the Ukrainian war. China, another strategic threat, rarely intervenes in external conflicts barring those outside its geopolitical sphere of influence like Taiwan. In other words, strategic risks from America’s most powerful rivals, in military terms at least, have been significantly curtailed; although not eliminated.

In the final analysis, resolving this intractable crisis will demand courage, equity, honesty, justice, robust political will and a serious attempt at resolving all the aforementioned questions by supremely objective nations and world leader. According to the ex-U.S. Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, “without leadership, institutions drift, and nations court growing irrelevance and, ultimately, disaster”. America’s leadership and strategic leverage needs to be brought to bear seek to resolve this impasse. This is neither wishful thinking nor political naivete.

If any country in the world can reverse the seemingly inescapable advance towards mutually assured destruction of the contending dramatis personae, upon the evidence of the extant war, between Israel (and its proxies) on the one hand, and Hamas (and its proxies on the other), that country surely is America.

Yet, American involvement cannot be unilateral and should involve neutral countries and proven global statesmen of unimpeachable integrity. Here, the likes of Chief Emeka Anyaoku, (ex-Commonwealth Secretary General), General Olusegun Obasanjo (Rtd), (ex-Nigerian military and democratic leader), Condoleeza Rice (ex U.S. Secretary of State), Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al Nahyan, (UAE Foreign Minister), could play a pivotal role.

Afterall, advancing with the blind orthodoxy of business-as-usual on this vexed Israeli vs Palestinian question, only increases the possibility of more bloodshed and lone-wolf attacks internationally with unpredictable consequences. Attention must therefore turn to the prophetic words of Pope John Paul II: “There is no true peace without fairness, truth, justice and solidarity.”
Ojumu is the Principal Partner at Balliol Myers LP, a firm of legal practitioners and strategy consultants in Lagos, Nigeria.
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