As of the writing of this story, Israel and Hamas have reached an agreement - a four-day pause in fighting and the release of 50 women held hostage in Gaza, a major diplomatic breakthrough after seven weeks of fighting.
Let's hope this agreement can lead to an end to this deadly war. As someone who values peace, diplomacy, and dialog between nation-states, this whole episode represents a sad situation for the Middle East and the world. Hamas, an Islamic terrorist organization and a proxy of Iran, engaged in the deadliest assault on the Jewish state in 50 years, as it fired thousands of rockets and sent armed fighters into Israel. In the early days of fighting, at least 900 people died - including more than 260 attending a festival near the Gaza border - thousands were wounded and dozens were taken hostage, according to Israel's Army Radio and officials. The death toll has climbed week by week.
In his story "Attack on Israel: Sabotaging Peace in the Middle East," writer Amjad Ayub Mirza said that Hamas didn't act alone. He accused Iran of supporting the attack, but there's a bigger story that stretches back several decades. Since former US President Jimmy Carter brokered a peace agreement, known as the Camp David Accord, signed between Egypt and Israel in 1978, Israel's foreign policy strategy included achieving regional peace by diplomatic means. In 1993, Israel and Jordan signed the Jordan-Israel Peace Treaty, extending peace to a second neighboring country. A little less than two decades later, 2020, Isarel convinced another Arab country to join a peace compact - the United Arab Emirates, a landmark achievement known as the 'Abraham Accord'. Bahrain joined the UAE in signing a peace deal that in turn led to the normalization of relations between Israel in Morocco. Saudi Arabia also might broker peace with Israel and establish full diplomatic relations, although the Isarel-Hamas war put things on hold. If the Sunni state establishes full trade and diplomatic relations with Israel, then many Sunni Muslim states are bound to follow suit.
Since its inception in 1948, Israel's diplomatic strategy included working toward peace in the Middle East, as stated by Mirza. One can't argue with the quality diplomacy the state exercised at times in its history. However, Israel's internal politics tell a different story, being governed by a hardline government that includes fundamentalist parties. Israel's killing of thousands of Palestinian civilians with no connection to Hamas also complicates the situation.
The menace of Jihadi terrorism represents a danger to peace in the Middle East, an obvious fact to all who observe the Middle East. Most likely, Israel will win its war against Hamas. Annihilating the hatred that Hamas represents is the next challenge. Remember, this won't be done by military hardware. It will take years of public diplomacy, an international relations term meaning communicating with foreign publics, on the part of the State Department to defeat this hateful ideology. The violence against the Palestinians by Israeli settlers in the West Bank also embroils tensions, and President Joe Biden supported barring those perpetuating the violence from our country. It represents an outgrowth of the hardline politics in Israel, another obstacle to peace. Israeli and Palestinian politics have come a long way since President Bill Clinton, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and the Palestinian Liberation Organization Chair Yasser Arafat attempted to establish a Palestinian state.
Israel's normalization with Arab states represents a step in the right direction, but terrorist factions are not states, they threaten the order that states provide. If this non-state threat can be defeated, then Middle East states can continue to march toward diplomatic normalization and the legislating and enforcement of international law. In the future, let's hope that a positive form of Palestinian nationalism can flourish, and Israel can return to the humanistic Jewish nationalism present in the early years of the state.
Jason Sibert is the lead writer of the Peace Economy Project
