No good guys and no easy solutions

The war in Gaza is now almost a month old. After a brief cease-fire that featured an exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinians held in Israeli prisons, the fighting has resumed in earnest, and more than 15,000 Palestinians are presumed dead. Israeli Defense Force (IDF) casualties are uncertain, but more than 1,200 Israelis were killed by Hamas during the brief cross-border incursion that started the war on October 7. Most of northern Gaza has been reduced to rubble by Israeli artillery and air strikes, and the IDF has now begun an assault into southern Gaza to destroy Hamas and their military infrastructure.

The war shows no sign of ending soon and has unleashed ferocious global acrimony between those who support Palestinians and accuse Israel of genocide and others who support Israel and argue that the attacks on Oct. 7 demand the absolute destruction of Hamas regardless of collateral damage. The debate has spawned riots in several countries, protests at embassies and in cites around the world, and unrest on college campuses across the United States, where it also holds the potential to influence the 2024 elections.

Amidst this cacophony of accusations and high emotion it is difficult to find any sense of nuance, or any understanding of the complex issues that underpin the conflict and complicate proposed solutions. Yet we owe it to ourselves and our children to try and understand, and with that in mind I urge each of you to consider the war from the following perspectives.

First, consider the geography of Israel. It is extraordinarily small, with a population of 9.3 million living in an area the size of New Jersey. Israel occupies adjacent territories including the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and Gaza that it took during the 1967 Six Day War and never relinquished. Those lands are hotly contested, with many Jews arguing they are part of lands given to the Jewish people by God thousands of years ago, while others (including virtually the entire international community, the United Nations (UN), and even the Israeli Supreme Court) argue they belong to Palestinians, the other native people of the region who take their name from the fact those lands were known as Palestine to the Romans and many others. It matters little who is right in this debate. The key point is that 4.9 million Palestinians live in those lands and in Israel, and they are intermingled in many areas with Jewish and Israeli settlements. It would be impossible to physically separate all of them.

Second, note that Gaza is only 25 miles long and holds a population of 2.3 million Palestinians. Prior to the war it featured some of the most crowded urban areas on the planet, with access to all communications, electricity, cable and satellite television, fuel and food supplies controlled by Israel. It features high unemployment, grinding poverty, and a pervasive sense of despair among its people born of hopelessness. Almost half the population is under 19 years old. Prior to Oct. 7 more than 18,000 Palestinians had work permits allowing them to cross the border and work in Israel, where they made far higher incomes than they could at home. All of that has ended.

Third, remember that Hamas and Palestinians are not the same. Hamas is a reprehensible, utterly evil terrorist organization formed in 1988 and dedicated to the destruction of Israel. Hamas is armed and funded by Iran and a handful of Arab countries, most of whom exploit the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to sustain hatred of Israel and the United States (which is the largest supplier of military aid to Israel and its defender in the UN).

Palestinians, on the other hand, are simply natives of the region who lost much of their homeland in 1948 when Israel was created and who have been losing territory ever since. They have what is known as the Palestinian Authority (PA), which rules portions of the West Bank, but most Palestinians consider it hopelessly corrupt and they voted it out of power in Gaza and put Hamas in charge following elections in 2006.

Fourth, criticizing Israel does not make a person an antisemite or anti-Jewish. Israel is a political entity, and the politicians who rule there are just as likely to be foolish or make mistakes as anyone else. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is widely considered to be corrupt, autocratic and divisive, presides over an administration that indirectly supported Hamas politically because it undercut the PA, and encouraged settlers to continue stealing West Bank land, fueling conflicts between Palestinians and Israelis. Moreover, his administration and the IDF ignored prodigious intelligence warnings that could and should have prevented the attacks on Oct. 7, a failing which may drive him from power when the war ends.

Fifth, Iran is the real problem. The Iranians are arming Hamas, arming Houthi rebels in Yemen who are firing rockets at Israel and U.S. Navy ships, arming Hezbollah (a militant group in Lebanon that routinely launches cross border and rocket attacks on Israel), arming the militias in Syria and Iraq that are attacking the 2,500 U.S. troops in Iraq and the 900 in Syria, and arming the Russians during their ongoing war of aggression in Ukraine. If they and their allies continue to attack American forces there is a real risk the United States will feel compelled to strike Iran directly, and a catastrophic regional war might follow.

Sixth, there are possible consequences for our 2024 elections, as many young people and Muslims in the United States are turning against President Biden over his support for Israel. If they live in swing states and do not support him in 2024 it could tip the presidential election to the Republican nominee, which will likely be Donald Trump. The first Trump administration featured extreme support for Israel as well, so U.S. policy might not change, but the fact the war could influence the election outcome is a measure of the importance of the conflict.

All of these issues are complicated, and the war is going to get worse before it gets better. There are no good guys in this one, and no easy solutions. The only innocents are the victims killed in Israel on Oct. 7 and the civilians killed in Gaza ever since. Our thoughts and prayers should be with each of them.

Lance Janda holds a PhD in History from the University of Oklahoma and has more than 30 years of experience in higher education. He is the author of “Stronger Than Custom: West Point and the Admission of Women”, among other works.