11/20/24, Stanford Law School
A few score members of the extended Stanford community gathered in the tiers of a law school lecture hall November 20, for a seminar led by two speakers, an Israeli and a Gazan, who reject the idea that conflict between these peoples is inevitable. It did not happen at an auspicious time. That same day, the Senate voted down a resolution barring offensive arms sales to Israel. And the US was the only UN Security Council member voting against a Gaza ceasefire. And so the war continues, with 43,000 Gazans killed thus far by the IDF, 70% of them women and children.
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The Palestinian spoke first. Ezzeldeen Masri was born in Gaza City, and is now the Chief Field Officer for the PeaceWorks Foundation, www.peaceworksfoundation.org. He has lost 80 family members in the latest war.
Born into a wealthy family, he learned both Hebrew and Arabic in grammar school, and thought he was an Israeli. Then he got an object lesson in identity at age ten, when he joined a demonstration against the Camp Davis accords. The IDF showed up shooting, and student ran for their lives, some hiding in his backyard.
Masri went to high school in the Jabalia refugee camp, where the calendar was filled with days of protests against past massacres and occupations. He joined the Palestinian Communist Party, because that was the only group without an armed wing — no violence or guns for him.
He eventually came to the US for college, received a master's degree in criminal justice in 2003, and considered becoming a prosecutor — the MC joked he must feel at home in a law school setting. But he wanted to help resolve the conflict that had shaped his life, and returned to Palestine. In 2006, he opened the office of the PeaceWorks foundation in Gaza, promoting peaceful co-existence and a negotiated settlement. In 2007, Hamas gunmen confiscated his papers and his laptop, and told him peaceful coexistence was a forbidden topic. He continued working regardless, and witnessed the bloody attack on Gaza in 2014. He was evacuated, and decided it was time to return to America.
In 2015, in Chicago, he started working on a PeaceWorks program training future American diplomats about the urgent need to end the Mid-East conflict. He acknowledges the suffering on the Israeli side, and has visited Auschwitz to say prayers for the Jewish dead. He believes peace must come, because two peoples love the land between the river and the sea, and neither is going away.
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Masua Sagiv, the second speaker, described herself simply as an Israeli who loves Israel, a Jew, and a Zionist. She thinks the Netanyahu government is the worst in Israel's history, and that the slaughter in Gaza shows there must be a struggle for Israel's soul. She does not like what she sees in her homeland: apathy; no concern about the future; a belief that political solutions can be based only on military force.
And yet … she still thinks there must be a struggle to protect Israel's body, since Hamas launched its attack with the goal of killing as many Jews as possible. And that there must also be a struggle against "Israel's "bad faith" critics, who don't think of Gaza as an aberration, but of Zionism as something irredeemable heinous. She doesn't want to help delegitimize Israel.
She sees three options for the future. One, the Hamas option of October 7, which cannot happen because Israel is too strong, and has such strong friends.
Two, the total victory option, the Netanyahu option. The status quo, more or less. She thinks this cannot continue because Hamas doesn't care how many Palestinians get killed. And because, emphasizing Masri's point, nobody is going anywhere.
Third, a negotiated settlement. She thinks this must be based partially on Israel's might, and that the Palestinian state must be demilitarized, in order to continue to preclude option 1. She didn't say what force might be required to uproot option 2, and the half million heavily armed, fanatic settlers who enforce it. But she does think it will require fresh Israeli leaders, who do not model the conflict as a zero-sum game.
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Two hours after the seminar, a dozen students gathered in the Ruben conference room for an informal exchange with Masri. Close-up they seemed young, intent — very Stanford. Before the dialogue started there was time for some academia shoptalk. One student fretted over being behind in her thesis. The MC, who at one time created Stanford fellows programs in conflict resolution, soothed her concerns. "If we were having this conversation in late March, and you said you were behind. I would say, 'yeah, girl, you behind'."
One question that weighed on many minds was the impact Trump will have on the Gaza war. Marsi said that in general, the US has played a crucial role in Mid-East peace negotiations. Or lack thereof — the Kushner Plan in Trump's first term was a non-starter. The Palestinians are afraid he will offer the same thing again, a real-estate development map with no reference to the 1967 borders. And that he will give Israel a free hand in Gaza.
Masri thinks the Palestinian political situation is not brilliant either. Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian Authority, no longer talks of peace plans. There is no Palestinian peace movement either, only a handful of NGOs supported by the international community. (Marwan Barghouti, the most popular Palestinian leader, supported the two-state solution when he was imprisoned in 2002; his present views are unknown. Since 10/7/23 he has been held in solitary confinement, and denied medical treatment for beatings.)
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On Nov. 21, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, accusing him of using starvation as a weapon of war. President Biden responded by denouncing the ICC, notwithstanding the fact that as of 11/5/24, the projected death toll in Gaza from starvation is estimated to be 66,000 — ≈ 3% of the population.
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