By Alex Ryvchin
17 June 2017
There has long been a con­ven­tion­al wisdom in some foreign policy circles that runs like this: solve the Israeli-Palestini­an conflict and you will harmonise the Middle East, crush the recruit­ment strategy of jihadists and keep the misery of the modern Arab world far from our screens and our shores.
Jordan’s King Abdullah said as much at a press con­fer­ence at the White House in April: ‘The Israeli-Palestini­an conflict … is essen­tially the core conflict in our region’. Barack Obama’s former chief advisor on coun­ter­ing Isis, Rob Malley, expressed a similar view albeit in more judicious terms when he said ‘… one of the reasons to resolve the Israeli-Palestini­an conflict… is that it would help diffuse an issue that is fuelling extremism,’ as though a jihadist will be de-rad­ic­al­ised upon reading of mutually agreed land swaps and greater co-operation on water access by Israel and the Palestini­ans.
While the theory never made much sense anyway, events in the past few years have decis­ively debunked the notion that the Israeli-Palestini­an issue is anywhere near the heart of the chaos in the Middle East or that its res­ol­u­tion would impact on the broader strife.
The rise of Islamic State in Libya, Syria and Iraq, the hegemonic designs of Iran, the increas­ing author­it­ari­an­ism of Erdogan in Turkey, violent conflict between Sunni and Shia in Bahrain, Yemen and Saudi Arabia have precisely nothing to do with Israel and the Palestini­ans.
A peace deal between Israel and the Palestini­ans, while noble and important in its own right, would have zero impact on the massacre of civilians on European streets, the destruc­tion of cultural sites, the genocide of ethnic minor­it­ies or the titanic struggle between the rival suc­cessors to the prophet Mohammed that is at the heart of the Shia/Sunni schism.
It is for this reason that Foreign Policy magazine, in releasing it annual list of ‘10 conflicts to watch’, made no mention of the Israeli-Palestini­an issue, instead leading with Syria/Iraq and closing with Putin’s annex­a­tion of the Crimea and President Trump’s looming stand-off with Mexico over the possible mass deport­a­tions of millions of undoc­u­mented immig­rants from the United States.
The second wobbly old plank of con­ven­tion­al foreign policy wisdom is that by altering our behaviour and changing our posture towards adherents of radical Islam, détente could be reached.
In its most extreme forms, this expres­sion of western angst and self-loathing descends into the realms of the comical.
Christine Shawcroft, who sits on British Labour’s National Executive Committee argued that ‘… having cups of tea might actually be the best kind of system of defence and national security that you could have.’ How very British though certainly not in the Churchill ‘we will fight them on the beaches…’ way. In essence, Shawcroft was urging hearing out the jihadists and pre­sum­ably seeking to make con­ces­sions over warm beverages to those who view the slaughter of children in concert halls and pub-goers on a Saturday night in London, not as a cowardly abom­in­a­tion but as a glorious victory on the bat­tle­field.
Similarly, during the 2014 Israel-Hamas war, British presenter Jon Snow harangued Israeli spokesman Mark Regev, urging him to talk it out with Hamas, in the midst of a war during which Hamas fighters had suc­cess­fully rocketed Israeli cities including Jerusalem and had killed Israelis through raids conducted by sea and air and via a network of under­ground tunnels passing under Israeli villages and communal farms.
‘Why don’t you talk to Hamas? Why not talk? Why not be brave and talk directly to them? Why not? Why won’t you speak with Hamas directly? You haven’t got the courage,’ Snow assailed, ignoring the madness of having a good old chat with a group con­sti­tuted with the sole mission of des­troy­ing any autonom­ous Jewish presence in the Middle East.
Of course, there is a great appeal to this sort of thinking. If by tempering our language on terrorism, extract­ing ourselves from foreign conflicts, and getting the Israelis to down tools on the latest apartment block or kids play­ground in disputed territory, we could prevent the suffering and carnage that has become normal, it would mean that the problem was readily solvable.
Leaving aside the sweeping arrogance and self-absorp­tion of such thinking, it is plainly divorced from reality. Run that logic past the Copts of Egypt, who just buried their dead after 29 of their people were ambushed by jihadists while trav­el­ling to a monastery south of Cairo. Tell them that if only their foreign policy outlook or posture towards radical Islam were more accom­mod­at­ing they wouldn’t suffer periodic massacres. Tell it to the enslaved Yazidi or the belea­guered nation of Assyria. Tell them that is their conduct and their policies that are at the root of their own mis­for­tune.
In our des­per­a­tion to conceive of a coherent strategy for insu­lat­ing ourselves from the medieval barbarism emanating from parts of the Middle East, we inev­it­ably ration­al­ise and search for change by looking inward at our own conduct or else outward not at the culprits but at rational actors like Israel whose conduct we feel we can control. We foolishly assume that the fun­da­ment­ally unreas­on­able will respond to reason.
The hard truth is that evil has always existed and it can never be satiated, nego­ti­ated with or reformed.
The murderers of civilians in London and Manchester or Christian pilgrims in Cairo, the vandals of Palmyra and the arsonists of Joseph’s Tomb in the West Bank are moved by irra­tion­al hatred and a com­pul­sion to destroy things of beauty until our lives take on the misery of theirs. The greatest mistake we could make in our war against jihadism is to respond to irra­tion­al acts with our own irra­tion­al thinking.
Alex Ryvchin is the Public Affairs Director for the Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry
This article was ori­gin­ally published on The Spectator