Is There Peace? 720 Days Without the Day After

By Mohamad Alqeeq

“You will never ever see the Israeli soldiers again here in your town.” This was the answer of a Palestinian policeman when I asked him, as a 14-year-old boy, if our town near Hebron was liberated in 1996 when the Palestinian Authority deployed its forces there.

The shock was that the Israeli settlers and army became the controllers of our lives. The settlements were expanded, the road between Gaza and the West Bank was cut off, and day in and day out, the West Bank was isolated from Jerusalem. After years, we had nothing left to establish our state with sovereignty on.

On the contrary, the settlements and military bases turned the promised land of that state into fragments without geographical continuity.

This is the story of the peace process that the international community was trying to achieve between the Palestinians and the Israelis, but the policy of occupation dominated by the Israeli government led to the deepest conflict because of Israel’s doctrine to subject the Palestinians to live in a reserve like animals, without sovereignty or state, instead of being able to live in peace.

720 Days and 75 Years of Conflict

It’s not a 7th of October issue, and it’s not Hamas’s or Fatah’s, not even Yasser Arafat’s, the former president of Palestine, who was assassinated to erase the dream of a sovereign state and diminish the existence of the Palestinians.

Wars, military operations, detention camps, isolation policies, and restrictions are the Israeli methods used to make life difficult for the Palestinians, to force them to leave in favor of settlers and the nucleus of Greater Israel.

Seventy-seven years of suffering and death due to the ignorance of the international community coincide with total US support, making Israel not a state with good relations with its neighbors in peace and prosperity, but a state of power, aggression, and expansionist policies to impose the “New Middle East” project and change the map of the region.

The former US president, Joe Biden, once said: “If there weren’t an Israel, we’d have to invent one.”

It was a long, bloody, and sad story before the 7th of October, and now we witness starvation and genocide in Gaza, and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, in spite of positive global transformations aimed at holding Israel accountable and stopping the war, especially with the recent US plan approved by Hamas and Arab and Islamic countries to bring peace to the region.

Will the Bloody Chapter End?

The opportunities for peace are increasing, and the world’s positions have become more realistic, putting more pressure on Israel to pursue real peace with the Palestinians according to international law and recent initiatives, especially the Arab Peace Initiative and Trump’s plan, which Arab and Islamic leaders agreed on.

Many factors are motivating peace:

• Hamas’s acceptance of a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, according to its charter annex in 2017. This stance debunked Israel’s false claims against the movement.

• The failure of the Israeli military option against the resistance resulted in the army losing its ability to fight. The Israeli society has lost trust in its air defense system and in the future of its country and its sectors, especially security and the economy. That failure will lead to an end to the war for the sake of stability and peace, to stop the exhaustion.

• The widespread storm of support for the Palestinians, and Israel’s isolation after its crimes against humanity and violations of international law.

• The world’s shifting priorities have created a new reality based on alliances and economic interests, strengthening their positions after many conflicts, such as the Ukraine-Russia war, the current indefensible annihilating war against Gaza, and tensions between Israel and other countries.

It’s the last chance for all parties to make the miracle of the century, to end the conflict, not to exploit the situation to expand Israel or erase the Palestinians. It’s a time for calm if good intentions are present.

At the same time, there will be escalation and expansion of the war if the real will of the parties disappears; most notably Netanyahu’s, as he is a master at flipping the script to serve his goals at the expense of the Palestinians and Israeli society, including the families of prisoners and the elite of its society.

My displaced friend asked me two days ago, “Will the ceasefire deal be signed soon?” I was afraid to tell him that there are no signs, but I tried to comfort him by saying that it depends on how things unfold and on Trump’s seriousness in fulfilling his promise to end wars in the world and establish peace, especially in the Middle East.