Too soon, perhaps, to imagine, but what would peace in Gaza mean?
It will take much to undo decades of Palestinian radicalization
I fear Jeff Jacoby is overly optimistic in believing, as the headline of his recent column put it, that “Palestinians can win the peace once Israel has won the war” (Ideas, Nov. 19). He’s correct that Israel must win, not just for its own existence but for the safety of the United States and democracies throughout the world, and he’s right in recognizing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s call for Gaza to be “demilitarized, deradicalized, and rebuilt” as a realistic postwar path.
But for Palestinian Arabs to “win the peace,” they first need to want to live in peace. That will require the demilitarization and deradicalization not just of Gaza but also of the portions of the disputed territories still nominally in the control of the Palestinian Authority.
A survey by researchers affiliated with Birzeit University (near the Palestinian Authority capital of Ramallah) found that 75 percent of the Arabs polled in the disputed territories (Judea, Samaria, and Gaza) supported the barbaric Hamas attack on Oct. 7, with 11 percent not expressing an opinion and only about 13 percent opposing it. The same high percentage was found to seek the establishment of a Palestinian state “from the river to the sea.” (The survey showed that 98 percent hate the United States.)
Undoing the damage of three decades of radicalization by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas will take generations. Trying to shortcut this necessary deradicalization would be worse than counterproductive; it would be deadly.
ALAN STEIN Natick
The writer lives part of the year in Netanya, Israel. Toxic Israeli settler movement in the West Bank stands in the way
In reviewing options for governance of Gaza after the war, Jeff Jacoby correctly criticizes the toxic Palestinian regimes that have historically nourished hatred of Israel and are therefore not good candidates (Hamas, Fatah, the Palestinian Authority, the Palestine Liberation Organization). Israel, he says, is the better option to lead the peace. However, his analysis leaves out a critical factor. He is silent on the extremist Israeli settler movement in the West
Bank that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies have green-lighted for years and that also fuels Palestinian hatred, making Israel an untrustworthy candidate for governance. A durable peace in Gaza or, for that matter, anywhere in Israel won’t come until the toxic settler movement and its relentless taking of West Bank land is also addressed in Israeli politics.
WILLIAM OSBORN Brookline
Israel’s attacks are destroying any semblance of a society to rebuild
Jeff Jacoby writes of Gaza that “a new Israeli administration in the territory, explicitly committed to nourishing a healthy civil society, is the best option for paving a path to effective and peaceful self-rule.”
According to the United Nations and other sources, Israeli attacks have damaged or destroyed at least 45 percent of all housing units in the Gaza Strip, shut down 18 hospitals, and damaged or destroyed mosques, bakeries, and schools. Israel’s relentless bombing has displaced 1.5 million people and killed at least 11,000 and, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, as many as 13,000, the vast majority of them women, children, and the elderly.
Given the Israel Defense Forces’ campaign of unfathomable destruction, I wonder how Jacoby can possibly believe the Israeli government has any interest in “nourishing a healthy civil society” in Gaza. Indeed, it remains to be seen whether any recognizable semblance of such a society will be left.
MARK SHERIDAN Somerville
Notion of a peaceful coexistence is optimistic
I marvel at Jeff Jacoby’s optimism in what he sees as the necessary “detoxifying” of Gaza society after current hostilities end. But is he so naive to think that, after the Israeli military killing of thousands of innocents and the traumatizing of tens of thousands of surviving family members, the people of Gaza will welcome the intervention of the Israeli government to overhaul “its educational and media networks, and steadily, patiently [undo] the culture of hatred”? Does he really believe that human beings can be brutally tamed then so easily trained?
JILL CHARNEY Newton
The writer correctly criticizes the toxic Palestinian regimes that have nourished hatred of Israel, but he is silent on the extremist Israeli settler movement.