Root cause

Anders Strindberg has some incisive words in a CS Monitor opinion piece. He starts with the immediate issue at hand:

As pundits and policymakers scramble to explain events in Lebanon, their conclusions are virtually unanimous: Hizbullah created this crisis. Israel is defending itself. The underlying problem is Arab extremism.

Sadly, this is pure analytical nonsense. Hizbullah's capture of two Israeli soldiers on July 12 was a direct result of Israel's silent but unrelenting aggression against Lebanon, which in turn is part of a six-decades long Arab-Israeli conflict.

Choosing to frame the driving force of the conflict as the inability of Israel to recognize the inherent rights of Palestinians, Strindberg continues:

For six decades the Palestinian refugees have been refused their right to return home because they are of the wrong race. "Israel must remain a Jewish state," is an almost sacral mantra across the Western political spectrum. It means, in practice, that Israel is accorded the right to be an ethnocracy at the expense of the refugees and their descendants, now close to 5 million.

Is it not understandable that Israel's ethnic preoccupation profoundly offends not only Palestinians, but many of their Arab brethren? Yet rather than demanding that Israel acknowledge its foundational wrongs as a first step toward equality and coexistence, the Western world blithely insists that each and all must recognize Israel's right to exist at the Palestinians' expense.

Western discourse seems unable to accommodate a serious, as opposed to cosmetic concern for Palestinians' rights and liberties: The Palestinians are the Indians who refuse to live on the reservation; the Negroes who refuse to sit in the back of the bus.

As to the long term prognosis within the region, he observes,

The fundamental obstacle to understanding the Arab-Israeli conflict is that we have given up on asking what is right and wrong, instead asking what is "practical" and "realistic." Yet reality is that Israel is a profoundly racist state, the existence of which is buttressed by a seemingly endless succession of punitive measures, assassinations, and wars against its victims and their allies.

A realistic understanding of the conflict, therefore, is one that recognizes that the crux is not in this or that incident or policy, but in Israel's foundational and persistent refusal to recognize the humanity of its Palestinian victims. Neither Hizbullah nor Hamas are driven by a desire to "wipe out Jews," as is so often claimed, but by a fundamental sense of injustice that they will not allow to be forgotten.

These groups will continue to enjoy popular legitimacy because they fulfill the need for someone - anyone - to stand up for Arab rights. Israel cannot destroy this need by bombing power grids or rocket ramps. If Israel, like its former political ally South Africa, has the capacity to come to terms with principles of democracy and human rights and accept egalitarian multiracial coexistence within a single state for Jews and Arabs, then the foundation for resentment and resistance will have been removed. If Israel cannot bring itself to do so, then it will continue to be the vortex of regional violence.

I know this will be harsh medicine for supporters of Israel -- probably too harsh -- but I think it stands up to scrutiny.

At bottom, the Palestinian issue is the primary destabilizer in the region. Any move "towards peace" that fails to place it at the heart of talks will ultimately be futile.

Israel can bomb its neighbors with impunity, set up numerous "buffer zones," or militarize its citizenry further, all to little effect. Palestinians and their advocates are not going away.

The longer Israel waits to engage the Palestinian plight seriously, it runs the risk of becoming further marginalized in the international system. Such is not a scenario that is conducive to long term stability, especially for a small state (albeit a throroughly modernized one). One would hope that the leadership of Israel would consider this, but unfortunately dreams of an "Eretz Israel" seem to be driving policy.

As an aside, I have my qualms about a single-state solution, mostly on the dreaded "practical" grounds Strindberg laments. But if you're looking for a succinct argument as to why it may be the best option on the table -- morally and practically -- you could do worse than checking out Tony Judt's NYRB article from October 2003.