(I see Dr. Huemer as very important in terms of his uniting and synthesizing much of the good ideas in the schools of thought of Prichard and G.E. Moore. this coming up essay just shows the great clarity of his thought.)
The Arab-Israeli conflict has been going on for decades, drawing particular attention since October 7. Paradoxically, in the wake of the October 7 attacks, left-leaning observers in the West appear to have reached their highest degree of sympathy yet for the cause of Hamas. I call this “paradoxical” because usually, the way to gain sympathy for your cause isn’t to rape and kill civilians (not even if the the other side reacts by committing more violence).
I don’t have a solution to the conflict. Instead, I’ll discuss why the conflict is intractable. Note: If some fanatics show up to berate me about how obviously one side or the other is completely evil and I didn’t sufficiently condemn them, I will ignore you and delete your comments. If you get super-emotional while reading this, I suggest not posting anything. My aim here is not to condemn people but to understand what’s going on.
Short Background
(See the Wikipedia entry on the history of the conflict.) There were Jews living in Palestine since ~2000 years ago. Many people ruled the region since then. The British took it over in the 20th century after defeating the Ottomans. Around the time of World War II, many Jews migrated from Europe to Palestine. Due to the persecution Jews had suffered, including especially Hitler’s attempt to exterminate them, many Jews wanted to leave Europe and to have a Jewish state in their ancestral homeland, where they could presumably escape persecution.
After World War II, Britain and the U.N. decided to divide Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state, as of 1948. Palestinian Arabs rejected this, and a war ensued, during which ~700,000 Palestinian Arabs were driven from their homes, and Israel captured some of the territory that the U.N. originally allocated to the Arabs.
Arabs and Israelis have been fighting over the area ever since.
This raises a question: Most violent conflicts end within a few years. For example, the U.S. fought Germany and Japan in World War II, yet the conflict ended after a few years, and now both countries are strong U.S. allies. Territory has changed hands during wars many times in many parts of the world, without ongoing decades-long fights ensuing. Why is the Arab-Israeli conflict still going on, 75 years after the initial division of Palestine?
Possible Resolutions
Let’s first consider how the conflict could possibly end.
1: Arabs win
Resolution #1: Israel disbands, and Arabs get control of the entire region. This is what Hamas and other Muslim extremist groups are fighting for. This is the meaning of the slogan “From the river to the sea” (the river being the Jordan River, at the eastern edge of Israel, and the sea being the Mediterranean Sea, at the western edge. The slogan refers to the goal of the Arabs gaining control of the entire region.)
This resolution would be disastrous for the Jews in the region. They would either have to flee in a mass exodus or risk being killed by the victorious Arab/Muslim forces. (For evidence about this risk, see below under “Why the Conflict Endures”.)
This resolution would also be terrible for almost everyone other than the Islamic extremist groups. Israel is the most prosperous and free nation in the region; if it disbanded, the most likely successor would be something similar to the surrounding Islamic theocracies, but even worse because it would be run by fanatics like Hamas.
But this proposed resolution is not serious. Israel is not going to voluntarily disband, and the Arabs are not going to defeat it. Israel is the most advanced and powerful state in the region, besides having the support of the most powerful nation in the world. Israel has repeatedly defeated Arabs in military conflict. In the Six-Day War of 1967, they fought Egypt, Syria, and Jordan at the same time, beating all three and capturing huge swaths of territory, including the entire Sinai Peninsula. You might as well hypothesize a world in which the U.S. disbands in order to give America back to the Native Americans.
Anyone who thinks this is on the table is not living in the real world. Which means that Hamas and the other Islamic extremist groups are not living in the real world.
2: Israel Wins
Resolution #2: Israel wins, and the Arabs give up. Israel takes complete control of the entire region.
This resolution is more realistic than the previous one, in that it contemplates victory by the stronger party rather than the weaker. However, it is also infeasible, because there is nowhere for the Palestinian Arabs to go—the surrounding countries do not want to take the Palestinians (including many terrorists and terrorist-sympathizers) into their lands. The Palestinians are also not going to voluntarily leave, and Israel is not prepared for the level of mass violence they would have to use to drive them out. Militarily, Israel is capable of that level of force (it is widely accepted that they have nuclear weapons); they just are not willing to use it.
So this one is also not going to happen.
3: Two-State Solution
Resolution #3: The Arabs and the Jews share the land; each gets their own state within the region. This is what almost all non-extremist observers have thought needs to happen ever since the original 1948 division. It seems like the obvious answer, and it doesn’t sound all that complicated.
Why hasn’t this solved the conflict? Because it’s really hard to figure out an equitable distribution of territory? Because there are some indivisible goods? Not really. The main reason this hasn’t solved the conflict is that there are violent extremists who refuse to accept any solution other than “my side gets everything”. There are some Israeli extremists who think Israel should get the entire region; that is why one of them assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin when Rabin was trying to make peace with the Palestinians in 1995.
And there are even more Islamic extremists who think Muslims should get the entire region and the Jews should get nothing. These extremists refuse to accept any compromise whatsoever, and they’re prepared to fight to the death.
Why the Conflict Endures
How conflicts end
History has seen many bitter conflicts in which each side demonizes the other. And yet, as I say, most of them are more or less resolved in a few years. Often, the two sides forgive each other and normalize relations after the war. How does this happen?
Usually, one of two things happens:
(a) The two sides inflict sufficient pain on each other that both realize that it would be better to make a compromise, and so they sign a peace agreement. But if one side is unwilling to compromise, then
(b) the two sides fight until it is clear that one of them is the loser. Who decides when this is clear? The loser. I.e., the fighting goes on until one side is losing so badly that they admit that they have lost and they surrender. The reason we’re not still fighting the Japanese is that in 1945, the Japanese government signed an unconditional surrender agreement. Then the U.S. rewrote their constitution to prevent further militarism and helped them to recover economically.
The Arab/Israeli problem
The conflict between Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East will not end because neither side will surrender, and the Muslim/Arab side will not compromise. Israel is not going to surrender since they know they’re more powerful and could wipe out the Palestinians any time they want.
The Islamic extremists are not going to either compromise or surrender, because they are delusional and they think they’re going to win. On October 7, Hamas thought that they were going to make it all the way to the West Bank. (They made it about halfway there.) They knew that Israel would have a massive military response, but they didn’t care; they’re fine with sacrificing many Palestinian lives for each Jewish life they can end.
They’re not interested in peace. A Hamas media adviser explained, “I hope that the state of war with Israel will become permanent on all the borders, and that the Arab world will stand with us.” Another Hamas official explained, “Will we have to pay a price? Yes, and we are ready to pay it. We are called a nation of martyrs and we are proud to sacrifice martyrs.” Also: “We must teach Israel a lesson, and we will do this again and again. The Al-Aqsa Flood [the Oct. 7 attack] is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth.”
Again, this is to make the point that they have no intention of stopping, because they can’t imagine that they’re going to lose. They think they are going to win. (Despite the “permanent war” comment, I assume they meant that the state of war would be permanent until they eliminate Israel, since presumably their ultimate goal can’t be literally to have war forever.)
All this is true despite Israel’s obvious military superiority, with more than 10 times as many troops, and despite the fact that Palestinian casualties are far greater than Israeli casualties, with Gaza suffering, by some estimates, 20 times more fatalities in the conflict. (These numbers are probably unreliable, but surely Gaza has suffered far greater losses.)
This is a highly unusual situation. Usually, a government does not keep thinking it is going to win a violent conflict against a vastly superior force. That’s why they usually do not launch attacks against such a foe or keep fighting while thousands of their people are dying. Religion may be playing a role here: Hamas may think they are going to win because they think God is supporting them. They also don’t mind seeing, or even are “proud” to see, Palestinians dying, because they think those people are going to heaven.
There has been some discussion of peace negotiations between the two sides. However, no peace deal that leaves Hamas still existing is a solution; Hamas will just use the respite to start building up to their next attack. I don’t see how Israel can accept Hamas’ continued existence, and I don’t see why Hamas would accept a deal that destroys Hamas.
What happens after Hamas is destroyed?
Okay, say Israel effectively destroys Hamas. Then will there be peace?
Probably not. More terrorists will just crop up to replace them. The problem is that the Palestinian population supports terrorism. Hamas was already a well-known terrorist organization when the population of Gaza elected Hamas to a majority of the legislature in 2006. Predictably, Hamas then violently suppressed all opposition. They haven’t allowed elections since then.
Have Gazans subsequently become more moderate? Not much. A poll taken after October 7 found that 72% of Palestinians supported the Hamas attack, and the attack increased support for Hamas among Palestinians, especially in the West Bank.
In the history of warfare, what would normally happen in a situation like this is that the more powerful nation would crush the weaker nation militarily. If the weaker nation initiated attacks on civilian targets, then the stronger nation would also destroy civilian targets. If the weaker nation kept fighting, the stronger nation would keep attacking until they physically destroyed the enemy’s capacity to fight any more. By the way, they normally wouldn’t be restrained by concern for the other side’s civilians, nor would the international community condemn them for killing more of the enemy than the enemy killed of them.
In this case, however, the weaker nation is happy to use human shields, and they contain so many insane extremists that they probably would never surrender unless Israel inflicts truly horrifying levels of violence on them, e.g., dropping nuclear bombs on them. Israel will not do this because they are not the kind of monsters that Hamas are (of course, if Hamas had nuclear bombs, they would immediately use them to kill as many Jews as possible).
So that is why the conflict is probably going to just continue for decades more. I don’t see how the traditional methods of ending conflicts can work here. In sum:
The Arab/Israeli conflict will continue because (a) the Arab/Muslim side will not accept compromise, and (b) neither side will admit defeat.
The Muslim side will not accept compromise because they have too many fanatics who think they can’t lose because God is on their side.
Israel will not be defeated because they are the more powerful side.
The Palestinian Arabs will not be defeated because Israel will be restrained by morality and the international community from taking the extreme measures needed to defeat them.
Will it Ever End?
Still, the conflict will someday end. It won’t be going on 1,000 years from now. But it will probably end through some much slower, non-traditional process—maybe the fanatics die off, and each succeeding generation has fewer fanatics. Perhaps some future generation of Palestinians and Israelis will be ready to accept a two-state solution. On the positive side, the rest of the Arab world hasn’t joined in the war as Hamas had hoped, so they may be tired of the conflict.
For future discussion: Why does the American left support the Arab/Muslim side? And why do we treat this war differently from other wars?
