Tag Archive for: Gaza Strip

Peacebuilding in the Middle East requires women

On 19 July, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said negotiations on an agreement to release hostages held in Gaza and establish a ceasefire were nearing the finish line. Such an agreement is long overdue and could lay the foundations for a peace settlement. But to build peace, rather than simply declare it, policymakers must engage a wider range of actors, starting with women.

Fortunately, this process is already underway, according to Israeli peace activist Yael Braudo-Bahat, who met with US officials on 30 May. As the co-director of Women Wage Peace, a powerful grassroots peace movement in Israel with more than 50,000 members, Braudo-Bahat moves in lockstep with her Palestinian counterpart MH (who goes by her initials for security reasons), the co-founder of Women of the Sun, a peace organisation with more than 3000 members in the West Bank and Gaza.

The two organisations are working together to advocate a non-violent resolution to the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict, notably held, just days before the 7 October attacks, a mass demonstration to demand an end to the cycle of bloodshed. Two of their founders were included in Time magazine’s 2024 women of the year, and their work has earned them a joint nomination for the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize and an endorsement from the Pope. Still, the Gaza war had been raging for eight months before US officials invited either organization to give a briefing on their shared Mothers’ Call declaration, which supports a political solution to the conflict and women’s inclusion in peace talks.

These peace activists have built momentum. On 29 May, Palestinian organisations that have women in prominent leadership roles convened in Ramallah to join forces in calling for peace. And on July 1, dozens of Israeli organisations, including Women Wage Peace, held a massive peace rally in Tel Aviv, helping end a decade of political division within the movement.

Now, they need more attention and resources. In particular, some of the $26 billion that the United States will spend this fiscal year on support for Israel and humanitarian relief in Gaza should fund these women peace builders, an agenda enshrined in US law. After Congress passed the Women, Peace, and Security Act of 2017, the US adopted a national strategy in 2019 to ensure that women would be ‘prepared and increasingly able to participate in efforts that promote stable and lasting peace.’

The Biden administration issued an updated women, peace, and security strategy and action plan in 2023, citing research that showed that durable peace agreements were 35 percent more likely when women participate in negotiations.

The updated plan calls for a review of all efforts by different US agencies to promote women’s meaningful participation in peace operations and security matters. And in the meantime an elaborate web of offices, policies, and funding streams within the US government—including the Office of Global Women’s Issues in the State Department, the Gender Policy Council in the White House, and the Women, Peace, and Security Caucus in the House of Representatives—has been built to support this agenda. Just this month, Blinken hosted a women, peace, and security reception at the NATO Summit, although he did not mention women’s involvement in talks about Israel and Palestine.

But despite these wide-ranging efforts, there is still a large gap between rhetoric and reality. The top US policymakers negotiating a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas are men. Moreover, American officials recently participated in UN-sponsored talks with the Taliban that excluded Afghan women. And globally only one of the 18 peace agreements reached in 2022 was signed or witnessed by a woman.

There is still time, however, for US policymakers to change course. Regardless of whether an agreement on a ceasefire and hostage release is concluded or remains stubbornly out of reach, the Biden administration should commit to including women in all future US-mediated talks.

At the same time, the US should join with countries in the region and Europe to launch a broader peace-building initiative that puts Israeli and Palestinian voices and needs at the centre of negotiations. Communities on the ground, including civil-society groups and women leaders, could thus participate more directly in the process of reaching a new settlement. This may help avoid the failure of the Oslo Accords, which were negotiated in secret and excluded both women and grassroots organisations.

Policymakers should also hold more visible meetings with civil-society leaders in the region. Peace builders face an uphill battle in communities that are being bombarded by disinformation and propaganda. US officials can amplify the efforts of these women by standing for photos with them, mentioning their work in public statements and sending envoys to visit them, as other countries have done.

War is still largely the province of men, while the work of rebuilding societies and repairing trust continues to fall disproportionately to women. Including women, especially those active in civil society, in official peacemaking efforts can help bridge this gap, as peace talks in Liberia, Northern Ireland and Tunisia have shown. MH, from Women of the Sun, put it best when she said to one of us: ‘It’s time to invest in peace as much as we invest in war.’

Australia and Indonesia should get to work on Israel and Palestine

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict matters more to Australians and Indonesians than either country’s foreign policy elite previously acknowledged. So, Canberra and Jakarta should cooperate to help resolve it. They should articulate a joint vision of the two-state solution and build international support for it. That could encourage, shape and shorten future Palestinian-Israeli negotiations.

The cliche that no one can want peace more than Israelis and Palestinians was never really true. The conflict’s global impact is now obvious. It’s straining social cohesion in Australia and inflaming public opinion in Indonesia (and in Malaysia and even Singapore). Much of the Global South sees the question of Palestine as Exhibit A of Western double standards. Whether or not it’s true, that view makes it harder to defend the rules-based order, from Ukraine to the South China Sea. Because Yemen’s Houthis purport to be fighting for Palestine, efforts to counter their attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean have received minimal international support.

More states have a stake in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but few have engaged with the gritty compromises of peacemaking, largely because Washington still dominates the process. Instead, most countries have focused their diplomatic energy on symbolic action at the UN and inconsequential rhetoric. The fact that conservative Arab states still routinely denounce Israel while quietly cooperating with it underscores the dysfunction in that division of labour.

Middle powers, including Indonesia and Australia, should work with the few positive trends that have emerged over the past two decades: more states willing to recognise Israel; more states willing to recognise Palestine; more states interested in Israeli-Palestinian peace; and more details added to the proposed two-state solution.

US-led peacemaking might be faltering, but since the 1990s it has delivered some genuine breakthroughs. In 2000, President Clinton’s Camp David summit collapsed in failure but it broke taboos and set parameters for continued Track 1 and Track 2 negotiations. Since 2020, the Abraham Accords have normalised relations between Israel and several Arab states, even as they sidelined the Palestinian issue.

Saudi Arabia will be key to future efforts. Riyadh was readying to recognise Israel before the 7 October Hamas terror attacks. But it’s now conditioning recognition—and cooperation on Gaza—on tangible and irreversible Israeli steps towards establishing a Palestinian state. That’s a revival of Saudi Arabia’s 2002 take-it-or-leave-it offer to Israel: recognition in return for a full withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967. Riyadh should refine that blunt demand, drawing on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations since then to detail necessary compromises on both sides.

Saudi Arabia need not act alone. It could be backed by the Arab League or even the G20. Most G20 countries can now agree on many more details of the two-state solution than they could when the group first met in 1999. They could concur that the border should be based on the pre-1967 lines and, possibly, on the basis for territorial swaps; on demilitarisation of the Palestinian state; on Palestinian refugees being settled in the Palestinian state (rather than Israel); and on some special arrangements for Jerusalem.

Australia and Indonesia could bridge the gaps. They’ve often been on opposing sides of the issue but now appear more aligned. In April, Foreign Minister Wong raised the possibility of Australia recognising Palestinian statehood ‘as a way of building momentum towards a two-state solution’. Before 7 October, Indonesia was quietly seeking to establish diplomatic relations with Israel. As defence minister, president-elect Prabowo Subianto led earlier efforts to normalise relations.

Like the Arab signatories to the Abraham Accords, Indonesia has pragmatic interests in ties with Israel. In particular, Jakarta’s bid to join the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development will ultimately require the assent of all existing members, including Israel. OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann, an Australian, has reportedly sought to broker ‘a commitment from Indonesia to soften its stance on Israel in exchange for Israel waiving its objection’. But Indonesian recognition of Israel would now be domestically toxic.

Instead, Canberra should work with Jakarta to outline a joint vision of the two-state solution. This would see Australia detail the Palestinian state it proposes to recognise and Indonesia set out realistic conditions for recognising Israel. The potential diplomatic win should outweigh the domestic political costs for both governments. An Australian-Indonesian proposal could provide the nucleus for one endorsed by a larger group of states, perhaps including most members of the G20 or even the OECD.

How much difference would that make? It’s true that a peace agreement looks further away than ever. The Palestinian Authority is weak and divided. Israeli opposition to Palestinian statehood seems firmer than ever. But Israeli and Palestinian politics have always been shaped by the international environment. And both sides need international support: the Palestinians to build a state and Israel to protect itself from Iran and Iran’s proxies.

The impact of a middle-power peace initiative will depend on the work that countries such as Australia and Indonesia are willing to put into it.

The global consequences of the Israel–Hamas war

War has returned to the Middle East. A month after Hamas militants carried out their brutal rampage, Israel’s military retaliation continues with an intensifying ground offensive in Hamas-controlled Gaza. For people living, or with family, in Israel—including me—this is a deeply personal crisis. At the same time, many people around the world identify with the thousands of Palestinians who have been killed by Israeli airstrikes. But, personal connections aside, this is also a geopolitical crisis, possibly even more profound and far-reaching in its global impact than the Ukraine war.

The most immediate consequences will be felt in the Middle East. For years, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu operated under illusions that have now been shattered. The biggest was the expectation that Israel could normalise ties with the Arab world without addressing the Palestinian question, which he apparently believed could simply be wished away.

Now, that question has become impossible to ignore. Regardless of the outcome of its offensive in Gaza, Israel will have to do some serious soul-searching, possibly rethinking its strategy towards the moribund Middle East peace process entirely. Saudi Arabia, which was on the verge of normalising relations with Israel, will now probably demand some concessions for the Palestinians before moving forward, lest it incur the ire of its population and the wider Muslim world.

Israel has an incontrovertible right to self-defence. But there’s a risk that, in his desperation to regain control of the narrative and preserve his political position, Netanyahu will draw out the war or encourage a regional escalation. With his nominal allies in the Gulf on the fence, Netanyahu may be hoping to restore his preferred geopolitical constellation: Israel and the Sunni Arab states face off against Iran’s ‘axis of resistance’, with the Palestinians once again reduced to a sideshow in a much broader confrontation.

The conflict will also have grave consequences beyond the Middle East, with one of the biggest losers being Ukraine. The violence and suffering the country’s people are enduring don’t appear nearly as exceptional as they once did. The images being broadcast from Gaza are as heartrending as anything that has come out of Kharkiv or Mariupol. Moreover, for many, the war in Gaza makes Ukraine look like a ‘local’ European conflict.

Given that Ukraine’s survival depends on the international community’s continued support, anything that distracts from its struggle is bad news. Moreover, if the Israel–Hamas war escalates, with Iran entering the fray, the impact on oil prices could make it more expensive for the West to maintain its sanctions on Russian energy.

For Europe more broadly, the crisis in Gaza raises several challenges. For starters, it has exposed deep fault lines within France, Germany and the United Kingdom. France, for one, has recorded more antisemitic incidents in the past three weeks than it had over the previous year. At the same time, the Israel–Hamas war has fuelled fragmentation among other EU member states.

Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year, European countries showed tremendous unity. But EU leaders are now splitting their focus among Ukraine, Nagorno-Karabakh (which Azerbaijan recently reclaimed after a 24-hour military offensive) and Gaza. In the 27 October UN General Assembly vote on a resolution calling for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, EU member states voted three different ways.

The EU’s shambolic response to the Israel–Hamas war has made China’s forceful reaction all the more notable. Unlike its effort to remain neutral after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China quickly expressed support for the Palestinians. China’s response has become part of its outreach to the global south. And Chinese diplomats are undoubtedly chomping at the bit to highlight Western double standards—Israel versus Russia, the Palestinians versus the Ukrainians—over the coming weeks and months.

But choosing sides could cause complications for China. Most obviously, a broader regional confrontation could disrupt the fragile peace China managed to broker between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

As for the United States, it has become a cliché to describe its experience in the Middle East with a line from The Godfather Part III: ‘Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!’ This is particularly apt today, since US President Joe Biden’s administration has shown far more discipline and determination in advancing a foreign-policy pivot from the Middle East to Asia than either of his immediate predecessors, Barack Obama and Donald Trump. But now, the region is again at the top of US policymakers’ agenda.

So far, Biden has done well to balance support for Israel with calls for the Israelis to exercise more restraint in their response to the Hamas attack. And his decision to combine assistance for Ukraine with support for Israel in a single national-security package offers a chance of overcoming resistance by Republican lawmakers to supporting Ukraine.

Nonetheless, Biden is walking a tightrope. Ukraine already represented an unwelcome distraction from America’s top priority: the strategic competition with China. In this sense, greater engagement in the Middle East is the last thing the US needs.

Nobody—with the possible exceptions of Hamas and Netanyahu—has an interest in drawing out or widening the conflict now underway in Gaza. One hopes (against hope, perhaps) that relevant actors recognise their shared interests and work together to advance them. That means, most urgently, ending the conflict as quickly as possible, without further escalation. And, once Hamas’s military wing has been dismantled and its Israeli hostages freed, it means pushing for a political solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. There is no other way to guarantee Israel’s long-term security.

Trump’s peace plan may become the harbinger of a one-state solution

Finally, US President Donald Trump, in the presence of recently indicted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, announced his much-awaited peace plan for Israel and Palestine on Tuesday. While the details are still sketchy, enough of its contours are now available to permit an assessment. According to most knowledgeable observers of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the plan is an absolute non-starter and a recipe for conflict rather than peace.

While Netanyahu has enthusiastically embraced the plan, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas—as well as all Palestinian parties, including Hamas, the PLO, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad—anticipating what the plan would look like, rejected it even before it was formally announced.

The plan made clear that Palestinian fears were correct. It allows Israel to retain full sovereignty over Jerusalem and Jewish settlements in the West Bank, carves the future Palestinian state into several non-contiguous territories, and awards the Jordan Valley to Israel on the basis of the argument that it is essential for Israeli security.

In addition, it locates the capital of the future State of Palestine in an area adjacent to Jerusalem, not within the city, thus denying the Palestinians’ demand that East Jerusalem, with its Muslim and Christian holy sites, be recognised as the capital of their state. It also declares that Hamas must be disarmed and that Gaza and the entire future Palestinian state must be demilitarised.

While the plan states that there should be unfettered access to the Al-Aqsa mosque for Muslims, it includes the caveat that they must ‘come in peace’, a provision that would obviously be interpreted at their discretion by Israeli authorities who control access to the Noble Sanctuary. Israel may continue to deny Muslims of a certain age access to Al-Aqsa on the pretext that they are unlikely to ‘come in peace’.

Furthermore, the plan requires that both sides recognise the State of Palestine as the nation-state of the Palestinian people and the State of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish (not Israeli) people. The Palestinians, and even a substantial section of Israelis, reject the latter claim. The only restriction it puts on Israel is that it should not build any new settlements for four years on areas that are not envisioned to be part of Israel.

The major intended impact of the plan is summed up by Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of the liberal pro-Israeli advocacy group J Street: ‘This is really an effort to shift longstanding US policy into alignment with the hardest-right positions that Israel has ever taken on these issues.’ This is why it is music to Netanyahu’s and Likud’s ears. Among other things, it seems to be an effort on the part of Trump to ensure that Netanyahu wins the Israeli elections scheduled for March by consolidating the right-wing vote behind him.

The plan allows Israel to immediately annex all the settlements spread throughout the West Bank, in addition to the vast area of the Jordan Valley. Netanyahu declared on Tuesday that the interim government he heads would vote on this step early next week. Israel is awash with speculation that Netanyahu may annex the settlements and the Jordan Valley before the elections in March to increase his prospects for re-election.

As for the Palestinians, the Trump plan will not only validate Israel’s acquisition of a large part of the West Bank but also legitimise their long-term subjugation by the Jewish state. If ever a demilitarised and cantonised Palestinian mini-state comes into existence, it will exist at the mercy of Israel, which will control all access and dominate it economically and militarily.

This is why all Palestinian factions have rejected the plan out of hand. Israel’s efforts to implement the plan by annexing Jewish settlements and the Jordan Valley are likely to have several major repercussions. First, they may lead to the complete collapse of the Palestinian Authority, which was created as part of the Oslo Accord that the Trump plan will now supersede. With the PA removed, the Palestinian territories would return to the pre-Oslo status of occupied lands for which Israel will have to bear total responsibility under international law.

Second, implementation of the plan is likely to provoke violent reactions by Palestinians in the West Bank as well as rocket attacks from Gaza on Israel by both Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The latter could lead to Israeli incursions into Gaza on a scale not witnessed since the Israeli Operation Pillar of Defense that devastated Gaza in November 2012. Gaza, already traumatised by Israel’s economic blockade, is likely to descend into near anarchy, posing an even greater security threat to Israel.

The most important long-term consequence of the Trump plan will be the burial of the two-state solution for good. With the prospect of a real state off the table, Palestinian opinion, which was already veering towards a one-state solution, will overwhelmingly prefer such an outcome to the cadaver of a fictitious, non-contiguous state offered to them. This, in turn, is likely to pose an existential dilemma for Israeli Jews because they will be forced to starkly confront the question of whether they would like to live in a bi-national democratic state or a polity based on apartheid where a dominant race will continue to subjugate another. The Trump plan may, therefore, inadvertently become the harbinger of a single state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.