I’ve hesitated to weigh in on the ongoing debate about Gaza and Israel, but Michal Schiff’s pain over the apparent tenor of the recent ‘Politics in the Pub’ in Mullum’s RSL (Echo 3 Apr)pushes me into it. How many of those present, I wondered, bothered to say that what happened on October 7 was an outrage, a crime against humanity? How many of them, when calling for a ceasefire, prefaced that by demanding that Hamas immediately release all of the hostages who are still alive? How many, in their rush to judgement against Israel, would admit that Hamas built command centres underneath Gaza hospitals, another crime?
This is essentially a fight over Palestinian real estate. Two tribes want it, each has rights to it, and extremists in both tribes want all of it, to the exclusion of the other tribe, driven partly by religious fundamentalism and partly by opportunism. As the late and great Christopher Hitchens said, ‘…those who think they have divine permission are truly capable of any atrocity.’ That applied to Hamas on October 7; it equally applies to the Jewish ultra-orthodox nationalist/religious settler movement in the West Bank who have murdered over 400 Palestinians just since October 7. They think they have a divinely-ordained right to all of ‘eretz Israel’.
Finding a lasting solution to this piece of real estate has defied clever minds and people of goodwill for over 75 years. Any solution requires that the two tribes share the land. As is often said, ‘You can have peace or you can have all the land; you cannot have both’.
Getting there will require reasonable people in both tribes to confront their own extremists.
So, what to do? Moderate, reasonable Israelis and Palestinians (and they are many, even most of each tribe), supported by friends and well-wishers outside Palestine, will have to find the courage to say, ‘This is what we want. If you stand in the way, we will sideline you. If you try to sabotage it, we will suppress you. If you resort to violence, we will stomp on you.’
Difficult? Of course! But out of the current tragic mess, perhaps Israelis and Palestinians will find the courage to sideline the extremists and bring forward the leaders to grab this opportunity. Israel could start by releasing Marwan Barghouti from prison, where he has been held for 20 years on spurious murder charges, just as Nelson Mandela was in South Africa. Barghouti could be Palestine’s ‘Mandela’.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
