Can we talk peace in the midst of war? Ten lessons for peacemaking

Hamas is decimated, reduced to a disparate ragtag insurgency in Gaza; Hezbollah has been neutered; and the myth of Shiite power in Lebanon has been exposed. Syria has collapsed, and with the Butcher of Damascus, Bashar al-Assad, having fled to Moscow, Syria’s military is today a scrapheap of metal. Iran has been humiliated, its air defenses destroyed, its missile and nuclear facilities crippled; and the Shiite crescent that once encircled and threatened Israel, has effectively been dismantled.

Finding peace is much harder than waging war. The American invasion of Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. When American forces withdrew from Kabul in 2021, they handed the country and much of their military infrastructure back to the Taliban, the very group that the Allied commanders had attempted to oust.

Similarly, the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, ostensibly to search for non-existent weapons of mass destruction, resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, leaving the Americans with nothing to show for it. Iraq descended into tribal and religious chaos, becoming a vassal state of Iran. The 2011 North Atlantic Treaty Organization attacks on Libya to support rebel forces and oust Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, as part of the Arab Spring, resulted in even greater chaos and instability in the region.

Since the carnage of 7 October, Israel has won a number of decisive victories. It has emerged powerfully and triumphantly on the battlefield. With victory comes opportunity.

Today, on the cusp of victory, Israel must not allow an opportunity for potential peace to slip from its grasp. Concessions after the devastation of 7 October and in the wake of victory are difficult, but peace is made between enemies not friends, and now more than ever, a genuine moonshot for peace must be made.

Seventy-six years since the birth of the modern state of Israel, we have learned what has failed, but we are yet to find a formula for peace that works. I believe there are 10 lessons that can guide our thinking.

Lesson 1: Attempting to destroy Israel and massacre Jews doesn’t end well for Palestinians. In 1948, seven Arab armies invaded Israel in an attempt to destroy the emerging Jewish state and commit genocide on the Jewish population. Their intentions were clear. The secretary general of the Arab League described the attack, saying, “This will be a momentous massacre [of Jews] which will be spoken of like the Tartar massacre.” For the Arabs, from the river to the sea, Palestine would be free of Jews. Their invasion failed, resulting in the “Nakba”, the refugee problem that has dogged the region ever since. Subsequent attempts to invade Israel have all failed. The events of 7 October 2023 were merely a continuation of the same theme. Israel is there to stay, it cannot be defeated, and each attempt to invade the country results in repeated and ongoing humiliation and destruction for those who try.

Lesson 2: The West Bank and Gaza cannot be legitimately annexed by another country. The war of 1948 left the West Bank of the Jordan River, which was supposed to form the fulcrum for an Arab state created by the United Nations partition plan of 1947 under the control of Jordan, and the Gaza Strip under the control of Egypt. In 1950, Jordan annexed the West Bank, an annexation recognised by only Britain, Iraq, and Pakistan, but no-one else. The idea that the West Bank and Gaza could form part of neighbouring countries or be annexed by another country hit a major roadblock.

Lesson 3: The Palestinians are here, and not going anywhere. In 1964, an Egyptian engineer in the pay of the Soviet KGB, with the support of the Arab League, established the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), not to liberate the occupied West Bank and Gaza – from Jordan and Egypt – but to destroy the state of Israel. Edward Said, the renown Palestinian academic and professor at Columbia University, lectured my class in international conflict resolution at Harvard. He explained that no attempt had been made to establish a Palestinian state while under Jordanian and Egyptian control because Arab society was largely built around family and clan. The notion of Palestinian national identity was born only after the 1967 Six-Day War, where a genocidal war by Syria, Egypt, and Jordan was thwarted by a pre-emptive Israeli attack which resulted in Israeli control of the Golan Heights, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Sinai Desert. But since then, Palestinian national identity has been ingrained into the psyche of the world.

Lesson 4: Land and dignity are keys to peace. While on a trip to Egypt, I visited the National Military Museum in Cairo. I was amazed to see an exhibition on the great Egyptian military victory of the Yom Kippur War, a war where Egypt was wholly defeated and where Israel had surrounded the entire Egyptian Third Army in the Sinai and would have completely obliterated it if not for the intervention of Henry Kissinger, who taught the famous lesson of Sun Tzu: Do not surround an army on all sides. The 1973 Yom Kippur War lead to the 1978 Camp David Peace Agreements between Israel and Egypt, breaking the taboo of Arab peace with Israel, and setting the precedent that Israel was willing to return land in return for peace.

Lesson 5: You make peace with your enemies, not your friends. To the surprise of the world, in 1993, Israel, under the leadership of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, were engaged in the unthinkable. They were secretly negotiating with the PLO, aimed at achieving a peaceful resolution to the conflict. The Oslo Accords marked the first time both parties formally recognised each other and outlined a framework for future negotiations. As a consequence, a year later, in 1994, Israel and Jordan signed the Wadi Araba Treaty, ending hostiles between the countries. Suddenly, peace was possible not just an isolated event.

Lesson 6: A complex deal is possible, but both parties have to be ready for peace. In the waning days of Bill Clinton’s presidency, his priority turned to solving the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Under the guidance of American diplomat Dennis Ross, Israel, represented by Yossi Beilin, and the Palestinians, represented by Mahmoud Abbas – the current president of the Palestinian Authority – negotiated a deal that would see Clinton walk away from the White House with a Nobel Prize. The final touches were to be sealed by Clinton together with Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak at the presidential retreat of Camp David. The deal was done, borders were decided, Jerusalem would be expanded, the west side would be the capital of the Jewish state, the east side the capital of a Palestinian one. Gaza and 96% of the West Bank would be given to the Palestinians as a state together with an additional 4% of Israel. On the day of signing, Arafat balked and refused to sign the deal that his team had agreed and negotiated.

I once asked Ross what went wrong. He believed that at the final moment, Arafat was unwilling to give up on the Palestinian dream of achieving everything and destroying Israel.

Barak had risked everything for a deal that evaporated before him. On the flight home, his team honed the message that there was no partner for peace on the Palestinian side. The Israeli peace movement collapsed in the face of Arafat’s actions, and Barak would lose the upcoming elections. The Palestinians had just blown their greatest chance for peace. As Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir once famously said, “The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”

Lesson 7: Never judge a book by its cover. The election after the collapse of the Camp David Summit was fierce. The hardline Israeli general standing for election, Ariel Sharon, would visit the Temple Mount and spark what became known as the Second Intifada, which claimed the lives of more than 1 000 Israelis. Israel was no longer in the mood for peace, and Sharon was a hawk. But Sharon was a pragmatist and against all predictions, he was soon making moves for Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

Lesson 8: Unilateral actions don’t work. Prime Minister Sharon saw an occupation of Gaza that couldn’t be justified on moral, political, economic, or military grounds. Thousands of troops were deployed to protect 8 000 Jewish settlers. Sharon decided to withdraw unilaterally from Gaza in 2005. The disengagement involved the removal of 21 Israeli settlements and the withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces from the Gaza Strip.

In 2006, Gaza went to the polls and elected the Islamic Hamas. Hamas seized control, massacring Fatah (PLO) supporters, throwing officials from buildings, and torturing and murdering its opponents. Hamas turned Gaza into a military arsenal, causing Israel to impose a blockade on Gaza. Hamas fired more than 11 000 missiles at Israel and invaded Israel on 7 October 2023, massacring more than 1 200 people, mainly civilians, and taking 251 people hostage. The Sharon plan had failed.

Lesson 9: Without trust you go nowhere. In 2006, Sharon would suffer a massive debilitating stroke. He would be succeeded as prime minister by Ehud Olmert who, despite being a hardliner, began what became known as the “napkin negotiations”. Olmert and Abbas held a series of negotiations in 2008 in which a deal similar to the Camp David Summit proposal previously agreed by Abbas was presented. Olmert showed Abbas maps but refused to provide copies to him for fear that they would be leaked and used against him. Abbas drew copies of the maps on a napkin. The two leaders didn’t trust each other enough to exchange formal proposals, and the negotiations collapsed. Olmert was facing corruption charges, and would later be sentenced to six years in jail for the Holyland real estate scandal.

Lesson 10: Doing nothing isn’t an answer. Benjamin Netanyahu followed Olmert for his second stint as prime minister in 2009. Netanyahu watched the collapse of all the peace efforts, and decided to do nothing. His objective was to provide economic prosperity to the Palestinians rather than political rights. He colluded with the Qatari government to pump a significant amount of money into the Gaza Strip, hoping that this newfound wealth would dissuade the Palestinians from attacks on Israel or demands for a Palestinian state. Netanyahu focused on curbing Iran and making peace with the Sunni powers of the Middle East, signing the Abraham Accords with Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, and Sudan. But 7 October proved Netanyahu’s strategy a failure.

Frustratingly, I have all of the questions, but none of the answers. But I do know that doing nothing and not seizing the new opportunities that arise from an Israeli victory on the battlefield will not serve our interests in the long run. As we sit on the beach this December, may we be obsessed with how to bring peace to Israel and the world.

• Howard Sackstein is chairperson of the SA Jewish Report, but writes in his personal capacity. He has a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations and a Master’s in political advocacy and international conflict resolution.

Photo credit: Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead