GARY RYNHART: Negotiation the only solution for Middle East peace

In a previous posting with the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) regional office in Beirut I worked regularly in the West Bank and Gaza. Since 1977, the ILO has been compiling an annual report on the situation of Palestinian workers that is presented to a standing committee at our International Labour Conference every June.

A similar committee was established, and annual report compiled on apartheid SA (established in 1964). In his first overseas trip Nelson Mandela came to the ILO in 1990 to thank the organisation (and this committee) for the support and practical action it had levied against apartheid. 

Our office compiled these reports with running multiple technical projects across the West Bank and Gaza. Returning home to Beirut (through Jordan, as Lebanon and Israel are still technically at war) always left a sour taste in the mouth.

The situation for most people is grim. A multilayered system of physical, institutional and administrative impediments places restrictions on the movement of people and goods, as well as on access to natural resources. The daily humiliations of the occupation are a constant reminder of the situation.

Our offices in Beirut and East Jerusalem had many Palestinian colleagues. I recall one, who had been born in Haifa (now in Israel), showing me the keys to the original family home there. Dispossession is a lived experience. As Israel has continued to cut off Palestinian population centres from one another, the sheer viability of a future Palestinian state seems geographically impossible.

In Gaza, while the Israeli blockade since 2007 has made life intolerable, Hamas imposes forms of sharia and a creeping Talibanisation. No elections have been held since 2006. The “world’s largest open-air prison” is an apt moniker.

Light fuse

In the West Bank the feeling of suspicion and tension is unmistakable. Even the Uzi-carrying Israeli settlers have a gaunt, tense look. Who wants to live like this?

The worst is the lack of hope. To remove hope is to light a fuse, and that is what has been happening in recent decades in the West Bank and Gaza. This has all now exploded. 

The atrocities carried out by Hamas this month, deliberately targeting children and elderly people, are the actions of the most heinous kind. These attacks have had a particular resonance in Israel as they resemble the atrocities carried out against Jews in World War 2.

Einsatzgruppen: The Nazi Death Squads on Netflix depicts regular German army units, mostly men who were too old for the front (not ideologues), carrying out massacres across Europe from the Baltics to Ukraine. They rounded up Jewish men, women and children (including babies) and systematically shot them. It makes for very hard viewing. 

This experience has indelibly left the view in Israel that “only Jews can protect Jews”. History gives them no reason to doubt this. It’s hard to think of a more persecuted people. They have been discriminated against, expelled and murdered consistently, everywhere, over centuries. Israel was supposed to be the promised land providing safety that couldn’t be achieved elsewhere. And now it is not.

Loud condemnation

Israel is likely to invade Gaza (possibly before this article is published). It will be a lengthy and bloody conflict that may escalate across the region. As is clear from the bombings so far, most of the dead will be civilians. However, at some stage, after much blood has been spilt, it will end. A resolution will be found. Two peoples, no matter what differences, histories and losses, will need to share the same small piece of earth. That is the only assured outcome.

The SA government has come out strongly in support of the Palestinians as the conflict intensifies. In my native Ireland the political discourse is loud in its condemnation of Israel. Ireland, with Denmark and Luxembourg, have been the three EU countries calling most loudly for an avoidance of an escalation in violence. Yet support for both Israel and Palestine should not be a binary choice.

That Ireland and SA, with their histories of division and exclusion, should come down on the side of Palestine is not surprising. However, for that very reason countries like SA, Ireland and others that have overcome conflict and division in their societies through negotiation should have the loudest voices calling for negotiated solutions to end this bloody cycle once and for all.     

• Rynhart is senior specialist in employers’ activities with the International Labour Organisation, based in SA.