While the Israeli motivation has been reduced to nothing more than an aggressive hunger for more Palestinian land or a desire to kill Palestinians, what both the Hamas and the Israeli leaderships are saying and actually doing, is being ignored.
As the war on Gaza continues, we should analyze the attacks on Jews and their property in Europe differently from how we view the masses of people taking to the streets in protest against that war.
International attention is focused on Gaza thanks to the brutal Israeli offensive, but the real problem has always been daily life under occupation.
A call for political leadership.
There are abundant signs of the weakening of Palestinian and Israeli willingness to engage with one another. The temptation to resort only to violence must not be allowed to take hold on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides. This conflict will only be resolved when each sees the other and is wil
Desistance from violence can be to withdraw from a stance of violence through an act of violence, to leave off one form of violence by taking on another. Each Israeli attack on Gaza is simultaneously and implicitly recast by state subtext as a desistance from genocide.
These options distract people from the real priority: to find (or strengthen) practical forms of pressure in support of international consensus.
Plain and simple sadness is a natural human reaction to the killing in Gaza. But we are told such emotional reactions must be politically calibrated.
If one of the motives of Israel's war on Gaza was to crush the nascent Palestinian unity government, it may have failed. For the sake of whatever peace process is still possible, Palestinians need to stay the course.
After its four-week bombardment, a three-day ceasefire reveals that the ground has shifted under Israel.
If the political will to bring about justice and peace is lacking, the answer lies in international law. Ending state trade with Israeli settlements is not an economic sanction, but a legal obligation.
