Israel and Palestine: a diplomatic path forward?

With the horrific events of the past four months in the Holy Land, it is legitimate to ask whether a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians will ever be possible.

Can these two groups of people, of different faiths, of contrasting cultures, with divergent historical grievances, ever be able to coexist in harmony?

Or, like oil and water, will they be forever separate, and unable to mix, with endless war stretching forth into the future, with all the misery that will entail for generations to come?

It's been almost a quarter of a century since President Bill Clinton summoned Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yassar Arafat to Camp David, where the three discussed the establishment of a 'two state solution' to the decades long conflict.

The 2000 Summit saw Israel offer the Palestinians their own state: Gaza and the West Bank connected via a highway, with East Jerusalem as their capital city.

But the talks broke down when it became apparent that Arafat, the man who had seemingly renounced terrorism and embraced diplomacy, could not make the leap from revolutionary to statesman, and rejected the deal.

If there was any time when peace could have been achieved, that was it.

Arafat's refusal to put the Palestinian people before his own ego, would prove to be a calamitous event in human history.

Camp David seems like a lifetime ago now, with rivers of bloody water under the bridge, and in 2024 the prospects for peace seem as remote as ever.

Indeed, in light of the ongoing carnage and the raw memories of the massacres of Israeli families committed on October 7, it seems absurd to even contemplate a possible end to this vicious cycle of violence.

Yet already diplomats, whose job it is to try and imagine that outcome, are at work, conceptualizing how a post-war on Hamas future may appear.

Chief among them is Anthony Blinken, the 61 year old American Secretary of State, whose 'shuttle diplomacy' in the Middle East has put him in the unenviable position of being stuck in the middle between two camps who literally hate each other's guts.

Walking a tightrope between being a friend of Israel, and being the bearer of bad news about how much of the world views their prosecution of the war in Gaza, Blinken has sought to be both staunch ally to the Jewish state, and at the same time, urging restraint and the admittance of greater humanitarian aid.

Concurrently, he is seeking to engage the various actors in the region, chief among them Palestinian President Mamoud Abbas, who rules in the West Bank, which, like all things in the Middle East, is no easy task.

Blinken is, in effect, seeking to not only end a war in Gaza, but one between the Palestinians themselves.

For it was in the elections of 2006 that the Palestinians effectively went into civil war, with Gaza electing the terrorist organisation Hamas, and the West Bank choosing the Fatah party, which Abbas heads.

Nearly two decades later, there has not been an election since.

Blinken wants Fatah to take control of Gaza in a post-Hamas regime.

Accordingly, he agrees with the Israeli war-aim to wipe Hamas off the face of the earth to help make this possible.

For if Hamas remains there will only be more war, more division, more bloodshed, and ultimately, no peace.

But will Gazans accept a Fatah government? Or will the people, half of whom can't even remember a time when Hamas wasn't in control, rebel against them, leading to more fratricide?

But another serious question that many are asking is: will there even be a Gaza by the end of this conflict?

Israel seems determined, with its destruction of homes, mosques, and schools, to make the area uninhabitable. They're not just dropping bombs on these buildings: they are going in with demolition teams, and razing them to the ground. While widespread destruction may help its objective to destroy Hamas, one wonders where they expect the Gazan people to live once that goal has been achieved.

Do they expect them to sit around in piles of rubble? Or do they want them to be refugees again, but this time, to get out of the Holy Land all together?

One of the great unsaids about this dire situation is that while the Arab world likes to speak of the plight of the Palestinians, they don't want to give refuge to any or to help them in any substantial way.

Firstly, nations like Jordan, Lebanon and Syria already house millions of Palestinians, and have been doing so for decades. In Jordan's case, they are not considered to be full Jordanian citizens, despite the fact that more than 20% of the population are thought to be of Palestinian origin. Indeed, they are still classed as 'refugees' with the clear intention that one day, they will 'go home'.

Secondly, a seemingly oppressed Palestinian people serves the Arab world's propaganda against Israel and the United States, used as an example of 'Zionism' and 'Western colonialism'. If they lived in peace and prosperity, the Palestinian cause could no longer be used as a rallying call for anti-semites the world over. Iran, in particular, funds and arms Hamas, as it does other terrorist groups in the region like Hezbollah, all part of its diabolical foreign policy which seems hell bent on bringing war across the region.

As President Ronald Reagan once said, the middle east isn't so much 'a place' as a 'state of mind…a disordered state of mind'.

Blinken's mission, to get the Israelis held hostage in Gaza set free, to allow life-saving aid in, and to lay the groundwork for a future two-state solution, is one fraught with danger, with no clear pathway to success. But if he manages to achieve these goals, his diplomatic prowess will demonstrate that sanity can prevail in that most insane part of the planet.