Where both Jacob and Hagar are signs of the will of God

The airways have been heavy with wisdom these days: Unfortunately, too late. On the other hand, it is also heavy with superficial runaway judgements that are also too late to bring two peoples to peace.

Queen Rania of Jordan, for instance, put the debacle of the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza this way: "The root cause of this conflict is an illegal occupation," she declared. "It is routine human rights abuses, illegal settlements, and disregard of UN resolutions and international law. If we do not address these root causes, then you can kill the combatant, but you cannot kill the cause." 

From another perspective, to ignore a well-known history of repression and debasement of Palestinians as well as ignore the most recent indiscriminate slaughter of the Jewish people, including women and infants and the kidnapping of some 200 more is to assume that one outburst after another is both justified and conclusive.

In response to a war that has been waged over and over again since 1948, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu swore on television to respond to Hamas' attack on Israel with "mighty vengeance."

But the Israeli president's focus on the immediate ignored the history of the case: the sense of debasement of Palestinians who had owned the land for centuries before the coming Jewish settlers in the 20th century.

The fact is that the vengeance that rained down on both Israelis and Palestinians solved little and reinforced the worst in their long and tangled history.

And for what cause?

Clearly, in this situation, the only way to create peace is to find a pathway to a Palestinian state. To fail to separate innocent populations from the violence being spewed — as well as to deny sovereignty to those burdened by powerlessness — exposes the real truth: Wars are routinely different from the effects imagined by the combatants themselves.

And we know those conclusions are embedded here, too. We have seen alien effects emerge again and again, one intifada after another, one occupation after another one, one settlement after another, with no genuine or universal resolution at all. 

So inhuman have these expectations been that now its effects have managed to seep into other parts of the world, too, foreign and far flung. Into college campuses in the United States, for instance. Into Eastern/Western enmities as well.

Worse, it has become vengeance blamed on God who, both cultures believe, has created this land specifically for themselves and their own descendants "to till and develop." They are old ideas never extended beyond their past meaning. 

For instance, this column is not new. At least it's not about new ideas. On the contrary. All the ideas are old ideas, so why are we not both happy to take a bit for ourselves? Why has nothing worked?

Why this ongoing hunger for destruction, each for the other?

Demonstrators march in Washington, D.C., Nov. 4 in support of Palestinians in Gaza, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas. In places that include Washington, Milan and Paris, tens of thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators marched that day, calling for a halt to Israel's bombardment of Gaza that began Oct. 7 after Hamas militants invaded southern Israel. (OSV News/Reuters/Elizabeth Frantz) 

We all know about the years of intermittent warfare between the Palestinians and Israel before this. And, I'm certain, too, that we have also hoped that simple decency, public morality, honest governments, and, in the end, personal conscience would sweep down and restore a sense of stability, of home, of peace, to both sides of one the oldest social systems on the globe.

But nothing ever happened.

I have seen it with my own eyes over and over again across the years. In fact, from July 2003 to June 2004 — shocked by the seething anger and despair of the Palestinians, seeing the concerns and personal exhaustion of the Israelis — I wrote columns to all of you about what I saw, week after week hoping to bring a broader awareness of the impasse. I explained that some Palestinians yearned to disrupt Israel's orderly world by planting suicide bombs. Israel, I noted, answered the problem with over 450 mobile checkpoints that kept Palestinians under control at all times.

It is a heartbreaking, inhuman and mutually unacceptable situation. One on side, Israel is a legally recognized nation with all the power that implies to address the United Nations, to solicit national support, to develop military defense measures, to claim legal support and international equality.