Some links with thoughts about the recent Israel Palestine Conflict.
Peter Beinart
My point isn't normative: Nothing justifies Hamas' rockets against Israeli civilians, which may constitute a war crime. It's descriptive. Eliminating Hamas won't eliminate Palestinian violence any more than eliminating the ANC or IRA would have eliminated Black South African or Irish Catholic violence in the 1980s. The only way to stop oppressed people from responding to the violence of oppression with violence of their own is to end their oppression. When Black South Africans and Irish Catholics gained political equality, the ANC and IRA ceased committing acts of violence-not because their leaders became saints but because they now enjoyed the basic freedoms that allowed them to pursue their people's interests in a peaceful way.
Fundamentally, Israel doesn't have a Hamas problem. It has a Palestinian problem. It dominates and brutalizes another people. Until that domination and brutalization ends, every cease-fire will be merely an interval until the next war, regardless of which parties lead the Palestinian struggle. Most Washington politicians, and most American Jewish leaders, don't want to reckon with that. So they keep talking about Hamas.
Daniel Kurzer the former ambassador to Israel under President George W. Bush and Aaron David Miller a former State Department Middle East analyst.
Start an honest dialogue with Israel on the steps Israel must
take even as the Gaza mini-war winds down: cancel home evictions of
Palestinians in Shaikh Jarrah; stop demolishing houses, especially in
Jerusalem; give Palestinians permits to build or add to their homes;
control Israeli extremists and punish them when they break the law by
provoking and assaulting Palestinians; stop expanding settlements in
Jerusalem to preserve the idea of two capitals for two future states.
...
Press the Palestinian Authority to stop its authoritarian practices
and human rights violations such as arbitrary arrests. Urge them to
hold elections recently canceled by Palestinian Authority President
Mahmoud Abbas and to stop incentivizing and inciting violence.
Indeed, that discriminatory logic is on full display especially in Sheikh Jarrah, the East Jerusalem neighborhood where Israeli settlers are trying to evict several Palestinian families from their houses. These eight families, who fled their original homes during the war of 1948, have lived in the neighborhood for more than half a century. Now, Israeli settler organizations - funded significantly by American Jewish donors - are claiming that because such homes were once owned by Jewish groups, the Palestinian families must be forced out. Yet no reciprocal right exists for Palestinians seeking restitution for properties they left behind during the Nakba, when roughly 700,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled their homes during the 1948 war. Under Israel's Absentee Property Law, the property of Palestinian refugees is controlled by the Israeli state.
Peter Beinart
In so doing, Biden helped create the current violence. His administration could have pressured Israel to stop evictions in East Jerusalem. It could have pressured Israel to allow Palestinians in East Jerusalem to vote, which would have made it harder for Abbas to cancel Palestinian elections. It could have let Israeli voters know there would be a price to pay for continuing to elect governments that entrench Israeli control over millions of Palestinians who lack basic rights. It did none of this. Instead, the Biden administration spent its first few months pumping the political equivalent of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere with its unconditional support for Israel while hoping those gasses wouldn't create a disaster. Now they have.