The Editorial Board, USA TODAY

Eight weeks before the latest Israel-Palestinian violence erupted, former President Donald Trump’s chief negotiator for peace in the region – son-in-law Jared Kushner –wrote in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece that « we are witnessing the last vestiges of what has been known as the Arab-Israeli conflict. »

Kushner was the architect of the Abraham Accords, which saw normalization of relations between Israel and four peripheral Arab countries, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco. It was a Trump foreign policy achievement, to be sure, because any easing of tensions is a good thing. 

Jewish-Palestinian differences

And Kushner himself inadvertently provided the answer in his newspaper essay. He said there could be lasting Arab-Israeli peace without resolving Jewish-Palestinian differences because they were « nothing more than a real-estate dispute. »

This is tragically far from the truth.

The broad framework for lasting bitterness and hatred has indeed been the steady encroachment by Jewish settlers into the Israeli-occupied West Bank and the largely Palestinian east Jerusalem, combined with a Palestinian leadership unable or unwilling to negotiate peace. And added to this is continued blockade of a densely populated Gaza Strip controlled by the terrorist Hamas organization. 

But beneath this intractable veneer are now generations of young Palestinians who have grown up in a society where they see themselves as perpetually lesser-than. In the West Bank, they are denied the same rights as Jewish settlers. And in Israel as Arab citizens, where they are a fifth of the population, they feel increasingly estranged from the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who in 2019 said plainly Israel is a state for Jews only.

Dream of a two-state solution

The dream of a two-state solution has faded as Israeli leaders either push for increased annexations of the West Bank, leaving Palestinians to virtually an apartheid existence, or a continued military occupation that controls the Palestinians’ every move.

So this is far more than a real-estate dispute.

It was, in fact, the dry tinder for the flames of conflict that erupted May 10. In the weeks before, Israeli police engaged in provocative raids on the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, among the holiest sites in Islam, and closed off a gathering place for young Palestinians in the Old City. Separately, there were efforts underway to expel six Palestinian families from their homes in east Jerusalem.

Young Palestinians took to the streets in protest. « We felt the need to stand up in their faces and make the point that we are here, » east Jerusalem butcher Majed al-Qeimari, 27, told TheNew York Times.  

Protests across the Middle East

Demonstrations followed at the Israeli border with Jordan and Lebanon, along with protests across the Middle East, including in Bahrain and Morocco, two signatories to the Abraham Accords. Even more troubling for Israel were demonstrations and violence by its own Arab citizens, the first in two decades, followed by vigilante attacks by Jewish mobs. 

Hamas used the growing unrest as ploy to assert its militancy by launching rockets against Israel on May 10, and the war was on, the fifth conflict between Israel and the terror group in more than a dozen years. A familiar cycle of killing began anew with Hamas using Palestinians as human shields in Gaza for its rocket launches, and Israel, accused by some of its own combat veterans of a lenient open-fire policy, killing scores of Palestinians in reciprocal artillery and air raids.

A cease-fire in the days ahead might end this latest round of bloodletting. But the hard work of resolving the Palestinian issue remains. President Joe Biden certainly has a full agenda of domestic and international issues. But as leader of the one world power with the clout to be an honest broker of peace, he needs eventually to produce his own version of a peace plan. As it is, he has yet to name an ambassador to Israel or a consul general in Jerusalem to speak with Palestinians.

But there will be no end to this terrible cycle of violence until, as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently remarked to Prime Minister Netanyahu, Palestinians and Jews enjoy « equal measures of freedom, security, prosperity and democracy. »

USA TODAY