Israel-Palestine: The Deeper Dynamics that Must be Addressed

By Jon Eden Khan

For now, we have a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas.

This is a profound relief for the Israelis and Palestinians, who have both been so violently and tragically impacted by this conflict.

And while new attacks are being reported and Donald Trump tries to convince the surrounding Middle Eastern nations that they should take the displaced Palestinians (against the will of the Palestinians and those other nations), the deal feels highly tenuous.

The Israelis seem ready to reignite into conflict at any time. The impulse within Hamas to violently strike back and wreak further vengeance is no doubt still present. We’ve been here before, though admittedly this most recent conflict took the violence to shocking new levels.

This Article is not About Polarisation

To be clear, nothing written in this article is to defend the violent actions of Hamas. Those actions, including October 7th, are fundamentally wrong, horrendous, and utterly tragic.

Singularity’s position is that all aggression toward the basic validity, safety, and right to self-determination of the Jewish people must stop. Hamas must release the hostages they are holding. Aggressive acts of violence must stop, with the Palestinian peoples’ basic human needs for self-determination, safety, and liberation being supported to find other means of expression than violence, which is fundamentally wrong and must stop. This includes all possible future attacks by land, rocket attacks on Israeli civilian areas, suicide bombings, the use of bases in or underneath civilian centres such as schools and hospitals, kidnappings, violence against Palestinian dissenters to Hamas’ rule, and the public executions of suspected collaborators with Israel.

The Roots of the Conflict

With that said, this conflict may never end until certain basic and deeply uncomfortable truths are faced.

At the core of these truths are fundamental injustices and traumas intimately woven into the birth of the state of Israel and the displacement of the Palestinian people.

Of course the lineage of trauma goes back further than that. The Jewish people have experienced incredible suffering and persecution through history, from the Babylonian Exile (586 BCE), to massacres during the Crusades (1096-1291), to the expulsions from England (1290), France (1306 and 1394), and Spain (1492), to the Chmielnicki Massacres (1648-1657), to the Russian Pogroms (1881-1920s), and then the Holocaust (1941-1945). There are no words to even begin to describe the tragedy and pain of these events.

And simultaneously, the Zionist impulse to claim land that had not been home to the Jewish people for two thousand years – land that if the Bible is to be believed they themselves took by the sword from its earlier inhabitants – was and is hugely problematic.

It’s critical to affirm here, as more and more voices have been over recent years, that questioning the Zionist agenda does not equate to anti-semitism. This accusation is a shield that ethnocentric voices within the Zionist project have used for too long, and it is one that has produced so much fear in nations, leaders, and individuals that they would become associated with perpetuating the horrendous injustices the Jewish people have experienced in history, that they have stayed quiet in the face of other horrendous injustices committed by Isreal upon others.

The Jewish people, like all people, absolutely have a right to safety, protection, and healthy ethnic identity. But not in a manner that violates the will and right to safety of a whole other group of people.

Many peoples through the course of history have been through cycles of displacement and necessary resettlement. Examples include the Armenians who were displaced from Eastern Anatolia because of the Armenian genocide by the Ottoman Empire, the Tibetans who were displaced by the invasion of China into Tibet, and the Native American people who were displaced by the incoming European settlers.

The impacts on individuals and cultures of displacement are tragic and traumatic. And this pain is also not a sound basis for repeating the cycle of trauma by claiming land from others. Or for engaging in what the 2024 UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories during the recent war reported could justifiably be described as genocide.

What is Waiting to be Acknowledged

Something that the global community of nations must acknowledge today is that the patterns of colonialism, imperialism, and exploitative power dynamics, which have a legacy of separation, injustice, and domination that still violently pervade our world today, were present in the process that led to the UN recommendation for the partition of the land of Palestine in 1947, and the reaction to the proclamation of the state of Israel that resulted in the 1948 Israeli-Arab war.

Those dynamics are still reverberating through this conflict, and will continue to do so until they are addressed.

Additionally, the Zionist tendency to perceive the Jews as ‘God’s chosen people’ must be released (this is equally the case for Muslims). This ethnocentric exceptionalism has fuelled and does fuel huge injustices, for example in the continued building of Israeli settlements in areas such as the West Bank despite it being against international law.

The tendency of Western nations to maintain their unconditional allegiance to Israel in spite of major injustices of its actions, which is fuelled by significant lobbying efforts by Zionist organisations, Christian Zionism, as well as investment in the military and resource-related advantages that come with the state of Israel, must also end.

Additionally, the legacy of Western colonialism that still affects this conflict and that stems from the tendency of Western nations such as the UK and the USA after WW1 and WW2 to make choices for the land of Palestine and the people living there without honouring their voices and history must also stop, be acknowledged, cleansed, and ultimately healed.

And to be clear again, none of this excuses the violent actions of Hamas.

Where We Are Today

Even if the injustices surrounding the past Zionist capture of land in the former Palestine is recognised, in addition to the atrocities committed by both sides since then, the reality today is the Israelis and Palestinians must find a way to share this land, whether that is in the form of a two-state solution or some other arrangement.

This will require a laying down of arms by the militaries of both sides. It will require a lasting ceasefire to be translated into a peace deal that can provide a foundation for the transformation needed for that peace to last.

Part of that transformation will need to be a fundamental change in the way that land itself is seen. The very tendency to see land as something that can be owned is a product of colonialism. Indigenous cultures, by contrast, often view land as family - brother, sister, communal and sacred. Recent examples of land being returned in the USA to indigenous peoples highlight that restitution is possible and necessary.

If all this is going to unfold, it will take radically different forms of leadership.

It will take leaders on both sides who invite their people into spaces where they can grieve and purge out the trauma in their bodies rather than allow it to fuel further vengeance and bloodlust.

It will take leaders who are willing to face and take responsibility for the injustices of history, and who can respond to the situation by somehow harnessing the world changing forces of proactive, non-naïve love and forgiveness rather than endless ethnocentric hatred.

It will take leaders who source themselves in the peace process in the one indivisible and sacred Life that beats in the heart of the Earth and every human heart, regardless of whether they are Israeli or Palestinian, Jew or Arab.

And it will take leaders who have broken through the illusion that ultimately any group of humans can ever truly own land, and who are ready to live in gratitude alongside others of any race and religion who share their love of a certain piece of the Earth’s crust.

Coming Home to the One at the Heart of the Many

In Singularity we perceive that the Earth as one sacred Life that expresses through all kingdoms of nature, nations, communities, and beings must move to the centre of our politics and communities and be the principle that organises governance and decision-making.

Until this approach to governance is in place, we sense that conflicts like this one will continue to spiral.

Maybe for now, and for those who desperately need safe space to begin to heal, the current ceasefire will be enough for them to begin to rebuild their lives.

And, it’s important that we do not confuse the relief of this moment as a replacement for the profound work that needs to be done for long term, sustainable peace to be possible.