Mideast scholar Hussein Ibish: "Israelis and Palestinians must stop dehumanizing each other"

Our commentary comes from Hussein Ibish, an Arab Mideast scholar with thoughts about the way forward:

Nothing can excuse the terrorist rampage by Hamas. They murdered hundreds of Israelis and made no preparations for the two million people of Gaza to survive the inevitable retaliation.

Israel is responsible for avoidable civilian deaths and for cutting off all basic necessities for the Gaza Palestinians now under collective attack. Civilian deaths could easily rise into the tens of thousands.

How did it come to this? The history is long and disputed. Yet today, a structurally unsustainable, inherently explosive situation prevails.

In the territories controlled by Israel since 1967, there are roughly equal numbers of Jewish Israelis and Palestinian Muslims and Christians. All seven million Jewish Israelis have citizenship and full human and legal rights, as do the one million Palestinian citizens of Israel.

The five million Palestinians under occupation don't.

In a world made up of states and their citizens, the stateless Palestinians are unique because they have no citizenship in Israel, and yet no state of their own.

The occupation forces Israelis and Palestinians into a toxic relationship of dominance and subordination. This unnatural relationship ensures periodic outbreaks of atrocious violence.

The conflict involves individual and group malice on both sides. But structures of violence are hardwired into any relationship defined by the control of one people by another in a contest for land and power.

Israelis and Palestinians must stop dehumanizing each other. Hamas killed Israelis indiscriminately. Israel says it's confronting "human animals" in Gaza.

People treated like animals sometimes act like animals. It's a self-reinforcing shared pathology.

Israelis and Palestinians must re-humanize each other, and eventually cooperate in replacing the violent occupation and resistance with genuine coexistence. That can only be sustained between equals, humans who respect each other's full humanity, recognizing we are all no better and no worse than each other.

     
For more info:

• Hussein Ibish, senior resident scholar, Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington
• Hussein Ibish's blog

     
Story produced by Kay Lim. Editor: Lauren Barnello. 

     
See also: 

• Yuval Noah Harari on the Hamas attack: Terrorists are "waging a war on our souls" ("Sunday Morning")
• Historian Yuval Noah Harari warns of dictatorship in Israel  ("Sunday Morning")
• Mo Rocca: For talking heads, no simple summary for Mideast ("Sunday Morning")
• Mona Eltahawy: Egypt proved change is possible, sexy and cool! ("Sunday Morning")
• Ben Stein: Israel faces another Holocaust ("Sunday Morning")

In:
• Israel
• Palestinians