The Middle East has been plagued with war, strife and chaos for millennia. On a simplistic level, there have been 3 main causes:
- Religion – think back to the Crusades. That was hardly a time of peace in the Middle East. Christian warriors, given the euphemised title of “Crusaders”, felt they had the right to kill and pillage just like the IOF do today (and that Islamophobic thinking has been around for a long time, as long as Islam you might say).
Think of recent comments (May, 2026) by “Atara”, a Texan US/Israeli “settler” (aka self-entitled, genocidal nutbar) walking through occupied East Jerusalem with her assembled, flag waving cohort, chanting “Leave or we will kill you” and, when interviewed, stating “Islam is a cancer, you have to destroy cancer” and proclaiming that the Al-Aqsa Mosque should be demolished and replaced with a Jewish temple (young Atara clearly hasn’t read the bible passage “Love Thy Neighbour). And you didn’t see that on 7 or 9 news, did you?
Or look closer to home and Pauline Hanson’s Maiden speech in 2016 claiming that Australia was being “swamped by Muslims who bear a culture and ideology that is incompatible with our own” or, more recently, “How can you tell me there are good Muslims?”. Change the faith and run that statement by a Royal Commission and see how it goes!
Maybe it’s time we just stop believing that man-made constructs like religion mean anything. As so eloquently described by Andy Partridge:
Dear God, don’t know if you noticed, but-
Your name is on a lot of quotes in this book
And us crazy humans wrote it, you should take a look
And all the people that you made in your own image
Still believing that junk is true
If you really want some good quotes about the nonsense of religion, turn to Ricky Gervais:
“I see Atheists are fighting and killing each other again, over who doesn’t believe in any God the most. Oh, no..wait.. that never happens”
- Colonialism – England (previous colonisers of Palestine, Iraq, Egypt, Aden, Kuwait, Bahrain, Quartar) and France (previous colonisers of Syria, Algeria and Lebanon) colonised and dominated the Middle East. But for such “colonial possessions” and challenges to such possession, WWI and WWII might not have included those regions. After all, the AIF fighting in Palestine in WWI were fighting for Empire and British colonial possession not for the establishment of the State of Israel (no matter what nonsense DFAT might put on their website).
England and France built a lot of wealth through exploitation in the region (and the Americas, sub-Saharan Africa and Asia) and, when they left, they created artificial borders (which have led to ongoing conflicts, which one might cynically think may have been deliberate) and established ruling elites of their choosing and to benefit themselves.
- Oil – See above. But after “independence” this also saw the importance of fossil fuels to the world, drawing the interest of more modern colonisers such as the United States whose self-belief and sense of “manifest destiny” and Monroe and Donroe Doctrines allow them to think that the world owes them something, indeed everything, and that just because they are good at building the means of destruction, that they are entitled to take whatever they want.
The present dysfunction and warfare in the Middle East has its roots in colonialism and petro-capitalism (Gaza having huge gas reserves off its coast, which Israel is exploring and exploiting together with UK-based Energean and US energy giant, is as unconnected with occupation and annexation of Gaza as the value of the “Riviera of the Middle East” real estate proposals of Kushner and the Satsuma Baby).
It was this colonial arrogance that allowed the creation of the British Mandate of Palestine after the 1919 Paris Peace Conference (where, in a post Balfour Declaration world, Prince Faisal’s aspirations, after T E Lawrence’s actions with the Arab battalions, were betrayed), the brutal crushing of the Arab Revolt in Palestine in 1936-1939 (which saw, amongst other things, the creation of a well-armed (by the British) Zionist militia that was the facilitator of the Nakba) and the Declaration, by UN Decree, of the State of Israel in 1947. Simultaneous with that decree came the violence of the Nakba and the forced expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians and the beginnings of Israeli Apartheid and Genocide, the violent seizure of Palestinian property and the death of 15,000 Palestinians.
It is these same colonial attitudes that permeate paternalistic proposals for Palestine such as the “Board for Peace” that proposes to “administer” Gaza (aka build data centres and other US-aligned industries that can draw on the captive and nearly free pool of Palestinian labour, corralled into heavily restricted and surveilled compounds akin to concentration camps).
Move forward to today and the Nakba continues and the ethnic cleansing and razing of villages in Palestinian territories and Lebanon continues in the full sight of the world. Yes, I know that some will say that October 7, 2023 “changed everything”. But did it? The blockade of Gaza and that territory’s treatment as an outdoor prison with a captured pool of near slave labour, had been in place since the 1990s and more formally since 2007 (read Antony Loewenstein’s “The Palestinian Laboratory” or any of the work of Chomsky, Zinn or Ilan Pappé if you find that statement controversial – and before you dismiss them as antisemitic, remember they are all Jewish).
But the geopolitical importance of Israel to the west guarantees that they are armed by the west, that they are supported by the west, that they are protected and defended by the west and that they are never held to account for their actions in illegal settlements, death and destruction amongst their neighbours, nothing. They can do no wrong or, at least, none that will be criticised (and with the contentious Holocaust definition, criticism of Israel is, conveniently, readily labelled antisemitism and shut down and prosecuted, even when that criticism is made by Jews). Perhaps the Judaism of Israel has nothing to do with the criticisms, but rather the abhorrent actions of that State-I wouldn’t care if they were Hindus of Presbyterians, genocide is genocide (as I type news flows through of continuous air strikes, artillery bombardments, evacuation orders and killing by the IOF in Lebanon notwithstanding the “ceasefire” suggested to be in place).
So now let us turn from the popular narrative and view the problem from the perspective of dispute resolution.
Negotiations for peace in the Middle East are nothing new. Western media often frames the attainment of peace as a present necessity and complex. However, the problem is not complexity but a failure or refusal to recognise and meet the needs of all parties.
In the Western narrative there is a simple failing. The US and Israel seek to negotiate their interests but no-one else’s. They adopt a “peace through strength” motto, suggesting that they will be “respected” if they are overwhelmingly powerful. The US and Israel act a little like the Kray Twins. There is no respect, only fear and whilst they continue to conflate the two, there will be no ready path to peace.
The negotiation style of the US and Israel is not ethical, principled or interest based but focused exclusively on their own needs and interests (and their genuine needs and interests are often different to those publicly advanced – for example, a desire for financial or personal gain (nothing postpones a corruption hearing or controversy around the Epstein Files quite like a war) being an undisclosed interest whereas the identified needs are often demonstrated as fictitious and thus a false basis for negotiation).
There is no real negotiation as such but an attempt to stand over and bully, a negotiation style that is “we’ve told you what we want, now agree or else”.
The approach of “do as we say or we will bomb you” has failed and will continue to fail as it leaves nothing for the threatened party and does not recognise, let alone, meet the interests if the threatened party.
And when those interests are not recognised or met and have been ignored for 78 years, there is nothing to lose by not agreeing. If you have nothing and are offered nothing, then there is no “loss” in failing to make a deal (and for the US and Israel there is no “loss” in failing to find peace as their economies are built on weapons manufacture and, hence, whilst war continues so do the profits and, importantly, the deaths, by and large, are not of their citizens and never their own as they do not do the fighting-bone spurs and age do not allow that).
All that is left is to fight and die on your feet rather than die on your knees (and as these aggressors do not respect or value their adversaries or even see them as human, that is not a challenging proposition to them).
If you think of it in a family law mediation context, it is like a case where one party has control of all the assets and no intention of giving up that control and they do not care if the matter goes to court. The other party wants a settlement and has a strong desire to avoid court. There are no shared interests. The stronger party has no interest in meeting anyone’s needs but their own. So, when the stronger part says “I’m giving you nothing” there are only two options for the weaker/dispossessed party – abandon their own needs or go to court. To strain the metaphor, it is perhaps even worse-the stronger party will not even allow the weaker/dispossessed party to collect their personal belongings and clothing or collect their car. They must hand these over too.
When the aggressors, the USA and Israel, can act as they wish, with impunity, without consequence, there is no motivation to change their approach. When you can abduct civilians at gunpoint in International waters with barely a ripple of disquiet (other than “stern words” but continuing military and economic co-operation and supply of arms, even continued involvement in Eurovision), then you are not motivated to settle.
When you delegitimise the other party by labelling them as “terrorists”, with no say in negotiations, then you can, for example, occupy 60% of their territory, continue to restrict aid and impose famine upon their population, drop bombs on a daily basis, like some medieval siege, and slaughter 30 a day and demolish whole villages as part of a “ceasefire” (redefined as business as usual of slaughter and destruction but absent scrutiny or criticism).
In Getting to Yes, Fisher, Ury, and Patton describe negotiation as “Back-and-forth communication designed to reach an agreement when you and the other side have some interests that are shared and others that are opposed.” The present difficulty is that there are no shared interests. Humanity being common between all parties is not necessarily accepted by one or both.
The right of each to exist is not necessarily accepted by the other. Western media, of course points to Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran not recognising the existence of Israel. That same media omits the comments of Netanyahu, Smotrich, G’vir (when he’s not parading amongst kidnapped folk, surrounded by thuggish security, his Yakama at a rakish angle, waving his little flag) that a Palestinian State will NEVER exist, all the while seizing more Palestinian, Lebanese and Syrian territory and extolling the forthcoming “Greater Israel”.
The present difficulty is that one or more parties do not accept the right of self-determination, without external interference, as universal. The right to run your own affairs is the sole possession of the US and Israel and something to be considered and, if permitted, imposed by them on others.
The more profound difficulty is that not all parties desire peace. Perhaps none do.
Fundamental to any negotiation and any agreement are “fairness” and “justice”.
Helpfully, the Cambridge dictionary defines fairness as “…the quality of treating people equally or in a way that is right or reasonable”. This is not apparent in the present discourse, merely an insistence that all but the USA and Israel must yield to the demands of the USA and Israel.
The Journal for Legal Research and Juridical Sciences say of justice that it is “…the absence of unreasonable actions, and a system of identical opportunities, equal privileges, and freedom for every section of society”. Justice is very subjective. However, irrespective of how one might define justice, central to the concept, is equality of application of norms and rules. Negotiation that treats one party as lesser, cannot be just or ethical.
And in the western context, that is what is done. Non-western participates are treated as lesser or “othered”. They are labelled as “terrorists” so that considerations of fairness and justice no longer apply to them. Indeed, by so labelling them, even to support or sympathise with them is, at the very least, support for terrorism if not actual terrorism. Consider the proscribing of Palestine Action as a “terrorist organisation” – an organisation that has harmed not a single individual – resulting in the display or use of the phrase “I support Palestine Action” being an offence punishable by 14 years imprisonment.
When one considers the history of the United States and Israel in failing to apply equal rights and access to justice for all, in their domestic affairs, it is hardly surprising that they fail to do so when dealing with others internationally.
The Declaration of Independence of the United States, commences with the prosaic statement
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”
notwithstanding that, at the time of the Declaration and until well into the 1970s (some would argue to the present day), that nation embraced slavery and dispossession and subjugation of the First Nations population and, today, (very much in common with all western nations including our own), engages in violence, victimisation and dog whistling with respect to migrants.
Israel has a strident apartheid system within its own borders and the occupied territories. Recent criminal legislation imposed mandatory death penalties upon Palestinians who cause the death of a Jewish Israeli whilst members of the IOF aid and abet and facilitate “settler” violence, when it is not they themselves perpetrating that violence.
These attitudes are an impediment to negotiation and agreement as there are no shared interests nor consideration of the needs of others.
If everyone genuinely desires peace then there is a shared interest (as Gil Scott-Heron sang in “Work for Peace” – If everyone believed in peace the way they say they do, we’d have peace”. As he sang in the next line “The only thing wrong with peace is that… you can’t make no money from it” or as Woody Guthrie sang “If we fix it so’s you can’t make money on war, we’ll all forget what we’re killing folks for”, and such sentiments have great relevance when the USA and Israel seem content to be in a permanent state of war, irrespective of who the adversary may be and when the commanders in chief of each crow about the money to be made).
Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah are not paragons of virtue. But are there actions worse? One cannot measure wrong purely in number of deaths and the level of deliberate destruction, perhaps just as well, as if that were the measure, there is a clear winner on those KPIs. But, considering the US first suggested that no Iranian school was bombed, then that if bombed the Iranians had done it themselves and finally, when acknowledging that it was so, becoming silent, there can hardly be a moral superiority asserted. And when G’vir causes controversy by posting videos of his arrogant and pathetic self with a group of kidnapped folk, the outrage is that he has damaged the Israeli brand by revealing the normalcy of violence by the Israeli state, undermining Hasbara, as opposed to having done anything wrong.
We now have the Satsuma Baby suggesting that everyone should sign on to the Abraham Accords and “normalise” relationships with Israel (most are already customers in military hardware and means of surveilling and oppressing their populations). Indeed, they should but that is, again, meeting the interests of the US and Israel rather than those who are addressed.
So perhaps, with that sentiment of recognition, I might offer a very simple and straight forward proposal for peace that will meet everyone’s shared interest in peace (assuming such a shared interest might be identified) and meet the needs of all to have their national sovereignty recognised and to be left unmolested:
- Israel immediately withdraws within their 1967 borders and immediately withdraw all military personnel and civilians from the occupied Palestinian territories of Gaza, West Bank, Golan Heights and from Lebanon.
- A Palestinian State comprising Gaza, the West Bank and Golan Heights be recognized by Israel and the United States.
- Palestine and all Middle Eastern nations recognize the State of Israel.
- Palestine, Israel and all Middle Eastern States sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
- That all demilitarize and lay down their arms, (and use the money saved to rebuild what has been so systematically and deliberately destroyed) so that if they must wave their Old Testaments around and profess that their religions matter or have meaning, then they might all follow the teachings of the Book of Isaiah and Micah:
“They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore“
