A twitter friend pointed to this article by Shadi Hamid, suggesting it was “worth a read.” Rather than answer him on twitter, I thought it “worth a fisk,” because the essay is so quintessentially illustrative about what’s wrong with the mainstream punditocracy on the subject of the conflict between Israel and her neighbors. So here is the fisk:

The Israeli-Palestinian Dispute Is Only Partly About Land

The White House can’t end the conflict by expecting one side to surrender unconditionally.
MAY 25, 2019

Shadi Hamid
Senior fellow at the Brookings Institution

 

Note both picture and caption. Not: “Palestinian children watch a band perform from the rubble of a building destroyed by Israeli air strikes in 2014 and now, five years later, still not yet rebuilt by a government that spends its resources on building this:

 

and this:

Gaza attack tunnel. Hamas spent $30 to $90 million, and poured 600,000 tons of concrete.

Is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict fundamentally about land and territory? It is certainly partly about that. But when you hear the objections and grievances of both sides, the issue of who has what part of which territory doesn’t necessarily figure all that prominently.

One might assume from this opening that Hamid has been listening to both sides. Alas, not.

I recently took part in a study tour on religion and nationalism in Israel and the West Bank organized by the Philos Project. One Palestinian official whom we met told us, “I’m not going to compromise my dignity.”