“The surest way of being convinced of the excellence of the cause of one party or the other is actually to be that party,” wrote the French novelist Marcel Proust.
Policy analysis often begins by quoting the pronouncement of a senior official and using this as a springboard to recommend a policy approach. By contrast, Proust’s words help us only to think clearly about policy. And I write this in unusually personal terms: In the current Gaza war, it is difficult for me to think clearly. And I would say there are others having an even harder time. The effects of this on policy analysis are severe, leading to a proliferation of unrealistic, thoughtless suggestions.
Proust was writing during World War I. The war not only caused great bloodshed but also the celebration of that bloodshed. French and Germans in 1914 mistook their patriotism and moral sensibilities for military capabilities. Like then, the poverty of today’s partisan polarization over the war in Gaza is thus not merely Proustian; it operates with horribly deadly results. The sense of grievance is profound among many actors, and is often profoundly justified. There are three aspects that make it particularly polarizing in the current context.
That context is the first issue—or rather the context partisans choose to see (or ones they refuse to see). Those who align with one party or the other understand their grievances in deeply moral terms and those sufferings that their side inflicts as a product of context. For some, the murderous attacks of October 7 were a deep shock that no background is necessary to understand. For others, it was a product of a history of blockade and abuse that left many victims with few options. For some, the horrific Israeli attack and forced relocation of most of Gaza’s population is a repetition of the 1948 Nakba. For others, it is an inevitable response to the violence of October 7. Even the most compassionate people seem to only muster a limp “Yes, but” about the suffering and death of those on the opposite side.
Second, dehumanization has set in as any sense of common humanity has been lost. But this actually falls short of describing how much rage is driving actions. Those who confront a rabid dog or a hornet’s nest have some sense that risks have to be carefully assessed and managed. There is no evidence that such careful balancing drove Hamas on October 7. Nor is it clear how the enormous death and destruction visited by Israeli forces on Gaza serve any strategy other than the enunciated ones of killing all Hamas members or (in what passes for realism) destroying the movement’s military and governing capacity, without replacing it. That is not just the Israeli leaders’ “day after,” it is explicitly an ongoing operation and thus their vision for the indefinite future.
Third, neither side seems to be aware of the messages the other is receiving, largely because each side shrugs off the messages it is sending. The Hamas Charter is frequently cited by Israeli officials and partisans. And it is a genuine document that indeed makes for frightening reading. I have never heard a Hamas member mention it in a speech or in writing, but that is irrelevant to many Israelis who see the October 7 slaughter as illustrating that Hamas’s essence is genocidal. The invocations of Amalek by Israel’s prime minister on the eve of the Israeli entry into Gaza, the unapologetic Israeli calls for ethnic cleansing, and the denunciation of United Nations officials for not facilitating the forced relocation of the territory’s inhabitants may be heard by many Israelis as rhetorical excess. However, most Palestinians with whom I speak understand them as a political action plan.
Such rhetoric might seem to make dialogue impossible. But my personal experience suggests almost the precise opposite—in private. Public discussions are shrill and characterized by rhetorical inflation. But I have found that makes many (especially non-specialists) hungry for calmer discussions, simply so the din doesn’t drown out their own understanding. Like many colleagues, I have participated in sober and reasoned (if distressed) discussions in classrooms, small groups, and synagogues.
The real problem with the screech of public debate and the darkness of the current hour is that they form the context in which policy analysis occurs—that is at least my only explanation for the extreme poverty of that analysis, almost all of which betrays either or both of two flaws.
First, much is based on an imaginary hope about what an actor will accept, often refusing to take that actor’s own words seriously: Arab states will pay the costs of what Israel has destroyed, Hamas fighters will board ships to distant shores, Israel will accept a Palestinian leadership that incorporates Hamas, everyone (including his Israeli jailers) will realize Marwan Barghouti is the answer to all questions, younger Palestinian leaders selected by international acclamation rather than elections will simply be followed because of their younger age, Mahmoud Abbas will step aside, Palestinian Authority leaders will march back into Gaza (where they will be welcomed), Israeli leaders will accept a two-state outcome, Gazans will greet external invitations to write new constitutions or curriculums, international aid agencies will help Gazans move to wherever Israel would like them to be, Egypt will accept population transfer, Israeli leaders will postpone perceived security challenges to their north, and Hamas will simply release the hostages it holds.
Second, there is a complete disconnect between preferred outcome and strategy and tactics—and sometimes a severance of cause and effect. Because Hamas is bad it can be eliminated. The Israeli military campaign will persuade Palestinians. Talking about the desirability of a two-state solution will make it happen. It is difficult to see how recent events will produce a negotiated settlement, a dovish Israeli public, a cowed settler movement, a disappearance of Hamas’s support base, an efficacious Palestinian leadership, or a revived peace process. Just the opposite: All these goals are being deeply undermined by the current war. Indeed, events are forcefully headed in dark directions, toward a further incorporation of the West Bank into Israel, a continued Israeli security presence in Gaza, a Gazan population relocated into new supercamps, a Palestinian “leadership” that even its international sponsors have stopped taking seriously, and radicalized publics. All these outcomes are being produced because of—and not in spite of—the actions of all parties.
Any serious policy prescription should therefore address how these trends can be reversed. And any reversal must be predicated on something other than key actors playing a part that others have scripted for them.
At present, the point of quoting Proust is to remind us how deeply-polarized partisanship has pulverized analytical thinking. Only when that eases—and there is no suggestion this will happen anytime soon—can we progress from Marcel Proust to Rodney King: “I just want to say, you know, can we all get along?”
