As the war in the Gaza Strip enters its fourth month, on the surface it might seem like possibilities for long-term, peaceful solutions are impossible. Even before the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel by Hamas-led forces from Gaza, many analysts were already declaring the idea of a two-state solution dead.
There are real barriers to the creation of a Palestinian state alongside a separate Israel. For example, the current Israeli government rejects the creation of a Palestinian state, and Hamas refuses to recognize Israel. After Oct. 7, some analysts think the barriers are even more insurmountable.
As a scholar of political violence and conflict, I think the unprecedented scale of violence in Israel and Gaza is creating equally unprecedented urgency to find a solution, not just to the current violence, but to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Few, if any, historical conflicts neatly compare to the one between Israelis and Palestinians. But there are similarities in the fall of apartheid in South Africa in the early 1990s, when growing international pressure and an intensifying war focused attention on an unsustainable system – and pushed people to find possibilities for peace that previously seemed impossible.
The fall of South African apartheid
In 1948, the white-nationalist Afrikaner National Party was elected to run South Africa, a country that had already been controlled by a colonial white minority government.
The National Party formalized racial segregation policies in a system known as apartheid, an Afrikaans word that means “apartness” or “separateness.” Apartheid ranked people by racial group, with white people at the top, Asian and people of mixed heritage lower, and Black people at the bottom with the most restrictions and fewest rights – for example, to live or work where they chose.
As the war in the Gaza Strip enters its fourth month, on the surface it might seem like possibilities for long-term, peaceful solutions are impossible. Even before the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel by Hamas-led forces from Gaza, many analysts were already declaring the idea of a two-state solution dead.
There are real barriers to the creation of a Palestinian state alongside a separate Israel. For example, the current Israeli government rejects the creation of a Palestinian state, and Hamas refuses to recognize Israel. After Oct. 7, some analysts think the barriers are even more insurmountable.
As a scholar of political violence and conflict, I think the unprecedented scale of violence in Israel and Gaza is creating equally unprecedented urgency to find a solution, not just to the current violence, but to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Few, if any, historical conflicts neatly compare to the one between Israelis and Palestinians. But there are similarities in the fall of apartheid in South Africa in the early 1990s, when growing international pressure and an intensifying war focused attention on an unsustainable system – and pushed people to find possibilities for peace that previously seemed impossible.
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