Our main dilemmas

Destruction from Israeli aerial bombardment in Gaza City, October 11, 2023. (AP Photo/Adel Hana)

Here are the main dilemmas we all face – especially the decision makers and the questions that I am asking myself and struggling with:

• How to bring the hostages home – all of them – without surrendering to Hamas?
• How to ensure that Hamas will not be ruling Gaza and continuing to threaten Israel without killing so many more innocent Palestinian civilians and without totally flattening Gaza?
• How to ensure that Gaza will not be led by Hamas and that it will be demilitarized after the war?
• How to bring about a reconstruction of Gaza, demilitarized, unify Gaza with the West Bank and East Jerusalem once again, have deep and need reforms in the Palestinian Authority, including democratic elections for a new leadership?
• How to end the delusion that Israel can rule over another people and their land and have peace?
• How to end the delusion that more than 2 million people can be kept in an open-air prison for 18 years and expect to have quiet?
• How to create a new vision and plan for re-engagement between Israel and Palestine towards a new and genuine peace process leading to the possibility of living in peace?
• How to ensure that our neighbors in Jordan and Egypt will not be overthrown because of the ongoing war in Gaza and the death and destruction of so many civilians?
• How do we enlist the active constructive support of Arab countries, those with peace agreements with Israel and those without peace agreements with Israel, in the post-war period?
• How to accomplish all of the above with a ceasefire and no ground incursion into Gaza?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The writer is the Middle East Director of ICO - International Communities Organization - a UK based NGO working in Conflict zones with failed peace processes. Baskin is a political and social entrepreneur who has dedicated his life to peace between Israel and her neighbors. He is also a founding member of “Kol Ezraheiha - Kol Muwanteneiha” (All of the Citizens) political party in Israel.