No amount of airstrikes will end the conflict between Israel and Hamas

Editorial: The peace process cannot make much progress without the United States intervening

Mourners attend the funeral of Israeli Arab Khalil Awaad and his daughter Nadine, 16, in the village of Dahmash near the Israeli city of Lod (AP)

The eruption of anger and violence that has threatened civil war in parts of Israel and Palestine was both sudden and, paradoxically, long coming.

The immediate cause looks to have been Israeli military action against Palestinians in the al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem, as well as demonstrations by militant Israelis. Hamas has launched hundreds of missiles indiscriminately at Israel. Israel has taken out a senior Hamas commander. The city of Lod is in flames. Claims and counter-claims about terrorism and about who provoked who continue to rage, as they have done so often in the past.

Perhaps the nascent intifada will soon, almost literally, burn itself out; perhaps it might persist into the kind of lower-level persistent conflict that has prevailed in past uprisings. Both sides are vengeful enough to make the escalation of fighting still more intense. It might be confined, or not, to particular areas where Israeli Arabs and Israeli Jews live in proximity, as in Lod.

Gangs are roaming about, inflicting injury and destroying property. The mayor of Lod, Yair Revivo, has warned that “civil war” is indeed breaking out. But he adds something that even the most extreme and zealous would have to concede: “The day after, we still have to live here together.”

Something seems to have gone badly wrong with the methods developed by both sides over many years to sustain their uneasy coexistence. These at least minimised the chances that occasional outbreaks of unrest and acts of terror (including state terror) would turn into some sort of conflagration. Israeli, Fatah and Hamas intelligence about the mood on the street and within official circles appears to have failed, unusually, and matters have now taken on a momentum of their own. Hence the escalation and sense of crisis.

It is not, though, a process that is unstoppable. With pressure from the UN, United States and Europe, and the dawning realisation of leaders on all sides that a civil war is unwinnable, the violence could peak and then subside over the coming days. As Mr Revivo says, Hamas missiles do not differentiate between Jews and Arabs in his intermingled city. A war between Gaza and Israel would be an unequal, pitiless affair, and would make peace and stability even more distant. No amount of air strikes or rocket attacks will end this decades-old conflict.

The roots of the conflict hardly need rehearsing, and for the people who happen to live in these crowded lands, the immediate problems are evident. It is said that no country should accept this level of threat, and that Israel is entitled to defend itself. That is true, and Israel is rarely slow to respond to force with punitive force of its own. But it does not always work. The “iron dome” missile defence system is impressive but not impregnable. Hamas forces are not going to be eliminated, no matter how hard Israel hits them. If a military solution were possible, it would have been achieved long ago.

It is also true that few democratic states have behaved towards their own people and their neighbours as the state of Israel has towards the Palestinian people, be that within Israel, in the occupied territories, or in the areas controlled by Palestinian entities.

One consequence of Israel’s diplomatic mission to gain recognition from states such as the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan might be to make its government more sensitive to international opinion, and exercise some restraint in a way it might not if no such dialogue existed (though Egypt, the first Arab state to recognise Israel, has failed in its effort to secure a ceasefire).

But of course the peace process cannot make much progress without the United States intervening with the Netanyahu government. Even if President Biden has more immediate priorities than the usually futile quest for a lasting peace in the Middle East, and is keen to disengage from Afghanistan and Iraq, the scenes coming out of Israel and Gaza serve as another reminder to him that America and the world cannot afford to neglect the region for long.