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How Mistaken Beliefs Led to Oct. 7
(Mosaic) Gadi Taub - The frame of mind that animated the defunct peace process continues to inform Israeli, American, and European political, administrative, and military actions. This is because the peace process is a conceptual framework rooted in a particular worldview. At the tactical level, Israel assumed a defensive, rather than offensive, military posture reliant on technological superiority. Like the rest of the West, Israel believed that its technological advantage was a sufficient deterrent. A "small, smart army" would therefore suffice because technology had made large ground wars obsolete. But our enemies were not deterred by our superior technology. They adapted to it and used low tech to subvert it. Israel's first choice was negotiations that would establish an agreed-upon border between two nation-states, tired of wars and determined to move toward cooperative coexistence. But peace was not forthcoming, when in 2000, then-prime minister Ehud Barak offered Yasir Arafat all the Israeli public could stomach and then some, only to be turned down and rewarded with the Second Intifada. So Israelis chose unilateral partition from Gaza with the 2005 disengagement. It was a trial-run for Palestinian statehood, based on the hope that the Palestinians would come around and realize, after tasting political independence and economic opportunities, the folly of endless war. The trial failed almost immediately. Rockets kept raining on Israel's towns after the disengagement and, in 2007, Hamas violently eliminated the PLO in Gaza, establishing a terror quasi-state. A regular, unending influx of international aid rendered economic development unnecessary. Aid flowed in because Israeli intelligence believed a higher standard of living would help pacify the Strip. Israel imagined the Palestinian national movement in the image of ours. We assumed that national self-determination was its goal and that Palestinians would seize the opportunity to assume political independence so they could build their political and economic future. But nation-building was never on their agenda. We would have understood this if we had studied their political culture seriously, instead of assuming they share ours. It was folly to imagine that of all Arab peoples, the Palestinians would prove the exception that would produce a stable nation-state. The principal grievance of the Palestinian cause is not the absence of a desired nation-state but the existence of another one. We also projected our own misconceptions of human nature onto the Palestinians. Contemporary Western elites assume that we all want a decent job, food on the table, and a safe environment to raise our children. But when we conceive of all life in these materialistic terms, we lose the ability to imagine the human capacity for evil. Encouraged by assumptions from America and Europe, Israelis failed to believe in their neighbors' sinister intentions. We did not take seriously their theology of hate, their deep-seated racism, and the depth of their barbaric sadism. The writer is a senior lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.