This commentary is by Liam Madden of Brattleboro, a Marine Corps veteran, a national antiwar leader, an MIT Climate Change Solver, and winner of a human rights award from the Institute for Policy Studies. He ran for Congress last year.
Do you know what a night terror is? My 4-year-old had a night terror last night. If you don’t know, a night terror is when a child wakes up in unconsolable fear, screaming gibberish, and they don’t remember it in the morning.
The threat is illusory, but the terror and suffering they feel is real, and nothing a father can say penetrates the hard shell of unconscious and all-consuming dread.
With him wailing in my arms, with nothing I could say to help ease his fear, my mind wandered to the images of parents of the children in the war zone of Gaza, where mothers are right now attempting to console their 4-year-olds. Except there, the terror is real, and so is the actual threat. I wonder how any parent could help but ache for their situation now, or their Israeli counterparts three weeks ago.
My 18-month-old, Winn, is still in diapers. Last night I reached for one in half-hearted gratitude that I have them, while wincing at the painful scene in my mind of a father who desperately wonders where the water to drink, never mind the water to clean the feces off his child, will come from, and what wartorn rag will have to suffice as a diaper.
I clench to brace against the feelings these thoughts provoke, knowing that only the luckiest fathers in Gaza get to have their days tormented by problems like an excruciating, humiliating, and disease-risking diaper change. The unluckier fathers have children with massive burns and barely stitched-together wounds being tended in conditions perfect for infections to run rampant. The unluckiest — well, we know their fate. They, or their children, are already dead, even if they are part of the 93% of Gazans who never voted for Hamas, or the 65% of Israelis who don’t vote for the ruling Likud party.
I am not running for office again next election, nor the one after, if ever. So please understand that my purpose is not to change your mind, or to see a certain side win, or to jockey for political position, but to propose that we discuss what would actually help to ensure that as few as possible are added to the list of the 1,200 Israelis and 10,000 Palestinians killed thus far, or the countless more who are powerless to console their wailing, starving, traumatized and/or dying children.
Our Vermont congressional delegation has called for a “humanitarian pause.” This gesture acknowledges that the people of Gaza, half of whom are children, are almost all innocent human beings, and that the campaign to fight Hamas has taken an overwhelming and unacceptable toll on them, killing an estimated 50 civilians for every single Hamas fighter.
What I think is impotent and hollow about their calls is that it implicitly suggests that our representatives are limited to “call” for a cease-fire, as though they do not have enormous leverage to actually insist on one, lest there be consequences that the combatants would have to take seriously.
During the last congressional election, I said that the U.S. providing arms to Ukraine should be contingent on willingness to negotiate. Nearly two years later, having lost significant territory and over 400,000 people, Ukraine must now limp to the negotiating table to beg for terms that Russia would have happily agreed to then. The idea of leveraging our support toward negotiation would have then, as it would now, save hundreds of thousands of lives. And we find ourselves, again, with an opportunity to be thoughtful, compassionate and strategic instead of being swept up by the fervor for vicarious vengeance.
Meaning, instead of penning a heartfelt letter that Netanyahu and Hamas leaders will never read, what a Vermont legislative delegation would do if they were interested in actually leveraging American power on behalf of protecting innocent lives is to propose terms of negotiation and consequences for ignoring them. Such terms could revolve around the following fundamentals:
1. Security guarantee. Offer a treaty wherein USA backs Israel against potential military aggression, negating need for continued yearly $4 billion in military aid.
2. Statehood for Palestine — nonmilitarized, Hamas candidates disqualified.
3. Settlers leave and/or live under Palestinian sovereignty.
4. Station U.N. Peacekeepers to retaliate against terrorists with targeted raids.
5. Stipend — no refugees return to Israel, but Israel pays civilians for land seized.
“Negotiation? …but what about Israel’s security?”
If the U.S. is part of a treaty that guarantees to defend Israel from militaries of nation states attacking Israel, then Israel’s existential threats are radically minimized. Israel should get that treaty in exchange for Palestinian statehood, leaving the illegal settlements constructed since 1993 (Oslo Accord) and ending the continued U.S. military aid since Israeli security is otherwise guaranteed through this proposed treaty.
“Palestinian Statehood? But what about the right of return of the Palestinian refugees who were cast out of their homes in 1948 and ’67?”
The agreement would entail these refugees abdicate right of return that they are entitled to under international law (the item that purportedly stymied previous peace deals), but this time the Israeli government will financially reimburse the refugees for the value of the property at today’s market rates, mediated by a panel of secular judges from places like Iceland, Japan and other neutral and religiously nonaligned nations. These refugees would be first in line for the recently vacated homes on the illegal settlements.
Peace, rights and security require compromise on both sides. If either side won’t compromise, our congressional delegation should draft embargos to actually leverage the combatants to participate, instead of making symbolic gestures with no real-world effect. This means there should be no aid, or trade, for any side that doesn’t agree to these or similar terms.
If either side continues to kill civilians in egregious proportion to combatants, then Vermont’s delegation should propose a blockade of all incoming trade to the offenders’ ports and airports. This kind of approach is what ultimately helped to resolve the decades-long conflict in South Africa.
This is what a proactive, solutions-oriented delegation would be discussing instead of presenting a facade that the situation is beyond their ability to influence.
Sens. Sanders and Welch, Rep. Balint, are you aware that you have power to do more than write letters to help end the unmitigated killing of civilians we see unfolding without an end in sight?
