Dennis Ross, left, and Ghaith al-Omari. (Image credit: Courtesy Dennis Ross and Ghaith al-Omari)

On Tuesday, Middle East policy experts and former negotiators Ghaith al-Omari and Dennis Ross discussed the intricate history and enduring complexities of the Israel-Hamas war, exploring its deep-rooted issues and the challenges of finding a resolution during a virtual event hosted by Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI).

The event, titled “How Did We Get Here?,” featured the two speakers in a wide-ranging discussion moderated by Janine Zacharia, a lecturer in the Department of Communication who has spent close to two decades reporting on Israel, the Middle East, and United States foreign policy.

FSI has organized various other discussions centered around the Middle East conflict throughout the fall quarter. “At FSI, our purpose is to have a stream of seminars and events from different points of view,” said political scientist and FSI senior fellow Larry Diamond in an interview with Stanford Report. “We need to hear different perspectives on this long-running and tragic conflict and to provoke thinking, reflection, and hopefully more civil dialogue on campus.”

Tuesday’s event marked the second time al-Omari and Ross spoke at Stanford. The pair also appeared together at an in-person event on Oct. 11 at Stanford Hillel. Diamond, who attended that event, was impressed by the civil discourse between the two speakers. “I thought it was a very good, balanced, and deeply informative discussion,” said Diamond. “Students asked really smart and sometimes challenging questions, and there was a very good-spirited, mutually respectful dialogue.”

Diamond said he wished to bring al-Omari and Ross back to Stanford to speak with the community more broadly, and he hoped Tuesday’s event would allow more people to learn from these two informed experts.

Where to begin?

Zacharia began the discussion by acknowledging that many events throughout the region’s history could be considered the starting point of the current conflict. “ ‘Where do you start?’ is a polarizing question,” Zacharia said.

Al-Omari said he would begin in the 1980s when the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) agreed to accept the existence of the state of Israel. But while this recognition led to the Oslo Accords in the early 1990s, it also led to the formation of Hamas, which al-Omari called a “rebranding” of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine.

“Since then, there was a fight over who represents the Palestinians,” said al-Omari, who was the executive director of the American Task Force on Palestine and served as an advisor to the Palestinian negotiating team during the 1999-2001 permanent-status talks. He also held various other positions within the Palestinian Authority.

Al-Omari argued that in the subsequent decades, Hamas has struggled to determine whether it was a terror organization or a governance organization. “What we saw on Oct. 7 … is that ultimately, [terror] seems to be part of their DNA,” al-Omari said. “Using terror and violence for achieving political means won the debate within Hamas.”

Ross agreed with al-Omari’s assessment. “For a while [Hamas] tried to have it both ways,” said Ross, a former diplomat who served in the George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations, where he played a leading role in shaping U.S. involvement in the Middle East peace process. He also served two and half years as special assistant to President Obama and as National Security Council senior director for the Central Region.

“We got here because, in no small part, Hamas could never give up the idea that it was a resistance movement. It has never been about ending occupation. It has been about ending Israel,” Ross said. “So, if you asked me how we got here, we got here because ultimately Hamas knew it wasn’t great at governing, and to preserve its identity it had to once again revert to what it is.”

Al-Omari speculated that Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7 because it was feeling pressure to reassert itself in the Middle East following recent developments in which Israel took steps to maintain and strengthen peace with Arab countries across the region, including signing agreements like the Abraham Accords in 2020.

“I think they saw the trajectory in the region going in a direction that was very disadvantageous for them,” said al-Omari.

Hamas also likely felt threatened by Israel’s recent efforts to normalize relations with Saudi Arabia, Ross said. “I would emphasize scuttling the movement of Saudi normalization with Israel, which looked to be gaining quite a bit of momentum, was important to them.”

Differences from the 1990s

Zacharia wondered why the reaction to the violence unfolding in the Middle East – particularly on college campuses in the United States – is so different today than in the 1990s, a period that was also marked by Hamas terrorist attacks after crucial moments of peace negotiations.

“I don’t remember so many people coming in the streets and celebrating it as legitimate resistance to colonialism and occupation,” she said. “Why do you think that we are seeing so many people on campuses responding that way?”

For one thing, Ross said, Palestinians have done a much better job of telling their own story and highlighting their sense of victimization. Also, “I think we’ve seen a different culture emerge here, especially among progressives that are focused on the issue of white privilege, inequality, of oppressor and oppressed. I think all this has acquired a kind of standing in a way that didn’t exist in the 1990s … I think it’s a very different reality now than we had 30 years ago.”

Al-Omari said he objected to the use of terms like “settlers” and “colonialism” to describe the situation in Israel. “I’m very uncomfortable with them for a number of reasons. First of all, I just don’t think that it’s analytically right. You know, at the end of the day, we’re not talking about the French and Algeria … We’re talking about … the Jewish people, who have a very clear connection to the land … so to think of it as simply a settler-colonial thing … obscures this very salient fact.”

More important though, al-Omari said, the use of such terms implies that Israel should disappear as a nation. “I find that extremely problematic,” he added. “Israel is a sovereign state. One of the key pillars of the international order as we understand it is the preservation of sovereignty and the inviolability of sovereignty. So any narrative that ultimately seeks to lead to the destruction and elimination of an existing nation-state, I find it extremely problematic, both politically and legally, and frankly morally.”

Impossible issues to resolve

Both al-Omari and Ross said that what makes the conflict so difficult to resolve is getting the two sides to agree on a common narrative – about their histories, about themselves, and their relationship to one another.

Technical issues can ultimately be resolved, Ross said, but narrative is the main “sticking point,” Ross said. “The narrative issues are the hard ones, because … you’re asking both sides to take on history and mythology – that’s profoundly difficult.”

Al-Omari agreed and recalled that one of the most frustrating episodes for him as a negotiator was when he tried to get Israelis and Palestinians to agree on a joint narrative about what happened in 1948 when war broke out after five Arab nations invaded the newly announced state of Israel. “After hours and liters of coffee and many cigarettes, at the end of the day, we couldn’t agree, was 1948 a good year or a bad year? … So we really have to think, are there different ways of tackling these issues without expecting any side to give up on their core identities?”

It’s precisely because of this narrative issue that al-Omari doesn’t think a “one-state solution” can ever work. “You have to have a degree of separation – peaceful, yes – but separation,” he said.

Ross agreed, and he concluded his remarks with an unsettling observation: In the Middle East, wherever there is more than one national, tribal, or sectarian identity, you have a state that is either failing or paralyzed by war.

“So if you want the Israelis and the Palestinians to look like Libya, to look like Lebanon, to look like Syria, to look like Yemen – that’s not a particularly hopeful prospect, and that’s certainly not something I think Israelis and Palestinians would want for themselves.”