Nothing will be the same (again and again)

The guilt of wanting everything to go back to the way it was

There is one thing that every section of opinion on Israel/Palestine must now agree on: The Israeli strategy towards Gaza, in place since the mid-2000s, no longer works.

For a long time we knew where we were. Every year or two there would be a few days of Hamas or Islamic Jihad rocket fire on Israel. There would then be a few days of air  strikes on Gaza. Then there would be some kind of ceasefire (acknowledged or otherwise). Some Israelis would be killed or injured. A lot more Gazans would be killed or injured. Then things would be relatively quiet until the next time. Some in Israel called it 'mowing the grass', an apt if dehumanising metaphor.

Many of us believed this was unsustainable in the medium to long-term (aside from the morality of it) and so it has proved. But for me personally, the last few days of horror have sparked an unexpected feeling: If only we could go back to the previous 'arrangement'. If only we could know that this will all settle down in a few days and we could forget about it for a while. If only I could avoid being sucked into the maelstrom of online discourse that explodes at times like this.

Needless to say, this is profoundly selfish and I feel guilty for even thinking this. There is no cause for any nostalgia for the good old days of last week. But what this feeling has brought home to me in a highly visceral way is the desperate power of conservatism, the terrible fear of change.

You might think that the conservative impulse is the mark of privilege. After all,  unlike Palestinian residents of Gaza or Israel residents of kibbutzes on the border, I am not directly in the firing line. Sure, I am at risk from the antisemitism that always spikes at times like these and my heart aches for the fate of the many Israelis that I know. I will survive though, and even thrive, regardless of what happens.

Yet it would be a mistake to see conservatism as a luxury only the privileged can afford. One of the laziest takes on Palestinian resistance is that it is a kind of instinctual, desperate action of  people with 'nothing left to lose'. While it is certainly true that the terrible conditions in Gaza and elsewhere in Palestine ensure that groups like Hamas have no shortage of recruits and supporters, there is always 'something to lose'. In desperate situations, the instinct to keep one's head down is at least as strong as any other reaction (I am refraining from quoting historical examples to avoid making analogies that may be misunderstood).

So I strongly suspect that many Gazans might be missing the slightly lesser horrors of the mowing the grass era; at least they were predictable and time-limited to a degree. And I also suspect that this conservative impulse may even extent to some of those who supported last weekend's actions and feel guilty that their secret desire to 'just make it stop' overrides their ideals. None of this means that regrets or a meek surrender is likely. It's just that our ideals and our politics sometimes conflict with our base instincts. That's true of all of us, whether we are members of Hamas or of the Liberal Democrats.

For myself, the desire for things to just stay the same has grown in the last few years. I am sick - sometimes literally - of the succession of moments I have experienced when it has become clear that 'things will never be the same'.

Some of that is to do with the pandemic, and how it exacerbated what was already a turbulent period in my life. I have a vivid memory of my son coming home from school a couple of days before lockdown was announced. He's been sent home at about 9:30 as there were barely any teachers or pupils. He never really went back to school - his final year was punctuated by lockdowns, remote learning and chaotic examinations. In fact, life never really went back to 'normal'. By the time of the 2022-23 academic year my son was at university, my daughter was ill with a long-term condition and my father had Alzheimer's. Sometimes I fantasise it was all just a blip, that one day soon the old pre-2020 routines will be restored; my father will be as he was, my kids will be back into the old rhythms of the school day. I even feel this despite many aspects of my life having improved since 2020 (my son is thriving at university). I just want my old life back, however imperfect it was.

Yes yes yes I realise that talking about my own, relatively minor woes at a time like this is self-indulgent. But the contradictory impulses I am trying to grapple with in my own life help explain why societies, cultures, states and civilizations get caught in conservate yearnings for things to stay the same even as radical change is self-evidently necessary.

That's a particularly pressing question when it comes to climate change. Personally, I am becoming bifurcated: I recognise that we are long past the point where cautious incremental change can prevent the catastrophe that is emerging. The only chance we have is a radical reordering of how our societies and economies work. Yet I dread this radicalism even though I know it is preferable to the alternative.

Ultimately, the conservative impulse leaves you terribly vulnerable to those who are prepared to break things. As so many of have dithered in responding to climate change, those who seek to prevent action have always been ahead of the game. So far ahead are they that they are putting the building policies in place for the certainty of millions of climate refugees. Anti-immigrant policies and walls will allow them to preserve a measure of their own security as the rest of the world burns.

And Hamas have shown that they are prepared to break things too. In doing so they have exposed the indolence, the smugness and the delusions of Israelis who thought things could simmer indefinitely without coming to boil. And now, as much of Israel blunders forward without a map, it is the far right who may fill the vacuum: They have the confidence to break stuff, to make that leap from brutal warfare with multiple civilian casualties to outright genocide.

I don't know how to end this. I could talk about the need to support each other to be braver, to mourn in order to know how to go on. But really I am probably going to listen to some cheesy power metal, watch old sitcom episodes on my tablet and try not to think about stuff; to put off changing myself and changing the world for just one more day.