On Wednesday, May 1, the Department of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies (JNE) at the University of Massachusetts hosted the annual Robert and Pamela Jacobs lecture in Jewish Culture, titled “Israel, Hamas, and the Old-New Middle East,” featuring Former U.S. Ambassador Daniel Kurtzer.

Kurtzer is a veteran diplomat that served in numerous key roles at the U.S. Department of State. His tenure included postings in Egypt and Israel and significant involvement in the Arab-Israeli peace process. After retiring in 2006, Kurtzer joined Princeton University as a chair in Middle East policy studies.

Over the course of the semester, due to the Israel-Palestine conflict, the JNE department has hosted both Palestinian and Israeli speakers to provide insight into the war, explained David Mednicoff, chair of the JNE department and associate professor of Middle Eastern studies and public policy.

“I believe that most of us on campus likely [have] shared desire for the current war in Gaza to end and for a peaceful and secure future for all people living in the region. But we may disagree on what a just or fair solution to this conflict should be or what an actual realistic solution to this conflict can be,” Mednicoff said.

Kurtzer worked in the U.S. government for 30 years. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, he traveled to Gaza every week for four years and reported back with information that was critical for American national interests.

“After not many visits, I came back to the [U.S.] Embassy in Tel Aviv [and] my ambassador went to the Israeli military governor of Gaza and said, ‘I don’t know why you guys are supporting the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Gaza,’” Kutzer said.

Kurtzer explained that the Palestine Liberation Organization was initially established by Egypt as an extension of Egyptian policy. According to him, after 1967, the PLO took a prominent role in the Arab-Israeli conflict and Yasser Arafat assumed leadership of the organization in 1968. By the early 1970s, the PLO emerged as the principal resistance force against Israel.

The response Kurtzer received from the military governor was that the Islamic fundamentalists were “better” than the PLO.

Kurtzer was told that the “PLO wants a state, PLO wants us to withdraw from the occupied territories. These guys are religious, they want to build mosques, they want to build the Islamic University.”

A few years after this, the first Palestinian uprising, known as the Intifada, emerged, the main players in which were Fatah and Hamas. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, Hamas has been recognized as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union since 1997.

Kurtzer’s main point of discussion was whether the current developments in the Israel-Palestine war could be marked as an inflection point. “This war in Gaza is different from all other wars,” he said.

Firstly, Kurtzer explained that it was stimulated by an invasion of the state of Israel, which has never occurred before. According to him, Israel has only been previously attacked on occupied territory, but Hamas was the first to directly attack Israeli land.

Furthermore, he explained that it is “impossible” to comprehend the “brutality” of the war. When Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, around 1,200 Israelis were killed and sexually assaulted. However, due to Jewish customs of immediate burial after death, the assault is difficult to prove.

“So, the allegations that we’ve heard later of rape and sexual aggression, were impossible to prove other than through the testimony of those who had been affected,” Kutzer said.

Kurtzer stated that this “sexual aggression” was a part of Hamas’ plan and has “left a mark on the state of Israel unlike anything else.”

The Oct. 7 attack, according to him, was an intelligence and operational failure but also a civil society success. He explained that because the government did not function well on Oct. 8, civil society “filled that vacuum,” like when individuals came together to feed soldiers and help them get to the front to fight.

“Civil society is still functioning in a place where the government of Israel is still having a hard time dealing with the aftermath of Oct. 7,” he added.

As a response to Hamas’ attack, over 30,000 people have been killed in Gaza. South Africa has brought a case against Israel, which many countries have since joined, saying that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

“Israel’s not committing genocide in Gaza, but they’re killing a lot of people,” Kurtzer said. “They have ministers who are saying outrageous things about genocide but Israeli government policy and the policy of the Israeli Defense Forces is not to commit genocide.”

Kurtzer explained that in 2020, four Arab states joined Jordan and Egypt in normalizing relations with Israel. According to him, none of countries have broken or stopped developing relations with Israel during this time and it has not changed the U.S.’s support for Israel either.

“There is almost nothing that will shake [President] Joe Biden’s support for the state of Israel,” said Kurtzer.

The White House will be making a decision on whether recipients of U.S. weapons are abiding by U.S law, which implies that said recipients cannot commit human rights violations.

However, Kurtzer believes that if Biden does not want to punish Israel, it will be difficult to come to a decision. He added that if Biden keeps supporting Israel, the president will not recover from the loss of critical swing state voters. Additionally, people who do not want to vote for either party will “kill the president’s chances at reelection.”

Kurtzer’s advice for the younger generation in terms of voting is, “Don’t do something silly by not voting for Biden. Because as bad as he is, in your view, the other guy’s worse. And when the other guy wins, because you haven’t voted for Biden, he’s going to turn on you.”

If the war ends, Kurtzer thinks “there may be a new Middle East coming out of this, the dynamics of which we don’t know. It certainly will involve the rebuilding of Gaza.”

Kurtzer explained that there will need to be three phases of the reconstruction of Gaza, institutionally, structurally, and politically. However, he thinks that even if that is all done, Gaza will be the same it was on Oct. 6, which he described as a “failed security system.”

“Who’s gonna try to be the marshal to watch out for the resurgence of Hamas?” he asked.

The idea of a two-state solution has been discussed for decades, but according to Kurtzer, will now only “get a snicker,” if mentioned in Washington D.C.

“But there is not a better solution than giving these two peoples a right of self-determination to become an independent state, after which they can decide what to do with each other,” Kurtzer said.

When asked what sort of policy action shift he sees and how people can support it, Kurtzer answered that Biden must give a speech on what a two-state solution can mean. He thinks Biden should lay out what needs to be done, and “make sure [that] this becomes an integral part of American policy.”

Daniella Pikman can be reached at [email protected]