Marty Levine
November 17, 2025
For more than two years, the story of Israel and Palestine centered on Gaza.
On October 7, 2023, Hamas fighters broke through a supposedly impenetrable barrier, overcame a supposedly undefeatable Israeli military, and, at least for two days, brought their struggle onto Israeli soil. The cost in human life and suffering was terrible, especially because many of the victims were civilians and much of the fighting took place in civilian areas.
After Hamas was driven back into Gaza, the toll for Israel was seen in all of its magnitude. 1,200 Israelis dead and many more wounded. Evidence of unspeakable brutality was described by those who survived. And almost 250 men, women, and children were taken to Gaza as hostages.
Then, more than two years of retribution began. Using its immense military might, Israel began a systematic attack that made as little effort as Hamas had to distinguish fighter from civilian. Step by step, month by month, Gaza was bombarded, and a siege was imposed. Civilians were forced to flee from their homes and then forced to flee again and again as what was thought to be a safe haven turned into another place for Israel to bombard. The entire infrastructure of Gaza was severely damaged, if not destroyed. Hospitals, schools, electrical grids, sewage systems, and most of the housing were all flattened by Israeli bombardment.
Because of the brutality of these two years, the political debate seemed to be reduced to this one place and this moment. Could we get a ceasefire? Could we, should we, restrict arms sales to Israel? It was as if the issue of Israel and Palestine had no history that did not start on October 7, 2023. It was as if all Palestinians lived in Gaza, and there were also millions living under Israeli control on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem.
Over these two years, the graphic brutality of the moment has sparked a fierce debate over what was taking place. Was Israel’s response warranted by the brutality of the October 7 attack? Was their response just an appropriate act of self-defense against a vicious and tricky adversary? Were Israel’s actions beyond the bounds of international law? Was Israel guilty of war crimes and of genocide?
And then, finally, a ceasefire was put into place, one that has mainly remained in force.
Over these two years, I have often written about this violence and my horror at what was being done in the name of Judaism and the Jewish people.
But there has been another victim of these past two years. The larger issues, the aspiration of Palestinians for their homeland, and the complicated challenges that this represents, have been lost. In Donald Trump’s rush to be a hero by creating peace in an area that has not been at peace for a century, he and we have forgotten that these last two years did not happen out of nowhere. It almost seems that to avoid how difficult the reality of Israel/Palestine is we are being asked to ignore any thoughts of what preceded that morning when a wall was pierced and a battle began. We are being asked to forget that things were not good then, that Israel was the occupying force controlling the lives of millions of Palestinians. Have we forgotten that no process existed to create a different future? Have we forgotten that Israel’s government and much of its Jewish population wished only for a greater Jewish Israel and did not care what became of their Palestinian citizens and those they governed under military rule?
The ceasefire, as fragile as it is, seems to allow public attention to drift away from a still stark and often deadly reality. While Gaza may no longer be as desperate a situation as it was a month ago, the situation in other places is only getting more desperate.
Consider this: On October 9th, Haaretz reported on the Israeli Government’s eviction of two Palestinian families from their homes in Jerusalem.
Dozens of police officers descended on Batan al-Hawa on Sunday, a neighborhood in the Silwan district of East Jerusalem, and evicted two Palestinian families from their homes. A woman in her 70s who collapsed during the raid and was removed for medical treatment was later said to be in good condition.
A total of 14 people, including children, were evicted and their household possessions removed. The Shweiki and Odeh families had been living in the houses since the 1970s.
These evictions were legal. Israeli law allows Jewish owners to reclaim property formerly owned by Jews that had been forced to move as borders and neighborhoods were rearranged to create the State of Israel. But, as Haaretz noted, this is a one-way proposition in terms of claims about lost property because the:
1970 law allowing Jews to reclaim property in East Jerusalem that had belonged to them…does not give the same right to Palestinians who were forced to abandon property in the western part of the city.
And just today, Haaretz reported on the residents of three Palestinian villages on land that should be part of a future Palestinian state being threatened with no longer being able to go in and out of their villages.
About two months after the army declared three Palestinian villages a closed military zone, several hundred of their residents haven’t received the Israeli permit they need in order to remain in their villages and their homes. The villages are Beit Iksa, Nabi Samwil and Khalaila, northwest of Jerusalem. On September 7, the head of IDF Central Command Avi Bluth declared them a “seam zone,” the area between the separation barrier and the Green Line, to which entry is forbidden to all Palestinians except its permanent residents.
The impact of this procedural change takes on a very human toll
“If I go out to work on November 10, they won’t let me return. And if I stay home, someone will take my job as a driver,” said A., a resident of Beit Iksa who requested anonymity, last week. At a meeting that took place in the office of the village council, he told Haaretz that the Civil Administration officer told him to submit a request to the Shin Bet security service to lift the security restriction. But since October 7, 2023, these requests have been frozen, A. explained.
Just days earlier, Haaretz reported this
There are 877 checkpoints and roadblocks spread between and around Palestinian enclaves in the West Bank (known as Areas A and B), according to documentation and a tally from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. About one-quarter of those – 220 – have been placed since October 2023. Between February and September of this year, OCHA counted 28 new roadblocks. A similar survey by the Palestinian Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission done in September found 911 roadblocks, 80 of which have been set up since early 2025. This slight discrepancy indicates the multitude of roadblocks, how widespread they are and the spontaneity with which they are set up – so the answer sometimes depends on the day.
In addition, there are also surprise pop-up roadblocks, where soldiers stand for an hour or two between villages or at the entrance, stopping every car and examining Palestinian drivers’ and passengers’ IDs, sometimes also photographing them. Their location varies, but the practice remains the same. Such was the case this Sunday (November 2), when 17 surprise roadblocks popped up, 11 of them in the Ramallah district. According to data from the PLO Negotiations’ department, 495 pop-up checkpoints appeared in September – with similar numbers recorded in previous months.
Another story, which recaps almost daily incidents of settlers attacking Palestinians, was headlined “Settlers Raid West Bank Industrial Zone, Wound Four Palestinians, Attack IDF Soldiers”
This is what life is like in areas that were not governed, as Gaza was, by Hamas. This is all happening in areas that were not at war during the past two years. These actions are all happening in areas that are to be part of the future Palestinian state.
And things are not different for those living as non-Jewish citizens of Israel. Here’s how Bedouin residents of villages that existed before the state was created are treated because they are Palestinians, as reported by Haaretz.
A Bedouin village in southern Israel with about 500 residents has been ordered to evacuate in 90 days, despite plans to build a new neighborhood on the village’s lands getting canceled, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday, thus ending a decades-long legal battle.
The village of Ras Jraba was supposed to be destroyed to allow for the expansion of the southern Israeli city of Dimona, following a lawsuit filed by the Israel Land Authority, which claims that the villagers are trespassing on state lands. In response, the village residents requested to be assimilated into the city and for a neighborhood to be built for them in Dimona…
…The Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, which represented the village’s residents, said that the Supreme Court’s ruling greenlights the evacuation of Bedouins for evacuation’s sake, even if there’s no plan to build on the lands. It added that by doing so, the court allows for a policy of destruction, disenfranchisement and Judaization of the area….his ruling throws the village’s residents into the unknown, leaving them without a roof over their heads.
Millions of Palestinians living under the thumb of an Israeli government that does not now and did not then appear committed to any form of permanent solution that sees Palestinians as equal human beings entitled to the same rights as Jewish Israelis and entitled to their own desire for national self-determination. It is, as it was then, life as a second-class people treated as lesser and entitled only to the dignities or indignities that the Israeli government deigns to allow them.
Over two long years, there was concern, well deserved, for those who were taken hostage. Yet the thousands of Palestinian detainees that Israel seized with the same lack of humanity and due process that Hamas demonstrated when it seized its hostages was of little, if any, concern, tells us so much about why there is no imminent solution and peace in our future.
Last February, Mohammed Ibrahim — then 15 — was awoken and pulled from his bed by Israeli soldiers, who said he’d been spotted throwing stones in the occupied West Bank. He’s Palestinian-American, and his family splits their time between the Tampa area and a sprawling stone house surrounded by olive trees in this West Bank village. “Around 3:30 in the morning, they blindfolded him, handcuffed him — they just took him,” his mother, Muna Ibrahim, 46, recalls. “Since that day I didn’t see my son. I didn’t hear his voice.” Mohammed, a U.S. citizen, has been in Israeli prison since then, without family visits or phone calls. In March, he turned 16 behind bars, and faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
Excusing the brutality of October 7th is not my point. Excusing the sexual violence or the taking of hostages is not my point.
But if you do not see how people’s lives are being shaped, on what the impact of being an occupied people as Israel has occupied the Palestinians, you are just avoiding having to confront the truth, as painful as it is.
And this blindness has long been a feature of the State of Israel. And it is a feature of too many in our country who refuse to open their eyes and their minds.
October 7, 2023, did not begin the problem. Its violence did not come out of nowhere. It is the unfortunate but expectable outcome of a state that sees Jews as a privileged class entitled to fulfil their desire for an exclusionary state and place all others in a “lesser than” position that should be grateful for whatever level of life they are permitted.
The peace and better future so many voices say they desire will only come when the humanity of all people is recognized and the demonization of the “other” stops. Only then can the difficult situation be resolved. And those are voices I find it difficult to hear because so few, particularly those with the power to make it happen, are brave enough to speak.
