While driving down the main drag of an Arab village on a tour of Samaria, my tour guide, Boaz Haetzani, drew my attention to the signs outside the stores and pointed out that many of them bore the word "Andalus."
"They miss Spain and they intend to go back there, too. From their standpoint, Spain was stolen from them just like Palestine," he said.
The fact that the country of Spain existed before and after its Muslim conquest does not change this perception: According to the laws of Allah, Spain belongs to the Muslims. They were there at one point and they were forced to leave. There are Muslims who call for the realization of a right of return to Spain, and some who even see themselves as refugees who fled from Spain and the Spanish as occupiers.
Muslim refugeeism and Western refugeeism are two entirely different concepts. A Muslim can be a refugee even if his father and grandfather never fled any country. They can also be refugees from a country they forcibly conquered and were subsequently kicked out of. Muslim refugeeism is metaphysical, and, as such, eternal. If a Muslim does not conquer or reconquer what was given to him by Allah, meaning the world in its entirety, he has shirked his religious obligation.
Metaphysical refugeeism is made possible by a combination of two basic principles – clinging to the land and nonlinear time. While Western culture sanctifies the present, Muslim time stretches across another axis, in which the present is of lesser importance. A devout Muslim scorns the Western culture of instant gratification and the failure of those in West to withstand hardship and suffering. The suffering in the Gaza Strip, for example, is seen as a tax that must be paid, the sufferers themselves but a link in an important chain that is larger than the sum of its parts.
The current escalation in Gaza has once again brought our deep misunderstanding of Muslim theology to the forefront. This time, though, the hubris has been equally divided among the two camps. The Left continues to be held captive by the romantic notion that the people in Gaza are nothing but desperate victims who are forced to contend with predatory Zionism with nothing but a slingshot in their hands. Of course, the opposite is in fact true. The reality is that the gasoline fueling the incendiary kites is not a sign of desperation but the aspiration of conquering the land from the north to the south.
The Right, too, with its calls for the government to reach a one-and-done solution and topple the Hamas regime has been tainted by an arrogance that amount to contempt for the enemy. While our security forces can topple Hamas, the question is what will take its place. It stands to reason it will not be a new leadership that supports equality between the sexes and LGBT rights. The more realistic scenario is that in the absence of centralized leadership, several groups will rise up and set the border on fire in return for a symbolic payment from the Iranian patron.
Even if Israel is forced to return to Gaza, and even if it retakes the territory, we must be honest with ourselves and recognize that any such action would be cosmetic only. The people in Gaza will not be deterred by the Right's stick, nor will they be satisfied with the carrot offered by the Left. The notion that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or the occupation is responsible for the current situation is megalomaniacal and narcissistic. He who takes full blame assumes he is omnipotent.
For the people in Gaza, this is a zero-sum game: It is either us or them. The only thing left for Israel to do then is manage the conflict, because a resolution just isn't on the table.
