Last week, the Master’s Programme International Relations hosted a panel discussion called “Why has Western Policy failed on Palestine/Israel?”. The event, moderated by Prof. Christian Henderson, featured three former diplomats who resigned from their jobs at US and Dutch institutions in protest of their governments´ Israel and Palestine related policies.
Within the context of our university, which still refuses to condemn or cut ties with Israel and routinely represses its students’ peaceful pro-Palestine protests, this event felt like a rare pearl. Like pearls tend to do, however, it did not exactly shine its brilliance out in the open, but rather remained quite hidden, tucked away inside the small oyster of Schouwburgstraat’s Living Lab. Many students only found out about it quite late, when registration was already full, or after it happened. Luckily, though, at university notes have a habit of finding their way to the laptops of those who don’t make it to class. So, here are some notes.
The speakers
Before delving deep into the many topics that were discussed, let’s start with an overview of the guests, and their comments on the circumstances around their resignations.
Josh Paul
Josh Paul worked at the US State Department for over a decade. As Director of the office in charge of security assistance, he was part of the chain of approval for US arms sales everywhere in the world.
With a job like that, he had definitely encountered situations that questioned his morals before. However, he describes what he encountered last October as something unprecedented in his career: an exceptionally heavy flow of requests from Israel coupled with very high pressure to approve them uncritically, with no room for discussion whatsoever – a complete shutdown of internal debate. During other crises, he had felt that his personal contribution could somehow make a difference; this time, there was absolutely no leeway, so he left. Now, he tries to make an impact by speaking up about his experience instead.
He says he left the State Department at a time of internal “widespread repugnance for the US approach” and “discontent at all levels, either unprecedented or at least unseen since [the US invasion of] Iraq. People are saying ‘this isn’t what I signed up for, this isn’t the career I want’.” Nonetheless, we are yet to see en masse resignations. Some did applaud his choice though, and particularly the fact he took it “early in the war.” He, however, refuses this framing, noting that in October “it was already clear mass killing of civilians was happening,” and that his choice was a “rational decision enabled by privilege, not act of courage.”
Angélique Eijpe
Angélique Eijpe worked for the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs for 21 years. When asked what specifically made her break now, after all this time, she says it was her realization that “we have given a green light for the destruction of a people.”
In October, she was relatively new to the Israel and Palestine file, but immediately disagreed with the Netherlands’ stance on the issue: bursting into her superiors’ office with what she calls “emotional talk,” she tried to convince them that “Israeli rhetoric was genocidal from the start, and Israel was going to practice what they preached.” While she assures that “the vast majority of people [within the Ministry] are struggling,” her plea remained isolated and went unheard.
At that point, resigning became a matter of personal and professional integrity. “I could no longer be part of that. I need to sleep at night; I’ll find some other way to make a living.” Much like Josh, she also is careful not to overstate the magnitude of her choice; “I quit my job, that’s all there is, not more, not less.”
Since her resignation, she has been busy raising awareness and trying to mobilize a bigger section of the diplomatic world, for instance by helping coordinate and spread a protest letter signed by over 800 European and US diplomats. That letter also happens to be what brought her in contact with Josh and Berber, and eventually led the three of them to speak at our university.
Berber van der Woude
Throughout her career at the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Berber van der Woude worked as a diplomat and policy advisor in several (post-)conflict areas, including Burundi, the DRC, and Colombia. Two years ago, however, her experience being posted in Ramallah, Palestine, pushed her to resign.
While she is open about the professional precarity this decision inflicted upon her, she clearly does not regret it. She says she appreciates finally having the “freedom to tell it like it is,” and that she feels that she has had a more positive impact on the Palestinian cause in these last two years outside MOFA than during her years within the institution. She describes the culture within the ministry as one unconducive to change, where “people are in there with their families, with their identities, waiting to get promoted; it is very difficult to get people to speak up. In private they will agree with you, but they are afraid to voice it. It’s an elephant in the room, and they try to ignore it.”
Similar to Angélique’s, Berber’s resignation also stemmed from some disturbing realizations about the real effects of her country’s policy on Palestine. She felt that her job, far from helping bring about peace, consisted in “hiding what’s happening from sight; holding up a smokescreen while annexation was ongoing.” There was a fundamental discrepancy between the picture she was expected to paint and the reality she observed, a reality she now openly calls Apartheid. As the discrepancy grew wider, this daily exercise of rhetorical gymnastics became untenable, and she had to leave.
So, why has Western policy failed on Palestine/Israel?
While the anecdotal experience of the guests was given a lot of attention, the panel discussion did not shy away from trying to answer its central question. Throughout the debate, four key concepts kept resurfacing, each offering a partial answer.
Dogmatism
All three speakers agreed that one major reason that the West is failing Palestine in such a monumental way is its dogmatic approach to the issue.
Policy makers have been so entrenched in their beliefs about Israel and Palestine that they have lost sight of their purported goal of promoting peace. For Berber, “most decision-makers maybe want peace as in lack of violence, but it’s clear they don’t want justice,” because instead of incorporating the observed reality of what’s happening on the ground into their policy, they “cut out pieces of reality from the conversation, and choose a dogmatic framework that’s not going anywhere.”
The situation in the US isn’t much different. For Josh, what sets the Palestine-Israel policy failure apart from others is the complete one-sidedness of the debate; as he puts it, “try to flip the script by replacing ‘Palestinian’ with ‘Israeli’, and they’ll look at you as if you had three heads.” He blames this on the dehumanization of Palestians and Arabs in general operated by the Israeli government, as well as on the influence of the pro-Israel lobbies active in the US, whose advocacy has managed to “make every criticism of Israel antisemitic.” Specifically, he mentions the Evangelical pro-Israel groups, who are having “a very real impact on the ground, actively helping settlement by funding it.”
Wasted expertise
Another recurring theme was that of wasted expertise: within the ministries, experts have collected plenty of evidence suggesting that the US and EU governments should make a u-turn on their Palestine policy, but the political leadership simply disregards it.
For instance, Berber notes that all Gaza watchers knew that “there was an October 7th waiting to happen. This was in the line of expectations the whole time.” Because political leadership has been refusing to incorporate evidence from the ground into its policy, though, that knowledge failed to translate into action.
She explains that in a democracy, foreign policy is supposed to be bottom-up, with recommendations making their way up from highly informed civil servants to the powerful figures in charge. When it comes to Palestine, however, “this system doesn’t apply: institutions are being bypassed, and this creates a situation where we produce policies not supported by expertise, or people.”
Josh shares similar concerns, and maintains that in the US, the direction of Israel policy is determined by the presidency; since Biden “believes in his Israel policy,” this means that currently within US governmental institutions “if you criticize Israel, you will lose your job; there is a strong pressure to fall in line, pushed by true believers.”
Josh’s use of the word ‘belief’ is not accidental, and points at a widespread tunnel vision problem that is fossilizing the debate, preventing the emergence of fresh solutions. On this topic, he makes the example of the two-states solution, of which he is very critical. He calls it “a policy based on false imagining that doesn’t match the reality on the ground, based on a belief, on an idea of what Israel is, and not on the reality of what it has become.” Angélique shares his criticism, saying that “the two-state solution is a figment of collective imagination, and we’ve known for twenty years. Yet, there is no space to imagine anything else.”
Resistance to systemic change
Much discussion also revolved around the West’s reluctance to ‘let its empire crumble’, as Berber put it, and how that informs its Palestine policies.
For Berber, Western inaction is undermining the credibility of the whole international system everywhere, as well as the credibility of the so-called Western values, which she prefers calling “human values.” She adds, “the empire is crumbling, but our institutions are still focused on amassing power: we are lagging behind what’s happening in the world.”
What is happening in the world, according to her, is that many countries that have suffered colonization and oppression recognize familiar patterns in Palestine’s plight and, as a result, sympathize with it in a way that the West, due to its own history, might be incapable of doing. “We need to be both grand and humble to admit our mistakes and start righting our wrongs, but our leadership culture does not promote that,” she concludes.
Josh has a different take on this: he still ‘believes in Western values.’ He is distressed by the US disregard for the very institutions it helped create, and hopes those values and institutions can be restored to their original meaning. His more nostalgic stance prompts an interesting question from the audience: “If these institutions are destroyed, is it that great of a loss? Why should we care that we are moving into a less orderly world, if the order they created was creating disorder everywhere but in the West?”
Josh remains of his idea, maintaining that “there is something to fight for. We can do better. We can provide a model that works for more people, and is not as driven by white supremacy.” Angélique, however, is less optimistic about the ability of the current global order to reform itself, in general and regarding Palestine policies, which she says have been informed by “a colonial and racist mindset; maybe it’s an unconscious bias, but it’s there.”
As a result, she is less protective of the current international order, and views the prospect of the West losing some of its power to the rest of the world as a positive development: “the emancipatory process that’s been happening is a source of hope. We have failed, but the Global South is stepping in.”
Irrationality, and the pitfall thereof
‘Irrationality’ was definitely a keyword of this discussion, as the speakers often framed their government’s Israel policy as irrational, expressing that from a national interest perspective, it simply doesn’t make sense.
Angélique, for instance, thinks that through its Israel policy, the Netherlands has lost all credibility regarding the human rights agenda and thrown out of the window all the work it had done with the Global South to jump straight back into the transatlantic alliance. She adds that this policy is “naive, too,” in that it reflects the delusion that “if you hit them hard on the head, they will stop; that with power and might you can control the world. But oppression and racism will always result in resistance: we learned nothing from decolonization.”
Josh also framed his government’s choices as irrational. Specifically, he criticized the excessive prioritization of the relationship with Israel, asking “what’s so important about it that it is worth damaging all other relations?” For him, supporting Israel is not worth “undermining the goals we have been working towards since 1945.”
He went on to also criticize the Israeli’s government internal logic, noting that while they might view Netanyahu’s hold on power as a political win, and the invasion of Gaza as a tactical win, the aggression has ultimately been a strategic mistake, and one that the US has not been a good ally about, for that matter, because “if you want your ally to live in peace and security, you don’t help them deepen their insecurity.”
At this point, a question from the audience once again helped refine the discussion: someone pointed out that this “irrationality” narrative can result in absolution for Israel and its allies, downplaying their agency and the deliberateness of their actions.
Sadly, there was not enough time to elaborate on this point, and the panel concluded on that open-ended note. As the small Schouwburgstraat room emptied, two feelings lingered. One was pretty gloomy, probably as a result of the bleak, bleak scene we had just caught a glimpse of through the spy hole provided by our guests. The other one, slightly more hopeful: it was the feeling of having just witnessed a tiny glitch in the system.
– Bia
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