Students and Claremont community members filed into Pitzer College’s Benson Auditorium on April 3 for a lecture titled “The Conflict in Gaza: A Historian’s View.” The speaker, UCLA Professor of History James L. Gelvin, authored “The Israel-Palestine Conflict: A History.”
The event was sponsored by Pitzer’s Melvin L. Oliver Racial Justice Initiative.
Gelvin started the talk with geographic and historical background, from the British taking control of Gaza in 1922 to Israel’s withdrawal in 2005. He stated that Gaza has a 65 percent poverty rate.
Gelvin provided three reasons for Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel, each supported by historical precedents.
First, he cited the 1974 Ma’alot massacre to illustrate how such attacks aim to bring Palestine back to the forefront of the international agenda. Next, he drew parallels with the 1985 Rome and Vienna airport attacks to demonstrate an intent to discourage Arab states from establishing normal ties with Israel. Third, Gelvin referred to the 1970 Black September conflict as indicative of an attempt to diminish the influence of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).
“Now, if it’s true that all three of these points are reasons for the attack … then Hamas has already won,” Gelvin said.
Gelvin discussed Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu’s goals in Israel’s bombing and ground attack campaign. Netanyahu stated that the objectives of the campaign are to destroy Hamas and to return the Israeli hostages held by Hamas.
However, Gelvin argued that the release of the hostages has been treated as an afterthought by the Israeli government.
“Actually, there is a third goal as well: Keep Benjamin Netanyahu out of prison,” Gelvin said. “This explains the Israeli reluctance to change its tactics. This explains the very muscular and unrelenting Israeli attacks.”
Gelvin pointed out that Netanyahu is attempting to hide his track record of supporting Hamas. According to a CIA official, the Israeli government initially enabled Hamas in order to “divide and dilute support for a strong, secular PLO.”
“This was done to mask … Netanyahu’s previous support for Hamas,” Gelvin said. “And … his unpreparedness in dealing with October 7.”
“At this point, neither side is willing to compromise. There’s a certain American optimism about, ‘Well all we got to do is put out this plan and because it’s a reasonable plan, obviously people will accept it’ and it doesn’t work that way.”
Gelvin argued that because Hamas provides social services and administrates Gaza, it is unlikely Israel will be successful in disbanding Hamas. He also predicted that Israel would claim an unearned victory and revert to a strategy known as “mowing the lawn,” in which Hamas militants are likened to grass that Israel needs to “mow” through periodic bombings and attacks to manage Hamas’ military capabilities.
“Every year or two, Israel will launch an attack on Hamas to the greatest capabilities,” Gelvin said. “Hamas will then rebuild his capabilities and Israel will strike again … Since the onset of the Oslo agreement, this is basically an almost yearly occurrence.”
Gelvin said Netanyahu’s post-war proposal does not address the political contention at the root of the conflict. The proposal includes deradicalization programs, implementation of a technocratic government, reconstruction of Gaza funded by third party foreign states and the disbandment of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency.
“The plan raises a number of questions,” Gelvin said. “In other words, Israel has no real plan … And there is no real plan because there is no military solution to the crisis. The only solution is a political solution, which is a solution that not only does the Israeli government not agree with, but 65 percent of Israelis currently oppose a two-state solution.”
During the Q&A, Gelvin mapped out a potential resolution. He argued that current violence is not rooted in inherent religious differences; rather, it originates from the repression of Middle Eastern governments.
“This is a sideshow, but what’s really happening in the region was expressed in 2011 with the [Arab Spring] uprisings,” Gelvin said. “People are sick and tired of their governments … They see the repression, they see the corruption … they’re really pissed off.”
Gelvin argued that the conflict is bound up in an unconventional conception of religion.
“This is a quintessential nationalist conflict,” Gelvin said. “Religion shouldn’t be thought of as what we think of religion, as it’s a belief system … Religion is a marker of community.”
While Gelvin offered the Clinton parameters as a rational solution, he said that in order to actually implement a solution, the conflict requires “political will” from both sides.
“At this point, neither side is willing to compromise,” Gelvin said. “There’s a certain American optimism about, ‘Well all we got to do is put out this plan and because it’s a reasonable plan, obviously people will accept it’ and it doesn’t work that way.”
Gelvin offered the Israeli invasion of Lebanon as precedent for how the United States might leverage their influence over Israel to create “political will.”
“After the … saturation bombing of Beirut, [Americans] began demanding that the Israelis work … for some sort of ceasefire,” Gelvin said. “The Americans backed that with an arms embargo of certain weapons … until the Israelis cooperated with that. That’s leverage that the United States still has.”
Addressing recent national protests, Gelvin argued that effective action cannot take place solely on college campuses. When asked to comment on the difference between “open-air prisons” — a phrase often used to describe Gaza — and concentration camps, Gelvin warned against sloganeering.
“I could come up with a semantic answer that would differentiate between the two but I can’t,” Gelvin said. “What has shocked me has been the way in which discourses on campus have been run. ‘From the river to the sea,’ for example, as a slogan is something that many people find extraordinarily objectionable … The sloganeering basically turns off those people who can go one way or the other.”
Instead, Gelvin implored students to take action off campus.
“The thing about political change is if you want to do it, you get the hell off campus,” he said. “If you are a member of a pro-Palestinian organization, you call up every local chapter of the Democratic Party and ask to speak to one of their meetings, every trade union office you can reach … You got to get off campus, you got to begin to move the movers and shakers in the American political system and it can be done.”
Sonali Mudunuri PZ ’25 found this answer to be unsatisfying in light of ongoing pro-Palestine organizing across the 7Cs.
“There is a lot of value or merit in college organizing, which is why I was … a little bit confused about the answer that was given to us,” Mudunuri said. “Since colleges are part of the military apparatus … divestment, particularly at Pomona … [is] a really, really hot button issue. And it [is] important to put pressure on the administration.”
Ultimately, Mudunuri appreciated Gelvin’s analytical perspective on the conflict.
“I know there’s been a lot of misinformation and propaganda, so I was just hoping to get a clear overview from the historian because Middle East relations in general can be very convoluted,” Mudunuri said. “I did appreciate that Gelvin was very staunch in laying out the facts and what the problem was before October 7 and what it’s looking like now, in terms of death toll and mass starvation. I just wish that there was a little bit more insight into what that actually looks like, rather than the pure statistics.”
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