“Israel’s devastating assault on Gaza, with its unconscionable numbers of civilian casualties, is proof of a bankrupt U.S. policy,” writes Sandy Tolan in the Daily Beast. To make progress toward a lasting peace, America “must confront the tragic mess it helped create, and abandon the foreign policy its own inaction undermined.”
Tolan is the author of two books about Palestine, The Lemon Tree and Children of the Stone. In an opinion piece published on the day Israel and Hamas agreed to a cease-fire, he argues that America’s decades-long failure to hold Israel to account has destroyed any hope of a two-state solution. “Israelis, Palestinians and Americans must find the courage to build something new,” he writes.