The Israeli Palestinian conflict started in 1947 after the British Mandate of Palestine was divided into a Palestinian and a Jewish state. In the following year, the first Arab-Israel war started. Israel won this war, Palestinians were displaced, and three states emerged: Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. Following this war, the region remained at peace for only a short time.
In 1967, a six-day war took place where Israel attacked Egypt and Syria. Israel made some territorial gains. In the upcoming years, Israel’s relations with its neighbours remained strained. Meanwhile, the question of Palestine’s self-governance remained out of focus. This led to the first Intifadah by the Palestinians in 1987. Peace efforts were made in the Oslo Accords. However, these efforts didn’t prove to be long-lasting. The Palestinians again launched Intifadah 2 in the year 2000.
This led to the building of a barrier wall around the West Bank in 2002. On the other hand, there was a lack of unity among the ruling parties of Palestine, i.e. Fatah and Hamas. Between 2006 and 2011, these parties remained in a state of confrontation with each other. Finally, in 2016, both formed a unity government. Meanwhile, conflict with Israel also continued in the next decade. The current genocide in Gaza by Israel started in 2023, after Hamas fired rockets into Israel, resulting in 1300 casualties. Israel announced war against Gaza and a complete siege of its territories.
Israel has been carrying out violence against the Palestinian people living in the Gaza Strip. To date, almost 50,000 Palestinians have been killed, and 113,274 people have been injured. The news is full of the killings and bombardment of the Palestinian people. However, this violence inflicted by Israel is not limited to physical violence alone. The violence is multifaceted, with the aim of not only genocide of the Palestinians but also shrinking the social, political and economic space for them through the unseen form of violence.
Johan Galtung’s theory of the triangle of violence is employed to provide a comprehensive explanation of the conflict in Gaza. This theory presents three types of violence, i.e. direct violence, structural violence and cultural violence. According to Galtung, in a conflict situation, direct violence is visible, but the other two types of violence are indirect and are invisible to the naked eye. Indirect violence becomes visible only when we analyze conflict at a deeper level. In a conflict, any one type of violence or all three types of violence can be at play simultaneously. Every kind of violence facilitates the other two in any conflict.
Direct violence refers to the violence that is apparent and can be identified, such as shooting, beating, killing, maiming. It also includes denying access to basic human rights, such as food, water, education, and healthcare. Structural violence, as the name suggests, is the structures formed by the government to perpetuate violence against a group of people. This type of violence is invisible and is present in different forms of policies and government initiatives that violate the rights of a particular group of people, leading to social inequalities in society.
The third type of violence is cultural violence, which is more difficult to identify. This violence is perpetuated through the favoring of certain cultures, beliefs, and behaviors within society. This leads to favoring one group of people at the expense of the other group. This type of violence is often used to justify the other two forms of violence.
In the Gaza conflict, unsuccessful efforts have been made to stop direct violence. However, structural violence and cultural violence have not been highlighted because, as the Journalistic dictum states, “If it bleeds, it leads”. All the Israel-Palestine discourse has been replete with direct violence, masking the structural and cultural violence. The people of Gaza have suffered the blockade for past 16 years. This blockade has led to the suffering and death of many Palestinians from the lack of access to medical facilities and even food aid.
While in the West Bank, infrastructure is built in such a way as to promote structural violence against the Palestinians. There are two types of roads; anyone can travel on one, while the other is reserved for Israeli vehicles only. Checkpoints are another example of a structure that has been delegating the status of second-class citizenship to the Palestinians.
Cultural violence is also used by Israel, which legitimizes the use of the other two forms of violence against the Palestinians. Israel has always claimed that the land of Palestine belongs to them through the divine commandment. Moreover, Israel frames the existence of a Palestinian state as a threat to Israel. These claims are circulated through the media in which the Palestinians are framed as “other” and legitimize the creation of the Israeli state through religion.
Galtung’s triangle of violence not only sheds light on the multiple layers of violence in the Gaza conflict but also presents a roadmap for long-term conflict transformation. For peace in Gaza, a ceasefire will be just a starting point. The eradication of structural violence and cultural violence will address the root cause of violence in society. This conflict resolution would require long-term, sincere commitment on the part of Israel and the International community, which seems like a distant dream for now.
*The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of TDI.
Tabish Munir
Tabish Munir is a research scholar at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad.
