An Arrogant Act Burns the Bridges to Peace The Palestinians are being made the escape goats for the recent upheaval in the Middle East. Again!
The pattern is all too familiar. Each time there is violence between the Palestinians and the Israel, the Israeli spin maestros and their American supporters, the likes of Charles Krauthammer, Roger Rosenblatt, William Safire and Thomas friedman, spring into action and lay the blame at the feet of the Palestinians. For the Palestinians, both Muslims and Christians, the latest events in the Middle East have added a yet another layer of resentment against the state of Israel and its right wing Likud party.
As of this writing about one hundred people have died almost all of them Palestinians, at the hands of Israeli forces and militant Jewish settlers. Israel and its main supporter the Unites States have refused demands for an impartial international inquiry into the recent events.
The US has also abstained on a watered down UN resolution, which criticizes Israel for using excessive force against the Palestinians. Even though at the recently concluded summit in Egypt the parties agreed, after considerable prodding from the US, to cease hostilities, a low lever of hostilities continues. Instead of an international commission as asked by the Palestinians now a tripartite commission comprising of the US, Israel and the Palestinian Authority will look into the causes of this latest upheaval.
Real peace demands an understanding of each other’s history, traditions and sufferings. This is sorely missing between the two peoples who consider the land of Palestine as theirs and theirs alone. Unless there is a genuine effort to understand and address the grievances of the parties, in this case mostly the grievances of the Palestinians, there can be no peace.
A process of demonizing the Palestinians that started in the sixties with the Palestinian demand for a homeland continues unabated. In a recent Time essay Charles Krauthammer, the ultimate Israel apologist, skips over the root cause of the recent violence, overlooks the atrocities committed by the Jewish settlers and blames the Palestinians for being ungrateful of what had been offered to them at Camp David. While a Palestinian with bloody hands makes the cover of the Time magazine, tens of Palestinian youth shot dead at close range go unnoticed.
Ask any West Bank right wing Jewish settler what he thinks of the Palestinians and he is liable to paint the picture of untrustworthy and uncivilized barbaric people. The pity is they hold the same opinion about their fellow Arab citizens of Israel. One would think that half a century of living together as citizens of one country would have changed the inter-personal dynamics between these two peoples. The protesting crowds of Israeli Arabs being confronted and attacked by the militant Jews say a lot about how the Israeli society treats preferentially its own Jewish citizens. When the police fires live ammunition, during confrontation between the Israeli Palestinians and the Jews, their guns are always trained at the Palestinians only.
Palestinians have suffered not only at the hands of Israel but also at the hands of their Arab brethren as well. The Arab countries that could help their cause- Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States have sold out to the US. Others are either too week to exert any influence or are totally isolated by the West. Already the US has opposed a planned meeting of the leaders of the Arab League. Even if such a meting does materialize, as in the past, it will be long on rhetoric and lofty promises but miserably short on any meaningful action.
The hard liners in Israel- Likud and the militant Jewish settlers- have achieved what they had always wanted; to derail the peace process and to keep the Palestinians under their control. From Oslo to Wye River to Camp David the Israeli right has cast its long shadow over the negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Benjamin Natanyahu as Prime Minister tossed aside the Oslo Accords and renegotiated Wye River only to put aside that accord too for dubious reasons. Now when Ehud Barak was so close to reaching the final status Ariel Sharon by his belligerent and provocative visit to the Muslim holy places put the whole process in deep freeze and unleashed the pent up emotions. His visit to Haram el Sharif was a deliberate act of provocation and was meant to provoke the Palestinians. In that he succeeded beyond his wildest imagination. Just as the Jews have a long and unforgettable memory of their suffering, so do the Palestinians. The Jews demanded a country of their own, the right of return to their country, an apology for crimes committed against them as people, compensation for their losses at the hands of occupiers and control over their lives and their holy places. In the end they have all that. Why should the Palestinians, and the question has been begging for an answer for over 50-years, be denied the same? After all the Palestinians demand but a small portion of the land that is theirs. All the posturing and rhetoric about the occupied territories coming out of Tel Aviv aside, the international community has not ceded Israel’s claim on the occupied land including East Jerusalem.
To the credit of Israeli society there are Jews who would grant the Palestinians the measure of dignity that they seek. These disparate groups- Gush Shalom, Committee Against House Demolitions, Women For Political Prisoners, Meretz Youths, Bat Shalom Women and Hadash- are in the forefront of a nascent peace movement that seeks justice for the Palestinians. Their courageous stand goes unnoticed and unreported Jerusalem, the epicenter of recent upheaval, has gone through such convulsions before. The fault lines from previous cataclysms are readily visible even to a casual visitor to the city. There are two peoples occupying the same narrow space but have no social interaction that is so necessary for building bridges of understanding. Now Ariel Sharon has, effectively burned whatever rudimentary bridges existed between these two peoples. Some times it takes an awful long time to build new bridges.
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