While Israel can celebrate whatever skewed version of history it
wishes to, it still cannot defeat a people, ordinary people armed with
their will to survive and reclaim what was rightfully theirs. The same
problem confronted the US in Vietnam, France in Algeria and Italy in
Libya. The Palestinian people will not evaporate. Attempts to undermine
Palestinian unity, instigate civil violence, and groom and present
shady characters as 'representatives' of Palestinians have failed in
the past and will continue to fail.
Representing, and thus
dealing with the conflict as one invented and sustained by Arab greed
and Palestinian terrorism helped Israel garner sympathy, while
simultaneously convoluting what should have been an urgent example of
injustice, predicated on colonialism and ethnic cleansing.
More,
depicting the mere existence of Palestinians as a 'threat', a 'problem'
and a 'demographic bomb' is inhumane and actually a full-fledged form
of racism. Throughout its 60 years of existence, successive Israeli
governments have treated Palestinians — the native inhabitants of
historic Palestine — as undesired and thus negligible inhabitants of a
land that was promised only to Jews by some divine power thousands of
years ago.
This archaic concept has managed to define
mainstream politics in Israel, and increasingly the US, allowing
religious doctrines to discriminate and brutally repress Palestinians,
both citizens of Israel and residents of the occupied Territories.
Needless
to say, neither a figurative Iron wall, like that proposed by Vladimir
Jabotinsky in 1923, nor an actual massive and menacing structure as the
one being erected in the West Bank can really separate Israel from its
'problem', the Palestinians. An area roughly the size of the US state
of Vermont cannot sustain such a complex model — a country that is open
unconditionally for all Jews who wish to immigrate, and an oppressed
population that is caged in between walls, fences, and hundreds of
checkpoints — without inviting perpetual conflict.
What
Israel has created in Palestine belies its own claim that its ultimate
wish is peace with security. While occupied East Jerusalem is entirely
annexed by an Israeli government diktat, 40 per cent of the total size
of the West Bank is used exclusively for the purposes of the illegal
Jewish settlers and the Israeli military. How can Israel's claim of
wanting to live in peace be taken seriously if it continues to invade
the lives, confiscate the land and usurp the water of Palestinians?
When
Israel invaded East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, the
Jewish citizens of Israel celebrated the 'return' of biblical Judea and
Samaria and the reunification of Jerusalem. Nearly 300,000 more
Palestinians were ethnically cleansed, adding to the many more who were
evicted from historic Palestine in 1948.
Yet, most
Palestinians have remained hostage to the Israeli-invented limbo that
suggests they were neither citizens of Israel, nor of their own state,
nor deserving of the rights of an occupied civilian population under
the Geneva Convention.
Despite this, Israel's insistence on
employing military 'solutions' in its dealing with Palestinians have
constantly backfired. Palestinians naturally rebelled and were
repeatedly suppressed, which only worsened the feud and heightened the
level of violence.
The PLO's acceptance of Israel's
existence, and UN Resolution 242 as a first step towards a two state
solution was both ridiculed and rejected by the Israeli government,
which continued to arrange for its own ineffective and ultimately
destructive solutions.
Throughout the years, Israel
translated its military strength to erect more settlements and move its
population to occupied Palestinian territories. Even after the Oslo
Accords of September 1993, the construction of settlements didn't slow
down, but rather accelerated. After the most recent peace talks in
Annapolis in November 2007, Israel continues to grant more permits to
build more homes in illegal settlements under the guise of 'natural
expansion.'
But it may have gone too far, leaving itself and Palestinians with few options now.
In
a November 29, 2007 interview with Israeli daily Ha'aretz, Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert warned that without a two-state agreement, Israel
would face "a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights" in
which case "Israel (would be) finished." It's ironic that Israeli
leaders are now advocating the same solution that they vehemently
rejected in the past. However, the Israeli version of the two-state
agreement hardly meets the minimum expectations of Palestinians.
Without
Jerusalem, without their refugees' right of return as enshrined in UN
resolution 194 and with a West Bank dotted with over 216 settlements
and scarred by a mammoth wall, asking Palestinians to accept an Israeli
version of the two-state solution is asking them to agree to their
eternal imprisonment, subjugation and defeat — which they have rejected
generation after generation.
If Israel is indeed interested
in a peaceful resolution to this bloody conflict, one that is based on
equal human and legal rights, justice, security and lasting peace, then
it must add a new word to its lexicon: coexistence. Jews and Arabs
coexisted peacefully prior to the rise of Zionism, and they are capable
of doing so in the future. Any other solution would simply
institutionalise racism and apartheid, undermine democracy and human
rights and thus further perpetuate violence.
It's time for a
secular, democratic state to cease being part of a removed academic
discussion, and instead be integrated into mainstream debate, if not
dialogue in Palestine and Israel. This is the right, moral and indeed
urgent course of action required now.
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Jews are indigenous to the Middle East and have lived there continuously for 3,000 years.
The jihadist philosophy whereby Israel and its non-Arab inhabitants are to be liquidated, at the same time that Palestinian Arabs use their own people as shields and cannon fodder only perpetuates the suffering of their own people.
Not all Palestinian Arabs subscribe to this, but they are still held hostage to the violent and often fanatically religious gangs that do.