"...je suis scandalisé par l'attitude des gouvernements israélien et européens envers les peuples arabes..."
So says one of my comments for the previous blog. I can't deny that I am excited at finding more and more comments now... but lets go into the subject.
It is always scandelous to see double standards when weighing two sides of the same conflict. I see this in almost all responses. What people seem to forget is that there is a root to everything. In this particular Middle Eastern Chaos, the root of the problem is injustice- Both in relation to Israel-Arab conflict and in the internal arenas of the Arab countries. I believe to be totally fair you have to take the whole situation into consideration. Anyone who comes out to condemn an act of resistance should make it a point what the root of the problem is otherwise he is not making a balanced statement.
Another comentator says:
"I work with criminals every day in my job. They have a way of justifying themselves which is different from what other people do. They never admit even the slightest wrong, it is always 100% someone else's fault. I see the same on every Palestinian site. No one is prepared to admit even a 1% responsibility for the troubles."
Well, to start with we are not criminals. Personally I believe, and I indicated this in previous posts, that all human life is sacred. I also believe that an oppressed should not seek to imitate its oppressors in its actions. Therefore I stand in a grey zone when it comes to Palestinian/Arab resistance: On the one hand Arabs have every right to resist "the original sin" that is named Zionism. On the other, it is essential that such resistance be directed and managed in a way to avoid unnecessary harm.
I don't believe in "collatoral damage" which is part of Israel/US occupation policy.
Of course, both sides to any conflict are responsible for its continuation. However, Can you blame the oppressed the same way you blame the oppressor? That is not possible, nor is it logical. If there was no Zionist conquest, the Palestinians would not have risen in 1921 nor in 1929 against the Jews. They would not have defend themselves against the Zionist forces in 1947-1949. There would have been no war in 1956 nor in 1967 and so on in 1973, 1982, 1987, 2000.
You see, we have a responsibility for the conflict's extension... But what else do you expect, sit there and watch all this injustice, silently as everyone else is?
Maybe with many Palestinians, the reason they fight this injustice is personal, or national. Maybe they would not have risen to do so if the oppressed where somewhere in East Timor. However, It is still a fight for justice, and many Palestinians view the conflict as that- a quest for justice.
That is why over the years, the PLO supported the ANC, the Vietnamese, the Algerians, the struggle against racism in Rohdesia, etc... In all these conflicts, Israel stood firmly on the side on injustice- The White supremacists in Rohdesia and SA, the American in Vietnam and the French. In Arabic we have a saying "tell me who your friends are, I tell you who you are." In this case, a state which supported all the injustice in the world, is standing against an organisation that supported all the just struggles for freedom.
That is why, we felt it was personal when Mandela was freed, we felt it was personal when the French conceded Algeria, we felt it was personal when the Americans were defeated in Vietnam... We celebrated.
The Israelis saw the victory of the just struggles of the people as a loss to them. doesn't this say something about where each side of the conflict fits exactly? I am sure it does.
That's why when someone writes to me
"Estoy con vosotros de todo corazon..."He is one person who supports justice against oppression...
7 comments:
"Of course, both sides to any conflict are responsible for its continuation. However, Can you blame the oppressed the same way you blame the oppressor? That is not possible, nor is it logical."
The problem here is Israel has never had a legitimate Palestinian Authority to negotiate with.
Any deals, treaty or ceasefires can be violated by any number of Palestinian criminal orginizations and Israel's "partners in peace" can only shrug and say " You have our sympathy but it was Hamas that blew up that school bus" or "We deeply regret any loss of human life but it was Fatah that killed 8 people in that cafe". "Oh we are are sorry but it is Hezbollah that is shooting those rockets into Haifa"
Isatel has nothing to gain by bargaining with Palestinians because Palestinaians have not demonstrated the ability to so much as feed themselves let alone policing themselves.
But I am an American listen to one of your Arab brothers:
The war with Israel is over.
You have lost. Surrender and negotiate to secure a future for your children.
We, your Arab brothers, may say until we are blue in the face that we stand by you, but the wise among you and most of us know that we are moving on, away from the tired old idea of the Palestinian Arab cause and the “eternal struggle” with Israel.
Dear friends, you and your leaders have wasted three generations trying to fight for Palestine, but the truth is the Palestine you could have had in 1948 is much bigger than the one you could have had in 1967, which in turn is much bigger than what you may have to settle for now or in another 10 years. Struggle means less land and more misery and utter loneliness.
[...]
Your young people are growing up illiterate, ill, and bent on rites of death and suicide, while you, in effect, are living on the kindness of foreigners, including America and the United Nations. Every day your officials must beg for your daily bread, dependent on relief trucks that carry food and medicine into the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, while your criminal Muslim fundamentalist Hamas government continues to fan the flames of a war it can neither fight nor hope to win.
In other words, brothers, you are down, out, and alone in a burnt-out landscape that is shrinking by the day.
What kind of struggle is this? Is it worth waging at all? More important, what kind of miserable future does it portend for your children, the fourth or fifth generation of the Arab world’s have-nots?
We, your Arab brothers, have moved on.
Those of us who have oil money are busy accumulating wealth and building housing, luxury developments, state-of-the-art universities and schools, and new highways and byways. Those of us who share borders with Israel, such as Egypt and Jordan, have signed a peace treaty with it and are not going to war for you any time soon. Those of us who are far away, in places like North Africa and Iraq, frankly could not care less about what happens to you.
Only Syria continues to feed your fantasies that someday it will join you in liberating Palestine, even though a huge chunk of its territory, the entire Golan Heights, was taken by Israel in 1967 and annexed. The Syrians, my friends, will gladly fight down to the last Palestinian Arab.
Before you got stuck with this Hamas crowd, another cheating, conniving, leader of yours, Yasser Arafat, sold you a rotten bill of goods — more pain, greater corruption, and millions stolen by his relatives — while your children played in the sewers of Gaza.
The war is over. Why not let a new future begin?
So, I see, Ryoushi, you could not care less for all those innocent people killed by your own army in Iraq, and possibly soon, in Syria, lebanon, Iran and other Middle East countries, too.
Well, good luck to you when your eyes become wide-open to accept reality. Be sure not to have a pistol in your pocket then.
Salaam
The answer to most law abiding, peace loving Palestinian's problems is easy.
Acquisition of Nationality by Naturalization,
Adults may acquire Israeli citizenship by naturalization at the discretion of the Minister of the Interior and subject to a number of requirements, such as:
they must have resided in Israel for three years out of five years preceding the day of submission of the application;
they are entitled to reside in Israel permanently and have settled or intended to settle in Israel;
they have renounced their prior nationality, or have proved that they will cease to be foreign nationals upon becoming Israeli citizens.
The Minister of the Interior may exempt an applicant from some of these requirements.
Ryoushi,
Well it is intresting, are you suggesting that "peace-loving, law-abiding Palestinians" can/should acquire Israeli citizenship?
To me that has always been something I advocated. But what would Israeli Jews say about this? after all- They view their country as Jewish only. DOn't they.
There are over 1 million Palestinians that currently hold Israeli citizenship. One in five Israelis are Palestinian by birth.
That doesn't answer my question. and besides, what is the proportion of Israeli Jews who consider this 1million Palestinian-Israelis as a mistake? how many parties mobilise to "transfer"them somewhere else? Did Ben-Gurion not say that their presence in Israel is a mistake? Didn't Israel systematically push out as many Palestinian arabs as it could even after the ceasefire? If you have any recollection of the years 1949-1951 you will know what I am talking about.
I am sure the only solution can be when both sides can accept the other as a next door neighbour and when all that is owed is returned.
About no Israeli... They themselves don't want to be transferred to the failed state in gestation that the PA is...
You see, the Palstinians have always rejected negociations... And each time they lose more...
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