Students Care about Palestine and Israel
February 23rd, 2005
By Archived Story
Israel’s right to Exist
Israel since its conception has been engaged in vicious struggle against its enemies on all fronts. To this day, the wars have never really ended. Once the military option became impossible for the Arabs states to destroy Israel, they switched tactics. Terrorism, propaganda and Palestinian refugees are being used as pawns to apply pressure on Israel.
Don’t get me wrong Palestinian suffering is real, but to lay the blame entirely on Israel is misguided. In 1948, when Israel was formed, some 800,000 thousand people became refugees. They were forced to leave the lands where they had lived for centuries. I’m not talking about Palestinians. I’m talking about the Jews that were expelled from places like Iraq, Syria, Jordan and Egypt. Israel managed to resettle these people, while the Arab countries refuse to do the same for the Palestinians.
History will always be disputed no matter who said it. The only undisputed piece of evidence I can offer that counters the claim that Jews forcibly expelled all Palestinians is this; there are over a million Israeli Arabs living in Israel right now. If in 1948 Jews were out to ethnically cleanse the land (as some claim) why would they allow a substantial Arab population to remain?
As far as the current peace process, the new Palestinian leader is no better. Abu Mazen doesn’t condemn violence he just thinks it’s counter productive. Was anyone assured about Abu Mazen’s intentions when we saw images of him smiling among masked men firing guns?
Real peace process will only take place when Arab leaders accept Israel’s right to exist. Until then terrorist organizations like Hamas will continue their deadly task. It’s plain wrong to call it “cycle of violence” because Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel; just search Google for “Charter of Hamas”.
Dennis Royzenfeld is a member of Friends of Israel.
Patience and Optomism
I can go on about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, arguing back and forth the same arguments thousands of people have debated in the past finding no clear solution. I can give facts about who owns certain areas of land, numbers about how many innocent civilians have died on both sides, broken promises by leaders and more. It’s a debate that people have been trying to solve for decades to no avail. Don’t get me wrong – there are a lot of serious issues that need to be worked out on both sides. People need to remember that a solution will not happen overnight.
There have been many encouraging signs lately from both the Palestinians and the Israelis (and even the Arab world). One is Sharon’s Gaza disengagement (which is going to cost a suffering Israeli economy 7 billion Shekels, or approximately $1.7 billion,) and handover of security in cities like Jericho. This will begin to pave a way for the Palestinian Authority to prove they can control terrorist groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad (which do not support the Palestinian Authority), and establish a legitimate government. Other promising developments are the deployment of Palestinian policeman in the northern Gaza Strip to stop missile attacks on Israeli towns and the announcement on February 8 at the Sharm el-Sheikh summit that Jordan and Egypt will return their ambassadors to Israel. These are extremely encouraging signs that all sides are starting to work toward a serious and true peace.
The situation is looking optimistic but we must remember peace will not come instantly. It might not be our Israeli and Palestinian peers who solve the conflict. Many of them are Israelis who have lost classmates in suicide bombings or Palestinians whose friends were shot in Gaza. It is going to take generations for tolerance and peace to arise, and only then will peace truly come between the people and states of Israel and Palestine.
Brett J. Willner is the Israel chair of the Hillel Student Board and the campus liaison of the Gopher-Israeli Public Affairs Committee at the University of Minnesota.
Yet Another “Cease-Fire”
Since the death of Arafat, a wave of optimism about peace in the Middle East has begun in the minds of the Western world. The efforts of Mahmoud Abbas to reach a truce preserved this hope. The promise of a withdrawal of Israeli troops from Areiha is a parallel act from the side of the Israelis to show their good will. Finally, the Sharm El-Sheikh summit of Sharon and Abbas is hailed in the Western media as the beginning of a new era of “real” peace talks.
Is the Western media really portraying the hope or the reality? On February 15 the Israeli Occupation Forces again showed their commitment to what is currently celebrated as a cease-fire. A military operation starting that evening resulted in two Palestinian victims of the cease-fire. In addition, withdrawal from the Palestinian lands is a one-sided decision that was so many times reversed, what is different about this one? And in exchange for pulling out and compensating 8,300 hard-to-protect settlers in Gaza, Israel got assurances from the U.S. to keep 230,000 settlers in occupied West Bank, and is expected to build even more settlements.
Everyone appreciates peace and calm, including the Palestinians whose suffering is not by headline incidents but by daily and hourly theft of dignity and property. The new “peace plans” are no more real than the previous ones, and in reality the Palestinians are losing more of their people and land and are being pushed into smaller and smaller prison enclaves as a result of the new wall that Sharon’s government keeps constructing.
The American public is not getting the real picture about the situation in Palestine, but a rather hopeful picture. There is no problem with hope. It keeps people alive. But let us have real hopes – not just pure optimistic conjectures. Hope can be based on new leaders, like Abbas who is trying to bring people together, but it also has to be based on justice, which even children can articulate.
Omar Merhi is a graduate student at the University of Minnesota and a writer for Al-Madina Writers.
Glimpse the Palestinian Perspective
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict now has the potential to bring peace to a devastating situation. The recent democratic election of Mahmoud Abbas in Palestine and the current peace talks may bode well for the future of the Palestinians.
From the mainstream media, most Americans hear of the deaths and horrors on the Israeli side when a violent act has occurred with little mention of the deaths of the Palestinians and the horror they face under the Israeli colonial occupation of Palestinian land. When Israelis die in the violence, the news reports shows faces and names. Palestinians are identified with numbers and dehumanized as ‘terrorists’ no matter the circumstances of their death. Since September of 2000 when the second intifada began, 1,050 Israelis have died compared to 3,600 Palestinians.
These numbers do not tell the whole story of occupation. The Israeli military has demolished the homes of thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. The military gives families 24 hours to pack their belongings and evacuate – claiming national security concerns. According to Human Rights Watch, Sharon’s government has demolished 2,500 homes in Gaza in the past four years. In the town of Rafah, the Israeli military has destroyed the homes of 16,000 people – 10 percent of the population – in the last four years. With the peace talks, however fragile in existence, Palestinians have wavering hope that they will be able to live without the fear of being forcefully removed from their homes.
As of today 1.2 million Palestinians live in refugee camps. According to the UN, there are more than 4 million Palestinian refugees in total. While Palestinians are displaced, Israelis continue to build colonial outposts in the West Bank, complete with Jewish-only roads and monopolies on water and electricity. While Sharon talks of disengagement by dismantling Jewish-only settlements in Gaza, The Washington Post, in a February 7, 2005 article, reported Israel’s plans to accelerate development of Jewish-only colonies in the occupied territory of the West Bank.
The peace talks will fail if the core issues of the conflict are not resolved, which is Israel dispossessing the Palestinians of their land and homes. Until the issue of colonialism is addressed, peace will, at its best be, a struggle.
Sandra Breuer is president of Students for Justice in Palestine.
