Though the headlines, as they always do, are following the mess in Ferguson, there is still a hell of a horror going on in Israel. I know anyone attempting to look logically at this disaster will probably regard it as an impossibility, but what the hell. Let’s give it a shot.
The Jews, an inordinately smart people have been acting very dumb the last few years about their Palestinian problem.
Or have they? For those who have been on a different planet the Palestinians claim that the Jews have been stealing their land. The Jews who have been known to be very hard negotiators and also very fond of real estate, as well as pretty good PR and advertising types, just shrug their shoulder and mumble; “Tough.”
So everybody in the civilized world has now taken sides but the ones that have stood by Israel’s side really wish that the Israelis would back off, just a little bit. There are even Jews in Israel that think that way but there are also a large group of them that say f**k the Palestinians. They’re just, pain in the ass mutts that want to kill us so why should we care what anybody thinks.
Looking at the situation, right now and definitely from the outside. One cannot but feel that the Israelis are acting poorly, at least from a PR point of view. Here are all these poor Palestinians being pushed off their land, their houses being torn down and the Israelis moving onto the land and building what look like, from the pictures in the media, future slums.
I haven’t been in Israel for over twenty years and I’m sure that like everyplace else, it has changed quite bit but when I was there, it appeared to be a barren, ugly, land, with plenty of places to build settlements if only they could find someone who didn’t mind living in them. Of course that didn’t include Jerusalem, which is without contest, one of the most special places I have ever been to in my life.
So what happened in 20 plus years to make this a place that everybody wants to move to, so much so that the Israelis had to kick people off their land so they could move in? Is the West Bank somehow superior to the rest of the country? I remember driving across the country and wondering why anyone would want to fight over it.. I could understand why the Jews wanted it. After WWII, they had no place else to go.
I have, over the years, been a big backer of Israel but in the last couple of years I have had to temper my enthusiasm for that country because of their treatment of the Palestinians. Much has been made lately about how many casualties there have been in Gaza and almost none in Israel during the bombings. Most of he casualties in Gaza have been civilian and that’s terrible but looking at this mess from a neutral point of view it seems clear that, in this case, the instigator has been Hamas. If they stop sending rockets into Israel, the Israelis will stop shelling Gaza. Hamas will tell you that they are shelling Israel because of the callous treatment of the people of Gaza by the Israelis. They claim that Gaza has been turned into one great concentration camp. This may be something of an exaggeration. If it isn’t, the reason could have something to do with Hamas doctrine of killing all Israelis; a not insignificant threat.
Due to this process a lot of innocent people are dying. But it seems to me, that as in so many cases over history the victims are doing nothing to help their own plight. If I am a citizen of Gaza, I don’t cry out to Israel to stop the bombing. I have no control over Israel. I cry out to Hamas to stop. They are my representatives, but they are also the ones that are getting my family killed. Make the people who represent you, listen to you.
I have previously made this point about the Muslim American’s who complain about the surveillance that they are under in this country. Well, the best way to get out from under that is to clean up your own house. Stop making your mosques places where anti-American sentiments proliferate. If you don’t like it here go someplace where you are happy. This country will never operate under Sharia law. Get used to it.
During WWII there were huge German, Italian and Japanese populations in this country, all of whom were placed under some kind of government surveillance. The Japanese fared less well than the others. In comparison the Muslims here now have nothing to complain about.
No matter what you say about Israel, you must admit that Hamas is a terrorist not a political organization and they are not looking to better the lot of their people but only to destroy Israel. No, the Jews have not acted like a good ruler of Gaza or the West Bank. They have harassed the people of those areas and are constantly doing things to them that incite revolution but at least they are looking for a political solution. Hamas is not. They are terrorist aggressors who want all Jews dead all over the world. So Israel has two problems. They must annihilate Hamas and they must negotiate with the rest of the Arab world, especially the Palestinians. So far they have been a complete failure at both.
The Palestinian ambassador to the US from Gaza was on the tube recently making the wrong point. The first thing he did was defend Hamas. There is no legitimate defense of Hamas. That’s like trying to defend Hitler.
Maybe the real problem is the complete lack of understanding that each group has about the reality of the situation. I watched Martha Raddatz interview an Israeli couple, who had moved to a settlement on the West Bank in 1988. At that time they were young Jewish hippies just starting a family and talking about finding out how to get along with the Palestinians but without any concept of what it meant to be moving into this settlement that had been the homes of Palestinians that they wanted to be their friends. They seemed to have no idea that the people they wanted to make friends with had just had their homes stolen so this couple could move onto it. They looked like naïve fools.
Then Martha interviewed them now, 26 years later and it’s obvious that in that long period of living in this settlement, these people had learned absolutely nothing. They spoke of the current dangers but had no concept that it was the actions of their government, like providing the place where they still lived at the expense of the Palestinian people that was at the root of the problem.
Charlie Rose has Kalid Meschall the leader of Hamas on his show and pretty much forced Meschall, to admit that Hamas doesn’t want to co-exist with Israel. That is, of course, the source of the problem. It has always been the source of the problem. The Muslim nations of the middle east have again and again tried to overthrow Israel and each time they have failed. Unfortunately, the Israeli reactions to these attacks on Israel have been to create captive states in the West Bank and Gaza that are and should be unacceptable to any human group. The have harassed and brutalized the Palestinian population beyond endurance.
Instead of trying to negotiate their way into a better position, Hamas has decided to attack and to do so from the most populous area in the country, exposing civilians to horrendous conditions and death. Hamas attack on Israel, a pathetic one considering the iron shield defensive technology, was practically suicidal, but the people who are dying are not necessarily Hamas soldiers, but women and children who they encourage to stay in place, in order to show the pictures of what the Israeli bombs are doing.
This is the position of both parties, being egregiously wrong. . They both know very well, how to blame the other guy but neither is willing to back off to a position that is acceptable to their enemies.
The solution, is a very difficult one to be sure, but it includes some major concessions on each side. From a very long way away and sitting in a very comfortable chair, those solutions seem obvious.
Both sides must go willingly to the peace table but both sides does not include Hamas because Hamas does not want a peaceful solution, they only want to destroy Israel. So what do we do? We have to leverage the Arab world to deal with Hamas. There are many Arab nations that are not happy with Hamas, that would like nothing better then a peaceful solution. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and others would love to see this whole thing just go away. There are others, of course, that want to see Hamas successful in eliminating Israel. I would seem that all Muslims are not on the same course. This shouldn’t surprise anyone but somehow it surprises many.
But even if we could, somehow eliminate Hamas, we would also have to put Israel in a place where they had to negotiate in good faith or nothing will get done. The answer is seemingly simple but terribly complicated. Gaza must disappear, it’s total square mileage added to the West Bank where the Jewish settlements now exist. Then the settlements must be disbanded and the buildings given back to Palestinian owners who lost them to Jews in the takeover. Yes, it sounds impossible and it probably is, but it is the only realistic solution to the many problems that currently make peace impossible. It would be a logistic nightmare, it would create social chaos, everybody on both sides would hate it, but if they could get it done it would solve all the problems except the people’s hatred for each other. It would put all the Palestinians in the same place, But how do we make these ever-contentious opponents see that with the Jordanian border on one side, the Palestinians could have their own state, not dependent on Israel for anything except normal trade.
The biggest obstacles other than peoples normal push back against anything new? The settlement people not wanting to give up their homes and the Palestinians not wanting to give up the port of Gaza. The tradeoff of peace and a Palestinian state are more than worth it.
Of course Jerusalem is the elephant in the room. Jerusalem must become an international city, under UN control, open to all but controlled by none of the current parties. It should be an independent city/state.
Maybe there will never be peace between the Israeli’s and the Palestinians but someone has to at least try and by trying I don’t mean the current bullshit that passes for negotiations. Anything other than some version of the above suggestions must fail. A divided Palestine is ridiculous and Jews living on stolen land is even more so. But before anything can happen, each side must silence the rabble, and make their own people understand what is at stake and what sacrifices must be made. This is a lot to ask, especially of the current leaders of both sides. I don’t think they are up to it. I hope I am wrong.