THE Kingdom’s Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal was right to reject US President Barack Obama’s attempts to get Arab states to make goodwill concessions for the benefit of Israel. Why should Israel receive the right to over-fly certain Arab countries and participate in academic exchanges when not only has its government made no moves toward a Palestinian state it is also swallowing up land essential to a future Palestinian homeland?
Standing with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at his side, Prince Faisal said the step-by-step approach will not achieve peace and neither will “temporary, security, confidence-building measures.”
That’s right! Such gestures would be the start of a slippery slope toward normalization of relations between Israel and its neighbors that would erode any incentive Israel might have for relinquishing land for peace. It would also leave the so-called moderate Arabs open to accusations that they are colluding with the enemy; a foe which in the last few years is responsible for the deaths of 1,200 Lebanese civilians and up to 1,400 Palestinian residents of Gaza.
What is Obama thinking? He’s making little headway with the Benjamin Netanyahu-led Israeli government over the curtailment of settlement building. They’ve basically told him ‘on your bike.’ In recent days, Israel evicted nine Palestinian families (53 people) from two houses in the Sheikh Jarrah district of East Jerusalem so that a block of 20 apartments could be built to house Jewish Israelis. Washington has deplored the action as being contrary to the spirit of the road map while the UN Coordinator for the Middle East says the action violated the Geneva Conventions relating to an occupied territory.
But as usual the Israelis do exactly what they like because they know there will be no serious repercussions. So perhaps Obama wants to gain kudos on the Arab side because he thinks Arabs are more pliable. Alternatively, he may be out to take the heat off his failure to sway Israel. Now, he can say that both sides aren’t cooperating with his Middle East strategy and if progress isn’t made it really is not his fault.
IF that is, indeed, the case, then he might be able to fool members of the American public who are not au fait with the conflict’s history into believing that Israel is once again the helpless victim, but the truth is very different. Most ordinary Americans have no idea that Palestinian land was robbed and then occupied, while the handy ‘terrorist’ label that Hamas has been tagged with gives the impression that the Palestinians are aggressive and indiscriminate killers out for Israeli blood. They have no idea that far more Palestinians have died at Israel’s hands than vice versa and fail to consider that while Israel is the most militarily powerful nation in the region with sophisticated weapons, the Palestinians with their homemade rockets are no match.
Moreover, even the most uninformed Westerners will probably be aware that Hamas kidnapped an Israeli soldier in 2006 and they may even know that his name is Gilad Shalit. But how many know that between 9,500 and 11,000 Palestinians and Arabs are currently held in Israeli prisons and military facilities with 765 of these designated “administrative detainees” deprived of any right to a trial?
SINCE 1967, Israel has arrested over 700,000 Palestinians, many as young as 12 years old. In February this year, 423 Palestinian children (including 12 girls) were in Israeli jails, according to a June 2009 report published by Defense for Children International Palestine Section.
The report further states that children as young as 12 are denied access to a lawyer as well as visits from their families and during interrogation, they are routinely blindfolded, handcuffed, slapped, kicked, forced into painful stress positions, subjected to sleep deprivation and placed in solitary confinement. And what is their crime? Most are picked up for throwing stones. Does anyone know even one of their names?
The fact is that the two sides have been at war since 1948 when Palestinian farmers and villagers were murdered or pushed out from their homes at pain of death. Many still retain rusty keys or yellowing deeds to those homes even though few still stand or are occupied by Israeli families. Not satisfied with turning a people who were sons of the soil into refugees, in 1963, Israel captured the old city of Jerusalem along with the Sinai (later returned to Egypt), the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and Syria’s Golan Heights when an estimated half-a-million Palestinians were rendered homeless.
This land grab is a far cry from what was proposed by the 1917 Balfour Declaration which stated “His Majesty’s government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people… it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.”
These basic facts must be absorbed before anyone can view the problem fairly and without bias. The Palestinians are the wronged people, not the Israelis, yet successive US administrations demand that Palestinians must accept the right of Israelis to live in their houses and on their land, and, further, renounce the use of violence.
Now the Obama administration has gone one step further. It wants the allies of the Palestinians to reward Israel for all the suffering it has caused and is still causing with a warm “Ahlan wa Sahlan. Beitna Beitak,” loosely translated as “Welcome, our house is yours.”
If Israel seeks a normalization of relations with the Arab world then the Arab Peace Initiative, first proposed by Saudi Arabia at a 2002 Arab League Summit, is still on the table… but only just. This offers Israel normal relations with all 22 members of the Arab League in return for its withdrawal behind 1967 borders and a “just settlement” for Palestinian refugees.
Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal recently said that his organization would accept a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders and is prepared to work with the United States toward peace with Israel, which some commentators are interpreting as a de facto recognition of the Jewish state.
Israelis have had things they’re own way for far too long. They think they can have their cake and eat it too thanks to a benevolent Washington. And so, rather than take painful decisions they cling to the umbrella of US protection and their own military superiority while ignoring at their peril the universal principle ‘Nothing, but nothing stays forever.’
