(YellowTimes.org) — The Holy Land is in trouble. The Middle East has been embroiled in a devastating, hate-filled, and dangerous war for the past 18 months. The Israelis and the Palestinians have been engaged in a vicious cycle of death and destruction, and the situation on the ground has reached crisis proportions. It is a crisis that could boil over into neighboring Arab countries and by extension affect US interests in the region and its war on terrorism.
What has President Bush done in response to all of this bloodletting? So far, close to nothing. As the saying goes, Bush has played the fiddle while the Middle East burns. From the beginning of his presidency, President Bush and his administration have shown no interest in resolving the conflict in the Middle East, and have tried to wash their hands of everything Clinton and the Oslo Peace Accords tried to achieve.
After the leadership shown in the aftermath of September 11, it is disappointing to see such a performance from President Bush and his administration. Since coming to office, this administration's policy has been: as long as the conflict stays within the West Bank and Israel and does not spill over into other areas, let them kill each other. Vice President Cheney's trip to the Middle East a couple months ago was an eye opener for the administration. The vice president did not receive cooperation for plans to attack Iraq, from any Arab or non-Arab country, until the Palestinian issue is resolved. The United States is fast losing support in the region.
After widespread criticism and the realization that this conflict could well become an all out war in the Middle East, the president made some rhetorical overtures about some sort of future provisional Palestinian state after they find themselves some new leaders. In the past year, both Arab and European countries have continuously reminded the Bush administration that it should step in and prevent the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from spreading to neighboring countries. The illusion that Israel's military superiority will solve the problem has proven false, and now it is time that the US realizes the gravity of this conflict.
Why is it the responsibility of the US to broker a deal? The United States is the only country with enough power and influence to get both sides to sit down and talk with each other. Many in the world, especially the Arab world, see this conflict as painfully unbalanced and unfair. The Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is the only remaining military occupation in the world. This military occupation is maintained because of US military and financial support for Israel. The world already sees the US as a part of this occupation and the inhumane treatment of a whole population; therefore, to attain the moral high ground, it becomes the duty of the US to resolve this conflict fairly and permanently.
Because of media influence, many Americans see the situation in the Middle East as the democratic nation of Israel fighting Palestinian terrorism in self-defense. This is a misconception and a failure to see the struggle in its true context. After September 11, polls showed that a majority of Americans did not know that there was any occupation involved in the Middle East conflict. We see images of suicide bombers blowing themselves up along with innocent Israeli civilians and think they are terrorists, period. As abhorrent and unjustifiable as an act of terror is, it can be explained. We must look deeper into this conflict and think to ourselves, why would an 18-year old girl embark on such a devastating act? What motivates such action? Why would anyone destroy his or her own life along with other people's lives? The answer is that a life of occupation, humiliation, poverty, despair, and hopelessness is worse than death. Ever hear that expression, give me liberty or give me death?
The reason that this bloody conflict has not been resolved is because the media in this country has been portraying this conflict as one nation defending itself against terrorism, instead of a poor and desperate nation struggling for freedom and human dignity. And the biggest irony is that Israeli Jews know what it means to be second-class citizens, humiliated and persecuted!
The current violence in the Middle East goes back to the struggle for land that has gripped the holy land of Israel and what is now known as the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In the past 35 years the Israeli government occupied the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (only 22 percent of original Palestine), and has transferred thousands of Jewish settlers creating hundreds of settlements in the West Bank and Gaza changing the demography of the area. Today there are over 200 militarily protected settlements scattered throughout the occupied territories. These settlements are the crux of Palestinian anger.
The Oslo Peace Process in 1992 was the result of the first Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation, and in which the Palestinian authority was created with Yasser Arafat as the elected leader. At that time there were no suicide bombers and the Palestinians' weapons were stones. It was agreed that settlement building would be stopped, and Palestinian lands returned to them in stages with a viable Palestinian state by 1999. It has been ten years and none of that has happened. The number of Jewish settlers and settlements in the West Bank and Gaza has almost doubled, and all hopes of a Palestinian state diminish with every passing year.
Palestinian anger erupted in the year 2000 after peace talks failed and the second uprising began. Suicide bombers became the new Palestinian weapon against the fourth largest army in the world.
That is where we are today. Palestinians are among the poorest people in the world, and their desperation is simply unimaginable to someone living in the United States. In some parts of the squalid West Bank and Gaza refugee camps, unemployment is as high as 80 percent - they are the ghettos of the oppressed and a hotbed for anger and extremism. Roads are cut off by army checkpoints that protect the illegal settlers.
Homes are demolished, water pipes serving communities are destroyed, and civil administration buildings are bulldozed all in the name of self-defense for Israel. Children are periodically shot at during Israeli incursions into West Bank cities (400 of the 1400 Palestinians killed in the fighting the past 18 months have been children). People cannot get to jobs and are imprisoned in their homes for days under harsh military curfew and shot if they try to escape.
Again and again they are reminded of their position as second-class citizens living under occupation. The desperation and lack of hope have evolved into horrible acts of violence towards innocent Israelis, the settlers, and soldiers of the occupation. Israelis have tanks and fighter jets from the US, and Palestinians have people strapped with bombs and explosives. The tragic irony of this whole scenario is that Israel wants security, but government suppresses the symptoms instead of treating the disease. On the moral side, this occupation and the suppression that comes with it has transformed Israel from a nation built for persecuted Jews with the sympathy of the world into a nation of oppressors of another population. They have lost the moral high ground they enjoyed as a persecuted people.
Suicide bombing and terrorism is repugnant and morally unjustifiable, yet equally repugnant is state terrorism expressed in occupation and military aggression. In the past 18 months the Sharon government has engaged in a major military aggression against ordinary Palestinian citizens, which has included the bulldozing of random homes, the shooting of children, destruction of security buildings, cutting off water and electricity to cities, and going house to house looting and destroying under the guise of looking for "militants." The humiliation and anger this creates simply cannot be imagined and it has manifested itself into horrible violence.
There is no military solution to the problem. Yet President Bush in his war on terror seems to have given the green light to Israeli leader Ariel Sharon to reoccupy the entire West Bank, imprison and humiliate Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, murder his security forces, and destroy police buildings with the same force that is supposed to stop the terrorists. Many in the Arab world and elsewhere wonder how Palestinian violence is condemned as terrorism, while the murder of 13-year old girls and the enslavement and humiliation of an entire population by Israeli soldiers is called self-defense.
The reason many of these so-called talks and ceasefires have not been successful is because Israel is trying to separate the ceasefire from an immediate political solution to the problem. Palestinians, on the other hand, are tired of sitting and waiting for something to come out of these talks. They must see the light of a political solution at the end of this tunnel, and not just a ceasefire that allows Israelis to go back to their comfortable lives while Palestinians suffer in their desperate condition. The most misleading interpretation in the US media has been to compare Israelis fighting Palestinians to the US fighting Al-Qaeda terrorists. The US is not occupying another country and terrorizing its population! Yet President Bush cannot or does not want to see this distinction in his simple minded and one-track foreign policy.
If Palestinians do not see that light at the end of the tunnel they will continue to strap bombs to themselves and attack Israeli civilians. As long as the bombings continue and Israel's security is threatened military aggression will continue unabated. Yet what Israel does not understand is that their military aggression will create more loathing for their methods and will lengthen the line of suicide bombers that are in waiting. What the Palestinians have to understand is that suicide bombers will only harden the hearts of ordinary Israelis and will not bring them any closer to a Palestinian state.
It is a cycle that must be stopped right now by President Bush. As the symbol of freedom and human rights, the United States should be the first nation to condemn any occupation of another land along with the condemnation of terrorism. They should condemn violence and atrocity on both sides and not simply take the side of Israel in every argument. America is the only country that repeatedly blames the Palestinians for everything. This is creating more and more hatred in the hearts of Palestinians and Arabs everywhere, not bringing Israel any closer to security, undermining Bush's support for the war on terror, and pushing the region into greater and greater chaos.
The Palestinians want an independent state, and Israelis want security for Israel. It seems simple enough, yet their leaders have proven their lack of vision and statesmanship in achieving these things for their people. Military superiority has proven futile when a whole nation is determined to achieve justice. Now is the time for a just, constructive US policy that can resolve this crisis. Why waste more and more innocent lives when we know this occupation must end?
[Ghazal Shafiei is 19 years old and was born in Teheran, Iran. She and her family fled Iran during the devastating Iran-Iraq war and came to America in 1986 when she was 4 years old. They live in Chicago, and Ghazal attends Benedictine University majoring in political science with an emphasis on international relations. This article was previously published in The Candor at Benedictine University. She encourages your comments at [email protected]]
