The Italian foreign minister, Massimo D’Alema, in a recent interview with Time magazine about the deployment of 3,000 Italian troops to southern Lebanon said that “I fully comprehend the psychology of the Israelis, who feel under siege. They are surrounded by hostile countries, openly espousing Israel’s destruction.”
D’Alema is obviously viewing the whole Middle East conflict situation through a certain lens. That is the lens of Israeli self-pity and paranoia. Egypt signed a peace deal with Israel way back in 1979; Jordan has especially warm relations with Israel; Syria has not fired a shot at Israel for decades and Lebanon has been obliterated by the massive Israeli bombing campaign in August and is hostage to the Israeli blockade of its air and sea ports. So where are the hostile nations wanting to push Israel into the sea?
That is an old slogan that Arabs have been using less and less, as they finally realize that they will have no choice but to live side by side with the Jewish state. Muslims have a long tradition of living peacefully with both Jews and Christians, protecting their rights to worship in their synagogues and churches .
What the Italian foreign minister should have realized is that Israel’s feelings of being surrounded by hostile Arab nations is in most part of its own making. The bloody and completely disproportionate response to the killing and capturing of some of its soldiers by Hezbollah has resulted in the death of at least 1,000 Lebanese civilians, including women and children, as well as the destruction of much of Lebanon’s infrastructure. What about the cruel ongoing Israeli repression and killing of hundreds of Palestinians every year in Gaza and the West Bank? Are all of these acts supposed to evoke warm and fuzzy feelings of happiness and contentment among the Arabs? Hardly.
If Arabs are feeling hostile toward Israel and Israelis, they certainly have good reason. Instead of whining about the alleged threat from Arabs, why don’t the Israelis do some much-needed introspection and admit their many mistakes and acts of cold-blooded murder? After the war in Lebanon, the government of Ehud Olmert is now saying that pulling back from the occupied West Bank is no longer a priority for Israel. The hundreds of Palestinians languishing in Israeli jails and the continued economic strangulation of the Palestinian economy just breed more bitterness among Arabs toward Israel. Instead of making Israel safer, it is endangering the very essence of what is supposed to be a humanistic and democratic state.
Palestinians must be given hope for a better future. Without that, many of them will continue to battle Israel. In order to avoid that, Israel must take the bold step of allowing, and indeed encouraging, the Palestinians to found a stable and prosperous state. Only then will the hatred felt toward the Jewish state subside and Arab and Jew be able to live peacefully side-by-side, showing those doomsayers from both sides just how wrong they were.
