Saturday, August 25, 2012

No Talking Endlessly

A Facebook member contacted me with the following message: hello---can you say something about achieving peace both for Israel/Palestinians and over all area -- or are you just anti-Israel? I see you are educated…. so you should be working for a solution


My reply:


I am not anti-Israel.  I was one of the first Palestinians to call for the recognition of Israel.  In1980 I championed the recognition of Israel at college campuses and within the Palestinian community in Chicago. I attended the White House Rose Garden peace signing ceremony on September 13, 1993 and witnessed the famous handshake between Rabin and Arafat. 


I have always been and continue to be an advocate for peace.  Yet, I like many peace-loving Palestinians have become disillusioned by Israel's constant talking but not really talking.  They want to talk but never conclude the "talks" and all the while they want to illegally confiscate more Palestinian land and build more illegal settlements and transfer more hard core machine gun taunting settlers into these settlements.  Their justification for this is that the Palestinians have given up Area C in the Oslo Agreement.  This is hogwash. 


They cut down our olive groves and then Israeli supporters justify this by saying that "terrorists" hide in the trees.  This is hogwash. 


When I ask Israeli's to explain the discrepancy between laws that differently effect Palestinians and Israelis and how they cannot call Israel an apartheid state, they have no explanations. They have no explanation for Jewish only roads; no explanation for colored license plates for Palestinians; no explanation for a wall that divides farmers from their farm land; no explanation for surrounding towns with barred wires and checkpoints out of those towns that allow residence ingress and egress at only certain times of the day.  In one such town, an elementary school is outside the wall and the guards at the 3pm crossing when children are released from their school purposefully choose to not open the gates leaving the children alone to wait until the evening crossing before they can return to their families and homes. This is a direct policy that builds frustration and hatred and ultimately aims to continue the status quo--occupation.


No one can explain to me that why Israel always asks the Palestinians to return to the "negotiating table" when Israeli soldiers carry out a direct and humiliating policy to destroy the human will of the Palestinians.  No one asks the Israelis why their leaders continue to frustrate and subjugate Palestinians into complacency.  No one asks Israel to stop its policy to dehumanize Palestinians and establish a policy to build an atmosphere of confidence in the future.


The future is in numbers. Peace will be established when Israel realizes that the will of the Palestinians people cannot be destroyed; that they cannot continue their apartheid practices especially when in 2016 it is expected that the population in Palestine and Israel will be such that Israelis are the minority.


The problem with a lack of peace is that the Israeli political system gives too much power to its minority parties.  In all the 64 year history of Israel, there has been only one Israeli government that had a majority in its Knesset.  All the other Israeli governments have been run by coalition governments that are beholden to right wing minority parties that do not want peace because these parties wield the ongoing threat to switch their allegiance in the Knesset in a no confidence vote thus bringing down the ruling party.  (See my article Soul Searching Leads to Peace http://fadizanayed.blogspot.com/2011/12/soul-searching-leads-to-peace.html  which explains how the Israeli political system is a hindrance to peace. ) 


The only way for peace to be achieved is through a One State Solution.  It is not an impossibility.  South Africa has proven that. Despite the decades of White Rule in South Africa the Black population, through the heroic efforts of Nelson Mandela, reconciliation between the people of South Africa, thought to be unattainable, was achieved successfully. Recompilation can be achieved in the Holy Land.  

I still have hope for peace. I will always have hope for peace.  I want to live with Jews, Muslims and Christians in prosperity in the Holy Land.  I want to work for a solution but I cannot and will not talk for the sake of talk if it will lead to a never ending talks.  


A One State Solution is the only thing to "talk" about. 

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