The saddest thing of all is that most Israelis already see it. It is the Palestinian leadership that could not compromise because they were under orders from Cairo, Riyadh and Tehran, and had prepared their people only for war, not peace.
If only it were so simple.
The Palestinians do not take orders from "Cairo, Riyadh and Tehran". That's a fiction and a naive view. No shadowy figure in a distant capital can order thousands of young men and women to blow themselves up in desperate attacks. These are driven by much more immediate visceral reasons. By experiencing the daily occupation, humiliation, beatings, and persecution by their enemies whose uniforms they can see plainly. By seeing their homes blown up, their land invaded, their mothers, fathers, sons, infants, family, friends, murdered and humiliated. By listening to family history of where they came from, of villages purged, pogroms, by looking at deeds to houses long since taken by the invaders. By seeing their past stolen and their future destroyed. By living in refugee camps whose very existance is testimony to the continuing injustice and present misery. It is a ridiculous fiction to imagine that somehow Tehran is creating all this motivation out of thin air, that somehow dark plots are hatched in distant capitals, and were it not for that, there'd be peace, tranquility and happiness.
PALESTINIANS ARE FIGHTING A WAR OF LIBERATION. This simple fact underlies all the problems of Israeli occupation of another people in the territories. The occupied are resisting, and resisting violently. This is not some clique in Riyadh, Tehran or Cairo deciding. As a matter of fact Arafat and the PA "leadership" has been repeatedly behind the curve, trying to catch up to what THE STREET is doing - this was so during the first intifada, when Arafat wasn't even there, and it is so with the second intifada. No amount of alleged "instructions Tehran to Palestian leadership" can change that, because that's not the underlying dynamic. Yes, the PA will take money to buy weapons from wherever they can get it - and the sources are perforce unsavory, but that's a reality the world over in liberation movements. The bottom line is that no amount of weaponry or money can be useful without a powerful REASON for the struggle. Most Swiss are armed, but they don't go around shooting. PALESTINIANS ARE IN A WAR OF LIBERATION.
The saddest thing of all is that most Israelis already see it.
I don't think so. Seems most have grown quite comfortable in the occupation, see Jerusalem as theirs exclusively forever, and in general have a quite unrealistic perception of what military might can accomplish and how the world sees them. If that were not so, they wouldn't dream of electing a war criminal who has been sanctioned by their own courts. Sharon is a symptom. A man of that caliber would not be elected, if "most Israelis see reality". This is a prescription for disaster, because it means they'll have to take quite a lot more pain before they make contact with reality - it will be a forcible process, and a bloody one.
Take a look at your post, and indeed your posts. Your mantra is "Israel always right", "Palestinians always wrong". Note, that in my analysis, I never claim the Arabs are without fault (indeed, how can they be without fault, when their civilisation has basically failed) or Israel is never right (f.ex. Israel is right wrt. Lebanon, and is right wrt. Syria). Nadine, it is not reality to imagine that in this conflict one party is pure as driven snow, while the other is the devil incarnate. It is exactly this kind of "reasoning" that distorts the debate and makes it look exactly like the Arab Jihad - both claim absolute truth, and see the opponent as absolutely wrong.
The hallmark of great and dynamic modern cultures has always been their ability to look at themselves self-critically, and tolerate internal debate. Somebody mentioned Kapuscinski on this forum. Well, read his book of dispatches from Africa "Empire of the Sun", where his diagnosis of the failure of African cultures to build modern functioning states is laid at the door of exactly a lack of willingness to accept criticism. But we need not refer to any authority here - it is a matter of historical record - the modern societies with the most free flow of information, internal debate and high treshold for criticism, are the most successful. The reasons for this are not surprising - for what is criticised can be fixed, but if you can't criticise, how do you know what to fix? The attitude "we are always right, and we'll kill you if you don't agree" is exactly what causes failure over the long run - just look at the repressive Arab cultures over the last 400 years.
The Jewish culture has always been marked by free inquiry and a thirst for knowledge and truth whereever it may lead. The difference between talking to someone in Riyadh and in Tel-Aviv has been that in Tel-Aviv it used to be that people could see THE OTHER POINT OF VIEW. That was healthy, for it allowed more rational decisions to be made, based on better information and better analysis. But this is what has been slowly changing. And when you get people who, just like you, only say "we're always right", "they're always wrong" the whole place starts sounding exactly like the caricature of the Arabs - and what difference is there then, between the two? Both are fanatics, only on opposite sides. I call it the Arabification of Israel. How sad.
And so with your analysis. Propaganda is not a useful guide in making decisions. |
