I wrote this as sort of a capstone paper to my 200-level Geography class about the Middle East. As always, I'd love to hear where I went wrong.
The feeling of desperation and devastation that came when I saw body parts lodged up in the rafters of a freeway overpass as a result of a Palestinian suicide bomber will not soon leave me. This was an especially grizzly and poignant scene from Thomas Friedman’s Straddling the Fence report. The scene in the video showed Friedman running to see what had happened. The chaos was thick in the air. The police were yelling to control the crowd. The crowd was yelling anti-Palestine epithets. Of course, only a select few people could get through to the bomb site to see what, exactly, the damage was. The camera man was not one of those few people. Friedman certainly was, though. And while he was doing his reporter work, the camera continued to roll, scanning the scene for anything that could be of interest: people crying in despair at the latest in a long line of violent acts between the two nations; young men yelling in frustration and rage at what the conflict continued to be, “unresolved” being the current status; the devastation that one suicide bomber to inflict on a partially enclosed freeway. And then the camera found the person most directly responsible for the act, or what was left of him, and I had to turn away. Friedman came back a few moments later after questioning one of the policemen nearby the point of attack. He looked as if the bomb had exploded any hope he had for resolving what had, for decades, been called the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.
This video would not be very meaningful without the context behind the conflict that I have learned about in this class. At the beginning of the semester, in my pre-paper, I wrote how I am a novice when it comes to policy problems and international relations within the area of the Middle East and North Africa. Despite my ignorance, I must be a genius in the “take the right classes at the right time” area. I took a Macroeconomics class during the winter of 2008, the same time that insurance firm Bear Stearns filed bankruptcy, igniting the most dynamic time to study Macroeconomics because of what would become the biggest financial meltdown of the past 80 years. And now, at a time when a dozen different countries in the Middle East and North Africa are experiencing a recent spike in tumult and unrest, making the last few months the most dynamic the region has experienced since the creation of the state of Israel, I am taking a class on the Geography of the Middle East and North Africa. I am pleased at my own fortune to be taking the most important and helpful class, from a global perspective, on campus right now. But the knowledge I am gaining from the class has made me more aware, and saddened, by what is going on in this region of the world. On a personal note, I find my prayers for peace for foreign strangers to be more meaningful because I am more familiar with their struggles. (Please don’t grade me on that. I simply wish to convey how the things that I have learned during this class have affected me.)
Specifically to this assignment, those struggles include the conflict between two passionate, stubborn peoples to occupy two relatively small pieces of land, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. This conflict that has been the most severe since Israel was created following World War 2. Hitler and the Nazis were finally defeated, but not after doing tremendous damage to the Jewish population in Europe. Some kind of reparation needed to be made to made up for the loss of 6 million Jews. So the United Nations, with the zealous support of President Harry S Truman, created the State of Israel for the remaining Jews to have a place to live. The problem is that the United Nations commission in charge of selecting a location chose one that was not already vacant of people. Rather, they chose a place at the heart of what global experts refer to as the “shatterbelt.” An ominous name for any tract of land, the shatterbelt is that area in the Middle East that has been conquered over and over again by different empires and nations, the state of Israel being one of the most popular locations for invading hordes. While foreign nations parceling out land that is not theirs to give will make for an interesting case study in sequent occupance in tomorrow’s history and political science classes, the location and issues occurring therein make for a tumultuous and complicated current events seminar.
As interesting as the history of the region is and which people have what kind of rights to the land in the past, experts involved in commentating on possible solutions to the conflict do not focus on property or land rights. They generally see this as a sunk cost as far as the debate goes. They are more interested in how to rectify the most recent of wrongs and what Israel and Palestine can do now in order to find a mutually beneficial, or at least acceptable, solution.
Both sides have a lot of room to improve their relations with the other. They are, after all, in a defunct, unofficial state of war. The suicide bombing that Friedman reported on is one of many attacks made by the Palestinians on strategic Israeli points, such as freeway overpasses or the fatal bus bombing in Jerusalem on March 23. On the other hand, Israel commits its own share of attacks against the Palestinians, such as the action against the supply boat loaded with humanitarian supplies bound for Gaza in May of last year. Because the default position of either side of the conflict is violence, then we know there is something fundamentally with the dialogue, or lack thereof, regarding this intra-regional, inter-cultural relationship.
The international community is heavily involved in the conflict between these two nations. (Here I use the word “nation” to describe a cohesive group of people who share a culture and history; not a political state entity recognized by other states inasmuch as Palestine is not yet internationally recognized a state, despite its government and organized bureaucracy.) It was the United Nations that created the conditions for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They allocated land for the Jews in part because of guilt for allowing the Holocaust to happen. Now they feel guilty for the debacle stemming from giving away the land that the Palestinians lived on. On top of that, the world’s thirst for the resources in abundance in the area, specifically oil and natural gas, bring further incentive for foreign countries to facilitate peace in an historically war-torn area.
The United States is pouring in support for peace. Arabic and Middle East experts are in high demand in the military. A conversation with an acquaintance of mine enrolled at West Point illustrates the anti-terrorism efforts our country engages in. To defeat an enemy, one must first understand the enemy. He reports how popular the Arabic Studies major is at West Point. He is also involved in counter-terrorism training. The concept behind his training is that in order to fight terror, we must know how to be terrorists ourselves. Based on this thinking, the cadets design simulations of terrorist attacks. They even go so far as to covertly contact arms dealers to get prices and discover ease of accessibility to materials they may need. This acquaintance had a man ready to sell him a few dozen pounds of C4 explosive over the phone, no questions asked. His simulation happened to be the most “successful” in his class –an attack on the Wailing Wall at Passover, costing somewhere between $4 ,000 and $6,000, with an estimated casualty count of 20,000 to 30,000 people.
These efforts beg the question: are we fighting against violence or advocating for peace? The main problem is that both sides feel that violence is their only outlet. It is their only access to having their point be heard; to have a voice. Here in the United States, we have plenty of impassioned dissenters who seem to be just as incensed in their respective causes as any of the Palestinians or Israelis. The difference between the violent conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians and the conflict in Western countries is that in our form of democracy, these impassioned people are not forced to resort to violence in order to be heard or taken seriously. Except, of course, in gang cultures, but they do not enjoy a democratic method of communication.
The answer to this conflict can only come through peaceful, somewhat private dialogue. Both sides are already very well organized. The Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have the support of their respective governments to come to some kind of peace agreement. The real problem is when the general public gets involved—people who are not as well-informed as their leaders and who do not have a big picture mentality. Therefore, to keep public support, leaders of both sides must make impassioned speeches that speak of non-compromise. However, behind closed doors, I have no doubt that both sides are willing to make concessions to the other in order to stop the bloodshed.
Unfortunately, Palestine is not yet formally recognized as a state, and therefore can’t really officially enter into peace agreements. Whoever the Palestinian official is who enters such peace talks cannot yet speak for the entire nation. Hamas, the violent organization encouraging violence against Israel, is not controlled by the Palestinian National Authority. Palestine must be more unified in order to make any peace agreement stick. In February, “The Jerusalem Post” reported that a declaration of statehood made by the Palestinian Authorities could come as early as September of this year.
Of course, Hamas will not come crashing down if the Palestinian National Authority decided to declare itself the central government of Palestine. The PNA will have to employ some internal diplomacy with its own people. Leaders within Hamas will need a position in the PNA to keep their own voices heard, and their gunfire quiet; so the PNA needs to prepare itself to provide such a position. On the other hand, in order for Hamas to secure such an official place in the new government, they will have to surrender some of their demands. Until all parties involved are willing to make compromises and ready to lose some face in the process, the un-informed boots on the ground will continue to strap bombs to their chests and use them in, well, deadly ways.
Besides diplomacy, land rights is a big problem inter-twined with the diplomacy debate. Israelis encroaching on land what used to be Palestinian dwellings needs to stop immediately and be reversed. Perhaps the Israeli Government and the PNA could create a grandfather clause to let Jews go back and visit the settlements they built, but the cultural affront to simply taking land without regard to the lands current residents is deplorable. It will be hard now to not have Jews living in Palestine, but will become the norm within a generation.
Jerusalem is also a big question mark. Both sides want the city and have historical claim to it. So, let them both live there. Washington D.C. is not part of any state; neither should Jerusalem. The city will have both Jews and Arabs living there. If their respective governing bodies and countries are diplomatic but still live together, this will trickle down to the general public and they will be able to live separately, but together, also.
It’s a complex, violent issue. But the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict can disappear when private diplomacy with compromise and benefits for the other side will be the main goal. I look forward to seeing if the PNA can unify the Palestinians this coming Fall and pull the proverbial trigger on statehood declaration. This is where it all starts.
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