Israel-Hamas – Special Announcement! There Are Two Sides To The Crisis In Palestine; And These Are Both Wrong! By Peter Awanrin
The conflict between Israel and Palestine is not new to most people. And for Readers in International Relations, the crisis demonstrates efforts at the continuing use of Diplomacy to solve an issue that is become Cultural.
Do not misinterpret my statement. Diplomacy has played its role at ‘containing the crisis’. The role of Henry Kissinger that led to the Camp David Accords of 1978 remains evergreen. It removed Egypt from any future coalition of military forces that could take up arms against Israel. This has remained so till the present. If I should add, it also ensured the Superpowers would not have reasons to become hypertensive for most of the period of the Cold War.
What the peace agreement did for the Middle East was to remove the possibility of war between Israel and a coalition among of states in the Middle East, particularly since Egypt was the major military might in the region then, and probably till the present.
It should be noted that, the Camp David Accords, and others after it, did not guarantee the peace between Israel and her immediate Arab neighbours, especially the people of Palestine, Lebanon and Syria. In fact, we could say it actually infuriated the Palestinians and their supporters more. It was condemned for not carrying the Palestinians along in the process.
As we have, since 1980 to the present, that portion of the Middle East has not known peace for any period worth computing. In fact, Tupac’s allusion to the crisis was probably before September 13th 1996, when stated in the song “Changes”, that “there’s war on the streets and the war in the Middle East”! It has been over 23 years, and the crisis has continued.
Yet, Diplomacy has been in the background all the stated period, and even as of today. However, like the peacemakers before the current crop of diplomats, the ones presently involved in the conflict will soon get wary and exhausted!
Israel on her part has tried almost every thing possible to make peace; including taking lands of the Palestinians, building settlements and fences! They have had three wars with other countries over the Palestine issue. In fact, they have even relinquished some of the land acquired by conquest, with the hope for peace. These have not yielded much. The State of Israel has become a garrison unto itself; which in any case, is a wise thing to do when you have neighbours that have vowed to eliminate you from the face of the earth, and have demonstrated this willingness to follow through on their vows!
In cost, Israel has expended huge amount of resources in weaponry, including the research and development underlying such advancement in weaponry. I am sure they would prefer to use these resources for other developmental purposes.
For the Palestinians, it appears that, they have long concluded that peace is not possible with the “usurpers” of their land! They have resorted to a number of actions, mostly clandestine to remonstrate the presence of the Jews in their midst!
Unfortunately, their responses thus far have reduced them to beggars in the midst of affluence! And presently, their cities are being reduced to rubbles, while relying on rations from donors for survival! This is very unfair.
Outside of these protagonists, we have the West and some Arab countries! If you want my honest opinion, it is this: These two groups have both failed the people of Palestine. And in this case, the Arabs have failed Palestine more than the West has been unable to help Israel secure peace with Palestine. It is all too evident. Israeli GDP is about the highest in the entire Middle East.
That of Palestine is below measurable compared to her affluent neighbours.
Somehow, I just feel like the West and some Arabs prefer not to have lasting peace between Israel and Palestine. But I stand to be corrected. And to show that I am wrong should start from the efforts made by these two groups to make peace between Israel and Palestine, which have not been in response to incidences such as that of October 7. Then, I will need to know whose citizens are being killed as a result of the crisis! Also, I will need an answer to this: How come the supporters of either side have been making progress, while the people of Palestine become the paupers of the Middle East?
The other groups to the crisis are these rest of humanity that have found it possible to take sides in the conflict referring themselves to either Pro-Israel and Pro- Palestine! Honestly, we should not take sides in a conflict that has witnessed the death of thousands of persons, mostly innocent civilians. I mean, humanity should be classy, for crying out loud.
How do you hear folks say Hamas was right for killing over a thousand persons, including babies, and that Israel is wrong for resorting to natural instinct! Or how do you say Israel is right for dropping concrete walls on families, because of the sins of Hamas? I still look for the sense in these statements; I cannot see any.
In all honesty, can we really see sides in this conflict? Must the conflict be seen in a binary faction? Are the persons killed on both sides not humans? Again, is the crisis a religious one? And which religion is involved in the crisis?
Even worse is the way outsiders label the parties to the crisis. In fact, some persons even describe Israel as an Apartheid State! You have to be completely ignorant of the meaning, nature, purpose of Apartheid for you to refer to Israel or any other country as an Apartheid State.
Apartheid was an official policy, crafted by the Nationalist Party of South Africa, which was used as its manifesto for the election of 1947, which the party won. It was a policy that the ruling Afrikaans believed would keep the peoples or races of South Africa separate so as to be able to pursue their respective developments. It was initially seen as a policy to keep them different while they pursue the destinies separately. In the following decades, it became an instrument to keep the Blacks, i.e. majority of the people of South Africa permanently dispirited. This it did through the instrumentality of 317 laws that basically reduced the Blacks of South Africa to inhuman conditions comparable to what the victims of the Transatlantic Slave Trade experienced in the Americas. This is not what is happening in Israel.
Presently, the bulk of the Palestinians are not even within Israel. They have their government, who run the affairs of the people. Israel currently does not discriminate against the people of Palestine. It does not make laws for them. In fact, if there is anything the Israeli government want is to have nothing to do with the Palestine people; if such would bring peace. What is happening between Israel and Palestine has nothing to do with Apartheid. It is part of taking sides that such heinous label could be impose on Israel.
This is also the reason why the conflicts in the Middle East have continued because the crises have been seen as between “we” and “them”, laced with extreme hatred for the other side. This should not be so. If anything, the crisis has to be seen from a single angle, that is, from the perspective of Humanity. That is, from the part that there is the need for peaceful coexistence among people. That, there is the urgent need for peace between the Palestine people and Israel!
Ironically, this is the key to peace in the Middle East. Let us imagine that the two antagonists are at peace with each other; and Palestine is able to develop almost at par with Israel; would there be crisis in the Middle East? Would the Middle East need warmongers like the United States, Russia and China, who only show up to support arm confrontation? I doubt. In fact, I am sure that the Middle East will be the most peaceful region of the Earth crust, without the prompting of “meddlesome interlopers”!
The above is easy to conclude with recourse to the rapprochement that happened between France and German in 1950s, which has now morphed into the European Union. We see that despite the three rounds of fighting between France and Germany from 1870 to 1945, a simple realization that peace between the two people, anchored on economic cooperation and development could spell progress for the two countries changed the security dynamics and economic fortunes of the continent. Presently, the European Union features the most developed conglomerate of states on earth. This can also be the achieved in the Middle East, and it could start with peace between Palestine and Israel.
Flowing from the above there is just one side to this crisis. This is the side in support of peace between Israel and Palestine. I really do not need anyone to legitimize my position. I am sure I have done some research involving this crisis, including analyzing the changing patterns of the crises in the Middle East since the 1920s. I have an adequate understanding of the crisis.
Therefore, the need for peace is not negotiable. This will pay the region more than their present predicament of shame. I mean, what region has a people that have been in conflict for a hundred years, and yet unable to do anything about the conflict! We really need to change the way things are seen and done in the Middle East, especially with regards to the crisis in Palestine.
For me, lasting peace between Israel and Palestine is as simple as ABC. It is like this:
The State of Israel is a fait accompli. It cannot be dismembered. It can only be erased from the face of the Earth. This is going to be at a cost humanity cannot afford to pay. As Levenson and Klein noted, “one can call Israel many things, but certainly not ordinary”. Erasing such country from the face of the Earth could be the end of Humanity.
The State of Israel has stopped to rely on “outsiders” for her existence! We hear the country has nuclear weapon, even though no one has been able to verify this. At best, we know that “Operation Nickel Grass” was prompted follow President Nixon’s realization that Israel was about to resort to the “Third Temple” in October 1973.
The formidability of the State of Israel is the reality. Israel cannot be eliminated. Removing them from the land is almost impossible, even if the United Nations has to reverse its decision of 1947 – which provided for a two states solution; and the General Assembly Resolution of May 1948 recognized the State of Israel. A Resolution that was effectively supported by the Soviet Union, and later the United States, who granted “de jure” and “de facto” recognitions to Israel respectively.
The Palestinian authorities will need to recognize this fact of Israeli presence in the Middle East. Even if we have to assume without conceding that Palestinians own the land; but this is against a lengthy 75 years of Israeli presence on that portion of the Middle East! I mean, this is a very long time ago, and Israel has made very significant investment on the territory.
Rather than conflict, the Palestine people just have to trade with Israel, by recognizing the existence of Israel, for massive developmental assistance in the form of reparations, and then a Palestinian State.
If this is done, them, the healing process between the citizens of the two countries will follow gradually. This will include starting from the elementary schools, with children on both sides being taught to love their brothers and sisters on the other side. It is a long process, but it has to start with the genuine need for peace.
Iran, with other states in the Middle East, has a major role to play in this crisis. This means that Iran has to be truthful to itself. I do see how the regime will continue to insist on eliminating Israel by using proxies! It should be obvious to any serious government that Israel is not ready to be eliminated, and especially not by a non-nuclear power. And even if Iran becomes capable of nuclear warfare tomorrow; the possibility still would be impossible to use nuclear weapon on Israel without fatal repercussions.
Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have the resources to finance the peace between Israel and Palestine. After all, any problem that money cannot solve, more money will solve it. It is not possible to see how Palestine will refuse massive financial and economic aid for permanent peace with Israel, with tacit support of Iran. A city like those of Dubai can also be replicated in Palestine. And the Palestine people can also life of peace, prosperity and security, without fear that IDF will have to attack them tomorrow.
For the West and the other world powers, I am sure they would fare better concentrating on the mess in Ukraine rather than instigating another “front” in the Middle East. They already have their hands filled with the eyesore there. They should make effort to clear that mess in Ukraine, rather than adding more.
For us therefore, we need to change the way we have viewed the crisis in the Middle East or anywhere for that matter. Conflict need to been seen from the side of the need for peace. We have to be mediators, and not instigators. This old ways of siding with one party to a conflict between two groups have never worked. It simply makes a mockery of the human race. Therefore, we just have to change the way we view conflicts. The injunction of Tupac becomes very much like truth from the streets:
“It’s time to fight back, that’s what Huey said.
2 shots in the dark now Huey’s dead [because of this fight back attitude].
I got love for my brother, but we can never go nowhere
unless we share with each other. We gotta start makin’ changes.
Learn to see me as a brother ‘stead of 2 distant strangers.
And that’s how it’s supposed to be.
How can the Devil take a brother if he’s close to me?
I’d love to go back to when we played as kids
but things changed, and that’s the way it is.
We gotta make a change…
It’s time for us as a people to start makin’ some changes.
Let’s change the way we eat, let’s change the way we live
and let’s change the way we treat each other.
You see the old way wasn’t working so it’s on us to do
what we gotta do, to survive”.
