The Fulfilment of Purpose; the Bitterness of Envy
Two societies, two populations, two cultures and traditions, two polarized visions. There was the existence of small towns and villages comprised of Palestinians who planted small tracts of land where they could, and who shepherded sheep where practical. There was a respected hierarchy, the traditional and respected head of the village and all other residents honoured and obeyed his instructions. These were people with a large vision of themselves but given scant respect from their neighbours within a society for which intertribal suspicion was the order of their times.There were sprinklings of Jews living here and there in urban centres where they had always lived, where their religious, cultural and traditional roots spoke of a long history in the region. Joining them, a gradual cadre of European Jews for whom return to Zion was a longing and an aeons-long obligation to their history, their forbears, their sense of their place in the future. These were educated people with a political agenda of return; their vision of the future included a Jewish state and they slowly and methodically embarked on the mission set before them.
The local Arab population, illiterate, uneducated, traditionally tribal, viewed these newcomers as interlopers; with the same kind of suspicion they had for other tribes, but overlaid with an especial loathing for people who were not Arab, decidedly not Muslim. They knew, because the Koran stated it, and other Arabs reminded them of it, that Islam rejected outright the spiritual insult of infidels inhabiting Muslim land other than as supplicants who might be given permission to live among the Arab populations, with certain social and taxed restraints.
But these visionary Jews, committed to a shared promise of the future, went quietly about their business, aided and supported by other Jews, prominent in politics, in social and monied circles abroad who encouraged these pioneers and funded them generously in a communal determination to achieve the return to the homeland. With the funds provided to them they bought up land from absentee Arab and Turkish landowners and amassed for themselves a geography which could house communal farms, kibbutzim, a solid presence in advance of a state.
They set about organizing themselves, transforming the desert through careful planning and irrigation techniques, to plant crops and graze animals, to teach themselves about the land and to make of it what only hard work and total engagement could achieve. While their nervous and curious and envious neighbours looked on in disbelief and resentment, wanting nothing better than a future that would reflect their past in perpetuity. Waiting for the newcomers to abandon their presence where they were not wanted.
The Arab population had no leaders among them whose concern was all-encompassing for the people as a whole, to better their circumstances, to bring them together in harmonious relationship, to encourage them to build schools and hospitals and civil infrastructures. Instead, they all watched and waited as the State of Israel became a reality, and in furious disagreement, launched a war of attrition against the new state, which came to nothing, but which increased the bitterness and left Arab Palestinians in their thousands outside the borders of the new state.
When the Palestine Liberation Organization came to maturity and persuaded itself to veer from its initial aims and become the Palestinian Authority they had the means and the wherewithal to begin serious planning for statehood, including all the needed civil infrastructure that an independent state would require; a judiciary, a health and education institute, policing to ensure law and order prevailed, but none of this really occurred. All the vast sums of money that the United Nations and other supporters of the Palestinians in their refugee camps had provided over the years was used as maintenance, and much of it fled the country for private Swiss bank accounts.
While one group of people prepared themselves for statehood and achieved their dream of a refuge for their people through dedicated hard work and determination, the other allowed itself to sink into a swamp infested with hatred, envy and bitterness. The desert bloomed for the former, the latter sunk deeper into deprivation. Even though the Palestinians are now the most educated among the Arab populations of the area, they haven't been able to haul themselves out of financial dependency on the largesse of the UN, the EU, the US and Canada.
They refuse to accept the reality of life as it is, and instead embrace the idea of their noble past as sole inhabitants of the land perpetually at war with one another, accomplishing little in the way of social and economic advancement. They've stagnated, wallowed in self-pity, blamed everyone else but themselves for their inability to advance their own interests independently of handouts, and to live in a decently co-operative manner with their neighbour whose existence they continue to abhor.
That old saying about cutting off one's nose to spite one's face; never was it more telling.
Labels: Middle East
posted by Pieface @ Friday, January 19, 2007
<< Home