Political Maturity? Don't Look There!
Well no, it doesn't look very good, not at all. The world cannot help those who have no wish to help themselves. Palestinians decry their helpless situation, feel themselves to be occupied by a foreign military which will not permit them to get on with their lives. Simply put, they cannot see through to recognizing the legitimacy of the State of Israel in territory which they still claim to be theirs.
That tiny sliver of geography apportioned co-jointly to Jews and to the existing Palestinian population in the territory by the United Nations in 1948 to offer sanctuary to the remnants of a nation decimated by an age-old disease of militantly deadly anti-Semitism still sits badly with the Palestinians who continue to bitterly contest Israel's existence. After 60 years of grievance and anger and attacks against the existence of the State, Palestinians still remain unconvinced that their continued inability to accept the unmovable is their own worst nightmare.
Yes certainly on the face of it, the United Nations decision, while rewarding Jews and assuaging world guilt was bought at the expense of Palestinians. Those who fled the official announcement, the international recognition of the State of Israel, fearing the area conflagration they knew was imminent as Arab states surrounding the intruder-State gathered their armies to attack still simmer with aggrieved hatred.
That was then, this is now. Long past time to come to terms with reality. A reality that dictates that this is how it is, the State of Israel and its population of Jews and non-Jews will not be moving any time soon. The acceptance that there is room in the geography for everyone. That the State of Israel was founded as a refuge for world Jewry, from a world that had never wanted to accept Jews throughout the diaspora.
The offer, however belated, to assist in bringing to reality an independent Palestinian state has been made time and again and always turned down by Palestinian representatives because it never included enough. Enough in this instance being the ouster of Israel or the weakening of its purpose and its aspirations, its dedication as a country of refuge for Jews. Whatever was offered, whatever compromise was accepted at the bargaining table invariably failed at the last moment.
If sincerity was left behind to be expressed by one side only no conclusion resulting in peace and fairness could ever evolve. Now, finally, when a segment of the PA is determined to reach a peace accord to result in a Palestinian State, another segment stands firmly back at square one; outright refusal to recognize the legitimacy of the presence of a Jewish state in the region. And because the two PA segments cannot agree to agree they revert to mutual self destruction.
Well, how mature is that? How responsible is that kind of throw-back? Just as mature and responsible, one might venture to say, as Fatah and Hamas militias continuing their 'armed struggle' against the 'oppressors', when terrorist suicide bombers slither into Israeli territory and detonate their Paradise-bound bombs killing innocent Jews; men, women, children. But that's seen as business as usual. Lately, business as usual has been continuing, but the targets have changed.
"What is happening now is damaging our reputation and our standing with Arab public opinion and with Arab officials," said Mkhaimar Abusada, a political scientist at Al Azhar University in Gaza. "My feeling is that Arab support for the Palestinians is beginning to evaporate. Arabs are looking at us as fighting ourselves now, not the Israeli occupation, and Arab officials are saying that we're not very serious about establishing a state."
It isn't only Arabs from without Gaza who look on with apprehension and disbelief. News travels, and around the world there is cause for wonder and doubt internationally. And Mr. Abusada, academic that he is, has got things slightly skewed. If he and other educated civilian Palestinians so eagerly desire a state of their own they will have to amend their vision and understand that Israelis have no wish to 'occupy' Palestinian land; they want peace. Peace cannot establish itself one-sidedly, unilaterally.
He has a personal obligation as an educated Palestinian to accept reality, to accept that there has been fault on both sides and that to progress, to advance toward a workable solution there must be forgiveness and good will extended from both sides. He must make an effort to denounce the civilian killings, the constant rockets lobbed from Gaza to Israel. He and others like him, influential and reasonable, must make an effort to instruct others on the way to achieve peace - by being reasonable and accommodating, not by supine acceptance of the unacceptable.
And Daoud Kuttab, an analyst teaching at Al Quds University who declares: "This fighting affects everyone's morale. We always felt we had this one big asset, our social unity as Palestinians, but to see it shredding, with lives being shed without much concern, is horrible." I would ventur to say that no one in their right mind could disagree with that assessment. But the social unity he refers to also includes the social acquiescence of terror being visited upon another population. Why hasn't he decried that state of affairs, why hasn't he used his analytical skills to understand what Palestinians are doing to their aspirations, killing one another in sectarian violence aside?
"There has been a lot of hopelessness and frustration and disappointment, with people thinking they can solve everything with a rifle" he claims. And why is that? When Israel cleared out of Gaza leaving it free for the civil administration to pull itself together and offer its people a life, not encourage them to take up arms and fill the air with rhetoric, shooting off their rifles in defiance of reality it did no such thing. Who is responsible for the political and diplomatic impasse that has fostered this violence he so decries? Are the Palestinians never responsible for themselves? But Mr. Kuttab does know of what he speaks when he finally says: "Unfortunately power and violence do produce results in this part of the world. Talk of peace and non-violence doesn't get us very far, unfortunately."
Unfortunately indeed. And he's right on. So why doesn't he go any further and inspect that statement of his a little more introspectively? Why not pin the tail on that unfortunate donkey? Even the PA legislators, blaming one another rather than speaking to the issues and identifying their own failures instead lament that the collective attention is not being turned on their common enemy, Israel.
Palestinians see that Fatah and Hamas, in striking out at one another, at the symbols of authority each wields, at their symbolic institutions, are busy destroying civil infrastructure, universities, libraries, attacking them with rockets and firebombs. And murdering academics and students. And killing civilians and their children. "Everything the Palestinians fought for in the 1980s and 90s is being undermined in a second," said Diana Buttu, a former aide to Dahlan and Abbas.
"People were shot and killed to ensure universities stayed open. Now we're blowing up our own universities and UNRWA is threatening to pull out and no one cares." All those millions upon millions of dollars the UN agency that cares for and educates Palestinians and their families, wasted. What has been achieved? All for naught. Palestinians don't want to be educated in the direction of responsibility to self, an understanding that they must want to help themselves, not continue to blame others for their misfortunes.
That's the true issue. That this is really a culture of blame and violence. Want change? Enter the 20th century, you'll have lots of leisure to welcome the 21st.
Labels: Middle East
posted by Pieface @ Monday, February 05, 2007
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