generalspeaking

Brutalizing the Palestinians

Israel the aggressor, the oppressor, the occupier. It's really tough to live next to Jews; they have such tender regard for themselves and such a fearsomely irritating penchant to dismissing the human rights of others. One sees it in the reportage regularly aired on certain radio and television stations intent on ensuring that the world does not forget the plight of the Palestinians. For the Palestinians deserve better than to remain a fearful, oppressed and poverty-ridden population, refugees forever, clinging to the wan hope of statehood.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas informed Jackson Diehl of The Washington Post that the reason he refused Ehud Olmert's offer to create a Palestinian state with 97% of the West Bank and an additional 3% in trade representing land within Israel's 1967 border was a matter of simple practicality. "In the West Bank, we have a good reality. The people are living a normal life." Besides which, added the head of the Nablus stock exchange, there is no rush for statehood.

For at the present time Palestinians have a need for the Israel Defence Forces. West Bank Palestinians urgently require protection from the forces of Hamas. The defence forces of the Palestinian Authority are not yet capable of defending them. West Bank Palestinians, formerly Jordanian in origin, have traditionally been secular, business-oriented people, capable of looking after their own interests.

West Bank Palestinians see themselves as being quite different culturally and socially, from Palestinian Gazans, who originated within Egypt. Gazans have clung to a different culture, and they are religious in orientation. Seeing for themselves a commonality with the ideals espoused by Hamas. Although Gazans may be finding themselves less comfortable of late with the restrictions imposed by Hamas through interpretations of sharia.

The Palestinian state is proceeding, however, with little fuss, in establishing the required infrastructure to be put in place to ensure an orderly transition from 'refugee state' to proudly sovereign state. That time will come. Meanwhile, in Nablus prosperity is everywhere to be seen; the head of the Palestinian Securities Exchange has celebrated the Nablus stock market as the second-best performing in the world this year, after Shanghai.

The wealthiest man in the West Bank lives in Nablus, a billionaire. The most recent Hollywood releases are on view at well-attended Nablus theatres. The presence of BMWs and Mercedes would challenge in their numbers, those seen anywhere else, including Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. Israeli checkpoints are scarce since Israeli security services put down the last intifada, restoring security to the West Bank.

It is that prevailing security largely responsible for the current economic boom. In Hebron, restaurants and shops are full of people living comfortably. Sizeable villas have appeared around the city perimeters. New apartment buildings, banks, brokerage houses, car dealerships and health clubs are in clear evidence in Ramallah. In Qalqilya, local Palestinian farmers, trained by Israeli agriculturalists and helped by Israel with irrigation equipment have sent their first strawberry crop to Europe.

A new Palestinian city is in the planning stages, soon to be built north of Ramallah. The Jewish National Fund has assisted in the planting of three thousand tree seedlings for a forested area to be developed near the new city. Palestinians have consulted with Israeli experts in the planning of public parks and additional civil infrastructures. Tourism has soared in the Palestinian Authority, bringing new guests to the now-open 89 hotels.

According to the International Monetary Fund, Palestinian economic growth has rung in at 7%. But according to the PA Prime Minister Salam Fayad, (a former IMF employee), the real figure is 11%, partly due to the congruent strong economic performance in Israel. Gaza has not been entirely immune to the strong economic forecast, and it has seen its shops and markets brimful of goods and foodstuffs.

Life for Arabs within Israel is still seen as preferable to living outside the borders of the country. Palestinians living within Israel as citizens, still largely state their preference is to remain within Israel, eschewing removal to a new Palestinian state. The intractability of Hamas in the formula for living peacefully side by side, Arabs and Jews, presents as a particular dilemma, one whose solution lies somewhere in the future.

Peculiarly enough, in a territory where strange occurrences are strange only to the uninitiated onlooker, Gaza's Hamas leader, Ismail Haniya's three sisters- Kholidia, Laila and Sabah - originally Palestinians living in Gaza, married Israeli Bedouin from Tel Sheva, a Negev town. They have lived there for 30 years, and even though two of the sisters are now widowed, none are willing to give up their Israeli citizenship, and live comfortably in Israel.

Israel has been facing the urging of the United States to surrender the villages it has possession of, on the border of Lebanon, as a possible way to induce Hezbollah to give up its battle with Israel. One of them, partly within Lebanon, and partly within Israel, were formerly Syrian, won by Israel in the 1967 battle that gave Israel the Golan Heights. But the residents of the town of Ghajar are vehemently resisting leaving the geography of Israel.

The head of the Ghajar municipal council, informed the Israeli Arutz Sheva: "We were a Syrian village that was conquered by Israel. We have in the village 2,200 people, and we are a part of the State of Israel. We won't agree to be refugees in any other place, and we won't allow anyone to divide our village into two parts, either." Most of the village's population participated in a protest against the proposal that would leave them as part of Lebanon.

The residents of Ghajar have called on the government of Israel not to abandon them. Two Arab-Israeli elected members of the Knesset have upheld the appeal of the Ghajar residents: "...returning a village with its residents to a country which never controlled it should not be done. Just as Israel expects loyalty from its residents, it must also be loyal to them."

Another Knesset Member, representing northern Israel's Druze community said he would "fight with my last drop of blood" against any plan to abandon the village to the control of the United Nations and Hezbollah terrorists controlling southern Lebanon. Nothing is ever without nuances. Jews and Arabs have lived in peace with one another before, and they can do so again.

Absent terror groups like Hezbollah and Hamas.

Labels: Human Relations, Israel, Middle East

posted by Pieface @ Sunday, December 13, 2009