In November, the Israelis and the Palestinians had a little kerfuffle over rockets fired from the Gaza Strip. The group Hamas, a militant organization that won power in 2007 through democratic elections, is fond of firing rockets at Israeli settlements.
The Israelis, of course, don’t take kindly to rocket fire and pounded the Hamas-governed Gaza Strip, killing hundreds of civilians in an attempt to disable missile launchers.
It seems there are two narratives being repeated about this ongoing feud. One is that Israel is completely justified and beyond all criticism, that they have done nothing wrong and that criticizing them is an anti-Semitic attack on Israel and the Jewish people.
The second is that Israel is a bastard state bent on torturing the Palestinians and other Muslim peoples out of racial hatred.
Both explanations are garbage. Hamas is clearly in the wrong. They have stated they want Israel destroyed. They have no real way of doing this and they have led the Gaza Strip into a very dark place.
Poorly targeted rocket attacks may be an attempt to show Palestinians they are resisting an occupier, but they are just slowly committing suicide. Hamas also denies the extremely well-documented fact of the Holocaust in an attempt to delegitimize Israel’s existence.
On the other hand, many Israelis deny that the Palestinians have an ethnic history and discriminate against them.
Israel also possesses the power in the relationship. They are a nuclear armed state and spend a huge amount of money per capita on the military. This is on top of billions of dollars of military aid from the U.S.
By blockading the Gaza Strip, they have created a deteriorating ghetto not unlike the ones Jews had to endure in Europe before, during and after WWII. Palestinian casualties are often 10 to 1 or more.
Rocket attacks are intolerable, but what Israelis impose on Palestinians in Gaza is also intolerable.
Recently, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, recognized by Israel, the U.S. and the United Nations as the representative of the Palestinians, went to the U.N. to ask for non-member observer state status. They got it.
The U.S. and Israel opposed this move because they want Palestinians and Israelis to negotiate with no preconditions. The only thing is, Hamas isn’t invited. The PLO doesn’t want to appear they are abandoning the Gaza Strip. Therefore, these talks never move forward.
Israel has said the PLO violated agreements to negotiate a two-state solution. This would mean something to me if Israel hadn’t started building internationally condemned and illegal settlements in the West Bank the day after the U.N. vote.
The PLO is at least trying to do something peacefully.
The problem with this situation is that no one wants to compromise. No one wants peace, they want revenge and paranoia. This will take decades and a massive shift of viewpoints to be resolved.
Meanwhile, the U.S. and many other countries continue throwing money into a giant pit. At the bottom, Israelis and Palestinians fight over their patch of desert and innumerable grievances; their blood soaking into sands whose thirst is as unquenchable as their hatred for one another.
