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Jewish aggression
Posted: Wednesday, April 3, 2002
T&T Newsday
It should now be clear to everybody, particularly the Israelis, that peace in the Middle East will never be achieved until the Palestinians are able to establish a nation state in the their traditional homeland. However, Israel, now under the hardline and hawkish Ariel Sharon, shows no indication of wanting to surrender any part of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the Palestinian territories they have been occupying for more than three decades.
Indeed, the Israelis now seem intent on using their military strength to crush the Palestinian intifada, an action that can only serve to intensify the escalating bloodshed and to threaten another all-out war in that volatile region.
Looking at both sides of this conflict, it is difficult not to feel some sympathy for the cause of the Palestinian people who have been robbed of control over the land they have occupied for generations. In their festering condition of statelessness, such a denial must be taken by the Palestinians as an intolerable act of aggression and, while we cannot condone their retaliation in the form of suicide bombings, we think it is important for the rest of the world to see these "acts of terrorism" against the agonising reality of their situation.
In our age, every people are entitled to enjoy the benefits of self-determination, of having a settled homeland and an established government. Ironically, the Israelites should be the first to recognise this right since they themselves have known the bitter anguish of homelessness, having been scattered about the world for centuries until they were given that part of the Holy Land held under British Protectorate which they had claimed after Moses led them out of Egyptian captivity.
If they had regained control of "Canaan" after being blown about by the four winds, why can't they accept the same need of the stateless Palestinians? Instead, they have consolidated their hold on the occupied areas by building Jewish settlements there which may be seen as another act of provocation.
But apart from their suppression of the Palestinian people, the Israelis are now using their vastly superior military strength, their powerful tanks and heavily armed soldiers, to invade Palestinian villages in a self-proclaimed campaign to root out terrorism. In Ramallah, Israeli forces have actually invaded the headquarters of Yasser Arafat, holding the elected PLO leader captive and incommunicado. We must say that we are disturbed by this adventurism and by the conspicuous failure of world leaders to strongly condemn this latest act of aggression by the Israeli government.
While we understand the power and influence which Jewish Americans wield in the US, that traditional relationship will have little or no moral authority if the US government declines to view the situation in its entirety, fails to recognise the just cause of the Palestinians and refuses to call on Israel to pull back their invading forces.
In any case, we think the Israelis are badly mistaken if they believe they can stop the suicide bomb attacks by their military onslaught on terrorists and the isolating of Arafat.
The truth is, the Palestinians can produce any number of suicide bombers who are willing to give their lives as the only means they have of retaliating against the continuing occupation of their homeland which, by the way, is the subject of United Nations resolutions. The campaign undertaken by the Jewish state will not achieve its purpose; indeed if Arafat is harmed in any way it could well lead to another Middle East conflagration. The Israelis have gone too far, and the world must tell them so.
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