Israel-Palestine, finding a culprit … and a solution.

When a wrong is committed, consideration of its sources and implications is always multi-faceted. Courts consider motive, intent and understanding and other factors to determine the level of culpability and the just punishment.

While reading the good Shards commenting on my post yesterday, I had an idea. Let’s use the situation in Gaza and Israel to show how difficult it is to find the truth in such cases, how ridiculously convoluted is the intertwinement of facts and passions that built up through History to the most recent events.

Most recent events : a bus was destroyed by a bomb in Tel-Aviv and the response from Gaza is here : http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4309890,00.html

Or here in this snapshot of AlQassam’s Twitter :

So starting from a moral viewpoint : welcoming civilian victims is wrong whether you were subjected to such yourself or not. War does not happen in a vacuum but when an attack is directed at the civilian population stripped of any military objective, it is called terrorism. Bad Point Gaza.

Of course, terrorism is the answer of the feeble in a desperate situation and comparing military means between Gaza and Israel does confirm that to be the case. And what’s surprising here is the main recent cause of that situation can easily be seen as Israel itself. Although it was never its job to contribute to build another state than its own, Israel has actually hindered the emancipation of the Palestinian people through a series of channels. The most striking example being the on-going campaign to block any representation of the Palestinian people at the United Nations. Others in the past included many military operations as in blockading ships and the likes, strict control of movements of the Gaza inhabitants, maintaining a climate of mistrust and hatred which is known to be a perfect way to “create” new terrorists in return. The reason for Israel’s attitude is two fold. One, it does not want a Palestinian State for enmity/security reasons but two, it does not want a return of Palestinians in diaspora to populate Gaza and more importantly Cisjordania that Israel is still colonizing discretely as we write. Bad Point Israel.

If however one asks whether that was always the case, the surprising answer is a resounding no. When it was created in the spring of 1948, the Israeli Nation was represented by the excellent prime minister David Ben Gurion. He was a left-wing politician and is remembered as a good man. He had been a central element in the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine and was very ready to accept and define a Palestinian state to share the place with. Sadly, no such institution existed! So the discussions had to be held with Arabs governments instead and that did not go well. In the mirror of History, Ben Gurion the Zionist was deprived of being remembered as Ben-Gurion the Humanist. He wanted full equality for Palestinians living in Israel even the possibility to be elected president but feared that peace with Arabs around was impossible. Until now, he has been proven right. So there was a war between Israel and the Arabs in 1948 and Gaza was taken by Egypt and Jordan nabbed the West Bank.
So that what happened there at least until the 1967 war could be seen as the responsability of these two States. What was done to make those territories into an autonomous Nation? Pretty darn little if anything, that is what! So Bad Point Exterior Factors here.

Let’s go back to why there were Jews in Palestine then? Where did they come from to disrupt the quiet peaceful stupor of Palestine. Well, Palestine was never quiet as we will see but heck the Jews came from Great-Britain actually. It had backed the Ottomans as rulers in 1840 and these allowed the first returns of Jews in Palestine by the end of the 19th century. Then during WWI, the Balfour Declaration of 1917 was the true marker of things to come :

“His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

In retrospect, that statement is as naïve as they come and one just understands in that light Ben Gurion’s pessimism. To paraphrase the above, … it is clearly understood that ( as explained above ) nothing was done which may serve and further the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine … save within Israel itself strangely enough?
The fact remains that peaceful diaspora return was made into a forceful event and conflict by design through the UK Mandate of Palestine from 1922 to 1947 so Bad Point Exterior Factors again.

And in the 1947 resolution 181 at the UN, a partition plan was proposed that the Arab Nations rejected from an understandable standpoint that partitioning land that was wholly theirs made no sense. Actually that land was not theirs as Arabs but the Palestinian’s specifically and the Arab nation’s attitude and rejection played such a huge part in the following events that not only did it immediately triggered the civil war in Palestine that led to the creation of Israel nonetheless but has recently been commented thus by Mahmoud Abbas, present Fatah Palestinian Authority’s chief :
” … the Arabs’ refusal to accept the partition decision was a mistake that he is trying to rectify.”

So that we have come full circle.

Do you understand why it is useless to find a definitive culprit in this sorry situation? As an outsider, an observer, one can only wish the best for both parties.

That best may well have been past as we just saw or at least rendered highly improbable by the evolution and works of successive governments from all sides involved. As stated in this article in Haaretz, http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/features/abbas-should-change-his-locks-before-next-wave-of-palestinian-prisoners-freed-1.399760 that contains the above indirect Abbas citation :

“If David Ben-Gurion were to peek out of his grave this week and offer Netanyahu a similar plan, one like the proposal that Abbas submitted to the Mideast Quartet, Netanyahu would accuse Ben-Gurion of being an “anti-Zionist NGO” and ban him from receiving donations from foreign states.”

That  is why in a recent post, Definitive Lapse of Reason* presented a picture of the conflict and degrees of separation on the security wall between both physical entities in Palestine and also presented people, real live Israelis that can actually coexist with Palestinians. The intent of that piece was and can now be seen as a pretense that governments having done all the bad that they can, it is time to let the individual humans that comprise these nations be in charge of relations, exchanges and ultimately peace . . . or at least the best of them.

Oh! I have a dream too, like my illustrious predecessor, that we can go back in time. Take a stance around 1967 down to 1947. Rewrite that 181 resolution as little as possible  and then :

***

-The States of Israël and Palestine will be recognized with the 1947-1967 borders
the intersecting zone being declared shared territory.

-The States of Palestine and Israël will extend all civic rights to citizens of the other party
as if they were their own.

-The States of Israël and Palestine will share a common Parliament in Jerusalem
housing both governments.

-Terrorist acts against any part of the two States will be delegated to a special Tribunal staffed equally by each State
and complemented by a Foreign judge FRA_USA_RUS_CHI_UK.

-Both States recognize the right for pilgrims of all Faiths to come marvel at their legendary lands
most particularly the quintessential Triple crowned Jerusalem, jewel of Humanity.

***

Because you see, if that could be done, each state cramming its crazies away from the common zone, Israel establishing the over-zealous almost world-hating fringe to the seaside so they can learn to hang ten at the beach, Palestine jamming their Heil-Hell promising Israel-negationists to the Jordanian border so they can squabble with their cousins instead, I have a major hunch from what I know of good people, that the cool-headed calm folks from each place would create in time a very normal society where people fight over TV shows, singers or the neighbor’s cat. Tourism would rise in both places too if there was peace to the level deserved by the millenary importance of the land and normal tourists don’t bomb much. This place would also fill with pilgrims from the Religions of the Book coming to honor their link to their relative histories and unless I’m mistaken, each presents itself as a religion of peace? So that there should be no bug for a Christian to utter a Prayer between the Mosq of the Dome and the Wall of Lamentations on way to the Golgotha?

I know that it sounds like a kid’s dream. But when reality becomes impossible to bear, dreams point away from nightmares; that I am certain of!
And the alternative is more horror as this little gem explains better than I :

If that happens, Bad Point for All of Us, really!
Between the two, I’ve made my choice. What will yours be?

Peace out, Tay.

* I think the name of this blog is now in this context evident as an attempt to describe our geo-political environment.