Resolving the Israel/Palestine debates

What Israel, as outlined by heathlander, must do is clear -- they must stop making false claims that Hezbollah is using human shields, given that Human Rights Watch has found that there is no evidence of that. They must get rid of the settlements and they must end their policies of collective punishment against the Palestinians.

There have been other reports of Hezbollah using human shields.

Just last week, Maj. Hess-von Kruedener wrote an e-mail about his experiences after nine months in the area, words Maj.-Gen. MacKenzie said are an obvious allusion to Hezbollah tactics.

"What I can tell you is this," he wrote in an e-mail to CTV dated July 18. "We have on a daily basis had numerous occasions where our position has come under direct or indirect fire from both (Israeli) artillery and aerial bombing.

"The closest artillery has landed within 2 meters (sic) of our position and the closest 1000 lb aerial bomb has landed 100 meters (sic) from our patrol base. This has not been deliberate targeting, but rather due to tactical necessity."

Those words, particularly the last sentence, are not-so-veiled language indicating Israeli strikes were aimed at Hezbollah targets near the post, said Maj.-Gen. MacKenzie.

But, given the contradictory reports between this one and the HRW claim that there was no evidence of that, it may be that there were isolated incidents of individual units using human shields, but that it was not a collective tactic. Israel should stop using collective blame when the blame should be assigned individually.

Lee Kaplan claims that ISM volunteers are offering themselves up as human shields. However, Kaplan is a GOP propagandist who writes for Horowitz's Front Page Magazine rather than an accurate reporter of information.

There are things that the Palestinians have to do as well -- they must police their own. They must stop looking the other way as splinter groups launch rockets at Israeli civilians. I understand that resistance is a legitimate tactic against occupation (after all, we engaged in armed resistance against the British); however, the principle must apply to both sides -- the Palestinians should not engage in acts which they do not want the Israelis to engage in, and vice versa. After all, there would be wave after wave of outrage on these threads if the IDF were to launch rocket attacks on a daily basis against the Palestinian population.

There are things that we, as Americans, can do as well. Israel's defenders love to claim that we are not pointing out other human rights abuses around the world. First of all, that is not true in general, as there are all sorts of recommended diaries about the human rights violations of the Bush administration. And that is not true in my case as I have written about human rights violations in Egypt, undermining Bush's claim that democracy is breaking out in the Middle East. But Israel's defenders cannot claim that we have some kind of historic relationship and friendship with Israel and then turn around and complain when we put our relationship with that country under the microscope. Since we send more military aid to Israel than to anyone else, it is only fair to investigate where our taxpayer dollars are going.

It is not a matter of "propaganda," as one poster put it, for people like heathlander to write about the human rights violations of Israel. If those of us on the left opposed aid to the Contras because of their human rights violations back in the 1980's, then it is only fair to put Israel under the same sort of microscope now, when we are sending them military aid.

It is welcome news, of course, that $7.4 billion has been pledged towards Palestine. But, hidden in the fine print, is this:

Israel was ready to cooperate, insisted its foreign minister, Tzipi Livni. But the first round of renewed negotiations last week was overshadowed by news of the expansion of the Har Homa settlement in East Jerusalem. "We'll do everything to help the development and strengthening of the Palestinian Authority infrastructure, but not at the price of giving up any vital security interests," Ehud Olmert, the prime minister, told his Kadima party.

The problem is that as long as Israel continues to build and expand settlements, they are not a reliable partner for peace. That does not mean that there are not things that the Palestinians can do; however, it means that Israel is still not interested in a peaceful solution to the conflict. However, we can work together here on these boards and work out a collective solution where others are unwilling or unable to do so. And any solution must involve the end of settlements -- no ifs, ands, or buts. The problem is that both the Israeli and Palestinian governments have been hijacked by a minority of interests who are not sincere in wanting peace and will do anything to sabatoge it.

Palestine and its defenders frame this issue similar to South Africa and compare Israel to an apartheid state. What brought that regime down was a groundswell of opposition to their practices; eventually, F.W. DeKlerk realized that their position was unsustainable and threw in the towel. The problem is that in Israel's case, we are propping that regime up with massive military aid. What we must do, first of all, is for us to elect Democrats. The problem now is that the Bush administration has shown a complete lack of engagement in the I/P problem, letting things fester on their own. By contrast, when Bill Clinton was in power, the US would always send a diplomat to the region whenever trouble broke out. By letting things fester, the Bush administration has let the situation get out of control, with two different governments controlling the two different parts of Palestine. Next, we must tie military aid to Israel's human rights performances.

The goal is not to destroy Israel as a nation; the goal here is to convince the Israeli leadership and people that their occupation of Palestine is unsustainable and must be stopped. After all, South Africa still continues as a nation today. An actively-engaged leader can facilitate this process by bringing parties to the table to foster dialogue.

But there is one area where the Israel=South Africa analogy breaks down. Israel has never sought to create a racially pure homeland in the same way that South Africa's leaders did. There are many people in that country with different religions and ethnicities who are citizens and who are equal under the law.

Palestine's defenders also raise the parallels of what happened to the Native Americans. They point out that it did not matter whether they tried to assimilate or resist -- some Native Americans even owned slaves at one point in time. Eventually, they were all herded onto reservations where they all had to live. Taking the Israel defenders' argument that if the Palestinians would just renounce "terrorism" and apply it to our situation, the Native Americans did stop resisting after the Wounded Knee Massacre. But even now, over 100 years later, they are still living in second-class conditions with high crime and unemployment.

I spoke in heathlander's diary about devising solutions where everyone benefitted. Jon the antizionist Jew's response:

Could, for example, the American south have been desegregated without southern whites losing power and privilege? I would say that we can solve such power imbalances by doing the right thing for all, which is end the oppression that makes them tick, but we have to accept that there will be people and institutions which will be opposed to such moves, and that they must be defeated. Can we end the Iraq war without overriding the Republican base which seems staunchly in favor of it, no matter the cost?

My answer to that is that at some point, there will always come a time in life when one has to walk away from power. My point is that nobody benefits under an inherently oppressive system like the one that we have in Palestine. The problem is that neither side trusts the other enough to make the first move. Israel does not trust the Palestinian government to respect their right to exist; Palestine does not trust the Israeli government not to continue their settlement expansions. Eventually, even the British realized that it was not in their best economic interests to continue the colonization of India. A peaceful resolution to this crisis might involve the establishment of buffer zones and international peacekeeping forces to separate the two sides as well as inspectors who could come into Palestine and dismantle the rocket systems that have been used against Israeli civilians.

Jon continues:

In the end, we must face the fact that Israel as a Jewish state exists mainly to promote power and privilege for it's Jewish citizens, and its potential Jewish citizens around the world, as it is a state (by its own definition) of the Jewish people and not a state of it's citizens.

But he misses the point here -- and that brings up another point and an observation. The point is that Israel was formed as the result of persecution of Jews worldwide by other governments, cumulating in the Holocaust. Consequently, the Jews collectively decided to form their own state that would serve as a refuge against persecution. This sort of right to collective self-determination has long been recognized under international law. The observation I would make, and this is why so many Americans identify with what Israel is going through, is that it is very much like our formation, as a place of refuge against tyranny by monarchs and dictators. In both our cases, the oppressed have become the oppressors -- but no reasonable person would argue that we should destroy America and send everyone back to Europe. And no reasonable person can argue that we should destroy Israel as a nation and send all the Jews back to where they came. Therefore, we should have a two-state solution, with two nations of Israel and Palestine. Now, 100 years down the road, if the two countries are able to cooperate with each other, we could think about integrating the two countries. The problem with anti-Zionism is that it ignores the fact that all people have a right to self-determination. The fact that the current Israeli government misuses the ideal of Zionism for its oppressive ends does not mean that we should throw out Zionism.

I mentioned above that the Palestinians must be able to police their own, which the pro-Israel defenders rightly say that Palestine must be able to do. But in fact, the Palestinians are willing and able to police their own. The problem is that in many cases, they do not have the resources to do so. So, any peaceful solution to this conflict must involve giving the Palestinian police the resources that they need to do their jobs and then turning things over to them. To their credit, Israel has already started this process:

General Keith Dayton's views are seconded by the PA, which recently informed Israel that it lacks the necessary infrastructure to deploy police officers in Nablus.

Meanwhile, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said during talks in Washington last week that Israel is interested in furthering a process to enable Palestinian security forces to deploy in the West Bank. Barak added that Israel lifted 25 roadblocks in the West Bank recently.

But a smart diplomatic effort on our part should involve finding ways of making this process go faster.

And from a standpoint of Daily Kos, we can work towards developing a framework. You can't always tell it from all the vitrol, but all sides agree that Israel has gone too far in pursuing their occupation. Most of them want the settlers out of their and would oppose the use of collective punishment. What we have to do is to foster dialogue between all sides so that we can develop this collective solution. For instance, I would challenge all of you who would consider yourselves Zionists to explain the Palestinian position in your own words. I would challenge those of you who would consider yourselves defenders of the Palestinians to do the same. Step outside your comfort zone for a bit, and try and describe what the other side thinks in your own words.

Another way that we can foster dialogue is to accept one's own responsibility in this mess. Part of the problem is that both sides do not take blame for the conflict, but always lay the blame on the other side. But peacemaking involves taking responsibility and figuring out what your side can do to end the conflict. For there to be peace, it must be a grassroots solution before there can be a political solution. Therefore, regardless of the policies of the governments, we have to be able to figure out what our side can do to end the conflict. Then, we should work to pressure our own elected officials to act to facilitate this.

Healthlander, in the comments, makes this comment about the other side:

I don't think that most "pro-I" posters "are usually willing to admit to the fact of Israeli atrocities" - they generally won't challenge the facts, because they can't, but they will either respond by not responding, or by justifying them, which is far worse.

What people on both sides have to recognize is that two wrongs don't make a right -- the practice of collective punishment by the Israeli army does not justify the use of rockets on civilians -- the latter is just as much a violation of international law as the former is. And the rocket attacks do not justify the Israeli army coming into Palestine for the purpose of demolishing homes. For us to make progress in this dialogue, we cannot rationalize the bad behavior of our own side just because (in our view) the behavior of the other side is so much worse. There is simply no defense of any of these actions. Even the claim of security is not a defense for the settlements, for instance.