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Bilal Hijjawi
Palestinians are not killing “Jews”, neither have they ever killed Jews, because they were Jewish. Nor are Jews killing Palestinians because they are so. It’s a fight for recognition for both, for a place under the same sun. Just as Jews did kill and fight for their own land before, so do others. Palestinians do live in peace under Israel as we speak, have dealt with them always and have learned Hebrew in their schools, forced to do so perhaps, but nevertheless have done so. As did Jews before them, long before. And moderates do communicate everyday on mutually agreeable issues of peace and justice. Palestinians or Arabs are not anti-Semitic, nor are Jews so against all logic. Neither peoples have impartial attitudes toward killing, nor do they have a vision of cleansing, or are planning to destroy each other.
If anything, it is more and more, or seemingly so, that Arabs have accepted their historic defeat and now seem to have come to terms with it; such is an accomplishment of Israel – fools only would doubt this. But a change in policy is needed, as greed is reversing an historic Jewish accomplishment and indeed awakening an unprecedented reaction against world Jewry. There’s no doubt that it is now up for Israel to accept that security is not an issue of physical borders. Remember the attacks against NY and Washington, distant Islands, remote and supposedly a haven against international terrorism!! Security is about sharing a vision and sharing a trust in a better just future. Israel can choose, as Arabs also can, to come back to negotiations unbridled with historic phobias; but that of self-aware Israel and its heavy hand in the conflict. Arabs cannot be forced to suddenly become in love of Israel, nor deal with it as if years of hatred did not exist. Nor could Jews or Israelis do the same. History however should bring some trust to all that a long lull shall force cooperation; eventually the next generation will develop passive attitudes that slowly the sentiment metamorphoses into an exchange of smiles. In turn the smiles become words, sentences and long apologies or some sort of the distant cousin of love.
Dialogue! But no promises! America and Americans, Jews, Christians or Muslim, can help catalyze such a future, if only the US can begin to understand the grievances of Arabs and their ultimate accusation against partisan foreign policies in the region. The vision shared has got to become one of justice and equality, not one based on who runs a better lobby in Washington, or who has a larger equity of home viewers’ sentiment. This motivates my suspicion that Jews and Arabs want hate to lead them?! Implicitly a question of whether reciprocal hate had become the only possible identity for Jews and Arabs? It’s not a secret that Palestinians wish for the disappearance of Jews and Jews same! But so do Indians and Pakistanis, Irish and British, Cypriots and Turks, White and Black, wife and husband! To be hated is not the prerogative of Jews only! It’s an issue we have to deal with away from myth and power intoxication. It’s wholesomely a human issue. Add that opining an anti US world policy in the middle east does not translate to supporting death to Americans. On the contrary, it could mean that America is the world and the world is America. Perhaps we all want America to remain strong, but with a changed and softer heart for all. An arrogant military and trading power cannot stay in its rightful worldly place forever. Instead, such powers have always become bedeviled by an ever-increased creative enmity, with time more dangerous and willing foes.
Jewish, Christian and Muslim moderates have insanely decried the absence of justice and dialogue for Palestinians. Those at the helm of an ever uncompromising power, be it in Israel or the US and the rest of the world, are killing such intelligent voices. The call for arms and more spending on arms will reward us with catastrophe. Are we to expect peace and lull from an increasingly dangerous world? Will Sharon win the hearts of Arabs by denying Palestinians a way out from the conflict, or by destroying every home in the West Bank? Will anyone win any hearts if an all out war in the region escalates into a regional war that may trigger nuclear and germ warfare? My question is always, how can we silence terror and start at conversing for a better world? How can the moderates of humanity be allowed to negotiate a middle ground against Neanderthal logic, which now seems continual in its deception?
American Policy in the Middle East - An Israeli View
What Americans Can do for Peace the Middle East - A Palestinian View
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