The Politico-Religious Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Why It is Never Resolved/(PART I)
"The world is a dangerous place to
live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who
don't do anything about it."
Albert
Einstein (1879–1955)
"For the last 30 years, I have witnessed and experienced
the severe restraints on any free and balanced discussion of the facts. This
reluctance to criticize any policies of the Israeli government is because of
the extraordinary lobbying efforts of the American-Israel Political Action
Committee and the absence of any significant and contrary voices."
Former President Jimmy Carter
"When it comes to the Israeli-Arab conflict,
the terms of debate are so influenced by organized Jewish groups like AIPAC that
to be critical of Israel is to deny oneself the ability to succeed in American
politics."
Henry Siegman, former head of the American Jewish
Congress
After tremendous attempts to bury the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict under the rubble of Baghdad, this intractable and
open-sore conflict is now back on the agenda since the
December 6, 2006, Baker-Hamilton commission
report stated the obvious, i.e.
that settling the precarious fate of the Palestinians in the hands
of Israel is crucial in stabilizing the entire Middle
East and even the entire Muslim world: "The
United States cannot achieve its goals in the Middle East unless it deals with
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and regional instability."
Indeed, there are strong links between the on-going
Iraq war and the longlasting Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as it
relates to the Israeli occupation of Palestine, in the West Bank and in Gaza.
Most observers agree that the center of discord, resentment and conflicts in
the Middle East is the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is a
festering sore in the body of international geopolitics. As the President of
Lebanon, Emile Lahoud,
reminded the U.N. General Assembly on September 21, 2006, "peace and
stability in Lebanon will be attained only when the Israel-Arab conflict will be settled in a just and permanent
way."
Such is the case also for most Middle Eastern
countries. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf
pretty much said the same thing on September 26, 2006, stressing that the world
should urgently address the Palestinian issue, because it is this issue that
lies at the root of all conflicts between the West and the Muslim world. We
have an indication how immoral and dangerous the entire Israeli-Palestinian
conflict is when a recent headline announced that the Israeli Supreme Court
upheld a policy of the Israeli government
to kill Israeli citizens of Palestinian origin. Therefore, it would seem to be
logical that if you address the root cause of grievances and resentment in
Palestine, this would reduce the violent reaction that many people in the
Middle East have against Israel and its mentor, the United States.
On
November 13, 2006, British Prime Minister Tony Blair made a similar appeal in
favor of a “whole Middle East strategy” centered around a fresh
focus on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This is an assessment that
is nearly unanimous, with the notable exception of the unconditional advocates
of Israel within and outside the United States. The latter is the all-powerful pro-Israel Lobby, and in the past, it has defeated all the plans to solve the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, always succeeding in placing Israel's interests ahead of the
interests of the United States.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is
a politico-religious conflict, and that is
why it is so difficult to solve. It has lasted for nearly 90 years, that
is to say since the British minority government of Lloyd George decided to open
the ancient Ottoman province of Palestine to Jewish settlement. It is a
conflict that pits three monotheistic
religions (Christianity, Islam, and Judaism)
against each other and which involves the political and economic interests of
Jewish zionists, Arab fundamentalists and Western Christian politicians.
Indeed, when the government of Lloyd
George issued its Balfour declaration in 1917,
expressing its support for "the establishment in Palestine of a
national home for the Jewish people" it
probably did not realize it was opening a Pandora's Box that would spew out its
disturbing consequences for a century to come. Indeed, after the War World I
collapse of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, Palestine
was among the several former Ottoman Arab territories that were placed under
the administration of Great Britain under the Mandates System, adopted by the
League of Nations. Ultimately,
all but one of these Mandated Territories became fully independent States. The
exception is Palestine, which is still an occupied colony of Israel.
Palestinian
demands for independence have been frustrated for more than half a century. To
its credit, the government of Great Britain did try to implement various
formulas to bring independence to Palestine, but could not succeed because of
the endemic terrorism and violence that has been a hallmark of this land since
its removal from the Ottoman Empire. That is why, in 1947, Great Britain turned
the problem over to the United Nations, and the General
Assembly quickly passed its Resolution 181 (II) on November 29, 1947. In it, the United Nations
affirmed the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people to
self-determination, national independence and sovereignty, and proposed the
partitioning of Palestine into two independent States, one Palestinian Arab and
the other Jewish, with Jerusalem internationalized.
However, Israel
unilaterally severed its ties from Great Britain, and became independent on May
14, 1948. Nearly sixty years later, Arab Palestine is still not independent. Worse,
a large part of Arab Palestine was, over the years, appropriated by Israel,
leaving Palestine with an uneconomic base to survive and prosper.
—Therein lies the problem that has festered in the Middle East for so
long.
[to be continued]
_______________________________________________
Rodrigue
Tremblay lives in Montreal and can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@yahoo.com
Also
visit his blog site at www.thenewamericanempire.com/blog.
Author's
Website: www.thenewamericanempire.com
_______________________________________________
Posted,
January 1, 2007, at 5:30 am
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