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Vol.1 No. 1 (Soon)

 Selection of the Day.             إخترنا لكم 

.Article 350: Position Paper on Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

By: H. A. Yahya, The Dean of Arab American Writers in North America*

Concerned intellectuals in human rights are increasing day by day to unleash injustices going on daily basis against Palestinians. In their introduction of a research collection manuscript, about Origin of Palestine-Israel Conflict, a Jewish group for Justice in The Middle East, at Berkeley CA. wrote: "The standard Zionist position is that they showed up in Palestine in the late 19th century to reclaim their ancestral homeland. Jews bought land and started building up the Jewish community there. They were met with increasingly violent opposition from the Palestinian Arabs, presumably stemming from the Arabs' inherent anti-Semitism. The Zionists were then forced to defend themselves and, in one form or another, this same situation continues up to today." If we know the origin of the Palestine-Israel conflict as Americans, we should stand against our governmental blind support to Israel and reject such support on national grounds.Especially when the nation loses under economy recession. The conflict, took the shape of aperiodic bloodshed continues in the Middle East, the search for an equitable solution must come to grips with the root cause of the conflict. The conventional wisdom is that, even if both sides are at fault, the Palestinians are irrational "terrorists" who have no point of view worth listening to. Real Jews position, however, is that the Palestinians have a real grievance: their homeland for over a thousand years was taken, without their consent and mostly by force, during the creation of the state of Israel. And all subsequent crimes — on both sides — inevitably follow from this original injustice.

Brief History of Palestine shows that "Palestine became a predominately Arab and Islamic country by the end of the seventh century. Almost immediately thereafter its boundaries and its characteristics — including its name in Arabic, Filastin — became known to the entire Islamic world, as much for its fertility and beauty as for its religious significance...In 1516, Palestine became a province of the Ottoman Empire, but this made it no less fertile, no less Arab or Islamic...Sixty percent of the population was in agriculture; the balance was divided between townspeople and a relatively small nomadic group. All these people believed themselves to belong in a land called Palestine, despite their feelings that they were also members of a large Arab nation...Despite the steady arrival in Palestine of Jewish colonists after 1882, it is important to realize that not until the few weeks immediately preceding the establishment of Israel in the spring of 1948 was there ever anything other than a huge Arab majority. For example, the Jewish population in 1931 was 174,606 against a total of 1,033,314." (Edward Said, 1996). In percentage form, this constitutes only 16% of Palestine population. And in 1948 in terms of land ownership, Jews has only 6% of the Palestinian land while Palestinians has 94% of the land. These are facts not imagined figures. Concerning Jews in Palestine , before the 20th century, most Jews in Palestine belonged to old Yishuv, or community, that had settled more for religious than for political reasons. There was little if any conflict between them and the Arab population. Tensions began after the first Zionist settlers arrived in the 1880's...when [they] purchased land from absentee Arab owners, leading to dispossession of the peasants who had cultivated it." (Don Peretz,)

 

After the creation of Israel in 1948, there is nothing quite like the misery one feels listening to Palestinian suffering all years inside or out side Israel, after occupation like this story. A Palestinian person who worked fifteen years as a laborer in Israel in order to save up money to build a house for his family only to be shocked one day upon returning from work to find that the house and all that was in it had been flattened by an Israeli bulldozer. When I asked why this was done — the land, after all, was his — I was told that a paper given to him the next day by an Israeli soldier stated that he had built the structure without a license. Where else in the world are people required to have a license (always denied them) to build on their own property? Jews can build, but never Palestinians. This is described as apartheid by Edward Said (1998) eight years before President Carter came with the concept of his book: Palestine, Peace, Not Apartheid, 2006). Uri Avnery is a true Jew and his voice for many long years try to open Jewish minds for justice and morality in Israel where politicians always have certain agenda differs from intellectuals and true spirit of the Jewish faith, according to him as a Jewish activist and his Israeli Peace Now organization he described the conflict between Palestinian Arabs and Jews by Saying: "the standard Zionist position is that they showed up in Palestine in the late 19th century to reclaim their ancestral homeland. Jews bought land and started building up the Jewish community there. They were met with increasingly violent opposition from the Palestinian Arabs, presumably stemming from the Arabs' inherent anti-Semitism. The Zionists were then forced to defend themselves and, in one form or another, this same situation continues up to today. Politicians such as Sharon, Barak and Netanyahu are politically selfish. "Barak, for example, few years back, promised peace and brought war, and not by accident. While speaking about peace, he enlarged the settlements. Cut the Palestinian territories into pieces by ‘by-pass' roads. Confiscated lands. Demolished homes. Uprooted trees. Paralyzed the Palestinian economy..Conducted negotiations in which he tried to dictate to the Palestinians a peace that amounts to capitulation. Was not satisfied with the fact that by accepting the Green Line, the Palestinians had already given up 78% of their historic homeland. Demanded the annexation of ‘settlement blocs" and pretended that they amount only to 3% of the territory, while in fact he meant more than 20% would remain under Israeli control. Wanted to coerce the Palestinians to accept a ‘state' cut off from all its neighbors and composed of several enclaves isolated from each other, each surrounded by Israeli settlers and soldiers...Boasts publicly that he has not given back to the Palestinians one inch of territory...When the intifada broke out, sent snipers to shoot, in cold blood from a distance, hundreds of unarmed demonstrators, adults and children. Blockaded each village and town separately, bringing them to the verge of starvation, in order to get them to surrender. Bombarded neighborhoods. Started a policy of mafia-style ‘liquidations', causing an inevitable escalation of the violence." (Israeli peace activist, Uri Avnery, February 3, 2001, www.gush-shalom.org). The problem with politicians explanation is that it is simply not true. What really happened was that the Zionist movement, from the beginning, looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of the indigenous Arab population so that Israel could be a wholly Jewish state, or as much as was possible. Land bought by the Jewish National Fund was held in the name of the Jewish people and could never be sold or even leased back to Arabs (a situation which continues to the present).

The Rights of Arab Palestinians in Palestine: As for Arab Palestinians living as majority in Palestine compared with less than 16% Jews in the land. They became increasingly aware of the Zionists' intentions, strenuously opposed further Jewish immigration and land buying because it posed a real and imminent danger to the very existence of Arab society in Palestine. Because of this opposition, the entire Zionist project never could have been realized without the military backing of the British. The vast majority of the population of Palestine, by the way, had been Arabic since the seventh century A.D. (Over 1200 years). The Arab Palestinians' opposition to Zionism before 1948, and Israel after that date, never was based on anti-Semitism but rather on a totally reasonable fear of the dispossession of their people. While the British Mandate was the hand to make Palestinians in Palestine and in the Diaspora after 1948, have a common dream, that Zionism will not be forever believed for its apartheid policies through its political cronies, who are short-sighted to see the outcomes of their aggression to have power. Israeli Politicians are becoming Zionists digging the grave for Israel. They have to know that Zionism was based on a faulty, colonialist world view that the rights of the indigenous inhabitants didn't matter. They have to know that power historically recorded will never sustained forever. The world will not politically remained in supporting Israel in ignoring Palestinians rights in their homeland, and they will prevail soon. Intellectual and sincere Jews have to stand for those politicians and fundamentalist who are leading Israel to another Holocaust by their hands. Israeli daily terror have to stop.

Uri Avneri, being a Jew, call Jews to take his position which is critical of Zionism but is in no way anti-Semitic. Peace Now, do not believe that the Jews acted worse than any other group might have acted in their situation. The Zionists (who were a distinct minority of the Jewish people until after WWII) had an understandable desire to establish a place where Jews could be masters of their own fate, given the bleak history of Jewish oppression. Especially as the danger to European Jewry crystallized in the late 1930's and after, the actions of the Zionists were propelled by real desperation. Actions of the Arabs, and the mythic about Palestine as "land without people for a people without land" was the home of already 700,000 Palestinians live in Palestine in 1919. And now they are more than eight millions worldwide, and need from the world to listen to their logic of existing undeniable rights. Israel have to understand this, Jews and Zionists have to understand this, and the world has to understand this. Suppose Jews will announce Florida to be a Jewish State, could America accept that idea? Could the same state in Canada, to give one part of it to be a Jewish State. I don't think so!

The search for Identity whether Jewish or Palestinian is raging both over and below the surface in Israel. Politicians, whose concern for positions was, to put it politely, more than emotional, are merely seeking to fertilize the shrunk seeds of a now arid insurrection of identities. What we are seeing is Israel over rights and possession of land that has gone flabby with complacency at the top and political corruption from top to bottom. Competing identities, released from any discipline by a democracy where appeasement has become the key to electoral success, are constantly trying to encroach across political and psychological boundaries. To a certain degree this is inevitable. Competition is an integral part of freedom. But, when it comes to two parties: the powerful and the powerless, as always the case in Palestine under occupation, it is the degree that becomes the problem. Democracy cannot be digested when it comes to Jews, and turns poisonous when it comes to Palestinian human rights.

In a message to President Obama, the writer made it clear in a bold idea to create a new map, and plan to help him solve the 100-year conflict between Jews and Arab Palestinians. (The message can be found in this website: www.amazines.com or at the author's webpage: www.dryahyatv,com ). In my belief, it is not important who's right or wrong, what's important is solving the problem of four million Palestinian refugees live in camps (inside and out Palestine) who suffer the expulsion from their lands, more than any other segment of the Palestinian people in the Diaspora which needs more attention to be taken into consideration in the suggested plan and map. If the map was adapted by concerned nations and peoples it will bring an end to conflict in the region, and the USA will regain its positive perception among nations. I think both Arabs, Muslims and Americans have to measure such solution for its consequences of prosperity and peace the holy land. It is time for Americans to understand, and think deeply, about their American one-sided government and biased media controlled by Jews in the United States to make the change of USA negative perceptions worldwide. (2056 words)

 

  • Dr. Yahya is the President of the Palestinian Voice Association in USA,

 Original Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/politics-articles/article-350-position-paper-on-israeli-palestinian-conflict-4061823.html