Well coming from the coal face of the problem, this fellow seems to
bring the problem into focus without name calling:
Peter Rodgers
Wednesday 8 September 2004
perspective Topic: Herzl's Nightmare
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/perspective/stories/s1194801.htm
Program Transcript
A British military governor of Jerusalem once observed that a couple
of hours of listening to Arab Palestinian grievances was enough to
drive him to Judaism. Equally, he said, an intensive course of Zionist
propaganda made Islam look appealing.
Some 80 years later, the governor's frustrations are all too
understandable. For the contest between Jew and Palestinian for a land
they both call home seems more intractable than ever.
It's hard to imagine two peoples anywhere more absorbed with their own
sense of rightness, so constant in demonising their neighbour, so
stubborn in their denial of a common destiny.
If only Israelis and Palestinians could accept that they are both
victims—of history's sometimes cruel forces, and of each other's
physical aggression and absolutist mentality.
If only they could see that the blight on their lives can be resolved
only by acknowledging that the other has a legitimate place on the
landscape.
But they don't, and they won't. And that is the tragedy of Israel and
of Palestine.
Rarely a day goes by when we are not reminded of the distress that
these two gifted peoples bring into each other's lives. They
constitute but a tiny fraction of the world's total population. Yet we
are all hostage to their struggle.
Constantly it seems we are pressured to declare our allegiance to one
side or the other. To criticise Israel runs the gauntlet of the charge
of anti-Semitism. To criticise the Palestinians risks the accusation
of pro-Israeli bias. Those of us who speak about the conflict can only
hope we draw fire from both sides.
And there are good reasons for taking aim at both Israeli and
Palestinian. Each has acted towards the other with extraordinary
blindness and inhumanity.
There's no better example of Israeli myopia than its colonisation of
the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The
present Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, has been the godfather
of this settler movement. But it has been supported across the
political spectrum. And, during the past decade, the number of Israeli
settlers in the West Bank has doubled—to around two hundred and thirty
thousand.
Now, Ariel Sharon says he intends to withdraw all seven and a half
thousand Israeli settlers from the impoverished Gaza Strip. But that
is not meant as a concession to the Palestinians. It's a way of trying
to tighten Israel's stranglehold on the West Bank.
Israel apparently believes that the Palestinians will make peace while
watching daily the alienation of the very land that might, one day,
become their nation state.
On the other side, it beggars belief that the dysfunctional
Palestinian leadership apparently believes that Israel will cut a deal
while its citizens are killed and wounded in the most outrageous
terrorist attacks. No amount of indignation by Yasser Arafat over
Israeli behaviour is going to change his dismal legacy to the
Palestinian people.
Yet it's wrong to focus overly on Sharon or Arafat. They epitomise the
problem; they do not constitute it. We fool ourselves if we believe
that Israel and Palestine will suddenly be freed of blood and anguish
once they depart the scene.
There are still a few brave souls who push the merits of a two state
solution: of an Israel and a Palestine living alongside one another—in
peace if not in harmony.
But how long can this remain a serious possibility? How long before
the constantly refreshed layers of hurt and anger overwhelm any
prospect of a rational solution? Can a viable Palestinian mini-state
really be concocted from the bits of the West Bank that Israel might
relinquish, connected to Gaza by a tenuous land bridge across Israel?
So the question we face is whether it's too late for Palestine.
Whether Israelis and Palestinians have so demonised each other that
any real prospect of a peace deal has evaporated. Of whether, in a
bizarre, troubling way, they have grown so used to the conflict they
have lost the ability to end it.
And if it is too late for Palestine will it, one day, be too late for
Israel? A country intended as a safe haven for Jews; a country that
has brought enormous stimulation into our lives – intellectual,
cultural and technological. But which has been unable to resolve the
riddle of its creation. That self-determination for the Jewish people
denied it to the Palestinians.
Guests on this program:
Peter Rodgers
Author
Former Australian Ambassador to Israel
Publications:
Herzl's Nightmare; one land, two people
Author: Peter Rodgers
Publisher: Scribe
ISBN 1 920769 31 5
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