Any knowledgeable observer of the Middle East knows
Sharon’s ascendancy to power spells disaster for the most contentious
region in the world.
Ariel Sharon, the former butcher of Lebanon, prevailed by
declaring the Oslo peace process dead and promising to get tough with
Palestinians. Israelis choice of Sharon proves what the Palestinians
suspected all along--that the Israelis were never interested in peace.
Last summer, I studied at Birzeit University while living
in Ramallah in the West Bank. I watched the humiliation of Israel’s
occupation in the streets--soldiers checking identification and slapping
Palestinians in the face for no reason--and realized why the Palestinians
are filled with frustration and hopelessness.
The reality on the ground in the occupied territories is
that two societies exist--one Israeli and the other Palestinian. The
Israelis treat the Palestinians with hostility and cruelty, unscrupulously
depriving them of their rights. To make matters worse, the Israelis have
never acknowledged the Palestinians as a proud people with a past, but
instead demonized the Palestinians and cast them as illegal usurpers of
ancient Israel.
Sharon’s “peace plan,” in a manner befitting the
Afrikaners of South Africa, calls for herding millions of Palestinians
into a desert Bantustans on less than 42 percent of the West Bank and Gaza
Strip.
Sharon plans on surrounding these Palestinian enclaves
with illegal Jewish settlements and maintaining them by brutal force.
The Palestinian’s response should come as no surprise,
for if you lock a dog in a cage and beat him, the dog just gets meaner. So
if you tell a Palestinian youth living in poverty and exile in a refugee
camp that he has no right to exist, don’t be shocked when he chooses to
refuse by any means necessary--with stones, bullets, or whatever it
takes--in order to secure his human rights. As my Palestinian classmates
told me last summer, they would rather die defending their dignity and
freedom than suffer the occupation like dogs at the hands of the Israelis.
Americans need to recognize that regardless of what the
Old Testament might have said, the Palestinians have an equal and
justifiable claim upon Palestine (but one that no one is willing to
recognize). The Palestinian question is in the end, a question of justice.
Yet this noble principle is forgotten when dealing with the Palestinians.
The Oslo Accords took from the Palestinian everything and
offered them nothing in return. Palestinians simply want to be treated
like human beings, and should not be blamed for refusing to accept the
intolerable. It is time to recognize who the real victims of the conflict
are, and start dealing fairly with the Palestinians.
It is time to recognize who the real victims of the
conflict are, and start dealing fairly with the Palestinians.
