http://www.nydailynews.com/2000-12-10/News_and_Views/Opinion/a-91752.asp
Israel's Apartheid Must End
By KEVIN JAMES
New York Daily News, Dec 10 2000
The latest peace proposal of Ehud Barak, who resigns today as
Israel's prime minister, demonstrates a tragic failure to grasp
the deeper undercurrents of the present Israeli-Palestinian
conflict.There can no longer be any peace process until Israel
acknowledges the consequences of its flagrant disregard for
international law and human rights.
Palestinian activist Salmon Abu-Sitta recently told a New York
City audience that Israel has to learn to live with people, not
instead of people.
Ami Ayalon, retired head of Israel's Shin Bet security service,
stunned his fellow countrymen last week when he pointed an
accusing finger at his government's 'apartheid' policies.
Ironically, Barak also revealed damning sentiments in 1998 when
he let slip --and later apologized for-- "If I were Palestinian,
I'd also join [a] terror group."
Middle East scholar Edward Said recently wrote of a new set of
declarations for peace evolving among leading Israeli, West Bank,
Gaza and diaspora Palestinians. One stipulation is that the Oslo
accords must be thrown out and that the original UN resolutions
delineating Israel's boundaries be strictly adhered to.
Another condition is the removal of Israeli settlements and
military roads that effectively break up the contiguity of
Palestinian lands.
Former President Jimmy Carter describes how the deliberate
placement of isolated Israeli communities as outposts in
Palestinian lands leaves settlers open to attack without massive
military protection, thus frustrating both Israelis who seek
peace and any Palestinian government from realizing an integral
sovereign nation.
Any legitimate peace process must include Israel's atonement for
the lies and deceit used to justify more than 50 years of land
grabbing, racism and cruelty inflicted against Muslim and
Christian Palestinians.
The first step must be to compensate the Palestinian people for
their losses and to allow them to return to their homes and
property with full and equal rights of citizenship according to
UN Security Council resolutions.
More important, however, is the fundamental change that must
occur within Israel's mentality.
The mindset that "One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish
fingernail" voiced by Rabbi Yaacov Perin in 1994 when he
eulogized mass murderer Baruch Goldstein must follow the Third
Reich to the grave.
"Never again" must apply equally to all peoples who have ever
faced ethnic cleansing or enslavement by virtue of their
identity, be they Jewish, Muslim or Christian, Bosnian, African
or Native American.
As philosopher Martin Buber noted in 1961, "Only then will the
young and old in our land realize how great was our
responsibility to those miserable Arab refugees in whose towns we
have settled from afar; whose homes we have inherited, whose
fields we now sow and harvest; the fruit of whose gardens,
orchards and vineyards we gather; and in whose cities that we
robbed, we put houses of education, charity and prayer."
James is director of government relations for the Council on
American Islamic Relations' New York office.
(c) New York Daily News
