http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/orl-oped-reese08050801.column?coll=orl%2Dopinion%2Dheadlines
Mideast peace process dead -- no hope for revival
Charley Reese, Orlando Sentinel
May 8, 2001
The key to peace in the Middle East is in Washington, not Jerusalem. It is our
government that empowers the Israeli government.It is vain for people to keep
saying, "Renew the peace talks." The peace process in the Middle East is dead.
Kaput. Finished.
People should take Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at his word. In recent
interviews he has made it clear: There will be no permanent agreement with the
Palestinians; all Jewish settlements remain; the Golan and East Jerusalem
belong to Israel; and no Palestinian refugees will be allowed to return or be
eligible for compensation.
Can people not understand plain Hebrew translated into plain English?
The peace process is dead. Sharon and a majority of Israelis don't want peace.
They want the territory they have, and they want a defeated, despairing and
docile Palestinian population living in isolation.
If they wanted peace, they wouldn't have killed more than 400 Palestinians,
wounded more than 13,000, destroyed God knows how many homes, businesses and
orchards. They would not have continued to expand settlements. They would not
have continued to violate the Fourth Geneva Convention and defy some 60-plus
United Nations resolutions.
So what's going to happen?
It's simple. The Palestinians will continue to suffer and die and will continue
to try to kill as many Israelis as their limited means permit. What you have is
the military occupation by a regional superpower of a largely unarmed
population. Palestinians, like people everywhere and for all time, have the
right to resist military occupation by a foreign power. What you are seeing are
the final acts of European colonialism being played out in Palestine, which was
never Europe's to give away in the first place.
This will go on until Sharon's need for enemies provokes a regional war or
until the conscience of individual Americans is aroused. The key to peace in
the Middle East is in Washington, not Jerusalem. It is our government that
empowers the Israeli government to defy international law and human decency.
The Israelis wouldn't last six months without American backing, and they know
that.
The old canard that the Israelis and Palestinians must settle their differences
themselves is just an Israeli-dictated ploy to make sure nobody interferes with
their treatment of the Palestinians. It's the same as if the police told a
child rape victim, "Go work it out with your rapist."
There can never be negotiations between a strong party and a powerless party.
To pretend otherwise is to engage in public deception. For years, Israelis
would say that force is the only language the Palestinians understand. Now the
Palestinians are saying the same thing about the Israelis. It's ugly stuff. If
you love violence, then get a satellite dish and you can watch them kill each
other on Arab television indefinitely.
You may not like this, but the lives of 2 million Palestinians, many of them
children, depend on us. Their deaths will be on our conscience. They do not
have the power to stop the Israelis from occupying their land and brutalizing
them. Our president and our Congress do. But they are afraid of the Israeli
lobby. Therefore, if we do not give the American politicians some backbone by
letting them know Americans are tired of being accessories to Israeli
aggression, their misery will be unending.
Think about what it's like to be poor in a devastated landscape with no hope of
relief. Then think what it's like to be blinded or paralyzed by an Israeli
bullet with utterly no safety net. The Palestinian people do not deserve what
is happening to them. Their plight puts us in the uncomfortable position of
standing either by the innocent victims or by the oppressors.
There is no longer any neutral ground for people with an ounce of morality left
in them. One way or another, we will all have to choose. "Never send to know
for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee," said the poet John Donne.
Indeed it does, for with every Palestinian death a little bit of our own souls
will die as long as we do nothing, say nothing, think nothing as if we could
hide from our own conscience.
The most damned will be those in Washington who let their own fears and lust
for the comfortable position condemn a whole people to a hellish existence when
all along they had the power to relieve them with simply a frown and a stern
word.
Reach Charley Reese at 407-420-5315 or
creese@orlandosentinel.com
Copyright (c) 2001, Orlando Sentinel
