Sunday 13 July 2014

The middle east conflict

I know I haven' written anything here for ages, so I thought I'd write a comment on the situation in the middle east.

First of, I don't think too many people know the history behind the conflict, so I'll try to explain. Here's a brief explanation of the recent history:

The Israeli were on the run from an antisemitic europe, especially the nazi holocaust. They were encouraged to seek refuge in historic Palestine, at the time a british colony. The UN offered the Israeli people the better part of historic Palestine to build a new state called Israel. For the indegionus Palestinians, the uprooting of their country to make room for a new people were a destruction of life. They rejected the UN's partition plan and several Arab states invaded the new state of Israel. Israel effectively demolished over 400 Palestine villages. In 1949 they were at the end of their fight and new armistice lines were drawn up, and Israel now owned 78% of what was once historic Palestine. Only the West Bank and the Gaza Strip remained. Of the Palestinians who were expelled form their settlements during the fighting, many sought refuge in new Jewish villages, but were denied access and had to build tent camps and similar refuge camps on their own. They because second class citisens of the new state alongside the new Jewish majority.

Today, these refugees and their relatives live mostly in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Jordan and Lebanon. Many of them are still living in refugee camps, seeking to return to their home land.

To sum up, one group of refugees found a much needed home, but it the process, a new group of refugees was created.

Now, here's another thing to understand: Israel was created as a jewish state, but ask yourself what that means. People have had a lot of ideas about what a Jewish state should look like. Some called for equality for all citisens, but what was created in practice, was institutional discrimination against non-Jews. In other words, Israel ended up being built on a blue print of exclution. The Israelian government wants the maximum of land and resources for Jews, but not for the Palestinians living there. That's why, inside Israel, Jews get special priveleges, including the right to own land and housing, which is denied for the Palestinian citisens who make up 20% of Israels population. That's also part of why Israel never defined it's borders. In fact, Israel still holds on to land that were concuered during the war, the West Bank and Gaza, building "temporary military settlements". However, the settlements have existed on occupied Palestinian land for over 40 years, and Israel has even equipped it with infrastructure cut off from the Palestinian settlements, there are Israeli schools and even a college, so it doesn't look that temporary..

On the West Bank, Israeli and Palestinians live on the same land but under completely different circumstances. While the israeli have all the resources they need, such as water and agriculture, the Palestinians has next to nothing. To keep the unjust situation in their favour, the Israeli army has punished resistance with raids, arrests and assassinations, all to gain maximum land while making life so difficult for Palestinians that they will either leave or be too frightened to speak up.

Palestinians have fought back. For decades they have tried to achieve national liberation through armed struggle. Some groups still do. The majority today, however, demonstrate their disapproving of Israeli occupation through popular protest instead.

The deeply harmful pattern of control, repression and violence has harmed both Palestinians living under occupations as well as Israelis living as occupants. This must be broken to assure a safe and peaceful future for both people.

Now, what about the solution to the problem? What about peace talks?

So far, over two decades of the US meddling in peace talks has actually made things worse. There has been years of talking and nothing has happened. In fact, Israel has continued its occupation of Palestine, ridding the West Bank and Gaza of Palestine people to make room for Jewish settlers. The US has also funded the Israeli army, making them better equipped to take over Palestine settlements, and of course thereby not helping what so ever, but probably making a lot of money. The israeli army is acrually the biggest recipiant of US foren aid in the world!

So, what has to be done? Real peace talks. Israel needs to listen to reason and Israel and Palestine needs to come to a joined solution where both people gets the amount of land that is fair and the fighting has got to stop. Nobody can go behind the curtain, making money of the conflict, like the US has done, because that will only make things even worse than they are now. Someone who genuinely wants to end the conflict needs to speak up, step up and help Israel and Palestine come to a solution, or the fight will go on for ever.


Aight, that's basically what I have to say about that! Hopefully, the conflict will come to an end at some point, let's just hope it doesn't end because Israel and Palestine has exterminated each other.

1 comment:

  1. Duu burde sjå Tears of Gaza, knuuste hjerte mitt i tusen bita

    ReplyDelete

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