Palestine
cause of rough road to peace
Gerry
Wachovsky
Throughout
history, there have been feuds -- the Hatfields
and McCoys; Republicans and Democrats; men
and women; the list can go on and on. As
of late, however, it seems that one particular
feud has been growing rowdier by the day
and despite the continuing attempt at a
peace process, one group and one group alone
continues to disrupt it. Ironically, the
disrupting group is one of the two major
groups that the peace process will benefit.
The particular feud I am referring to is,
of course, between the Israelis and the
Palestinians, and the failure of the peace
process is due, for the most part, to the
Palestinians.
"Geneva
Understandings" is the name of the
new peace draft "formulated by members
of the Israeli opposition and Palestinian
officials," according to an article
found on www.haaretzdaily.com. The article
goes on to say that the draft -- which I
believe to be particularly optimistic and
dare I say ridiculous -- would have the
Palestinians "concede the right of
return [to Israel]" as well as "recognize
Israel as the state of the Jewish people."
Now hold on just a second here! Are we not
missing an integral point? The land of Israel
was never called "Palestine"!
Furthermore, there was never an official
Palestinian Arab state! Anyone who says
differently clearly does not have a firm
grasp on history. It was never more than
merely a region in the Middle East!
According
to www.palestinefacts.org, following World
War I, the League of Nations partitioned
a chunk of land "originally 118,000
square kilometers" designed to establish
"a national home for the Jewish people"
in the region of Palestine. Today, a whopping
80 percent of this land set aside is now
Jordan, which is the home of the majority
of Palestinian Arabs, while the remaining
20 percent of land west of the Jordan River,
is Israel. Note also that the "disputed
territories" of the West Bank and the
Gaza Strip are unarguably located within
the land of Israel, or as I said before,
the remaining 20 percent that was allocated
to the Jews. The Palestinians should have
been recognizing Israel ever since this
land was partitioned, seeing as how they
got the better part of the deal -- 80 percent
of the land, to be exact! Such is the Palestinian
mindset, however, as Yasser Arafat and the
Palestinian Authority have proven time and
time again -- it is either all or nothing.
Anything in between is inferior.
I
mentioned before that another part of the
peace draft would have the Palestinians
"concede the right of return [to Israel]."
For those who do not know, this concept
of a "right of return" refers
to the Palestinians' fallacious belief that
they were forcefully kicked out of land
that was supposedly once theirs. Let us
examine this by taking into account the
1947 U.N. Partition Plan, which the United
Nations created in the hopes of solving
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This plan
would have created an Israeli state and
a Palestinian state side-by-side but the
Palestinians rejected this, resulting in
a mass departure of "roughly 30,000
wealthy Arabs who anticipated the upcoming
war and fled to neighboring Arab countries
to await its end," according to www.us-israel.org.
Now, these Palestinian Arabs, not to mention
many more, feel that they have a "right
of return" to the land. It seems as
though they are missing a crucial concept
-- the Palestinian Arabs rejected the
1947 U.N. Partition Plan, creating all of
these refugees! I think www.us-israel.org
sums it up best when it says: "Had
the Arabs accepted the 1947 U.N. resolution,
not a single Palestinian would have become
a refugee."
There are, of course, literally tons of
other factors that play into this continuing
conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians,
but to sum up why this peace process has
been unsuccessful I will say the following:
as long as the Palestinians continue to
be unable to reason with, the fighting will
continue. Time and time again, the Palestinians
have had deals and peace plans on the table
and every time they have rejected it. This,
of course, is due to a deep-rooted hatred
for Jews and Israelis, but one would think
that by now the differences between the
two people could have been set aside and
the problems sorted out. Apparently this
is too much to ask, when one group, namely
the Palestinians, cannot get over their
selfishness and abhorrence for the other
group that would gladly be their peaceful
neighbors.
Gerry
Wachovsky is a broadcast journalism major
at Cal State Long Beach and can be reached
at SenorBucho@aol.com.
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