Talking peace in the Middle East

Many UCLA faculty and students are voicing their hopes and expectations about the most recent negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians happening this month.

Members of the UCLA faculty see these negotiations as a positive indicator for a lasting peace between the two warring parties.

The Obama administration’s first step in the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian territories comes at a point of considerable development in the Middle East, with the United States’ announced withdrawal from Iraq in August and Iran’s push to become one of a few countries in the region with nuclear capabilities.

The UCLA community is not unfamiliar with the continuous conflict between Israel and its neighboring territories. In February, Students for Justice in Palestine sponsored Palestine Awareness Week with the help of the UCLA Muslim Student Union.

The event lasted five days and featured skits, protests and a life-size replica of the security border separating Israel from the West Bank.

Although some Muslim student groups agree with the student activism during Palestine Awareness Week, Koutaiba Chihabi said he was dismayed by the terms used to describe the conflict.

Chihabi, a third-year neuroscience student and director of UCLA’s Muslim Union, added that the issue is not fundamentally a religious feud but a humanitarian crisis.

“Muslims are generally in support of Palestine, but this is not because Palestine contains many Muslims,” Chihabi said. “It is an oppression issue. Muslims are in defense of any oppressed people worldwide.”

But some believe that Israel sincerely wants to make peace with its Arab neighbors and that enough blood has been shed over borders.

“Israel is looking to the future, which is a big tenet in Judaism, and we feel strongly about peace,” said Miri Kornfeld, a fourth-year biochemistry student and president of Bruins for Israel.

To help foster that peace, Bruins for Israel, along with Muslim student groups, helped to host the first annual Middle Eastern Comedy Festival in May and will hold the second show in October to ease the tension between two groups of students that often do not agree, Kornfeld said.

“Dialogue like (the Middle Eastern Comedy Festival) is what we need to see both on college campuses and on a larger scale, like what is going on this month between Israel and the Palestinian Authority,” she said.

One of the main issues discussed in the talks is the current moratorium on Israeli construction of settlements in the West Bank, which is set to expire this year. The Palestinians have threatened to abandon the discussion if Israel does not renew its suspension on building.

The Israelis are willing to compromise on settlements in the West Bank, but the Palestinians must not make the talks a one-issue litmus test, Kornfeld said.

Also, the Palestinian Authority must be willing to recognize Israel as a sovereign Jewish state if a two-state solution is ever to be feasible, she said.

The Palestinians in the West Bank are more prepared than ever to take control of the territory allotted for an Arab state in the 1948 United Nations resolution that Israel has controlled since the 1967 Six-Day War, said Neil Netanel, a law professor and the previous director of UCLA’s Israel Studies Program.

But some faculty members believe that very little will come from this most recent dialogue.

“The outlook, in my view, is not particularly good. The major issues remaining are the most contentious ones, and we see no clear signs that either side is willing to concede much on anything,” said Amy Zegart, an associate professor at the UCLA School of Public Affairs and a member of the advisory committee for the Center for Middle East Development.

Zegert added that although there has been development in the peace discussions in the Middle East, she feels that these are likely to remain as talks about talks.

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