To many of us Westerners, the Middle East seems to be a perpetually doomed, inevitably warring place.
The sad truth is there may never be peace in Israel. The Middle East is a region in the grips of terror. But why, then, does Israel presume that the best way to silence terrorism is to close checkpoints and rain bombs on a territory they have under lock and key?
There are two simple answers. The first is that Israel is a Jewish nation surrounded by a swarm of unfriendly Muslim neighbors and thus stands alone in the region. It feels as though it must demonstrate its strength lest bordering nations band together and attack it (except for the small fact that Israel has nuclear capability, essentially alone in this capacity).
The second is even simpler: Israel bombs Gaza into oblivion because it can.
It can and does, with the support of the United States. So while it is appropriate to criticize Israel’s military policy, there is little American citizens have to say about their actions. Instead, it is our duty to appeal to our own leadership.
President George W. Bush’s response to the increasingly disproportionate war was as such: “By spending its resources on rocket launchers instead of roads and schools, Hamas has demonstrated that it has no intention of serving the Palestinian people.” Perhaps the president does not realize that building schools is not a viable option when one of the world’s most skilled and aggressive armies is persistently casting an ominous shadow on a territory corralled by Israeli checkpoints.
A reevaluation of America’s unequivocal support of Israel is long overdue. In a supposedly more enlightened age than the decades that bore witness to world wars, there is no room for blank-check diplomacy.
More specifically, it is time for America to consider the position of nearly every other government in the world: the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is a two-sided mess.
Consider the following from the Times in England: “Europeans and Arabs have simply not been able to believe at times the virtually unyielding pro-Israel line that the US has taken since 2001, whether over Jewish settlements, Ariel Sharon’s security fence, the war with Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006 or the present fighting with Hamas, or on any number of lesser but pointed issues.”
Unfortunately, America appears to have termed its “War on Terror” as what is really a “War on Pan-Arab/Muslim Terror.” Had the bombs dropped on Gaza fallen from the planes of Islamic fundamentalists or Iranians instead of IDF ones, these acts would have been unequivocally condemned as terrorism.
This sort of two-faced diplomacy is not only careless, it is dangerous. Israel’s flagrant, senseless bombardment and invasion of Gaza (an area slightly larger than twice the size of Washington, D.C.) has killed over 500 Palestinians, many of whom were women and children. It is impossible to think of an area riper with terrorist recruiting opportunities than the rubble of Gaza.
In the West, save for Sept. 11, we have little experience with having our loved ones murdered by foreigners and foreign regimes (though we commit the most heinous of crimes against fellow Americans regularly). The hate that is brewing in Gaza is the same hate that led Americans to kill Sikhs and commit hate crimes in the time immediately following the 2001 attacks. (Some might argue that it is the same hate that led to American support for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.)
None of this is justification for the rockets Hamas senselessly fires into Israel. There is no room for condoning violence or aggression of any kind, but the Obama administration must consider understanding it. When the death of four Israelis is answered by the decimation of an entire region, when the kidnapping of two soldiers in Lebanon is countered by bombings in civilian areas, there arises the highest of tides of hate ““ and terrorism is nothing if not an outlet for hate.
By not engaging Hamas or the Palestinian people in any substantive discussion and instead demanding that they simply take the brutalization Israel has wrought on their kin, America is not only furthering the problem ““ it is making itself complicit in the deaths of nearly 600 civilians.
America must instead work with both sides to stop aggression and make both sides realize that violence only breeds violence.
We are learning this lesson in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Israeli people are as well: More than 40 rockets were launched into Israel on Monday. Bomb people, and they will bomb back. If they do not have bombs or an organized army, they will throw stones and fire rockets.
Sadly, many agree that it is doubtful that the president-elect will even reevaluate this undying allegiance, especially with such an outspoken supporter of Israel as his secretary of state. For the sake of the Israeli and Palestinian people, let’s hope we’re wrong.
E-mail Makarechi at kmakarechi@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.