|
ISRAEL AND THE
PALESTINIANS
Table of Contents
January 19, 2009
Letter to government of Israel
January
19, 2009
Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert
Foreign Minister
Tzipi Livni
The Knesset
3 Kaplan Street
Hakirya
Jerusalem 91950
Israel
c/o Ambassador Sallai
Meridor
Israeli Embassy
3541 International
Drive NW
Washington, DC 20008
By e-mail
to: pm_eng@pmo.gov.il
Dear Prime Minister
Olmert and Foreign Minister Livni:
I am an American who
cares deeply about the welfare of both Israelis and Palestinians. For most of
my life – I was born in 1942 – I’ve watched as the conflict has continued
between the Israelis and various Muslim groups. Today it is Hamas. Previously,
it was Hezbullah and the PLO. Before that it was Egypt and Syria.
Although not Jewish,
I am very close to many Jewish Americans. My high school, from which I
graduated in 1960, had a large Jewish population in its student body. I live in
South Florida, where our Jewish population is a dynamic and important element
in all that is good in our community. I am not anti-Jewish, and want Israel to
be a successful and valued member of the community of nations in the Middle
East.
For the last 60
years, I’ve observed Israel’s responses to the attacks it has received from its
neighbors. This began during the 1967 war, which occurred while I was in
Officer Candidate School during the Vietnam War. I am a retired Lieutenant
Colonel of the US Army Corps of Engineers, in which I served for 31+ years,
mostly as an Army Reservist. I try to stay fairly well informed about events in
other parts of the world and never have understood why Israel seems to act so
frequently in ways that seem to me to be contrary to the long-term welfare of Israel.
The Public Television
News Hour this evening had video from Gaza, as did the BBC’s news program
before it, and particularly from a UN school that was bombed by Israel with
white phosphorus, killing two students and blowing the legs off of another 19
year old, and burning children with the phosphorus. The
administrators at the school deny that it was being used for any hostile action
against Israel.
I don’t understand
what Israel, as a nation, can possibly expect to gain from this.
After years of watching
the struggle of Palestinians against the Israeli occupation of lands occupied
during the 1967 war, and the struggle of Israel against anti-Israeli suicide
bombers, rocket attacks, and who knows what other kind of hostile action, it
seems to me that for every Palestinian you kill, either through reprisal
bombings, air attacks to assassinate Palestinian leaders, or attacks like the
school bombing claimed to be directed at someone who was firing on your
aircraft, you motivate another 100 frustrated, angry young Muslims to take up
arms against you. Your actions against civilians in Gaza can only harden the
determination of Palestinians against Israel and strengthen their resolve to
send more rockets and suicide bombers. I can see this. Why can’t Israel’s leaders?
Additionally, because
the sentiment of the Muslim world is triggered by each innocent Palestinian
injured or killed, whether in Gaza, the West Bank, or elsewhere, the failure of
Israel to come to a peaceful settlement of the conflict between yourselves and
the Palestinians fuels the anti-western extremists of groups dedicated to
exterminating Israel and its supporters, including Al Quaeda (which seems to
have gotten the most press recently) but also other organizations whose names I
either haven’t heard recently enough to recall, or whom I haven’t heard of yet.
As an impartial
observer, being neither Jewish nor Muslim, it seems to me that both Israel and
the United States have made a major error in treating Hamas as a ‘terrorist’
organization. My recollection is that Hamas won the recent election among the
Palestinan population. It operates numerous welfare programs, and to all
respects seems to me to be acting like a legitimate government, not a terrorist
organization. If it is the government, and it should be considered as such, as
I see it, its relatively ineffective rocket attacks on Israel take on the
character of one nation expressing its legitimate opposition to an occupying
power. To my eyes, it appears that for Hamas to send an occasional rocket into
your territory is a fairly predictable response from a government whose
population has been blockaded by its neighbor, whose territory (the West Bank)
is still being occupied by a superior military force, and whose territory has
settlements built there by the occupying force.
When I took an
International Law course in law school, my recollection is that I was taught
(by my Jewish professor) it isn’t lawful under established international law
for one nation to occupy another’s territory after a military conflict is over.
Israel’s continued occupation of the 1967 territory, after the 1967 war was
conclusively won by Israel, seems to be the core of the problem. Another
recollection, from several years ago, is that the Arab League proposed to
recognize Israel’s right to exist, and to cease all hostilities, if the 1967
borders are restored. This is, or was, an opportunity for Israel.
I recognize
that Jerusalem is the key to the failure to resolve this situation. It is an
important religious site for three major religions. Because that is so, my gut
feeling is that it isn’t realistic for Israel to monopolize the control of
Jerusalem. At the same time, it isn’t realistic to expect either
Israel or the Palestinians to agree to control of Jerusalem by the other. I
would suggest that it be made a neutral UN city, with the governments of both
nations located there, but not running the city government. Both groups have to
begin acting like neighbors and find ways to get along as friends, no matter
how improbable that sounds. And Israel has to learn to treat terrorists as
criminals rather than as agents of the Palestinian people, most of whom
probably want peace as much as most Israelis.
I have never had the
privilege of visiting Israel, but that isn’t necessary to see that the
continuing conflict is destructive to relations around the world. I believe the
attacks of 9/11 and the recent attacks in Mumbai (sometimes claimed to be due
to Muslim-Hindu hostility) are in fact fueled by anti-Israeli sentiment in the
Muslim world.
Israel needs to end
its conflict with the Palestinians. It is the grown-up thing to do, but Israel
has repeatedly acted like a bully every time it had a chance to defuse the
conflict. The example that is most significant in my mind is what happened when
Israel removed the settlers from Gaza, before turning control of that area back
to the Palestinians. As I recall, the last thing Israel did was to destroy all
of the houses that the Israeli settlers had built in Gaza. That was
a punitive, mean-spirited, and unnecessary act, obviously intended only to
prevent the Palestinians from being able to use those structures after the
Jewish settlers left. Perhaps the Israeli government thought no one else in the
world would notice, but I did.
It is disappointing,
very disappointing, to see Israeli leaders deliberately acting in ways that
block efforts at establishing a lasting peace. In 2000, when it looked like
there was a possibility of baby steps toward a peace agreement, Mr. Sharon took
his personal bodyguard to the Temple Mount, in a move carefully calculated to
cause a Muslim reaction. Aren’t there leaders in Israel who are grown up enough
to lead your country to a peaceful settlement with its neighbors?
The news reports here
in the US say that hundreds of innocent civilians have been killed by Israel’s
military action. Hamas spokesmen have said they have lost 45 soldiers to
Israeli fire. How many Israelis have died as a result of the rockets from Gaza?
Are Israel’s attacks on civilians really justified, or justifiable? How does an
act, that is inherently wrong, become justified?
How many Palestinian
children will have to be killed by Israeli forces before Israel acknowledges
that it is wrong to kill children because adults cannot work out their
differences? What moral high ground does Israel earn by destroying
the UN warehouse where food and medicine was stored for the residents of Gaza?
When will Israel renounce the use of white phosphorus weapons? If not, why not?
I am a military retiree and I understand white phosphorus. It won’t get you
where you need to go.
Each Israeli attack,
even if provoked by a few Hamas rockets landing in Israel, generates massive
waves of sympathy for the Palestinians and new hostility around the world
against Israel, even among non-Muslims. How can such attacks be in Israel’s own
self interest? Eventually, either Israel must make peace with its neighbors or
be overwhelmed by the numbers of hostile forces around it. What will Israel do
if it loses the support of the United States?
When Israel was
founded, the Jewish people had endured unspeakable atrocities at the hands of
their persecutors. The decision, as I understand it, to establish Israel as a
Jewish nation, was recognition of the awful things that the Jewish people of
Europe had endured. The Holocaust was the result of the Nazis having a military
force that was overpowering to those who would have resisted it. I am not
suggesting that Israel is actually equivalent to the Nazis. It isn’t, and in
many ways Israel is a bright, shining light of promise. But in another way, the
excessive force that Israel has used against Hamas, which force has no hope of
ending the feeble Palestinian resistance against Israel’s continuing occupation
and blockade, is a terrible reminder of the brutal inhumanity of holders of
military power against the weak. Just because a government has the power to do
something, doesn’t make it the right thing to do.
To me, and I believe
to many other observers in the western world, it appears that Israel has used
its military strength to oppress the Palestinians, and has missed a great
opportunity to use its superior economic and technical resources and
enlightened moral principles as a way to make the Palestinian community into an
ally, sharing in Israel’s prosperity, rather than to perpetuate its enemy
status.
Tomorrow, the United
States swears in a new President. We have high hopes for new directions with
his leadership. Isn’t it possible that, somehow, Israel might change its
direction? That will take real leadership. It will require
leaders who will not allow people like Mr. Sharon to succeed in their
destructive behavior, those who build their political strength by sabotaging
peace efforts, to further their own ambitions. Like many others who have used
religion as a manipulative tool, they are not interested in the welfare of
Israel, but only of their own personal acquisition of power. Real leaders will
recognize that there will always be people on both sides, who seek to prevent a
peaceful settlement, and who don’t want those peacekeeping efforts to succeed.
Real leaders will resist those efforts to sabotage the peace and will instead
focus on peacemaking.
Israel needs to be at
peace with the Palestinians. I wish you strength and wisdom, the persuasive
power to convince the Israeli people that peace with the Palestinians, no
matter what government they choose for themselves, is the only possible correct
course for Israel, and I wish you the courage to see it through.
Sincerely,
Michael F. Chenoweth
|