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Israel as a Secular Nation
and the Palestinian Cause
Alex Thorn
Class of 2004
10.25.03
International Relations
Mr. Christopher Gurry
If
peace is ever to be reached between Israel
and the Palestinians, it will be so within the current nation state of Israel.
Because Israel is a developed, democratically sovereign nation state, the
United States and the world will never let it fall to the Palestine Liberation
Organization (hereinafter referred to as “PLO”), or any group, whether its
cause is religious or not. Thus, the PLO’s mission to “destroy Zionism” is in
vain. Similarly, there will never be peace between the two peoples if the
Israelis don’t allow Palestinians to live in Israel
– knowing that the Palestinians may make up the majority. However, as long as
the PLO’s battle cry is “destroy Zionism,” Israel
will never allow a Palestinian majority for fear of the possibility of the
destruction of their Jewish state – because, of course, Israel
is a democracy. So, the question
remains: if we want peace, how do we convince the Israelis to move towards
secularism and help the PLO to accept that they’ll have to share their
homeland, and how do we change our country’s policies to help persuade both sides that we have their interests in mind in brokering
peace?
Yasir
Arafat, the Chairman of the PLO, must be removed from power if the Palestinians
are to move from solely an anti-Israeli agenda to a pro-Palestinian cause. In a
letter to Yitzhak Rabin, Prime Minister of Israel, on September 9th, 1993, Yasir Arafat
affirmed that “the PLO recognizes the right of the State of Israel to exist in
peace and security.” In
congratulations for his efforts to “, Arafat was awarded 1/3 of the Nobel Peace
Prize in 1994. Despite the terrorism embedded in his very being, it had
appeared that Arafat had turned to diplomacy. However, ten years after Arafat
promised to recognize Israel’s
sovereignty and accept Resolutions 242 and 338,
Article 15 of the PLO’s charter still states calls for “the elimination of Zionism
in Palestine.”
Alas, Arafat’s inaction on his promises in the Oslo
agreement has not been the result of a tough battle not yet won. In fact, on
the very day he signed the peace agreement on September 9, 2003, Yasir Arafat,
the Chairman of the apparent terrorism-turned-diplomatic PLO, broadcast to the
Palestinian people that the “peace accord to which he had affixed his name was
nothing more than a first step in a longstanding plan for the ‘phased’
elimination of Israel.”
Essentially, not only is Yasir Arafat the same man today as the one who
operated the PLO as a terrorist organization for twenty years prior to 1988 and
founded Al Fatah, an underground terrorist organization, in 1956, but he never
did or will intend to follow through on his promises made in the Oslo
agreement. Thus, the peace process will
go nowhere with Arafat at the helm of the Palestinian ship of state.
However,
in the same way that the United States needs to either ensure that Saddam won’t
be returning to Iraq or that he is dead before the Iraqi people will warm up to
the idea of creating their own democracy, once Arafat is gone and a true
diplomat is in charge, the PLO will be able to focus on how to get the
Palestinians back onto their homeland and not on how to destroy Israel. The United
States and the United Nations will not allow
Israel to fall,
based on a history of foreign relations and two UN resolutions respectively.
Thus, the PLO must realize that their efforts to “eliminate Zionism” (a
Euphemism for “destroy Israel”)
are to no avail and that, if the Palestinians really want to return to their
homeland, more diplomatic means will have to be reached that don’t include
eradicating the Israelis. Unfortunately, the PLO will not be able to pursue
diplomacy in the fast lane without the United
States’ help.
The United
States’ current involvement in Israel
amounts to this: self interest. We are not trying to advance the Oslo Accords
or move forward with Israel-Palestine peace because we have built a
relationship with Israel
that benefits our military technology and keeps our foot in the Middle Eastern
door. We are interested in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict only in as much as
it destabilizes the region and affects our own economic interests. Sadly, this
unilateralism will continue to fuel the fire rather than facilitate peace.
Instead, the United States
must end its unwavering, bias support of Israel
in order to help the Palestinians as well. In doing so, the US
must relinquish their own economic interests in Israel
and help both nations and all nations throughout the Middle East
in a manner that shows the world that the United
States of America is trying to help the
Israelis and the Palestinians, not themselves. The US
must place economic sanctions on Israel
– or at least postpone our annual aid – until it refocuses its policies on
moving towards not the freedom of religion (which there technically is in Israel),
but a secular government that isn’t governed by religion. Further, we must
reward Israel
for true efforts at maintaining and creating peace and for attempting to move
towards a friendlier, secular nation. If Israel
separates synagogue and state, Palestinians will be able to live in Israel
without feeling like they are living on someone else’s homeland. However, Israel
cannot be expected to move towards secularism until the PLO moves away from
their anti-Zionist battle cry and makes a sincere effort to negotiate. The United
States must provide equal aid to the PLO –
once Arafat is gone – to help it move away from violence and focus on peace. If
the Palestinians are still trying to destroy the Israeli state, Israel
won’t move towards secularism because there will still be a strong fear that
the acceptance of the Palestinians would allow them to bring down the nation
through their majority control.
Sadly, it is
highly likely that there will never be peace between the Arabs and the
Israelis. At the heart of the Palestinian’s religious belief is the conviction
that Jerusalem belongs to the Arabs
and the Palestinians and no one else. Similarly, the Zionist movement is not to
bring the Jews back to Israel,
but to return Jerusalem to the
Jews. How can the Palestinians and the Israelis share something that they both
believe is theirs alone? In order for peace to be established, both sides would
need to change their beliefs – certainly an unlikelihood. At the heart of the
Israel-Palestine conflict and the potential ways to fix it is the fact that the
Israelis and Palestinians don’t get along because they believe, religiously,
that the other is wrong. It is ironic, in fact, that these two groups with have
such different views and disagree so violently, as they are so similar in their
claims about the same homeland.
If peace is
possible between the Israelis and the Palestinians, it will only come after
these events occur: Yasir Arafat is removed from power, either by force or by
time; the PLO truly does what Arafat promised in his letter on September 9,
2003, and accepts UN Resolutions 242 and 338, and recognizes the state of
Israel; Israel transforms into a secular nation where there is no worry of the
effects of a Palestinian majority of citizenship; and the PLO accepts that it
will never win Israel by force, so it should just try to live with the Israelis
on their common holy land. Of course, the only way any of this is possible is
with substantial financial aid from the United
States and the rest of the world. Still, the
nature of the problem maintains the great possibility that there may never be peace.
©2003 Alex Thorn and the Trustees of Phillips Academy
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