Nakba Day 2: An Obstacle for Peace!

Earlier this week, on Nakba Day, I wrote about my feelings towards the “Palestinian disaster”. In short, while I don’t take away from the devastating outcome of the Arab / Palestinian refusal to the partiotion plan (the two states for two people which the Jewish Community accepted and founded Israel upon, and which the Palestinians rejected and started a war which they’ve lost).

Did you know? The term Nakba was first set to describe the outcme by Syrian author Constantin Zureiq, who refered to the disaster as the “shameful” lost of Seven Arab nations against one entity (Israel, or in his words “Zionism“).

I also mentioned, but more on the sidelines, the many issues this issue raises. Some of them are essential to why peace is so hard in this conflict. I’d like to summarize it in short:

1. The Palestinians demand a fictional right they call “The Right of Return”. Basically, they’re demanding a return to their old homes from before the war. This so-called “right” has never been granted in any conflict!
   (moreover, many Jewish people were either forced by the government or were treated horribly to basically having no choice but to leave their possesions and homes in the Arab nations where they lived at the same time).
2. The Palestinian “Refugees” are handled in a seperate special and unique agency, that doesn’t help them but works to keep them refugees in grave and dire situations.
3. To that extend, Palestinians refugees are the only refugees around the world whose offsprings recieve refugee status.
4. A Palestinian coming to money or success, granted citizenship and so on are still called refugees (as do their offsprings).
5. There are many Palestinian refugees who have been living in camps in Syria and Lebanon (Egypt’s camps are now called The Gaza Strip). No one is helping them improve their lives, even when 64 years have passed since the war. They’re only concerned with keeping them poor and in poor condition to demand a fictional right from Israel.
6. Granting the “Right of Return” would mean to demographically extinct the state of Israel (especially with refugee offspring status).
7. Each year the Palestinians organize marches and have themselves and kids walk around with keys, symbolizing this fictional right. With that kind of education, how can you really teach your children peace and not violence (especially when its’ rooted in half-truths to complete lies)?

At the end of the day, the 67-borders is not the main issue of this conflict.

Israel has made many territorial compromises throughout the years (including Israel’s current Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu):

1. To achieve peace with Egypt, Israel gave Egypt the entire Sinai Peninsula, whose size is more than twice the size of Israel (Egypt refused to take back the Gaza Strip territory, rending it belonging to no state but de-facto under Israel’s military rule, due to Egypt’s refusal to accept the Palestinians and their territory back to its’ own territory as it was before the war).
2. Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza.
3. The establishment of Territory A, most of which is in complete civilian control of the Palestinian Authority (originally included military and security control as well, but when the Palestinian were unable or unwilling to stop suicide bombings, Israel reclaims military control).

And there’s more. Israel can, has and will make territorial compromises. But territory is not the issue!

This is! The hatred, the educations to hatred and lies, the thought of a fictional right that asks to abolish Israel completely, and the endless lies ensuing, this is the real issue. This is the real reason peace cannot be made.

This is the key issue in which Palestinian leaderships are still speaking out and saying they will never make compromises. This is the key issue in which Palestinian leadership organizes marches and instills false beliefs and lies, starting from the very early ages, against Israel and against peace. The false stories of the “evil Jews who came to steal our land when we were all innocnet in all of this” is a lie! And In his article last year in the New York Times, Palestinian Authority President, told the world this false narrative.

If you don’t know the truth, you might believe he was telling the truth! But he’s not!!! And these lies are what children on the other side are taught to believe is the truth!

So while it might be easy to blame Israel for everything, and while it may be super-easy to see this is as nothing more than a territorial dispute, IT IS NOT A TERRITORIAL DISPUTE!

This Nakba, this education of lies and hatred – that is!

Yaser Arafat said “no” to Bill Clinton’s peace proposal because of this very issue! Not territory, not security… Because he couldn’t have ended the conflict. Because to end the conflict is to admit the lies. To admit, at the very least, that like in any other conflict around the world, no return right will been given.

But in the meantime, peace won’t come. And refugees around the world can only envy the kind of conditions the Palestinians receive…

Tags: Israel, Middle-east conflict, Nakba, Palestine, Palestinian Refugees, Right of Return