CAIRO, Egypt—From over here it looks like the PSM conference went off pretty well. Hopefully, people already passionate on the subject learned something new and newcomers came to realize that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the most important issue in the most important region in the world for Americans today. Please don’t forget: What happens over there today will affect what happens here tomorrow. The perpetrators of Sept. 11 drew a lot of their anger from what the Israelis and Palestinians are doing to each other and al Qaeda’s new recruits will continue to do so.
It’s good to read about teach-ins and activists making it clear to everyone that a lot of innocent people are dying on both sides. But to see the extremism that emerged from both camps is awful. Things like “Zionism=ethnic cleansing” signs, speakers referring to Arabs as barbarians, claims that “diplomacy just gets in the way, “ as Daniel Pipes did—it just doesn’t help. It’s absolute poison in the peace process.
I’ve only been in the Middle East for two months now, but it doesn’t take long to figure out that the people here are so worked up, so stirred by their religious and political leaders who seek to place the blame for domestic problems onto Israel that a rationale, pragmatic solution just isn’t coming from here. On some of Lebanon’s streets and highways you can see Hezbollah martyr billboards—commemorative paintings of suicide bombers. In Egypt you could have watched the anti-Semitic ‘Elders of Zion,’ on state-television last year.
The impetus for peace is going to have to come from the other side of the Atlantic, eventually from the White House but also on places like college campuses. And frankly, we have to be better. We have to rise above the fray. It’s a complicated issue. It’s not black and white and don’t believe people when they say it is. Everyone has to realize both sides are doing bad things. The Israelis have to give up the settlements. The Palestinian response to the Oslo offers—suicide bombing—was foolish. Thinking you can force Israel to give you a state by killing more people is stupid.
And equating Zionism with ethnic cleansing hurts the Palestinian cause. What is happening to the Palestinians right now is awful—there is no doubt about that. But ethnic cleansing is what is happening in the Sudan; it’s what happened in Rwanda, Bosnia and in 1940s Germany. This conflict isn’t about liquidating a people. It’s about land, pure and simple. Trying to make the Palestinians’ suffering into something more, something it isn’t, undermines the legitimacy of what is happening to them.
Instead, how about organizing another infitada of a different kind? Maybe the leaders of PSM should be dropping leaflets detailing the history of the American Civil-Rights movement in the West Bank and Gaza right now. Imagine the world’s response if it watched Palestinian youths get run over by tanks instead of throwing rocks at them. It would be outraged. So, Hamas, quit blowing up civilians. Go find a Martin Luther King instead.
And both sides need realize the eventual peaceful solution is going to involve compromise. To the Jews: You suffered through centuries of oppression and the Holocaust. To the Palestinians: You are suffering greatly right now. But you both want the same land. You will have to share. There’s no other way around it. Here in Egypt, at the American University of Cairo, there was an informal survey in the student newspaper last week asking five students who they thought was responsible for the recent terrorist bombings in Taba, Egypt. Three of the five students answered Israel. These are the wealthiest students in Egypt with the best education.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a tough, tough issue and people feel very strongly about it. But as you walk away from the PSM conference, remember that here in the United States—on college campuses and beyond—we have to do better. Because if we don’t help to solve this thing, we are in trouble too. After Sept. 11, we should all realize that we all have a share in how this conflict turns out.
Jesse Shuger-Colvin is a Trinity junior.
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