As seems to be an annual tradition, the Israel-Palestine conflict has decided to re-assert itself on our campus.
A year ago, if asked for my opinion on the situation, I would have said without hesitation that Israel was the oppressor, the Palestinians the oppressed. While I have always been morally opposed to suicide bombings or any other violence targeted at civilians, I felt that one could not reasonably ask for an end to such violence until Israel met all the demands of Palestinians.
Certainly, there is no justification for Israel’s occupation and settlement of Palestine, for building the separation barrier in such a way that Palestinians are cut off from the land that is their livelihood, or for the human rights abuses that occur far too often at checkpoints in the occupied territories. Equally unjustified are the daily rocket attacks on the Israeli town of Sderot, and the bombing of civilian targets such as restaurants, bars, and buses.
The “who started it?” fight can go on for years without any definite resolution. Groups on both sides of the conflict can continue to take jabs at one another with arguments that focus on the injustices of past and present rather than on solutions for the future.
Alternatively, we can acknowledge that this confrontational approach is simply not going to work. A month ago, I had the chance to participate in a political tour of Israel designed to go beyond the left-right rhetoric so prevalent in the media. In one day, I went from standing at a checkpoint in occupied Hebron that is notorious for human rights violations to seeing firsthand the damage caused by Qassam rockets that had landed earlier that day in Sderot.
Most surprising of all-despite being in the middle of a war zone-was the peaceful attitude of the people I talked to. Before visiting Israel, I had imagined the Israelis to be violently anti-Palestinian and unwilling to consider the existence of a Palestinian state. In fact, most Israelis believe in the Palestinians’ right to an independent country. If you ask the average person in Tel Aviv what he thinks of the right-wing Israeli settlers who insist on living on Palestinian land, he will get angry and tell you that they are ruining any chance for peace in the region.
Proof of this is the “People’s Voice” initiative, a grassroots peace plan drawn up by Ami Ayalon, a retired Israeli admiral, and Dr. Sari Nusseibeh, a Palestinian academic. The plan involves compromise on both sides: Israelis and Palestinians must accept the other’s right to exist as an independent state along the 1967 border; Israel must dismantle all settlements on Palestinian land; and Palestinian refugees may only return to Palestine, not to Israel. While this plan involves painful concessions, over 200,000 Israelis and almost 200,000 Palestinians have signed on to it-a significant number considering the population of both groups totals less than 10 million. Throughout Israel and Palestine there is an increasing willingness to meet each other in the middle.
How does this apply to U of T? Here are a few words of advice based on lessons that I had to learn myself: talk less. Listen more. Open your minds and try to see where the other side is coming from, even if their views utterly offend you. Don’t waste your time trying to sabotage the other side’s events or get them cancelled. Organize your own events that actually try to discuss rationally how to end this horrible, bloody war. This is your chance as university students to expose yourselves to ideas of all stripes. I let my political views stop me from learning for many years, and I consider myself lucky that I took the time to think outside the ideas I had created for myself.
What we so often forget, or never realize at all, is that on both sides of the green line, people just want to live their lives. We forget that Israelis and Palestinians are not fighting this war; this war is between right-wing Israeli settlers and Palestinian militants.
I recommend that you go check out Israel-FEST and learn about Israeli culture. Go check out Israeli Apartheid Week and listen to the grievances of the Palestinians. Read books on the issue and view some websites-from both perspectives. And if you can, visit the region firsthand and experience it for yourself.
Sam Rahimi is the Vice-President External of SAC. Contact him at [email protected], or drop by the SAC office anytime.
