With the repeated failure of peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine, and despite involvement of the entire international community, one only has road blocks to remember, and no solutions.
For 62 years, the world has witnessed the Middle East in crisis.
The Gaza Strip and the West Bank, a total of only 2,410 sqare miles of land, have been the sites of war and terror. The entire conflict revolves around a struggle for identity on the part of both Israel and Palestine.
The most recent peace efforts began in early September. The issue at these talks was the construction of Jewish settlements on the West Bank. However, with the expiration of the moratorium on construction in the middle of the peace talks, the negotiations are back to square one.
Melissa Jiha is a 20 year-old senior and a public health major. She is of Palestinian origin, but grew up in Haiti.
Last summer she went to the West Bank to visit her family. Speaking about travelling between Israel and Palestine, Jiha explained that clearing the check-points is a painful ordeal.
A special permit is needed to enter Israeli territory, which her grandmother doesn’t have.
“I was frustrated because my grandmother couldn’t come with me. When I showed her the pictures I had taken in Nazareth, she pointed out the place [where] she lived and used to play; she felt sad about how things had changed.”
Jiha also volunteered at a UN refugee camp for Palestinian refugees in Dheiche and attended an international conference about the conflict.
“I left all my paperwork in Palestine because I was afraid I would be checked. I also changed the name of the folder on my laptop to ‘My little brother’ so [Israeli security forces wouldn’t] delete the pictures I took in Palestine. I was treated like a terrorist because I was a young woman travelling alone,” Jiha said.
When asked about whether she felt a solution was possible, Jiha said,
“Yes and No. Yes, if both sides change their perspectives and learn how to forgive. No, because there is a lack of awareness. However, Israelis and Palestinians have lived together [before]; this can happen again.”
Two weeks ago, the Israeli government backed a bill that proposed an extension of the moratorium, provided Palestine recognizes Israel as a Jewish state. Palestinian authorities denied the proposal and demanded a permanent freeze on the settlements.
All the proposed solutions have yet to pinpoint a practical resolution for the conflict. In the meanwhile, Palestinian militants continue engaging in extensive acts of global terrorism.
Since all this bloodshed is supposed to be in favor of Palestine being recognized as a sovereign state, given the hypothetical stance that Palestine is granted its demand, what would follow? Palestine, with its current territorial delineations, would be a state within another nation-state. How can anyone guarantee a state as small as Palestine, future security? Will sovereign Palestine end up being just a puppet controlled by a big Western power?
Also, the state of Palestine would be territorially split into two parts, with both parts representing the two extremes of Israel. The feasibility of government with such geographical dispersion would be a fundamental issue Palestine would need to sort out. Similar circumstances were seen in the Pakistan-Bangladesh conflict.
The conflict led to the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, resolved only when Bangladesh attained freedom from Pakistan. Will we be seeing another war for the division of the Palestinian state?
An important factor in this discussion is the consideration that the West Bank and Gaza Strip are under the control of the Fatah and Hamas respectively.
These political groups are hostile towards each other. How will a newly found state be able to deal with this division of power?
With over 4 million Palestinian refugees, how will the state of Palestine accommodate them all? In light of the global terrorist activities by Palestinian militants, how can the world trust that Palestine wouldn’t try to blackmail its way out of situations with the use of terror again?
How can anyone promise the complete dissolution of these terrorist groups? Considering the strong anti-Israeli propaganda Palestinian children are bombarded with, what assurance is there of any peace between the neighbouring states as the next generation gains control?
As pessimistic as it sounds, the world needs to face the fact that if there were a feasible solution to be reached, it would have been reached already.
Reema Sengupta can be reached at reeema.sengupta@spartans.ut.edu.