It just does not make sense. Where is this intense rage on the part of the Israelis coming from? It was there in full force at the very first hint of Palestinian protest at Ariel Sharon's very provocative visit to the Al-Aqsa Mosque at the very beginning of this terrible crisis two and half weeks ago. One would think the Israelis are fighting the Nazis rather than Palestinian men and children predominantly throwing stones as well as innocent bystanders brandishing no arms.
I am wondering desperately what the Israelis are fighting so brutally for. Israel is here to stay and the Arabs are not even challenging that anymore. Even the most hard-line opposers of the state of Israel in the past like the PLO have fully accepted and do not challenge the existence of Israel in any way, shape or form. Even if they did not acknowledge this, it is an obvious fact they could not do anything about it. What the hell are the Israelis doing to the Palestinians and how can they justify it? Barak seems to have a moral justification for every single move of any Israeli in the past 2 weeks but then why does he refuse to allow a UN fact-finding mission to investigate the recent crisis?
Recently I read an article in the Oct. 16 issue of Newsweek magazine entitled "The New Days of Rage" in which an Israeli soldier is quoted as saying about the Palestinians, "we're going to get the motherf---ers. Every last one of them," before adding that, "we're elated. Now we can fire live bullets instead of just rubber ones. This is war".
I don't understand the psyche of the Israelis. Before I go further with my questions and concerns, I want to state firmly that I am not referring to every single Israeli. I know there are many that are truly interested in reaching peace with Palestinians in a non-violent manner. My reference to Israelis in this case, is to those who support this malevolence. I don't understand their hatred. The only explanation I can derive, unless someone can explain another convincingly to me, is that "You often hate those you wrong." It makes sense to me simply because I ask, what had the Palestinians done to the Israelis, before this whole two-week crisis began, to merit this immediate explosion of extremely deadly violence? I can understand resentful feeling on the part of the Israelis and I can understand the need to defend oneself but what I totally fail to grasp is why there was such an outburst of seething hatred coming straight from the hearts of the Israelis towards the mostly unarmed Palestinians.
Why can't an Israeli soldier see a Palestinian child throwing a stone and just walk away? Why can't an Israeli soldier heed the desperate pleas of a father to stop shooting at him and his child? Why do the Palestinian children deserve to die so grotesquely with rockets blowing up in their faces? Why are internationally outlawed weapons, (bullets that explode inside the victim, eradicating all hope of survival) readily unleashed upon the Palestinians throwing stones? Why do Israelis love literally slaughtering Palestinians? I am not talking about Israeli reaction to the recent deplorable killing of the two Israeli soldiers or other four soldiers in the past two weeks. I am talking about Israeli bloody rage from the very beginning at the first hint of Palestinian protest at the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
How can the Jews, the most oppressed people in the history of the world, turn around and not understand the frustration the Palestinians have been feeling for 52 years? Like the Jews in the past, the Palestinians have been denied their human rights, have no homeland of their own and have been oppressed, silenced and even wiped out in some areas for more than half a century. This uprising is the result of utter despair on the part of the Palestinians for living too many years in a country where democracy is a joke and has never benefited them. This anger on the part of the Palestinians is the result of Israel's reluctance to follow through with agreements they have signed that lead the way to peace and Palestinian self-determination. The terrible reaction to Ariel Sharon's visit to the Al-Aqsa Mosque stems from the horror the Palestinians have always felt towards this Israeli figure for the massacres he orchestrated in Sabra and Shatila in 1982. They led to the deaths of around 3,000 Palestinian men, women and children in the most evil and disgusting of manners. A mini-holocaust of some sort if you will. How can anyone wonder after all this what led to this Palestinian outburst? In the words of Robert Fisk, "the whole Palestinian society has been pressure-cooked to the point of explosion".
The Palestinians did not want to fight against the Israelis simply because of some instinctive, bigoted, inexplicable hatred they have always felt for Jews for no reason. This is the nonsense they have been accused of. If that was true, then why didn't the Palestinians or any Arab for that matter fight the Jews during the past few centuries when they lived side by side?
Let me reiterate that Israelis had a right to defend themselves against the Palestinians. Speaking from a moral AND legal point of view, they did not have a right to carry out this defense the way they did. Let's assess what Israel has gained by it excessive and brutal use of force against the Palestinians from the beginning that has led to 130 gruesome deaths. Israel has earned the complete disgust of every single neighbor they have in the 22 Arab countries that surround them. Even countries like Morocco and Egypt that have had good diplomatic ties with Israel are completely horrified and want nothing to do with Israel at the moment. When this fighting is all over, the peace process that the Israelis talked about so fervently will be impossible to rekindle. Perhaps politically there may be peace but there will be no real peace for a long time.
The violence that the Israelis unleashed on the Palestinians is not only inexplicable but it is also unforgivable. Israelis will feel even more isolated and alone, without a single true friend in the Middle East for a long time to come. Not one single Arab in the world can forget the horror of the past two and half weeks. Israelis will only see horror in the eyes of every Arab they confront. And if this totally unjust treatment of the Palestinian people continues, then Israelis will never be able to breathe in air that is not saturated with the potential for another violent outburst like the one that has just (hopefully) passed. Has this brutality been worth that?
Dina Karam is a senior majoring in sociology. She is the president of the Arab Students Association.
