By: Sergio Edelstein
Proportionality
When certain medias or foreign politicians claim that Israel should react proportionally to Hamas attacks, are they sure that this is what they really want? Do they know what this means?
Hamas has always fired at civilians indiscriminately, without taking into consideration who might be affected and, according to their leaders, praying that they strike as many civilians as possible such as schools or kinder gardens. They don’t fire at military bases, on the contrary they target and pray to kill innocent people.
If Israel was to react proportionally, which is what many claim, can you imagine what the consequences would be?
However, due to the principles that distinguish us, Israel does everything in its power, despite the inhumanity of Hamas leaders, to attack only military bases or places that Hamas leaders use to attack civilians indiscriminately. There aren’t many countries in the world that work so hard to avoid the loss of innocent people.
Whoever claims proportionality either doesn’t have the slightest idea of what he is talking about, or doesn’t care about human rights and morals as much as Israel does and is trying to be politically correct or representing other interests that are not related to the conflict or simply being anti-Semitic…
Wasting each and every opportunity to reach an agreement.
I’ve read many times that the Arab- Palestinian leaders have wasted each opportunity they’ve had to reach a peace agreement in the middle-east, for the well-being of the Palestinian people. Without going way back, we can list examples of this behavior in these last decades.
Clearly the peaceful solution to the arab-israeli conflict in general and the palestinian- israeli conflict specifically have two sides that should be dealt with and resolved. On the one hand the Israeli dream of a strong State of Israel recognized by the whole world, therefore establishing acknowledged and safe borders, this being the key to resolving the conflict according to Israel.
This is precisely what the Palestinians cannot seem to agree to, therefore wasting the opportunities given to them to reach an agreement. And here it is important to distinguish that we are speaking about Palestinians and not Arabs due to the fact that Arabas have established specific rules for negotiation, that might be difficult for us to accept but at least they keep the doors open to dialogue and debate.
The Palestinians on the other hand have repeatedly denied the territorial offers that different Israeli governments have proposed, that would have been a solution to the territorial conflict.
The Israeli offer to make territorial changes to the 67′ borders (as took place with Egypt and Jordan), responds to many realities and needs: the creation of an independent and sovereign Palestinian State; the consolidation of the Palestinian people where they are the majority as well as for the Jewish people; the possibility for Palestinians to receive thousands of hectares of land attached to the Gaza strip, which is key to them due to the population of the area. These are the three basic things that could lead to the development of a true country, Palestine, that would allow their citizens to live a normal and peaceful life.
The problem is that even these possibilities where overruled by the extremists, maybe out of fear that Israel would really accept it and they would become irrelevant to their people.
It is true that there are other serious problems that should be considered, such as Jerusalem, the refugees, water..
but these too are problems that can be resolved if we understand and accept that the State of Israel has the right to exist safely as an independent and sovereign state just as it was declared in 1948
Occidental point of view.
Sadly many leaders and people in general, relate hypocritically to the conflict in the Middle East as they try judge with their occidental views a conflict where one of the two sides doesn’t abide by these same principals.
Although they claim they are defending human right, what they are really doing is defending their interests. Or how else would you explain the fact that they defend leaders that do not respect their own people, that relate to their women as objects, that use them as human shields while they protect themselves and their families hiding behind their civilians; leaders that are dictators that do not relate to the suffering of their people.
Let’s not be fooled, they are defending their economic interests, for this same reason they have the need to accept Israel as a Jewish state that is moral and has a right to exist.
Israel must understand that in order to truly solve the conflict, although we cannot guarantee its success, we have to recognize a real Palestinian state that can determine its own destiny. Then too Israel will legitimately be able to defend itself just like it does against any other country, but we will also have the opportunity to be at peace with a big part of the Arab world just as we have done with Egypt and Jordan and other countries.
