Hamas has been condemned because it will not renounce violence against Israel, yet no one seems to ask Israel to renounce its violence against the Palestinians. Certainly it’s obvious from the recounting above that Israel covers Palestine day in and day out with violence, violence that is indiscriminate, illegal and inhumane. Any violence perpetrated by Hamas pales in comparison, horrific as it is. Why does the international community permit this carnage to continue?

      But the violence above does not tell the whole story. The international community needs to visit the West Bank and Gaza. The world’s eyes need to see what Israel’s occupation has wrought on the Palestinians. Drive through the checkpoint that isolates East Jerusalem from West Jerusalem; witness the contrast between the rubble that surrounds the weathered broken homes of the indigenous people from the spanking new town homes surrounded by green shrubbery and trees of the immigrant settlers who live in the West Bank on stolen land. Crawl along potholed and scared roadways that cut between houses stacked like firewood on slopes of stone and rock while settlers move swiftly past on highways built solely for them, highways that run on land confiscated by Israel. Look to the right and the left and see the remains of demolished homes, 104 in 2004 in East Jerusalem, 94 in 2005 evicting the families that lived in them onto the streets, 594 people in all, mothers, fathers, sons and daughters. Israel demolishes these houses in order to construct the roads settlers need, to keep houses away from the entombment wall they’ve constructed to imprison the Palestinians, for collective punishment despite its illegality under the Geneva Conventions, and to ensure more land for expansion of illegal settlements. (B’tselem, 5/1/2006).

      Drive through the poverty riddled towns that lie in crevices between sand hills and olive groves that are stacked one above the other; stop in Hebron’s old city as the residents hide in their homes under curfew unable to go to the store or school or work unless an 18 year old IDF soldier gives them permission or shoots them should they disobey the lockdown. Walk along the dirty streets of the old city beneath the chicken wire stretched above your head to prevent the garbage and waste tossed from above by the illegal settlers from falling on your clothes. Taste the humiliation; watch the settlers stop school children and mock them as inferior beings. Listen to the racism that spews from their mouths reflecting the attitude of Effi Eitem or Avigdor Leiberman in the Knesset.

      “Israel’s restrictions on the movement of workers and merchandise in the Occupied Territories are generally sweeping and unlimited in time, leading to great consequences suffered by the local population … Israel’s policy violates a number of rights that Israel is obligated to respect pursuant to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. These include the right to an opportunity to gain a living, the right to an adequate standard of living, the right to adequate food, clothing and housing, and the right to enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.” (B’tselem, 5/1/2006). Why, if this Jewish run organization, housed in Jerusalem, can see the devastation caused by Israel’s illegal occupation of another people’s land, can’t the European Union leaders, the US Congress, and the Senate see what crimes they share in letting this terrorist state act with impunity against Palestine?

      The Director of operations of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Pierre Krahenbuhl, visited the Palestinian territories in April, noted the increased violence and deteriorating humanitarian situation and called for a concerted effort on both sides to prevent an impending crisis. The US and Israel responded by preventing the Palestinian government from securing international funds owed to it so that its people could be paid, including its own taxes collected by Israel. Why such barbaric behavior? How can the international community swallow the lie that Hamas can destroy Israel? How can that community continue to allow a rogue state to defy international law? How can it remain silent when such inhumane treatment is inflicted on a helpless people?   

      Today peace is possible in Palestine; not because Israel has offered a peace plan, not because Israel has responded to the “road map,” dead as it is, by removing its illegal settlements in the West Bank or by removing its occupying forces from Palestine, but because Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas have made possible avenues to peace, one in a speech to the Nobel Institute in Oslo earlier this month and the other by speaking openly about its study of the Saudi 2002 peace plan. Has the Bush administration or our representatives in Congress or the Senate jumped at these overtures? No. Has Olmert suggested that his demands -- to have Israel recognized by Palestine’s new government, to have the violence brought to an end, to have agreements made in the halls of the United Nations accepted – are within reach by calling together the international community at a conference to work out the details of a peace in Palestine as recommended by Abbas? No. Have the American people even been informed about these overtures? No. Has the “liberal” media rushed to interview Abbas or Hanyieh to seek further explanation of their proposals? No. Why?

Have the American people even been informed about these overtures? No. Has the “liberal” media rushed to interview Abbas or Hanyieh to seek further explanation of their proposals? No. Why?

      Mark the obvious. Israel illegally occupies Palestinian land; Palestinians are prisoners in their own land. Israel illegally confiscates and annexes more and more of that land; Palestinians have become a displaced people under constant curfew in their homes, surviving in refugee camps, or spread throughout the world unable to return. Israel illegally constructs  its accursed Wall that entombs the Palestinian people behind cement and chain link fence stealing in the process even more land including the Jordan Valley; Palestinians are helpless to prevent the construction despite the action of the International Court of Justice that declared it not just illegal but inhumane.

      Israel illegally confiscates Palestinian aquifers, than rations its distribution to the people who legally own it while dispensing it in abundance to immigrant settlers who live on stolen land; Palestinians can do nothing but witness the racism that allows such behavior to exist. Israel illegally prevents the Palestinians from getting to their fields and crops, demolishes olive groves and homes, constructs road barriers to prevent freedom of movement, denies building permits and creates illegal laws that determine property rights for the indigenous population that has no say in their design or implementation; Palestinians suffer the indignation of such treatment as they fall deeper and deeper into debt and poverty.

      Israel illegally incarcerates thousands of Palestinians denying them right of counsel or trial by jury; Palestinians are forced to submit to this barbarous behavior since they are forced to exist under Israeli law. Israel illegally assassinates individuals in extra-judicial executions contrary to behavior expected of humane, civilized societies; Palestinians are damned for striking back at the occupiers by a world that sees their action as terror while it euphemistically accepts Israel’s as “security” for its population. Israel illegally defies international agreements that call upon nation states to forego development of weapons of mass destruction, biological, chemical and nuclear; Palestinians become potential innocent victims of a nation that can and has occupied neighbor states, used its vast military arsenal against its neighbors (Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq), and could become engaged in war as a consequence. And this represents only some of the illegal behavior that has guided Israel under Sharon and will continue to guide Olmert’s government unless the international community takes command of the crisis in Palestine and demands equitable and just treatment for the Palestinians.   

            Now is the time to bring peace to Palestine by unmasking the true state of terrorism; the international community must take control of the production of truth. Truth is not the province of those with the most to gain at the expense of those with the most to lose. The UN must force open the prison gates in Israel’s Wall; it must let the international community see the unnatural conditions imposed on the Palestinians under Israeli occupation. Let this spring fulfill its promise of renewal. Bring in the UN Peace Keepers; let them stand between these warring factions to ensure that both receive just and equitable treatment. Create conditions that enable compassion, comfort, respect and dignity to prevail and the need for violence driven by vengeance will evaporate. The mid-east is a cauldron simmering in the heat of fanatical vitriol and contempt; cool minds must take control, minds open to peaceful accord, justice, and respect for human rights.  

=================
 
William Cook is a professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California and author of Tracking Depception: Bush's Mideast Policy

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