Yalla Peace: Gaza flotilla and Israeli raid, Stupid, stupid, stupid

Yalla Peace: Gaza flotilla and Israeli raid, Stupid, stupid, stupid

By RAY HANANIA

06/01/2010 JERUSALEM POST

Rather than bring relief to the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, all the flotilla brought was death, violence, and int'l condemnation of Israel.

The activists leading the flotilla carrying medicine, food and building supplies to the suffering civilians in the Gaza Strip got exactly what they wanted. The IDF, stained by the indictment of the Goldstone Report, obliged them without hesitation.

Both sides are at fault in this confrontation. The activists are against peace, and want Israel to turn the clock back to 1948, while Israel wants to pretend the Palestinians don’t exist.

The flotilla was a bad idea from the start – not that supplies shouldn’t be brought in, but because the organizers knew full well that the purpose was to embarrass Israel politically. They knew that Israel might attack the convoy, and that’s why they chose to attempt to break the blockade rather than even try to negotiate.

But that’s always been the problem. People like that don’t want negotiations. When Palestinians and Israelis were negotiating, they were opposing the Oslo Accords, doing everything they could to stop them. And they stood by while Hamas, a terrorist organization which is also partly to blame for the suffering of the citizens of the Gaza Strip, used suicide bombings and brainwashed teenagers to kill themselves and to take innocent Israeli civilians with them.

As it stands, nine civilians aboard the flotilla were killed, although that number is not definite.

Israel’s military stormed the ship and for Israelis to claim they didn’t expect violence under those circumstances is ridiculous.

What could and should have been done?

First, the civilians should have negotiated with Israel rather than staging this dramatic PR drive. But Hamas refuses to do so, and the 1.5 million Palestinian civilians living in the Gaza Strip are as much a prisoner of Hamas’s distorted religious oppression as they are of Israel’s blockade.

Negotiation, not confrontation, is the answer. Discussions with Israel would have worked because Israel will never bend to the failed pressures of the Palestinian extremists. The activists who openly denounce Israeli military excesses are silent when it comes to Hamas excesses.

IT IS this hypocrisy that creates such tragedies. The activists have always been willing to have civilians die to make their case against Israel because the Arab world has been a huge failure from the start. The Arab League is a bad joke. It couldn’t argue its way out of a paper bag, but it sure knows how to act after the fact.

Meanwhile, innocent people die, including many of those who joined the flotilla believing, wrongly, that confronting Israel at sea would be the right strategy to break the blockade. But we know history, and confrontations with Israel always end up badly for the Arabs, and even worse for the Palestinians.

The extremists point to the fact that Turkey, Israel’s largest Muslim ally, is breaking off relations with Israel, but the truth is that this shift began long ago.

Rather than bring relief to the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the flotilla brought more death and violence. It achieved the international condemnation of Israel it sought, remaining silent when Hamas terrorists attack and murder Israelis.

The Israelis, too, should be ashamed of their policies, which have abandoned moral principles and instead exploit Palestinian extremism. This Israeli practice of using Palestinian extremism to justify excessive brutality is shameful.

Israel claims it wants peace, but the government seems to prefer confrontations, and the oppression of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Let’s face it folks, the people of Europe can scream all they want about Israel’s actions, but until the United States steps up to become a true arbiter of peace, this conflict will continue to rage.

And the activists who knowingly play into the hands of Israel’s military responses are doing nothing to achieve peace.

These activists do not want peace based on compromise, and it is clear this Israeli government does not want peace based on compromise either. Both find it far easier to continue the carnage and spin their stories.

The writer is an award-winning Palestinian columnist. He can be reached at

www.YallaPeace.com.

A dark lining in every silver cloud, Ray Hanania, Jerusalem Post

A dark lining in every silver cloud
By Ray Hanania
Published in the Jerusalem Post Jan. 30, 2010
Why can’t we say that the recent reports of a reduction in violence is a result of improved relations? That maybe we are starting to hate each other less?

There were no suicide bombings in Israel in 2009. That doesn’t mean no one was killed. Media reports, including in The Jerusalem Post, note that five Israelis were killed in Israel and the West Bank last year. About 49 Israelis were wounded in attacks, not including those injured during Operation Cast Lead at the beginning of last year.

I am surprised, though, that Israelis didn’t give all the credit to the wall, which they call a fence, even though in reality it is a “wall” where it is around people and a “fence” where it is around farmland and open space.

Instead, some give credit for the lower casualties and deaths to war in the Gaza Strip. Others say it’s because of better security and the ability to prevent Palestinians from arming themselves. The focus is on the perpetrators, not those engaged in peace.

How about giving some credit to the majority of Palestinians who didn’t engage in violence, who didn’t engage in protests and who watch Israel’s government continue its policies of expanding the settlements in the West Bank and around Jerusalem, including on my land just north of Gilo?

During the same period, there were many Israeli assaults, mostly by the military and some by the settlers, against Palestinians. According to The Washington Post, 27 Palestinians were killed in “conflict related violence,” down by half from 2008. That doesn’t include the more than 1,000 killed during the war in Gaza.

It has become kind of an industry in Israel and Palestine. I mean, of course, not the killings, but tabulating death tolls from violence. It says something that it is easier to find out how many Israelis and Palestinians were killed by each other than in car accidents or suicide.

It’s almost like dying from natural causes or accidents doesn’t matter as much.

THE GAZA Strip isn’t occupied by Israel any more, although it is certainly controlled by Israel, with the help of Egypt – I’m not sure if that is better than it would be if it were reversed and the Egyptians controlled Gaza with Israel’s help.

But the West Bank and east Jerusalem are, and that’s where my focus is. Why can’t we say the reduction in violence is a result of improved relations? That we are starting to hate each other less?

Why isn’t that reduction in violence an impetus for both sides to ramp-up (an American corporate term that has nothing to do with building Israelis-only roads in the West Bank, by the way) peace talks?

Doesn’t anyone believe that if peace talks resume in earnest, there will be even fewer deaths? “Earnest” means Palestinians speak genuinely about peace and out loud against the violence, and Israelis stop advocating settlement expansion and start looking at shutting some down while easing restrictions.

Is it too much to believe that peace generates more peace? And that peace is the better “wall” or the better “fence,” depending on which side of the conflict you stand?

I own 33 dunams of land next to Gilo near the Muslim village of Sharafat, the “Tarud” land (one of my mother’s families from Bethlehem). The Israelis are planning to confiscate it and build new homes.

I won’t resort to violence, although I bet many others would if it was their land being taken. I will go to the courts and fight and demand that everyone who buys or takes a home there be sued. The court system is where much of this conflict should be taken, not to a violent battlefield.

But I understand that it’s easier to do things in the face of violence than it is in the face of peace. The unknown investors in Jerusalem who are licking their chops at profiting from my land want it this way. The violence allows them to continue to take and profit.

I know the extremists among the Palestinians also are licking their chops knowing that although they speak out against the land confiscations and settlement expansions, those actions give them perceived public approval to engage in more violence against Israel.

Imagine if the land confiscations ended, and the settlements were really frozen, that peace talks could blossom and even fewer people will die. Wouldn’t it be nice if next year, we read stories that reports no Israelis and no Palestinians were killed? Peace talks increased?

That’s the silver lining in the dark clouds above our lives today. We can have that, or we can continue to look for the usual dark linings in the rare silver clouds.

In the meantime, if you know of a good lawyer who doesn’t mind representing Palestinian rights in lands controlled by Israel, have them give me a call. I won’t engage in violence, encourage violence or enable violence to achieve my rights.

It’s something we all should try, don’t you think?

http://www.yallapeace.com/