Many Palestinians rely primarily on UNRWA for assistance and employment; many Israelis, on the other hand, view UNRWA as a nagging reminder that Palestinian refugees continue to exist and, worse yet, demand their rights. If UNRWA were to go away, in the view ofsome Israelis, those refugees’ rights would disappear with it.
The daily summary from Ha’aretz this morning said nothing surprising. It’s so unsurprising that it’s necessary to comment on what is not news, because it isn’t anything new. That’s not Ha’aretz’ fault, they’re just sharing updates that are so clear only dense people didn’t know them already.
Twenty weeks, about 140 days, and “four and half months” after what they refer to as the start of the Israel-Hamas war Jonathan Lis and Ben Samuels reported today that Prime Minister Netanyahy has presented “the day after” plan to his war cabinet for their approval. This is, they say, the first time that Netanyahu has presented a plan for Gaza since the “war” started. This contradicts what I said earlier, but the fact remains that what Netanyahu has proposed should surprise nobody.
Writing under the title “Netanyahu Unveils Israeli’s Plan for Post-War Gaza: Full Demilitarization and Closing UNRWA” Lis and Samuels say that Israel’s military goals haven’t changed, and then slip into the same paragraph about medium-term planning that ” the postwar plan adds that Israel will maintain security control over the West Bank.”
Netanyahu’s plans – which are really should be called Israel’s plans – for Gaza are both familiar and laughable. The plan for civil affairs and public order, also known as governance, ‘will be based on professionals with managerial experience. These local officials must not be identified with states or organizations that support terror and must not receive salaries from them.’ While this sounds like it makes a lot of sense, governance is, by long-standing practice of practically every place in the world, managed by officials that identify with states or organizations and receive salary from the state. Not only that, but the state generally carries out elections, and the elected people appoint people to help minister civil affairs and public order. The only difference is, that in Gaza, any elected officials according to Netanyahu’s plan, will be voted in from the outside.
Part of Netanyahu’s plan is to permanently end UNRWA. Defunding UNRWA has long been a goal of both Israel and many of Israel’s backers in the United States. UNRWA, The United Nations Relief and Works Agency in the Middle East was a temporary creation to deal with the 750,000 Palestinian refugees from Israel’s War of Independence, and has become the major support organization for Palestinians, rendering service from healthcare to education and beyond. Summarizing the recent and ongoing attempts to defund UNRWA, Moustafa Bayoumi wrote in The Guardian
Part of the plan of permanently dismantling UNRWA would be to make sure the Palestinians don’t exist or demand their rights.
Next, part of Netanyahu’s statement regarding his plan is that
rebuilding Gaza will only be possible once the Strip has been demilitarized and once a process of deradicalization has started. The rehabilitation plan will be carried out with funding from and under the leadership of countries of which Israel approves
I’ve mentioned before that part of Netanyahu’s grand plan, and a long-envisioned plan of Israel, is a demilitarized Palestine. It’s odd that Netanyahu sees the need to demilitarize Palestine, because he’s said several times – and current ministers in his government say the same thing – that there never be a Palestinian state. I’ve described before that in order for there to be peace both Israelis and Palestinians must disarm.
What exactly does Netanyahu means by the deradicalization of Gaza? Writing in November, 2023, professor Tom Mockaitis said the idea that more than two million Palestinians in Gaza need is deradicalization is patently absurd. What they actually needs is better economic conditions.
The second part of this point by Netanyahu is clear. ‘The rehabilitation plan will be carried out with funding from and under the leadership of countries of which Israel approves.’ The rebuilding of Gaza, to the extent it will be rebuilt someday, is only going to happen in the way Israel allows it to. The people of Gaza has no say in the development or redevelopment of Gaza.
Netanyahyu had one more point to convey to the war cabinet, or perhaps just to the world. ‘Israel utterly rejects international diktats over a final-status agreement with the Palestinians,’ and that a unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state by the international community ‘would grant a huge prize to terrorism, the like of which we have not seen before, and would prevent any future peace agreement.’
This is doubtless a response to President Biden’s repeated and meaningless statements in recent weeks that a conclusion to this current attack on Gaza must result in a two-state solution. Netanyahyu and Israeli ministers disagree – there should be no Palestinian state. It would be wrong to say that recognizing Palestine as a state would be a unilateral act; three-quarters of the world‘s countries consider Palestine to be a state.
The summary that Ha’aretz provided today was both obvious and worth sharing. Netanyahu has plans for Gaza and the Palestinians aren’t included in planning “the day after.”
Our representative democracy operates on the premise that we elect people to represent our interests and values in a deliberative body thousands of miles away from where we live. Our task, and individuals being represented, is to stay in touch with our representatives to ensure that they know our needs and interests so that they can be properly represented.
What happens when we send messages to our representative and they respond with a message that doesn’t respond to the issue we present to them?
I’ve mentioned before that our government continues to support the bombing of Gaza, which has largely been referred to as a genocidal act, with our tax dollars and with weapons made in the United States,
Last week I wrote to both of my Senators from Washington State with the same message:
Dear Senator,
I’m very disappointed that you voted today, February 13, to provide more than $14Billion more military aid to foreign countries, including billions to Israel.
No more military aid should be provided to Israel as it continues to attack Palestinians in Gaza and beyond. What Israel is doing to Gaza is against international law, U.S. law, any sense of morality, and is an insult to me as a human and a Jew.
I ask that you join your colleagues in calling for conditioning aid to Israel and immediately work for a permanent ceasefire.
A week later I received a reply from Senator Maria Cantwell,
Thank you for contacting me with your concerns about the challenging and tragic situation in Israel and Gaza. I appreciate hearing from you about this important matter.
The shocking October 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas on innocent Israeli civilians were heinous and reprehensible and unleashed a terrible cycle of violence and recrimination. That’s why I continue to support President Biden’s vigorous efforts to facilitate the return of Israeli hostages and avoid a wider regional war.
The international community should also be doing everything it can to protect and get aid to innocent Palestinian civilians. The Biden Administration has already announced it will provide $121 million in additional humanitarian assistance to help the civilian Palestinian population in Gaza and the West Bank specifically in the context of the ongoing war. The Senate also recently passed a funding package that delivers vital support to our democratic allies Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan, as well as desperately-needed humanitarian assistance to Gaza and Ukraine. This funding is critical to America’s immediate and long-term national security which is why I hope the House of Representatives will quickly consider and approve the Senate-approved package.
You may also be interested to know that, in response to Senate debate surrounding the funding package, the President issued a National Security Memorandum on February 8, 2024, that lays out the standards that any country receiving U.S. weapons must adhere to. These standards include abiding by international law, facilitating the delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance, and ensuring the weapons are not being used in a way that is not consistent with best practices for reducing civilian harm.
Despite the horrors of the ongoing war, I believe that Israelis and Palestinians must continue to strive for an enduring peace that recognizes and respects the rights and dignity of both peoples. That is why I support Senator Brian Schatz’s legislation that reaffirms that the policy of the United States, going back to the time of President Harry Truman three quarters of a century ago, is to support a two-state solution.
Finally, it is incumbent on all of us to try and prevent the hostilities in the Middle East from fueling hate here in the United States. In the face of the alarming increase and growing intensity of anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, and anti-Semitic incidents, we must continue to reject and condemn violence and discrimination against any person because of their ethnicity or religious beliefs. Thank you again for contacting me to share your thoughts on this matter. Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future if I can be of further assistance.
Sincerely,
Maria Cantwell
United States Senator
This form letter from my Senator is written so well it’s hard to disagree with any of it, and just as hard to agree with any of it. I know it’s a form letter because more than one friend has received the exact reply, although I’m not sure what message they sent.
None of the reply actually addresses what I asked of the Senator. I asked specifically for her to condition aid to Israel and to call for a permanent ceasefire. If she had replied “Sorry, I won’t condition aid to Israel or call for a ceasefire” I’d know where she stands. But she didn’t indicate whether she would or wouldn’t do either or these, although it’s quite clear that she no interest in conditioning aid to Israel – much less ending the bombing of Gaza – or a permanent ceasefire.
Today I was listening to Dr. James Zogby‘s weekly “Coffee and Chat”. There’s great conversation every week about democracy and politics. One of the questions he responded to was what we should do when representatives respond with form letters that don’t address our needs. His answer was continue to message them.
It can be depressing to send messages to representatives and get no response, and just as aggravating when then respond with useless jargon that ensures they won’t take any action. But they’ll never take any action unless they continue to hear from us.
President Biden and Prime Minister Netanyahu just spoke to each other for this first time in a month, apparently, as Israel continues to obliterate Gaza with weapons made in and provided by the United States.
Several things became obvious after the news reported the contents of the conversation. First of all, nothing is going to change. Second, the attack on Gaza, which has created world-wide protests, and split the Democratic party, hasn’t convinced the United States that nothing nothing is going to change. The Israeli government thinks everything is going to change, and the United States is going to approve of any changes Israel suggests. The U.S. and Israeli government have convinced themselves, and convinced each other, that imposing government on the Palestinian from the outside is the correct solution. All of this means that nothing has changed and nothing is going to change – at least not from the perspective of Netanyahu and Biden.
The Associated Press reported that after “nearly four-week gap in direct communication” between Biden and Netanyahu, “fundamental differences have come into focus over a possible pathway to Palestinian statehood once the fighting in Gaza ends.” Netanyahu repeatedly rebuffed Biden’s called for Palestinian sovereignty that would result in “the oft-cited, elusive two-state solution” that President Biden believes is the “key to unlocking a durable peace in the Middle East.”
The call, the AP reports, “came one day after Netanyahu said that he has told U.S. officials in plain terms that he will not support a Palestinian state as part of any postwar plan.” This shouldn’t be news to the United States, although it appears that the Biden administration never got the memo. In September 2023, at his address at the United Nations, Netanyahu displayed a map of the “New Middle East” that didn’t show the West Bank, East Jerusalem, or Gaza.
This is not a new Netanyahu policy, or a new change in Israeli policy. Writing in 2017 about then-President Trump’s statement moving away from the two-state solution, Yousef Munayyer described that Netanyahu already envisioned a one-state solution – that in any agreement Israel would ‘retain the overriding security control over the entire area west of the Jordan River.’
Part of the control Israel envisions is the control of Gaza. It already occupies Gaza, and it’s 2005 withdraw of settlers and permanent military forces hasn’t changed its status as occupied under international law. Although Israel ignores this, as it ignores other parts of international law, the decision to withdraw settlers and troops has been a problem ever since for Israel, and with the current assault on Gaza it’s proposing and envisioning once again having settlers and a permanent military presence in Gaza. The United States says in one breath it’s its against these policies, and with the next gives Israel the diplomatic and military aid to make them possible.
In 1947, when the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) first proposed the idea of partitioning Palestine none of the members of the Committee knew anything about Palestine, and none cared what the Palestinians wanted. President Biden confronts the issue in the same way as the members of UNSCOP did. What Palestinians want doesn’t matter. The United States, is still operating with a racist mindset.
The New York Times reported that as part of his conversation with Prime Minister Netanyahu, President Biden, in an effort to convince Netanyahu that a two-state solution is the correct solution, “floated the possibility of a disarmed Palestinian nation that would not threaten Israel’s security.” The idea of a disarmed Palestinian, and in particular a disarmed Hamas in Gaza has been discussed before, in particular at the end of the 2014 Gaza war – Netanyahu was Prime Minster then as well. The idea of a disarmed Palestine has been promoted by Israel and the United States, but no one has asked asked the Palestinians if they want to disarm, or asked Israel, as part of a negotiated truce, to disarm.
Peace and violence have been imposed on Palestinians since UNSCOP decided that the two-state solution was the solution. The two-state solution, Netanyahu’s one-state solution, and the idea that Palestinians should disarm has been imposed on Palestinians. No one has asked what the Palestinians want, or whether Israel should disarm as part of permanent solution. According to the United States and Israel, Palestinians don’t matter.
One of the core elements of learning about international justice is the study of ICTY and ICTR.
ICTY, the The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, was created by the United Nations in 1993 to respond to ongoing war crimes where thousands of civilians were being killed and wounded, tortured and sexually abused in detention camps, and hundreds of thousands expelled from their homes. The goal was to criminally try individuals most responsible for the murder, torture, rape, enslavement, destruction of property, and other crimes listed in the Tribunal’s Statute. By bringing perpetrators to trial, the UN page for ICTY says, ICTY aimed, “to deter future crimes and render justice to thousands of victims and their families, thus contributing to a lasting peace in the former Yugoslavia.”
Over it’s twenty-four years, until it ended in 2017, ICTY charged over 160 people, including prime ministers, head-of-army, high and mid-level political leaders, and other actors with crimes. ICTY, the UN page adds, “was the first war crimes court created by the UN and the first international war crimes tribunal since the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals. It was established by the Security Council in accordance with Chapter VII of the UN Charter.” The International Justice Resource Center says that “ICTY’s jurisdiction extended to grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity committed by individuals within the territory of the former Yugoslavia from 1991 onwards.”
Similarly, ICTR, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, was established by the United Nations in 1995 to ‘prosecute persons responsible for genocide and other serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in the territory of Rwanda and neighbouring States, between 1 January 1994 and 31 December 1994.’ The genocide and and terror of the time has been commercialized and familiarized to the public with movies like Hotel Rwanda. The same page about ICTR, from the UN, adds that “the Tribunal has indicted 93 individuals whom it considered responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in Rwanda in 1994. Those indicted include high-ranking military and government officials, politicians, businessmen, as well as religious, militia, and media leaders.”
World Without Genocide, citing the ICTY page, says that Slobodan Milosevic, the former Serbian and former Yugoslavian president, was indicted by ICTY “for genocide; complicity in genocide; deportation; murder; persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds; inhumane acts/forcible transfer; extermination; imprisonment; torture; willful killing; unlawful confinement; willfully causing great suffering; unlawful deportation or transfer; extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly; cruel treatment; plunder of public or private property; attacks on civilians; destruction or willful damage done to historic monuments and institutions dedicated to education or religion; [and] unlawful attacks on civilian objects.”
This week the world watched as South Africa brought a charge of genocide to the International Court of Justice against Israel, accusing Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians. With overwhelming evidence, South Africa’s legal team, backed by images and statements from Israeli officials over the last few months, argued that Israel has “shown ‘chilling’ and “incontrovertible” intent to commit genocide in Gaza, with full knowledge of how many civilians it is killing. More than 500 statements of incitement to genocide against Palestinians by Israel officials have been collected by Law for Palestine, in this continuously updated document. More Palestinians have been killed, on average, every day than in any other conflict in the 21st Century, according to research by Oxfam.
South Africa’s legal team
Returning to the charges against Milosovic, in ICTY, Israel’s government under Benjamin Netanyahu has committed nearly every act that Milosovic was charged with: genocide; complicity in genocide; deportation; murder; persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds; inhumane acts/forcible transfer; extermination; imprisonment; torture; willful killing; unlawful confinement; willfully causing great suffering; unlawful deportation or transfer; extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly; cruel treatment; plunder of public or private property; attacks on civilians; destruction or willful damage done to historic monuments and institutions dedicated to education or religion; [and] unlawful attacks on civilian objects.
In some ways Israel’s assault on Gaza since October, 2023, which is the focus of the genocide charges, sound strikingly similar to ICTY and ICTR. Will there be an International Criminal Tribunal for Israel? Will there be an ICTI?
One of the benefits – indeed, an expectation – of a democratic system is that we communicate with our elected officials and ask them to represent our interests. While our government continues to support the bombing of Gaza, which has largely been referred to as a genocidal act, with our tax dollars and with weapons made in the United States, one of the best things we can do is to use our voice to make it clear we don’t support these polices.
With a few amendments, and removing names, below is my most recent letter to my member in the House of Representatives.
Dear Representative ______
I’m writing to you as a constituent concerned about the humanitarian situation in Gaza. I ask that you join your colleagues in calling for immediate and sufficient humanitarian aid into Gaza, both by endorsing H.Res. 935 “Calling for the same, timely and sufficient delivery of humanitarian aid to civilians in the Gaza strip,” and through other statements. I know you’re previously expressed concerned about the humanitarian situation in Gaza, and I appreciate your work on this matter.Let me take a moment to clarify by what I mean by sufficient humanitarian aid. The Office of the High
Commissioner Affairs (OCHA) reports that before October 7 an average of 500 trucks entered Gaza with food, water, and other essentials that comprise humanitarian aid that 500 trucks has never been
sufficient to meet the needs of the population . Since October 7, there hasn’t been a day when 150 trucks entered Gaza, and the numbers are often much closer to 100. I ask that you join HRes. 935, and clarify that sufficient humanitarian aid into Gaza means about five times the truckloads currently allowed in.
With
appreciation,
Continue to use send messages to elected officials, and take action to end oppression!
Growing up, there was a sort of junk yard where you could pick through discarded metal and other light machinery other people had given up on.
It was called something like “One Man’s Treasure,” meaning that someone’s junk could be useful to someone else. Of course, one man’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter.
To the Western governments with a history of colonizing, or being colonized, Hamas is one man’s terrorist.
Padraig O’Malley, in the Two State Delusion (2015), provides the following succinct summary of the beginning of Hamas, and he also shares in his book work that Israel and Palestine (including Hamas in Gaza) are addicted to the “peace process” and need each other to continue the charade of the process. Hamas was created by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, and other friends. Years before this, in 1970, Yassin was “allowed” by Israel to register an Islamist charity group called Mujama al-Islamiya. The group refrained from violence but clashed with the PLO, which they saw as a rival. Hamas was formed in 1987, during the First Intifada, which started as a nonviolent protest against Israeli policies,. It wasn’t until 1992 that Harakat al-Muqawana al-Islamiya, or Hamas, added a military component to their composition. Avi Shaim, in The Iron Wall, adds that not only was Hamas created as a result of the Firs Intifada, but Israel encouraged it’s creation in the hope of weakening the secular nationalism of the PLO.
It should be common knowledge, although it becoming increasing clear that it isn’t, and that legislators and policy-makers in Washing D.C. either don’t know or won’t recall, that Hamas was elected to represent Palestinians in 2006. The election, which was promoted by the United States – and monitored by Jimmy Carter, who wrote about it Peace: Not Apartheid – was a free and fair election in which Hamas received a narrow popular majority but a a clear majority of parliamentary seats (74of 132). Hamas was interested in forming a unity government with Fatah, Jimmy Carter later wrote, but Abbas’ intention “was not cooperate with them”
Jimmy Carter, in his talks with Hamas leaders leading up to the election, says that Dr. Mahmoud Ramahi, who would be elected a parliamentarian, and then imprisoned by Israel, told him that Hamas hadn’t committed an act of violence since the ceasefire in August 2004, and that they were able and willing to extend the ceasefire (hudna) for ‘two, ten, or fifty years’ if “Israel would reciprocate by refraining from attacks on Palestinians. In 2006, elected Hamas prime minister stated that ‘we have no problem with a sovereign Palestinian state over all our lands within the 1967 borders, living in calm.’
Following the October 2012 Operation Pillar of Defense, as Israel called it, Hamas maintained a ceasefire. Further, prior to the Operation Protective Edge of 2014, Hamas and Fatah forged terms for a unity government. The U.S. approved but Israel was furious because this uncut Israel’s claim it can’t negotiate with a divided Palestine, Noam Chomsky wrote, in On Palestine. The unity government accepted three conditions the United States and the European Union have long asked for: nonviolence, adherence to past agreements, and the recognition of Israel.
Referring to the 2008-09 Operation Cast Lead attack on Gaza, Chomsky, in Gaza in Crisis, quotes Thomas Freedman in Gaza in Crisis saying that Israel’s tactics of attacking civilians during the war was meant to ‘educate Hamas’. In that Operation, like many others, Israel attacked civilian locations like police stations, villages, homes, densely populated refugee camps, water and sewage systems, hospitals, schools and universities, mosques, UN relief facilities, ambulances “and indeed anything that might relieve the pain of the unworthy victims”.
With some revisions, including fixing some typos I made in haste and exhaustion, I handed the above summary of the formation of, history of,, and policy of, Hamas to my Congresswoman in a meeting I had about two weeks ago. The meeting, planned months in advance, naturally ended up focusing on ceasefire – a resolution she still hasn’t signed on to and very Representatives have endorsed – and other Palestinian rights issues. It was expected, though, that there would be talks of Hamas, and it became clear she knew nothing about the history of Hamas, like it’s endorsement of a two-state solution – a solution that almost every member of Congress mentions, without contemplating how it could happen given actual facts.
What’s written above isn’t a full history of the history Hamas, but rather an attempt to summarize what other say, and therefore what we should know, about some of the basics about Hamas.
During his time as Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Richard Falk wrote extensively about Hamas. In 2013 he wrote, in an article about how Israel fragments Palestinian lives and tries to drive a wedge between their social and political lives:
Israel and its supporters have been able to drive an ideological wedge between the Palestinians enduring occupation since 1967. With an initial effort to discredit the Palestine Liberation Organization that had achieved control over a unified and robust Palestine national movement, Israel actually encouraged the initial emergence of Hamas as a radical and fragmenting alternative to the PLO when it was founded in the course of the First Intifada. Israel of course later strongly repudiated Hamas when it began to carry armed struggle to pre-1967 Israel, most notoriously engaging in suicide bombings in Israel that involved indiscriminate attacks on civilians, a tactic repudiated in recent years.
Despite Hamas entering into the political life of occupied Palestine with American, and winning an internationally supervised election in 2006, and taking control of Gaza in 2007, it has continued to be categorized as ‘a terrorist organization’ that is given no international status. This terrorist designation is also relied upon to impose a blockade on Gaza that is a flagrant form of collective punishment in direct violation of Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The Palestine Authority centered in Ramallah has also, despite occasional rhetoric to the contrary, refused to treat Hamas as a legitimate governing authority or to allow Hamas to operate as a legitimate political presence in the West Bank and Jerusalem or to insist on the inclusion of Hamas in international negotiations addressing the future of the Palestinian people. This refusal has persisted despite the more conciliatory tone of Hamas since 2009 when its leader, Khaled Meshaal, announced a shift in the organization’s goals: an acceptance of Israel as a state beside Palestine as a state provided a full withdrawal to 1967 borders and implementation of the right of return for refugees, and a discontinuation by Hamas of a movement based on armed struggle. Mashel also gave further reassurances of moderation by an indication that earlier goals of liberating the whole of historic Palestine, as proclaimed in its Charter, were a matter of history that was no longer descriptive of its political program.
Falk concludes his book, Palestine: The Legitimacy of Hope, by writing about the imprisoned nonviolent resistor Marwan Barghouti, saying, “I believe that when Israel is ready for a sustainable and just peace it will signal this to itself, to the Palestinians, and to the world by releasing Barghouti from prison and by treating Hamas as a political actor with genuine grievances and aspirations that needs to be included in any diplomacy of accommodation that deserves the label of ‘peace process.’”
Ismail Haniyeh Head of the Hamas Political Bureau on October 13, 2022 [Fazil Abd Erahim/Anadolu Agency] from https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20231124-hamas-leader-haniyeh-confirms-their-commitment-to-humanitarian-pause/
On Armistice Day, or what the United States has turned into Veterans Day, it’s good to pause for a moment to consider armistice and disarmament.
Armistice Day celebrates the end of World War I. But perhaps it’s aptly named, because armistice according to Merriam-Webster means “temporary stopping of open acts of warfare by agreement between the opponents”, or a truce.
As I wrote a few years ago in “On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month”
The agreement between the armies to stop fighting – the armistice – lasted long enough to sign the Treaty of Versailles.
It sounds like a great excuse to have a three day weekend, but in reality what happened was A Peace to End All Peace.
Israel has been bombing Gaza daily for the last thirty-five days, attacking a defenseless civilian population in refugee camps, hospitals, mosques, and other densely packed places.
Over the last month there has increasing call worldwide for a ceasefire between Israel and Gaza. A ceasefire everyone is calling for might might be an armistice – a temporary stopping of attacks. Only 18 members of Congress signed on to a resolution calling for a ceasefire, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that Israel’s attack on Gaza is being done with full moral, financial, and military support from the United States, using weapons made in the United States.
Israel has met with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), and the Palestinian Authority several times not just for armistice, but to come up with durable, sustainable, solution to one of the word’s most noticeable conflicts. Unfortunately, the general consensus is that under a two state solution, the Israelis want to maintain a military, and ensure that the Palestinians remained disarmed. This is like allowing the tough kid on the playground to keep his rocks and a sledgehammer, but tell the other kids they can’t have rocks.
True peace requires that both sides lay down their weapons, not just for a ceasefire, but permanently. It’s time to reform Armistice Day into Permanent Disarmament Day.
The Dole Blog 