tbray@mprvaxa (09/23/83)
I feel strongly that anyone about to pontificate about the Middle East should reveal in advance their ethnic/cultural/historical biases. Accordingly, I am a Canadian WASP who lived for 11 years in Beirut, Lebanon (up till the civil war got bad) and has travelled extensively in the Arab world. I hold the following to be self-evident: 1. The state of Israel is a historical necessity - history has proved that no Jewish minority can trust a Christian majority for very long. It is also a political fact - the Israelis have repeatedly demonstrated the political will and military ability to defend what they see as their vital national interests. Accordingly, those extremists who question Israel's 'right' to exist are are either dangerously misguided or playing for political points. 2. The Palestinian people are broadly united in a desire for some form of national self-determination, and specifically united behind the PLO, despite its current troubles. They represent a genuine national-consciousness and national-liberation movement and their hearts are set on a home of their own. They are Palestinians before Arabs and they are not Jordanians at all. Accordingly, those extremists who dismiss Palestinians as nonexistant, who dismiss the PLO as non-representative, or who charactarize the basic Palestinian idea as terrorist are either dangerously misguided or playing for political points. 3. Polemics about what happened to the Jews, the Palestinians, and the Arabs in the historical up to about 1967 are irrelevant to the current political reality in the Middle East. Accordingly, those who draw sweeping conclusions from historical arguments about events in 2000 BC, 0 AD, 400 AD, 1948 AD, or 1956 AD are to be mistrusted. 4. The present foreign policies of the Israeli government are extremely bad for the peoples of the region, including the Israelis. They have taken on the role of an oppressive army of occupation in the West Bank. They have involved themselves in a politico-military disaster in Lebanon which has benefited only the government of Syria. They have publicly allied themselves with the Lebanese Phalangists, as bloody- minded a bunch of fascists as you'll find anywhere. The basic problem is that they are attempting to impose a military solution on a problem with roots in politics and nationalism, the same course the French followed in Algeria and the Americans in Vietnam. The Middle East problem reduces, essentially, to the Palestinian problem. If the Israelis can find the courage to talk and deal with the Palestinians there is a very real hope for lasting peace. The Israelis will have to make some concessions that will hurt, and the Palestinians will have to settle for the fulfillment of a rather small portion of their national dream. The first steps down the road which would lead out of the tunnel might be: a moderation in the West Bank and Lebanese policies on the part of the government of Israel, and immedate abandonment of their ill-conceived alliance with the Phalangists; the end of internal dissension in the PLO, and that organization's disavowal of the more unrealistic portions of its program; the election of a US administration which has the political will to twist the government if Israel's arm to push it into those last few crucial concessions. The real tragedy and irony lies in the deep cultural similarities between Jews (should I say Israelis?) and Palestinians, and the parallels between the position of the Zionists in the first half of the century and that of the Palestinians today. Palestinians, in the Arab world, tend to get ahead - they value higher education, do well in business, and produce an unusually high proportion of poets, politicians, doctors, and scientists. Their political organization is a loose confederation beset by internal squabbling, with leading roles played by moderate elder statesman and by ruthless fanatics, both of whom put the good of their nation above all other human considerations. Does any of this sound familiar? ...where would we all be without nationalism... tbray ...decvax!microsoft!ubc-vision!mprvaxa!tbray