Israel Must Free Gaza, Oppose Threats by Other Means

by Daniel J Gerstle · 2010-03-11 18:18:00 UTC
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There are always more than two sides in a war. When peace negotiations -- and military strategies -- are built with the assumption that there are only two sides, they can only lead to misunderstanding and more conflict.

This week, Gazans are approaching their one-thousandth day under Israeli military blockade, hundreds of thousands of people not permitted to travel or trade or recover from bombardment so that Israel can punish a small handful of men who lobbed mortars into Israel. Meanwhile, Israel's government signed off on building more houses for Jewish settlers in Arab-majority East Jerusalem. The U.S. has protested to the Israeli government about these issues, but to little effect.

The vast majority of people anywhere, from Chechnya, to Gaza, to Somalia, just want to enjoy time with their family, develop their careers, and live, despite whatever passions they may have about political debate. Wars only worsen when the general public buys the extremist rhetoric that they must choose a side. Ironically, this is exacerbated when peace negotiators only place leaders of the fighting parties at the negotiating table.

Israel and Palestine's war hawks, Likud and Hamas in particular, have a destructive habit of seeing everything as a war of good against evil. But the war is not Israelis versus Palestinians. It's Israeli war hawks versus Palestinian war hawks, with millions of people caught in the crossfire. This third group would prefer to be on neither side, but they are forced to identify themselves as such because of peer pressure, travel authorization, or threats.

When sociopaths like Hamas-allied bombers rain mortars on civilian Israeli neighborhoods, or Israeli soldiers who make or agree with orders to shoot Palestinian civilians if they try to farm close to a divider wall in Gaza, assume they are heroes fighting evil, it can be understood that these individuals need to be charged with their crimes and separated from society.

But what about when supposedly wise and fair leaders, officials, and strategists fail to be able to see that by grouping in the passive or non-aligned majority they are only preventing, not hastening, an end to the conflict?

Photo credit: ISM Palestine (A mosque destroyed in Israel's Operation Cast Lead)

Daniel J Gerstle is a journalist, human rights researcher, and humanitarian aid consultant. He is Editor and Chief Correspondent for HELO: The Crisis Story Magazine.
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