Palestinians 'have become unreasonably reasonable'
#ThirdIntifada
Sam Bahour
Saturday 31 October 2015 12:19 UTC
As Israel and US wrongly claim 'incitement' to justify their actions against
Palestinians, the oppressed may resort to new forms of struggle
"Give me liberty, or give me death!" Patrick Henry declared in a speech he
made to the Virginia Convention in 1775, at St John's Church in Richmond,
Virginia. Fast forward 240 years, and if Israel and the US were able to pin
those words to a Palestinian and decry incitement, they would do so in a
heartbeat.
Like "terrorism," "incitement" is a word that works great in conflict zones
because it means everything and nothing at the same time. However, its
misuse as a justification to perpetrate blatant human rights violations and
maintain an illegal state of affairs that contributes to conflict being
fanned, not diffused.
Both Israel and the US are guilty of misusing the claim of incitement in an
attempt to justify their punishment of Palestinians.
For Israel to point to Palestinian incitement, which does exist, as the
source of the present violence across Israel and Palestine is pathetic, at
best. After dispossessing Palestinians numerous times and leaving more than
half the population locked out of their homeland and scattered across the
region to live a life of misery as refugees; after installing a system of
institutionalized and structural discrimination inside Israel against the
Palestinian Muslim and Christian citizens of Israel who remained in the
country after Israel's establishment; after placing (and pressing) a boot of
military occupation on the necks of Palestinians in the West Bank, East
Jerusalem and Gaza Strip for the past 48 years; after expanding an illegal
settlement enterprise from 100,000 settlers to 580,000 settlers, all the
while pretending to be engaged in bilateral negotiations to resolve the
conflict; and while Israeli prime ministers and ministers continually claim
that no Palestinian state will ever be allowed to emerge, while also
claiming Palestinians are everything from snakes to subhuman, Israel has no
right whatsoever to even hint at incitement as being a factor in this
outbreak of violence.
For the US, be it Congress or the Administration, to ignore history and the
facts on the ground and point to Palestinian incitement in a knee-jerk
reaction to the current violence is criminal.
Secretary of State John Kerry, addressing the current deterioration of
security in the region, tells NPR News: "There's no excuse for the violence.
No amount of frustration is appropriate to license any violence anywhere at
any time. No violence should occur. And the Palestinians need to
understand." Really?
Palestinians need to "understand" when they are at the receiving end of all
the violence mentioned above? And this coming from a country that
underwrites Israel to the tune of $10.2 million in military aid each day,
that has just completed the total destruction of two sovereign states in the
region (Iraq and Afghanistan), and has been Addicted to War since its
founding.
Indeed, "no violence should occur," but regrettably Palestinians will not
make world history by being the first people that falls under military
occupation and wakes up one morning and accepts it by throwing roses and
chocolate at their occupier. The longest military occupation in modern
history will be resisted until it ends.
The challenge for everyone is how nonviolently to face the horrendous
violence of the occupation, much of which is bloodless violence, violence
that does not make the headline news but rather simmers on a slow burner,
like the never-ending settlement enterprise or the suffocation of the
Palestinian economy.
All of this is not to say that targeting civilians is justified. It is not.
But all the stakeholders in this conflict know very well that there are two
dynamics at play in this most recent Palestinian outbreak of frustration.
On the one hand, the level of loss of hope has pushed a very small number of
Palestinians to undertake violent and horrendous acts against Israeli
civilians, many targeting illegal Israeli settlers. This was totally
predictable and I, for one, have been speaking in public about the fear of
individual, lone-wolf, acts of violence for years.
On the other hand, an entirely new generation of Palestinians has reached a
boiling point, and some have taken to the streets in an uncoordinated and
disparate fashion to express their outrage at being locked into open-air
cages, suffocated economically, and humiliated on a daily basis.
Some claim this latter dynamic is a new intifada, or uprising, but
regardless of how it is coined or if it is sustainable or not its message is
crystal clear: there is no status quo under Israeli occupation, only the
facade of calm while Israel continues literally and figuratively to cement
new facts on the ground that are in total violation of international law.
The US State Department, claiming Palestinians are engaged in almighty and
undefinable incitement, has cut aid to Palestinians by $80mn as a "message"
to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. This funding cut will bring the US's
annual economic assistance to Palestinians from $370mn to $290mn, peanuts in
the larger picture and, for many, a sore source of the artificial prop-up
which maintains an expired Palestinian Authority.
So as the situation on the ground boils over, and the Israeli government's
intransigence and determination to "forever live by the sword" continues, as
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was recently reported telling a meeting of
the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, the US is making itself
more and more irrelevant to the reality on the ground by blindly adopting
Israel's well-crafted incitement mantra.
Israeli adoption of the "incitement" claim to cover up its blatant and
systematic violations of international law is not surprising; however, the
US jumping on this bandwagon to lay blame on the Palestinian leadership for
the current violence is more troubling than the violence itself.
Indeed, former Palestinian diplomat Afif Safieh puts it most succinctly when
he says: "Palestinians have become unreasonably reasonable."
I would add that if the US does not finally act, instead of paying only lip
service to a two-state solution, no one in Congress should be surprised when
Palestinians drop their bid for statehood and convert this struggle for
freedom to a civil rights struggle.
-Sam Bahour is a Palestinian-American business consultant living in the
occupied West Bank. He serves as a policy adviser to Al-Shabaka, the
Palestinian Policy Network, and is chairman of Americans for a Vibrant
Palestinian Economy. He was born and raised in Youngstown, Ohio and blogs at
ePalestine.com.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not
necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
Palestinians 'have become unreasonably reasonable'
#ThirdIntifada
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Sam Bahour
Saturday 31 October 2015 12:19 UTC
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Topics:
ThirdIntifada
Tags:
Palestinian youth; Intifada; Israeli occupation
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As Israel and US wrongly claim 'incitement' to justify their actions against
Palestinians, the oppressed may resort to new forms of struggle
"Give me liberty, or give me death!" Patrick Henry declared in a speech he
made to the Virginia Convention in 1775, at St John's Church in Richmond,
Virginia. Fast forward 240 years, and if Israel and the US were able to pin
those words to a Palestinian and decry incitement, they would do so in a
heartbeat.
Like "terrorism," "incitement" is a word that works great in conflict zones
because it means everything and nothing at the same time. However, its
misuse as a justification to perpetrate blatant human rights violations and
maintain an illegal state of affairs that contributes to conflict being
fanned, not diffused.
Both Israel and the US are guilty of misusing the claim of incitement in an
attempt to justify their punishment of Palestinians.
For Israel to point to Palestinian incitement, which does exist, as the
source of the present violence across Israel and Palestine is pathetic, at
best. After dispossessing Palestinians numerous times and leaving more than
half the population locked out of their homeland and scattered across the
region to live a life of misery as refugees; after installing a system of
institutionalized and structural discrimination inside Israel against the
Palestinian Muslim and Christian citizens of Israel who remained in the
country after Israel's establishment; after placing (and pressing) a boot of
military occupation on the necks of Palestinians in the West Bank, East
Jerusalem and Gaza Strip for the past 48 years; after expanding an illegal
settlement enterprise from 100,000 settlers to 580,000 settlers, all the
while pretending to be engaged in bilateral negotiations to resolve the
conflict; and while Israeli prime ministers and ministers continually claim
that no Palestinian state will ever be allowed to emerge, while also
claiming Palestinians are everything from snakes to subhuman, Israel has no
right whatsoever to even hint at incitement as being a factor in this
outbreak of violence.
For the US, be it Congress or the Administration, to ignore history and the
facts on the ground and point to Palestinian incitement in a knee-jerk
reaction to the current violence is criminal.
Secretary of State John Kerry, addressing the current deterioration of
security in the region, tells NPR News: "There's no excuse for the violence.
No amount of frustration is appropriate to license any violence anywhere at
any time. No violence should occur. And the Palestinians need to
understand." Really?
Palestinians need to "understand" when they are at the receiving end of all
the violence mentioned above? And this coming from a country that
underwrites Israel to the tune of $10.2 million in military aid each day,
that has just completed the total destruction of two sovereign states in the
region (Iraq and Afghanistan), and has been Addicted to War since its
founding.
Indeed, "no violence should occur," but regrettably Palestinians will not
make world history by being the first people that falls under military
occupation and wakes up one morning and accepts it by throwing roses and
chocolate at their occupier. The longest military occupation in modern
history will be resisted until it ends.
The challenge for everyone is how nonviolently to face the horrendous
violence of the occupation, much of which is bloodless violence, violence
that does not make the headline news but rather simmers on a slow burner,
like the never-ending settlement enterprise or the suffocation of the
Palestinian economy.
All of this is not to say that targeting civilians is justified. It is not.
But all the stakeholders in this conflict know very well that there are two
dynamics at play in this most recent Palestinian outbreak of frustration.
On the one hand, the level of loss of hope has pushed a very small number of
Palestinians to undertake violent and horrendous acts against Israeli
civilians, many targeting illegal Israeli settlers. This was totally
predictable and I, for one, have been speaking in public about the fear of
individual, lone-wolf, acts of violence for years.
On the other hand, an entirely new generation of Palestinians has reached a
boiling point, and some have taken to the streets in an uncoordinated and
disparate fashion to express their outrage at being locked into open-air
cages, suffocated economically, and humiliated on a daily basis.
Some claim this latter dynamic is a new intifada, or uprising, but
regardless of how it is coined or if it is sustainable or not its message is
crystal clear: there is no status quo under Israeli occupation, only the
facade of calm while Israel continues literally and figuratively to cement
new facts on the ground that are in total violation of international law.
The US State Department, claiming Palestinians are engaged in almighty and
undefinable incitement, has cut aid to Palestinians by $80mn as a "message"
to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. This funding cut will bring the US's
annual economic assistance to Palestinians from $370mn to $290mn, peanuts in
the larger picture and, for many, a sore source of the artificial prop-up
which maintains an expired Palestinian Authority.
So as the situation on the ground boils over, and the Israeli government's
intransigence and determination to "forever live by the sword" continues, as
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was recently reported telling a meeting of
the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, the US is making itself
more and more irrelevant to the reality on the ground by blindly adopting
Israel's well-crafted incitement mantra.
Israeli adoption of the "incitement" claim to cover up its blatant and
systematic violations of international law is not surprising; however, the
US jumping on this bandwagon to lay blame on the Palestinian leadership for
the current violence is more troubling than the violence itself.
Indeed, former Palestinian diplomat Afif Safieh puts it most succinctly when
he says: "Palestinians have become unreasonably reasonable."
I would add that if the US does not finally act, instead of paying only lip
service to a two-state solution, no one in Congress should be surprised when
Palestinians drop their bid for statehood and convert this struggle for
freedom to a civil rights struggle.
-Sam Bahour is a Palestinian-American business consultant living in the
occupied West Bank. He serves as a policy adviser to Al-Shabaka, the
Palestinian Policy Network, and is chairman of Americans for a Vibrant
Palestinian Economy. He was born and raised in Youngstown, Ohio and blogs at
ePalestine.com.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not
necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.