Interesting perspective you have up there on the fence, but unless you have some way of making the fence impenetrable and infinite, you will not stop those who have a vested interest in continuing the violence. In fact, fence sitters make easy targets.

I would say that you are one of the few people in the world who can look at this conflict from both sides. I can’t help but wonder what your own opinion would be. Who is right? Who is wrong? There are, after all, absolutes, despite liberal media folks who would claim that there are only shades of gray.

I look at the conflict from the perspective that most of the world takes; as an outsider. To me, and perhaps to others as well, your conflict looks rather silly. You (as an Arab or a Jew, for that matter) are like two six year olds on a playground arguing about who “owns” the see-saw, when in fact either child and neither child can truly lay claim to it. Somebody throws a hand full of gravel at the other and a free for all erupts. Within minutes, everyone has all but forgotten what the original conflict was about.

Who owns the Middle East? Nobody but God. Who will possess it? More than likely, none of the fools fighting over it. They will all be dead and somebody else will build a civilization over the top of their graves.

I see no other future. Sorry, I calls ‘em as I sees ‘em.

Very nice. Most folks I know do not take pride in being a so-called “sellout” but hey, I cannot blame you. I agree, in this case. Let’s all sellout for peace!

I congratulate you for the only fair view that I read from both sides or even from the whole world. Thanks for sending your precious articles.

Congrat for this article -

Ummmm…. What exactly should Israel do in response to all of the missiles that are sent into Israel including those now being imported from Iran that can reach as far as the large southern cities of Ashkelon and Bersheva and also reaching within 20 miles of Tel Aviv?

Just remember that America would be doing at least as much as Israel if not more and more forceful if someone were lobbing missiles within America as Hamas is doing within Israel.

Believe me, the biggest problem the Israelis have is that they are “too nice” when doing the job. I kinda doubt other nations put in Israel’s position would have been so patient to start attacking Gaza and would have gone in with so few civilian casualties.

So, instead of criticizing Israel for dealing with Gaza as it has, please suggest a better way to solve the problem of Hamas continually sending missiles into Israel. Thanks…

metro as in the subway daily?

amazing piece deserves NYT OPED…

Dear Mona,

Regarding sitting on the fence, it will be hard for most people who are inside or very close to the Israeli-Arab conflict.
Especially if you’re an Israeli or a Palestinian.

When you see your own people suffer, your own flesh and blood, it will be hard to be neutral, impartial or unbiased.

I’m an Israeli who will probably always be for Israel.
It’s part of my mental DNA, my identity and my heritage.

However, I do believe in constantly questioning your leadership, its strategy, its choices and its decisions and not in following them blindly as a sheep.
This is something that I always do.

Naturally, this piece of advice is easier to implement in a democracy, where you actually have the freedom to vote for whoever represents a better vision or to kick out of office and punish those who perform poorly.

PS: A bit off-topic perhaps, I know – but I would love to read some posts about your life in Israel: what was it like for you, what were your impressions from the country, the good and the bad – please don’t hold anything back.

“Stay on that fence with me and scream and yell for a ceasefire.”

If citizens in a democracy like Israel yell loud enough, doubtless their politicians will listen. But Hamas? Remember that scene in Persepolis when the woman objected to the armed thug of the mullahs? He responded with something like, “Shut up, I can do whatever I want, I eat women like you for breakfast!” When that happens, what is there left to do?

Solomon- Israel is a free democracy where politicians listen and the Palestinians are not? Now, I’m no supporter of Hamas or any of the Palestinian leadership, but if I do recall, the same guys who are leading Israel are going through a ‘rotation of power’. Guys like Ehud Barak, Benyamin Netenyahu, etc are the same guys I’ve been hearing about since I was a child, doesnt seem like much is changing. Also, correct me if I’m wrong (which I’m not in this case), but weren’t Hamas elected in what the International community heralded as a fair and free election? One of the few in the Middle East?

Mona- I do believe peace will come and I’ve seen it from brave Palestinians and Israelis who go beyond their differences and connect for the sake of peace. Though I do feel that Israeli actions in Gaza is not going to make this peace come any faster. It’ll be hard to convince a woman who has lost all her children or a man who has lost his entire family that Israelis can commit to peace.

“Guys like Ehud Barak, Benyamin Netenyahu, etc are the same guys I’ve been hearing about since I was a child, doesnt seem like much is changing.”

OK, so you’re still young. In parliamentary (as opposed to presidential) democratic politics the same personalities often stay near the top for a decade or longer, even as their policies and parties change.

“weren’t Hamas elected in what the International community heralded as a fair and free election? ”

Hamas was indeed elected to a majority in the Palestinian legislature. But Hamas forced the PA executive out of power in its bloody “military takeover” of the Strip in 2007. After a brief honeymoon period, the popularity of Hamas has slowly declined as the local economy tanked due to Hamas’ ineptitude and hostility towards its neighbors.

The support of the majority of the populace for Hamas means, in a big sense, that the population of Gaza is logically collectively responsible for its subsequent deeds. Only Iraq can boast a more representative elective government. Yet Hamas, by forcing the formula, “one man, one vote, once” is now a force for tyranny, not democracy.

The reasons that the Palestinians have suffered so much, at least initially, is not because of Israel but because of “The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.” Read his history in wikipedia.

He was pals with Hitler spending much of the war in Berlin as Hitler’s guest (pictured with Hitler) and organized SS troops from the Bosnians (also pictured).

So, after the entire world sees what Hitler did with the holocaust putting 6 million Jews in ovens the Palestinians and other Arabs decided to follow this evil leader, who, as I said was pals with Hitler.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Amin_al-Husayni

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Amin_al-Husayni#In_the_Middle_East (notice the picture with Hitler and the picture of him greeting the Bosnian SS).

After WWII, the people of Germany and Japan came to understand that what they did is wrong and apologized. The Germans were very sorry to have followed Hitler. The first step for peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis is for the Palestinians to stop blaming Israel and instead apologize for following the leadership of the friend of Hitler. Until Palestinians, like the Germans, come to grips with their decision to follow evil leadership and stop blaming Israel for their problems, there will probably never be peace.

It is up to the International Community to help the Palestinians see what they have done and that like Germany and Japan as losers in a conflict they initiated by following an evil leader, they are in no position to dictate terms to the winners of the conflict.

Can you imagine how ridiculous it would be for post-war Germany and Japan to dictate terms to the allies?

I am also “on the fence” because I see this conflict as intractable because of religious claims on both sides.

Side A: We are God’s chosen people and this land is ours by birthright.

Side B: God loves us and he has commanded us to wipe out Jews

You can not have middle ground when the two sides are making religious claims and both believe that God is on their side

Mona said in her original posting:

“Stay on that fence with me and scream and yell for a ceasefire.”

If there was one lesson that was learned from WW I, it was that the Allied forces didn’t totally defeat Germany by going into Germany and occupying the country.

Had that been done, there would not have been a WW II.

Similarly, the biggest mistake for Israel would be to stop now without total defeat of Hamas.

What really bothers me is hypocrisy: persons writing in this blog (e.g. Egypt) would never settle for another country lobbing missiles at its civilians and cities as Hamas has done to Israel. Yet, they criticize Israel for doing just what they’d want their country to do if another country was lobbing missiles at their country (e.g. Egypt).

A cease fire will not solve the problem. Solving the problem requires:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/world/middleeast/07mideast.html?hp=&pagewanted=all

“The endgame for us is threefold: that Hamas’s military machine would be substantially destroyed; two, Hamas understands that shooting rockets means paying a price they don’t want to pay; and three, there are mechanisms in place to prevent Hamas from rearming,” Mr. Regev said.

Now, imagine your country was attacked with missiles as Israel was. Wouldn’t these demands made by Israel make sense to you for your own country?

Please be honest. The way to end the conflict is to assure that Mr. Regev’s comments are followed.

From the previous post, I meant to say during WW II the Allies learned their lesson and in this case totally defeated Germany by occupying it and total defeat.

We should learn from history so that we don’t repeat it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/08/world/middleeast/08mideast.html?ref=world&pagewanted=all

On Tuesday, one rocket reached farther than ever into Israeli territory, only 20 miles from Tel Aviv, and wounded an infant.

With another day of gory news reports inflaming the Arab world, Israel contended that the deaths at the school, at the Jabaliya refugee camp north of Gaza City, demonstrated Hamas’s callousness toward the lives of Palestinian civilians.

The Israeli Defense Forces said that their troops had fired several mortar shells near the school in response to mortar fire from the school compound.

“They shot back to save their own lives,” said Ilan Tal, an Israeli military spokesman and a brigadier general in the reserves. Among the dead, the military said in a statement, were “Hamas terrorist operatives and a mortar battery cell.”

The military identified two Hamas operatives, Imad Abu Asker and Hassan Abu Asker, as having been killed.

A young witness from Jabaliya, Ibrahim Amen, 16, said that he had seen one of the militants, whom he identified as Abu Khaled Abu Asker, in the area of the school right before the attack.

David,

how much mileage are you supposed to get out of amin’s faux pas over 70 years ago. if we’re gonna conspiratorial, slanderous and technical why not mention the turn of the century zionist settlers receiving advice from the Ottomans (butchers) on how the dealt with the Armenian problem.

but that is neither here nor there, Amin and the Settlers are in the past. LETS LOOK TO THE FUTURE!

lost in nyc,
I completely agree that one needs to look to the future. The problem is that reason that Japan and Germany are the successful nations they are today is precisely because they came to terms with their terrible pasts. Japan and Germany did not blame the Allies for problems that they, Japan and Germany, caused by following the leadership they followed and all of the deaths that resulted. Because of this admission of guilt these two countries were able to correct their mistakes, move forward, and make themselves into two of the strongest market economies today with high prosperity.

The Palestinians will be unable to move forward until they stop blaming Israel for their problems: Israel did not cause the Palestinians to follow the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem (who was friends with Hitler) any more than the Allies asked Germany to follow Hitler.

When, and, only when the Palestinians, like the Germans and Japanese before them, come to terms with their awful past and apologize to Israel for all the pain and suffering and killing and terror and accept that they are the cause of their own problems will they be able to move forward and have successful economies as the Japanese and Germans have.

6,000 out of 600,000 Jews in 1948, or 1% of the population (1% of America’s population is 3 million) died because the Palestinians chose to follow this friend of Hitlers. Decades and decades of pain and suffering on both sides because of this decision.

What Mona has been saying in her posts is that Palestinians and Arabs have been using Israel as blame so that they don’t have to solve their own internal problems. If the Palestinians and Arabs stop blaming Israel then they have to address their own economic and other problems of welfare for their populations. For the Palestinians and the Arabs Israel is too much of an opium for that.

Hence, if you want to have true peace and prosperity for the Palestinians, they must follow the example of Germany and Japan and not blame Israel for their terrible decision to follow the Mufti of Jerusalem.

i’m afraid your post wwII template cannot be superimposed on ‘arabs.’ it was easy to supplant a supreme commander/demagog/demigod for a MacArthur figure. but it’s like herding cats with arabs there is no focus on one particular figure but on a few, who are safely tucked away in undisclosed locations.

and as for repenting for one’s sins, one cant help but thing of the stern gang or the irgun (Rahm and Tzipi proud off spring of former members.)

I hope the bloodshed stops on both sides!

To my recollection there was no “MacArthur figure” in Germany. In Konrad Adenauer, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Adenauer

Germany had a really great leader which the Palestinians have never had which is part of the problem. Instead of Adenauer, they got Arafat. Read the wikipedia of Adenauer. What the Palestinians need most is to denounce their past crimes against the Jews when they declined the two state solution proposed by the UN 60 years ago choosing instead to create war and follow the Mufti, that friend of Hitler’s. The parallels are striking, for The Mufti endorsed “the final solution” and wanted the same for Israel. To follow such a leader is not only a crime against the Jews but against all of humanity, yet the Palestinians and Arabs did exactly that.

What Adenauer did for Germany, the Palestinians need to elect a leader that commits to doing the same thing for the Palestinians. When they have such a person run and when they elect him/her with a clear mandate to govern, then we will see peace and a stop of the bloodshed, not before then.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1231167283817&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull

Jordan and the Palestinians…read the full article…

Over the next 10 days, he waged an aggressive war against the terrorists, killing about 2,500 and wounding several thousand more. The Arab world was in an uproar, calling him an aggressor. President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt was angry at Hussein and warned of “grave consequences” if he did not stop the fighting. Syria in fact invaded Jordan to aid the Palestinians, and Iraq threatened to do the same. But Hussein persisted, despite being pained and conflicted by what he was doing. He saw the fighting as “a cancer operation that had to be performed to save Jordan’s life” and made very clear – by appointing a prime minister of Palestinian origin and through other means – that he was not waging a war against the Palestinian people, but was merely fighting terrorists.

In the end, Hussein prevailed. After a cease-fire to end the war, he continued his battle against the PLO over the ensuing 10 months until July 1971, when he succeeded in ousting it and all its terror constituents from the country. (They moved to Lebanon, where they once again began to terrorize not only Israel, but their host country.) For the next 30-plus years, Jordan knew no more terror.

Ahmed said “…if I do recall, the same guys who are leading Israel are going through a ‘rotation of power’. Guys like Ehud Barak, Benyamin Netenyahu, etc are the same guys I’ve been hearing about since I was a child, doesnt seem like much is changing.”

Ahmed, you brought a smile to my face.
Let’s examine the ‘rotation of power’ as you put it, and the new vs. old faces in the main countries of the Arab world, compared to Israel.

Saudi Arabia: 2 dictators. 27 years.
King Fahd (1982 – 2005)
King Abdullah (2005-present)

Egypt: 2 dictators. 37 years.
Anwar al-Sadat (1970-1981)
Hosni Mubarak (1981-present)

Syria: 2 dictators. 38 years.
Hafez al-Assad (1971-2000)
Bashar al-Assad (1971-present)

Now let’s compare it to the Israeli ‘rotation of power’.
All Israeli leaders were elected in free democratic elections.

Israel: 9 different leaders. 40 years.
Golda Meir (1969-74)
Yitzhak Rabin (1974-77)
Menachem Begin (1977-83)
Yitzhak Shamir (1983-84)
Shimon Peres (1984-86)
Yitzhak Shamir (1986-92)
Yitzhak Rabin (1992-95)
Shimon Peres (1995-96)
Benjamin Netanyahu (1996-99)
Ehud Barak (1999-01)
Ariel Sharon (2001-06)
Ehud Olmert (2006-present)

Israeli Guy,
You remind me of a quote in an article by Paul Johnson about the creation of Israel in May 1998 Commentary Magazine called “The Miracle”

“Before he finally became Prime Minister, Begin had lost, I calculate, more general elections than any other party leader in the history of democracy. So he had certainly learned patience.”

http://cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/fendel/entry/the_impact_of_palestinian_rocket

Living with Rockets: The impact of Palestinian rocket terror on Israeli children

“There has been a war of terror on Sderot from more than eight years now. During this time period, an estimated 8,000-10,000 Palestinian rockets have been fired at Sderot and the western Negev from the Gaza Strip.”

“In the meantime, hundreds of Israelis homes and properties have been destroyed, over 700 Israelis wounded, and thousands psychologically traumatized by Palestinian rocket fire. Periodically, schools in Sderot and the western Negev have been forced to close, as normal life cruelly transforms into a marathon of 15 seconds, (the number of seconds one has to escape to shelter when the Tzeva Adom, or Red Color alert is set off by an impending Palestinian rocket).”

“Clinical psychologists working at the center discovered that many Sderot children are not developing speaking skills at a rate appropriate to their age. A normal child learns to speak around the age of one. But many children in Sderot have not even begun to speak by the age of three or even four. Those who are able to speak, stutter and cannot complete words.”

“Dalia Yosef, director of the Sderot Hosen Center, explains that the constant rocket fire upon Sderot has created a state of stress and panic that has dramatically impacted the development of young Sderot children.”

Can we all please be honest here: Would America, Egypt, France, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iran, Russia, China, France, Germany, UK, …. have put up with this? I assure you the US would not have let this go on for eight years and I think I can assure you that neither would Egypt or any other country. So, instead of criticizing Israel, please support the permanent termination of these missiles….

Try to think of those children as your children or nieces and nephews or brothers and sisters…

Other problems with have to sit on the fence include not reacting or passing judgment upon situations like this:

Soldiers enter Gaza hospital, execute wounded: link

and accepting “Gaza Rules” – that both sides deserve equal blame, that intent is irrelevant, and that “proportionality” implies the absence of a decisive victory.

Mona, you have my sympathies! And I applaud (again) your courage! I used to try to sit on the fence, even after I started getting active on Arab blogs several years ago, but I found it to be impossible. In my case, the last straw was an Egyptian friend of a friend that I was chatting with… she was saying such outrageous things, and just assuming that my silence meant that I agreed with her. And when I did finally speak up and ask her to tone it down a bit, and challenged a couple of things she was saying, she got quite abusive with me. So, no more fence sitting for me! Maybe nobody is right, but some people are more right than others. I have quite a few Arab friends, including my best friend, and I have no Jewish friends at all, but on this issue I’m not with my Arab friends. That might change if all the incitement of hate and violence that I see coming out of the Arab world changed, but I doubt that it ever will. I could be wrong, if your campaign is successful, so I really hope that it is

Israeli Guy,

I find it interesting that you brought up the topic of Arab dictators and monarchs. I never once claimed that the Arab world is the ideal place of democracy where the leaders are benevolent to their citizenry. I simply stated that there is no prospect for peace when the same guys who have been perpetuating war are allowed to continue to remain in power and this so called notion that Israelis are a free people where their leaders ‘listen’ to what their constituents have to say is also a preposterous claim. These guys are politicians and as politicians they share one thing in common with all politicians, they manipulate their people in order to remain in power and subjugate other innocents to subhuman treatment. This includes Arab leaders, Western leaders, Eastern leaders, African leaders, and yes…even Israeli leaders.

Say it aint so! Seriously, get over it. Be open to criticism just as you are critical of others.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/opinion/07friedman.html?em

The Mideast’s Ground Zero
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

“That is, Gaza is a mini-version of three great struggles that have been playing out since 1948: 1) Who is going to be the regional superpower — Egypt? Saudi Arabia? Iran? 2) Should there be a Jewish state in the Middle East and, if so, on what Palestinian terms? And 3) Who is going to dominate Arab society — Islamists who are intolerant of other faiths and want to choke off modernity or modernists who want to embrace the future, with an Arab-Muslim face? Let’s look at each.”

[snip]

“SHOULDN’T WE BLOW UP THE BAR AND REPLACE IT WITH A MOSQUE? Hamas’s overthrow of the more secular Fatah organization in Gaza in 2007 is part of a regionwide civil war between Islamists and modernists. In the week that Israel has been slicing through Gaza, Islamist suicide bombers have killed almost 100 Iraqis — first, a group of tribal sheikhs in Yusufiya, who were working on reconciliation between Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, and, second, mostly women and children gathered at a Shiite shrine. These unprovoked mass murders have not stirred a single protest in Europe or the Middle East.

Gaza today is basically ground zero for all three of these struggles, said Martin Indyk, the former Clinton administration’s Middle East adviser whose incisive new book, “Innocent Abroad: An Intimate Account of American Diplomacy in the Middle East,” was just published. “This tiny little piece of land, Gaza, has the potential to blow all of these issues wide open and present a huge problem for Barack Obama on Day 1.””

Read the rest of the article, read the comments.

Dear Mona Eltahawi,

Thank you once again for your measured views. I’ll join you on that fence.

as an israeli i can tell you that my relationship with the so called fence has been quite torturous..

i sit on it then i get off and then climb back on and then switch sides.. its giving me a terrible pain in the a%% and driving me insane..

i find it impossible to sift through the lies and propaganda of both sides.. and i cant tell who is trying to confuse me more..

responsibility has been neatly packaged as a ball that is thrown across the same fence against the direction of missiles everytime they are lobbed..

this sterile and aboslute treatment of such a complex issue is mind boggling and as much as i want the arab (as well as non arab) world to understand my point of view i cant stomach the idea of brain washing you that my govt has acted like angels in the desert..

in this ugly conflict we too have rolled up our sleeves and gotten ugly.. who started? who cares? we all live in the shit today.. some with a bombed house and some with a nice back yard but its all shit..

once we are able to detoxicate ourselves from the very persistent political poisons infused into our mental water on a daily basis – then we will stand a chance.. once our govts decide to invest ideologically and financially in people to people peace making as well as the negotiations that to date have remained vapid – then we will have substance behind our hopes..

until then we can continue to blame eachother while we dub our own warriors freedom fighters.. we will all become experts at excusing the chargrilling of enfants and become the ultimate debaters of how death has its upside..

some selling you scores of virgins and others telling you that they come once you don a khaki uniform when you turn 18..

this situation has to end.. we all know the truth of it.. no one is going anywhere.. so while we fight i shall continue to chafingly make out with this fence-partition wall-separation barrier call it what you want..

its just a shame its so high – not to mention electric

For a different perspective, take a look at this:
http://www.claywillis.com/Who%20Owns%20The%20Middle%20East.htm