Mideast peace campaign is not 'one-sided'
by Brian Wood, member of the Colorado Campaign for Middle East Peace
Letter to the Editor
April 11, 2002
Re: "After Arafat, chaos," April 4 editorial [Click Here for original Denver Post Editorial].
The Denver Post has accused members of the Colorado Campaign for Middle East Peace of holding "one-sided views" and being "Israel bashers." It has also accused us of acting as human shields for Palestinians and avoiding the same behavior for Israelis, making us sympathizers with terrorists.
The Colorado Campaign for Middle East Peace sent five members to the West Bank over the course of one week. Four are staying in Bethlehem refugee camps. I will be roaming back and forth between Ramallah and Bethlehem with various convoys trying to deliver humanitarian aid - food, bread and medicines - to Palestinian families and hospitals, whose supplies in the above-stated areas are basically gone or destroyed.
CCMEP has been calling and working for one main objective: the end of the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, the root cause of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If this were ever addressed, the numerous and more public symptoms of the problem - such as the violence - would be largely eradicated. Peace for both peoples would then become a material possibility, not a distant dream.
However, since public discussion revolves around the violence of the conflict - only a symptom of deeper structural problems - the conflict continues. Israeli occupation must end if there will ever be a resolution to this most troubling fight.
This is hardly a "one-sided view." Many Israeli groups hold the same view, proving that CCMEP is not engaged in "Israel bashing." Two thousand Israelis from several peace organizations tried to march to Ramallah April 3. They had one message: End Israel's occupation of Palestinian land.
Rabbis for Human Rights, an Israeli organization composed of rabbis from the four main branches of Judaism, consistently works for this same goal. The most powerful example of such peace organizations is the group of 52 Israeli reserve combat soldiers and officers whose membership has grown to more than 400 in two months. They issued a statement to give notice that they "will not serve beyond the 1967 borders for the starvation, humiliation, and domination of an entire people."
"Beyond the 1967 borders" is what Palestinians want for their state. This constitutes only 22 percent of historic Palestine and the chunk of land for which the Palestinians are fighting.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society, which was responsible for all emergency health services in the West Bank and Gaza, shut down April 4. Eighty percent of its ambulance fleet has been either destroyed or damaged by the Israeli military. In March alone, seven of its doctors were killed by the Israeli military; scores have been injured.
At the main hospital in Bethlehem, not one person had been admitted five days after the Israeli military invasion began there. Why? Doctors who tried to retrieve the injured or collect the corpses lying in the streets were systematically fired upon. Eyewitnesses report that Israeli soldiers stop the ambulances, force the medical staff and any injured people inside the ambulance to strip to their underwear and lie in the street. The soldiers then arrest them.
It is appropriate to reiterate Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's stated goal in these operations: "Palestinians must be dealt a heavy blow, which will come from every direction. If it is not made clear to them that they are overpowered, we will be unable to return to negotiations. We must inflict heavy losses on their side." These words demonstrate that what has been happening in the last six tumultuous weeks is not retaliation, but the de-creation of Palestinian society.
I recently conversed with an elderly friend who ran for her life from the Nazis in World War II. After telling her about my experiences in the West Bank for the last year, she was horrified and said: "That sounds just like the Nazis."
It is difficult to maintain that CCMEP is engaged in "Israel bashing" and sympathizing with terrorists when our views are held by Israelis and Holocaust survivors. From a wide range of society, the message is clear: Ending Israel's occupation of Palestinian land is good for both people and, indeed, the world.
BRIAN WOOD
Occupied Territories
Brian Wood, a Denver resident, is a member of the Colorado Campaign for Middle East Peace's delegation to the West Bank.
* More Information about Brian and the other Coloradans in Palestine at: www.ccmep.org/palestine.html
[origional Denver Post Editorial with sections about CCMEP highlighted]
After Arafat, chaos
Editorial of
The Denver Post
Thursday, April 04, 2002 - It's not easy to make Yasser Arafat into a
sympathetic figure. But Ariel Sharon, master of the misstep, seems to be doing
his utmost to accomplish that.
Arafat certainly earned the rebuke he received from George Bush Saturday, when
the president said the Palestinian leader could and should do more to restrain
the suicide bombers who have so savagely destabilized the Middle East and gutted
the peace process that began with the Oslo accords.
But even if Arafat really wanted to take Bush's words to heart, exactly how
would he go about it? He is now isolated in his office, surrounded by Israeli
troops, without land phone lines or electricity. Sharon loudly asserts that he
will let Arafat leave Ramallah only "on a one-way ticket" that would leave the
PLO leader in permanent exile, never to return to the territory that the Oslo
peace process promised would be the core of a Palestinian homeland.
No one will confuse the 72-year-old Arafat with Mahatma Gandhi. He clearly has
no commitment to the principles of non-violence. But however complicit Arafat
may be in Palestinian terrorism, he is still the sole recognized leader of his
people. Islamic Jihad, Hamas and other ultra-extremist groups will be the only
winners if Arafat is removed from the scene, whether by death or exile.
One of Arafat's worst failings is that he has never groomed a successor. Exiling
or killing him would solidify his hold on the Palestinian people while inflaming
an already vicious situation.
We confess to considerable impatience with the one-sided views of such
Israel-bashers as the Denver-based Colorado Campaign for Middle East Peace. That
group has despatched members to the West Bank to act as "human shields" for
Palestinians against Israeli retaliation. It goes without saying that none of
these zealots volunteered to serve as "human shields" for the Jewish children
brutally murdered at their Passover services.
But recoiling from the hatred and folly of terrorists and their sympathizers is
easy. Finding a road to a lasting peace is the hard part. As a first step,
Bush needs to clearly signal that he backs Secretary of State Colin L. Powell
and U.S. special envoy Anthony Zinni in their efforts to implement a truce plan
authored last June by CIA chief George Tenet.
The path to peace must begin - as Powell and Zinni insist - with a cease-fire
that permits at least the semblance of a peace process to resume. A peace
process, in turn, means someone must speak for the Palestinians - and the only
possible candidate for that role is Arafat. The longer Sharon refuses to deal
with the only Palestinian who can credibly speak for that long-suffering people,
the longer he will prolong Israel's agony.
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