Israel and Palestine have been at war for over three thousand years, and yet the United States, along with the rest of the world, believes that peace terms can be negotiated between these two enemies. This past week, Palestine achieved international headlines as they sought to be recognized as an official state by the United Nations. Many world leaders, including President Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, ordered their UN representatives to veto Palestinian statehood until Palestine works out a peace agreement with Israel. But, this will never happen, and world leaders need to realize this fact. Actually, world leaders need to learn their history. As statesman Edmund Burke said, “Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.”
The history of the relationship between Israel and Palestine started around 1200 BCE. In the book of Joshua, part of the Nevi’im (a Hebrew religious text), the formation of the nation now known as Israel is described. “When Joshua had grown old, the Lord said to him, ‘You are now very old and there are still very large areas of land to be taken over. This is the land that remains: all the regions of the Philistines and Geshurites, from the Shihor River on the east of Egypt to the territory of Ekron on the north, all of it counted as Canaanite though held by the five Philistine rulers in Gaza,'” Joshua 13:1-7, New International Version Holy Bible. This passage shows that to live in Israel, the Jewish people had to invade it and take it away from the Philistines, whose descendants are modern day Palestinians.
After they had invaded and established their new nation, the Jewish people were at war with the Philistines and other neighbors on and off for around 700 years until they conquered by Babylon in 586 BCE. This began nearly 2500 years of occupation by outside forces, including the Babylonians, Alexander the Great, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Arabs, the Crusaders, the Egyptians, the Ottomans, and finally, the British. After the Holocaust in World War II, the UN voted on and passed the UN General Assembly Resolution 181 (II) Future Government of Palestine in 1947. This officially created the state of Israel, which then declared its independence on May 14, 1948.
To enforce Resolution 181, the newly formed Israeli army had to fight off their Arab neighbors. Just as when they first settled the land, the Hebrews had to once again invade the land and take it away from the Palestinians. History repeats itself, and lasting peace proved impossible to maintain from 1200 BCE to 500 BCE. Therefore, why should the US and the rest of the world expect a peace anytime soon? The only time there has been a lasting peace in Israel is when an outside nation came in and conquered both the Israelites and the Palestinians, effectively acting as a babysitter.
Therefore, if the Western world wants peace between these two, they need to enforce [d]it. Due to the high improbability of this happening, world leaders need to accept the fact that there will be no lasting peace between Israel and Palestine. As long as they can accept this, and the conflict does not spread, the world should stop wasting their time and resources on a situation that will never end.
'Israel & Palenstine' has no comments
Be the first to comment this post!