The Palestine-Israel Conflict is not and should not be looked at as a dichotomous issue.
One of the largest political topics that looms around that does a rather efficient job at polarizing peoples' opinions is the Palestine-Israel Conflict that began within the mid-twentieth century as a response by European powers to deal with their Jewish refugee crisis following World War Two. Today, many people hold a position as being either Pro-Palestine, or Pro-Israel. I argue that people should be neither and should be Pro-Cooperation. Some will say that kind of stance is useless, but that seriously detracts from the intense complexity of the situation.
Summing up this issue is extremely difficult and brings about the danger of missing key pieces of information critical to being able to understand both sides of the conflict., It takes readings, courses and serious, dedicated discourse to really get a grip on this issue.
At the very least, the conflict began as such: The British Empire took the territory of Palestine and turned it into a mandate. After the World War Two, the British government used the Balfour Declaration of 1917 to support the creation of a "Jewish State" as a way to solve their refugee problem, because various European countries did not want them (sound familiar?).
In doing so, millions of Palestinians were from their homes and Eastern European Jews immigrated to the area. The conflict has so many different branches of problems and both sides have their share of definite wrongdoings, but ultimately, both sides at one point were and still are displaced, and because of the actions of Britain, are fighting over one territory to call their home. The suffering of the past cannot be understated, nor can those who suffer in the present.
While I don't claim to know the best solution to the Palestine-Israel conflict, I do know that the best way to come about it is to smite the perceived tension that Jews and Arabs have for each other.
Viewing the Palestine-Israel Conflict as a dichotomy is dangerous.
Humans are animals and we act out at perceived threats if we believe it is the best course of self-preservation. There is no hope of progress until that generalized threat perception is quenched. If the vast majority of Israelis believe the vast majority of Palestinians want to kill them, and the vast majority of Palestinians believe Jews want to kill them, why on Earth would anyone expect them to sit still in a room with each other and have any degree of efficient political discourse? If I were sitting in a room with an individual who I truly believed wanted to eradicate my existence, I wouldn't want to work with him, I would want to eliminate the threat.
We can do nothing to change the past. What has happened is set in the annals of history, but we can change the future. We can sneer at the Peel Commission, the Balfour Declaration and the irresponsibility of Britain in their handling of the situation, but all we can do is change what happens moving forward. The young Israelis today did not participate in the blatant disregard for the established 1948 borders in 1967, but they were raised with the discourse that those who were hurt deserved it because they were a threat.
As children are hurt, they grow up bearing the scars caused by the other side infighting, and the tension continues to scrape at the wounds caused over the span of over one hundred years now. Breaking the vicious cycle is an immense task, but if we don't do it, no one will. Next time you see a post or article that you may not agree with, read it, understand what the article is really saying, and put yourself in your neighbors' shoes.
It starts with us.
