Politics and legality in the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict
wchao37  Updated: 2004-01-12 06:26

Legality is the correctness of an action based on the conscientious application of the ubiquitous principles of fairness amongst the world's civilized nations. It differs from nation to nation in some areas but achieves a consensus on others. For example, international law is accepted by the majority of the members of the United Nations.

National laws are based on acceptable mores of a particular nation and most of them have universal applications. For example, people in all civilized nations would think of forcible rape, murder and arson as crimes, and that's why these acts are codified as such without exception in all nations. There is nothing in the animal world to prevent a rape (e.g. it is prevalent amongst chimpanzees). If chimpanzees which have ninety-nine percent DNA concordance with human DNA do not regard this as a crime, it is because they only obey their biological impulses and do not think in terms of legality like humans do.

In human society, in addition to the above black-and-white cases, there are also grey areas such as marriages between homosexuals, which are legalized in some societies and not others. So legality is not only based on moral precepts but also upon the changing attitudes of society in accepting certain behavior. Not all people in Hawaii agreed that homosexual marriage should be legalized, and yet a law was passed legalizing such union in that state. It is their way of coming to a decision and agreeing to disagree over a controversial topic.

That's why in establishing any laws, the prevailing attitudes of society have to be taken into account. In more barbaric times, grabbing other people's land and nabbing their women were considered 'honorable' acts (like the Rape of the Sabine women in Roman history), but as society progresses and our knowledge base of the physical world expands, we realize that such behavior, if legalized, would lead to total destruction of humankind in the age of nuclear weapons. That's why occupying other people's land is now viewed with such disdain and that's also why the neo-cons' plans for returning to old-style imperialism are fraught with difficulties. People are no longer passive as in the old days. Land mines and RPGs are enough to equalize the terror of cruise missiles and Black Hawk helicopter gunships.

Lawrence of Arabia was able to pacify an entire region into submission in his time and England with its small population was able to colonize nearly half of the world because of this passivity on the part of the indigenous populations. This is no longer the case as can be seen in Somalia and Iraq. Kosovo and the rest of former Yugoslavia were the exception rather than the rule because of unique circumstances in the Balkans.

So the world is viewing the Arab-Israeli conflict in this light and what we see is a bully stealing land from the Palestinians and now erecting a wall to formalize the theft. Of course the Palestinians have the right to resist in whatever way they can and there is no such thing as terrorism in defending one's own land against invaders.

If that were the case then all Chinese resisters against Japanese aggression in WWII were terrorists too. Does that make any sense?

It is the Jewish media which constantly misuses and drums the word "terrorist" into our skulls in describing Palestinian resisters as 'terrorists' -- that has confused some unthinking people amongst us into accepting what terrorism is and is not. Their occupation of Palestinian land is in fact the BIGGEST ACT OF INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM.

Now we come to politics.

The Palestinians are willing to accept the status quo up to a certain extent. They say they do not want to drive the Jews into the Mediterranean (a phrase often repeated by the Jewish media to have the anti-climatical effect of emphasizing the obvious impossibility...the Palestinians can't anyway. but that's beside the point). So despite the illegality of the Israeli theft of their land, the Palestinians are now trying to achieve the realization of statehood and get back to normal life by creating a separate entity sharing a border with Israel. Sharon is playing the role of the bad-cop extremist while Shamon Peres is the good-cop symbol of reason representing what the Israelis really want. Their plan is to terrorize the Palestinians into strategic errors so that they grab "The Road Map" as a last-chance life-saving straw. All that talk about killing Arafat is part of this 'pre-dawn darkness' plan. It's all a hoax, and you'll see that this is indeed the case soon enough. Arafat is getting old and sick, and he wants to be the one who establishes statehood for the Palestinians. He will be dealt a harsh hand by the Jews but he will have to compromise.

That's politics. It is a hand played without regard to morality or legality and is based on principles of conflict resolution -- if Israel wants peace it must give back some of the land, and if Arafat wants statehood he must give up some land and stop shooting. What Sharon is doing is to try to grab more land before the ink on the agreement dries up so as to achieve de facto occupation of a huge chunk of the West Bank. The problem is that Honorable Peace will never be achieved this way because the Palestinians will feel like a conquered people and will definitely carry on armed struggles in the future, and demographics and the world's total balance of power is on their side. The Israelis are smart enough to see this coming so they want to get back to the negotiating table too. The success of Shenzhou V has a lot to do with it because it clearly delineates the coming balance of power.

That's why I said peace talks will return to the Middle East. The only hindrance at this moment is the incredible obstinacy of the Sharon personality. 

The above content represents the view of the author only.

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