A solution for the Israeli-Palestine conflict

Chronicles 1 22:7 And David said to Solomon, My son, as for me, it was in my mind to build an house unto the name of the LORD my God: 22:8 But the word of the LORD came to me, saying, Thou hast shed blood abundantly, and hast made great wars: thou shalt not build an house unto my name, because thou hast shed much blood upon the earth in my sight.

The Talmud contains midrashim or stories about portions of the Bible. One of the stories tells when the waters of the Red Sea closed over the Egyptians the angels around the Lord cheered. The Lord wept because the Egyptians were also his children.

Originally the holiday of Hannukah celebrated a victory over the Hellenic forces. The rabbis not wanting to celebrate a military victory emphasised the miracle of the lights. I feel Israel has violated that tradition. I am unhappy that so many of their political leaders have been generals.

The great Australian Jewish General Monash rejected those who would have had him take political power. D.H. Lawrence wrote a highly fictional account of the incident in Kangaroo.

A Koranic verse (2:256) states: "There is no compulsion in religion" (in Arabic: la ikrah fi'd-din). It has not always been followed, but it exists.

The Maziyariyya, a Muslim pacifist sect, dropped jihad from their concept of the faith.

In the 19th century a central Asian Muslim leader led a non-violent jihad against the czarist occupation. As the Soviets were to do to later dissidents, he was confined to mental institution.

In 1930 the Pathans of Northern India, a people with traditions of violence, turned to non-violence. Abdul Gaffir Khan, “the Gandhi of the frontier provinces”, in 1930 persuaded the Pathans of the power of non-violence. In spite of persecution, imprisonment and executions they kept to their commitment to non-violence.

Although the violence has been emphasised there has been a tradition of non-violence in Palestine. From the Palestine Monitor:

In 1902, the inhabitants of three Palestinian villages - al-Shajara, Misha and Melhamiyya - held a collective peaceful protest against the takeover of 70,000 dunums (7,000 hectares) of agricultural land by the first European Zionist settlers.

In 1936 Palestinians held a six-month non-violent industrial strike against the British Mandate’s refusal to grant self determination to Palestine. The ultimate aim of the strike was to make Palestine ungovernable by anyone but the Palestinians themselves.

Fifty years later, in 1986, Hannah Siniora, then editor of the East Jerusalem Arabic Daily, called for Palestinian civic disobedience by boycotting Israel-made cigarettes. This led to a full-scale Palestinian boycott of Israeli soap, food, water, clothes and other consumer goods.

The 1987-1993 First Intifada was largely conducted non-violently. Palestinians held mass public demonstrations, refused to pay taxes, and sought out local alternatives to Israeli facilities. Community leader Mubarak Awad initiated olive tree planting on Palestinian land about to be confiscated by Israeli settlers. Israeli law prohibited any construction on land dedicated to growing fruit. Awad used non-violent resistance, and Israel’s own laws, to challenge the encroaching settlements.

In Counterpunch Ramzy Baroud points out that non-violence should be adopted by both peoples.

Garnett Publishing contains a review of "Refusing to be Enemies: Palestinian and Israeli Nonviolent Resistance to the Israeli Occupation." Some of both sides have already adopted nonviolence.

Hatreds and distrust will not disappear by creation of another state. It will merely continue the separation and suspicion. However, a secular state with opportunities for the differing peoples to get to know each other by living, working and going to school together would give peace a chance.

There have been great changes in the United States since schools and public facilities have been integrated. I visit Tidewater, Virginia, occasionally since my son is a professor at William and Mary College. That area has undergone tremendous changes since World War II. After the war there was real apartheid. Most restaurants and hotels would not let black people in. Those that did were for blacks only. Schools were segregated by race. When public facilities were first desegregated whites would cluster together and blacks would cluster together. Now one can see people of different races mingling and having a good time together.

It will not happen overnight, but the same process can happen in Israel-Palestine if given a chance.