Reply #147: It's better because it gives the Palestinians the chance to have a life [View All]

It gives them the chance to breathe. There's the possibility of improving their conditions and changing the internal dynamic within Palestinian society. People with something to live for are much more likely to value life than death. People can't be expected to value life if they aren't allowed to have one, and no one can have a life under the Occupation. Dignity, creativity, fulfillment, all are impossible when there are soldiers patrolling your streets and you can't even count on being able to get to a hospital in time if you're sick or injured(or wounded).

It's always more effective, if the goal is to create a peace-and life-affirming climate to let a people around them live on their own terms rather than under rigid restriction. Only when people have self-determination can the world expect morality from them.

One of the most insulting things has been people raising the question of why there hasn't been a "Palestinian Gandhi". Look, I'd have liked to see a Palestinian Gandhi(to say nothing of an Irish Gandhi, an American Gandhi and as many other Gandhis as you could think of) as much as anyone else would. But the emergence of such a figure requires an oppressor that at least behaves with the decency of the British Empire, which shouldn't be saying much but in this case it is. A Gandhi can't emerge in a land of home demolitions, checkpoints, and the completely unjustified destruction of olive groves.

BTW, there was a guy who tried to lead nonviolent resistance in Palestine, His name is Mubarak al-Awad. THE Israeli government kicked him out of Palestine. Will you agree that there was no excuse for that to be done?

And, as I've repeatedly asked you but you've repeatedly not answered, why do you defend keeping the misery and oppression in place on the backs of Palestinians when you KNOW that there's no possible way that this can result in a change in "the Palestinian leadership"?
History has shown that subjugation never changes the Palestinians(and seldom if ever changes anyone else)for the better.

Why defend something that hasn't work and thus never can work?

What security is there in the status quo? What possible hope is there in delay? What sanity could there be in continuing to build settlements?

If you proceed(as the Israeli governnent does) from the assumption that the Palestinians must be treated inhumanely because they are, alone among the world's peoples, somehow constitutionally incapable of demonstrating humanity, you will guarantee that they DON'T demonstrate it. What's so hard to understand about that, shira?