The number one grievance for the 1.5 billion Muslims around the world is the lack of just resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
On the 60th anniversary of the UN partition plan, President Bush invited the conflicting parties of the Middle East to Annapolis, Maryland. It seems that President Bush wanted to have a legacy for being a broker of a long-awaited peace deal between the Palestinians and Israelis. It looks like nothing is coming out of this meeting. However, it may turn out as a nice photo op for everybody involved.
Ehud Olmert, Israeli prime minister, made it very clear that no discussion will take place on the four major areas: Jerusalem, Refugees, borders and settlements. These areas of major conflict can wait until later. This is contrary to the premise of the 1993 Oslo Accord which necessitated that these concerns be discussed and resolved within 5 years, 1998 that is. Seventeen years later and no movement on these areas yet.
Israel has managed to manipulate the discussion. Israel came to Annapolis bypassing all previous commitments to its Palestinian neighbors. To me, I believe four major conditions must take place immediately.
First, freeze the establishment and the expansion of all the colonies, what some like to wrongly and erroneously call settlements. These colonies are creating facts on the ground. Since the 1993 Oslo Accord, population of these colonies has doubled. Currently, there are 149 colonies in the West Bank with a total population of 450,000.
Second, Israel must have an immediate stop to the Apartheid Wall. It is unconscionable that the world went into an uproar against the 90-mile, 12-foot Berlin Wall but can see no fault in the 400-mile, 24-foot Apartheid Israeli Wall that is creating a ghetto and Bantustans and making the West Bank a literal prison. Over 800,000 Palestinians live behind this Apartheid Wall.
Third, Israel must immediately lift the embargo on the 1.5 million Gazans and remove the declaration of "hostile entity" imposed on Gaza. Cutting off oil and electricity caused 61,000 workers to lose their jobs immediately. Over 80 percent of Gazans are below the international poverty line, which is $2 per day. This embargo and designation caused farmers to lose their income, paralyzed the hospitals, polluted drinking water, and is creating a dangerous crisis.
Finally, there must be sufficient guarantees to discuss the real issues. These issues are the right of return and self-determination for the refugees, status of Jerusalem, the borders of Israel, the colonies, or what is erroneously called settlements, and the prisoners. Over 12,000 Palestinians are in Israeli jail. In the 11-month period between January and November 2007, Israel released 900 prisoners and arrested 3,500! There is something extremely wrong with this picture.
The world is playing a dangerous game against the Palestinians. Certainly, the United States carries the biggest part of this responsibility. A poll by Daniel Yankelovich's Public Agenda shows that the American public wants US policy to be built on helping foreign countries with their social problems such as poverty, economic growth, and disaster relief among other issues.
The number one grievance for the 1.5 billion Muslims around the world is the lack of just resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. America continues to misjudge the religious and political significance of this conflict and the impact this one issue has on the Muslim mind and the mind of those who care about justice.
Almost a year ago, Sebnem Arsu of the New York Times reported that leaders from a variety of cultural and religious backgrounds announced a United Nations initiative to resolve the conflict between the West and the Muslim world. Desmond Tutu of South Africa, Mohammad Khatami, the former Iranian president, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, and many others from many nations were among the participants. At the conclusion of their meeting, 20 scholars drafted a report outlining the framework for a workable formula to resolve the conflict between the West and the Muslim World. The framework singled out the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as a primary source of "deepening split." Kofi Anan, the then-UN Secretary General, at the conclusion of the conference stated that, "No other conflict carries such a powerful symbolic and emotional charge among people far removed from the battlefield. As long as the Palestinians live under occupation, exposed to daily frustration and humiliation, and as long as Israelis are blown up in busses and in dance halls, so long will passions everywhere be inflamed."
The world is watching. America cannot afford to be on the side of injustice and apartheid. America must do something and do it now.
ahmad@alakhras.org
Read more articles by Ahmad Al-Akhras
I also do not understand the settlements/colonies expansion.
However, the wall is to keep Israelis from being murdered ,which seems to be working well.
The Gaza embargo though extreme, is in response again to Hamas and thier murdering ways.
The right of return is never going to happen and history shows at least and probably more Jews have been kicked out of Arab lands. The Arabs must absorb the Palestinian refugees.
The biggest problem is the continual poisoning of young and ignorant palestinians through preachings of hatred toward the Jews.
Comment by jprairie | December 10, 2007
Quite a remarkable analysis! A regurgitation of Islamic propaganda that essentially blames the Jews for the world’s problems. I suggest Mr Al-Akhras reads the ‘Open Letter to Tony Blair From the Silenced Majority’, by John Campbell, on this very site, in order to get a more realistic perspective on the so-called ‘Palestinian issue’.
The 1.5 billion Muslims did not develop a deep hostility to the Jews as a result of the creation of the state of Israel. The hostility towards the Jews is found in the Koran itself. It is part of the Islamic mentality.
Here are some examples:
The peoples having the strongest enmity to Muslims are the “Jews and Pagans.” [5:85 – references to A. Yusuf Ali’s translation of the Holy Koran]
“We said to them [the Jews – who transgressed in the matter of the Sabbath] ‘Be ye apes, Despised and rejected’.” [2:65 & 7:166]
“Miserable is the price For which they [the Jews] have sold Their souls, in that They deny (the revelation) Which God has sent down, in insolent envy that God Of His Grace should send it To any of His servants He pleases: Thus have they drawn On themselves Wrath upon Wrath. And humiliating is the punishment Of those who reject Faith.” [2:90]
“You will find them [the Jews], Of all people, most greedy Of Life, - even more than the idolaters.” [2:96]
“Taste ye [the Jews] the penalty of the Scorching Fire!” for saying “Truly, God is indignant and we are rich” and for “slaying the Prophets” [3:181]
“.. With a twist of their [the Jews’] tongues And a slander of Faith. If only they had said: ‘We hear and we obey’; And ‘Do hear’; And ‘Do look at us’: It would have been better For them, and more proper; But God hath cursed them [the Jews] For their Unbelief; and but a few Of them will believe.” [4:46]
There are many more such verses in the Koran hostile to the Jews. But there are also plenty that strike at the heart of Christianity. Here are just a few:
“[T]he Christians [went wrong] in raising Jesus the Apostle to equality with God”. The Koran goes on to deny the Crucifixion, [4:157] declare that Christ is not God and it is blasphemy to claim such [5:19], and likewise it is blasphemous to proclaim the Holy Trinity. [5:76] For good measure the Koran calls “God’s curse” on those who “Call Christ the Son of God”. [9:30]
And this is what the Koran has to say about the “deluded” People of the Book [Jews and Christians]: Fight those who do not “acknowledge the Religion Of Truth [ie Islam], (even if they are) of the People of the Book (ie Christians and Jews), Until they pay the Jizha [a kind of compensation] With willing submission, And feel themselves subdued.” [9:29]
Verses 20 and 38 of Surah (chapter) 9 exhort “those who believe” to fight with their goods “and their persons” in Gods [ie Islam’s] cause. Verse 38 admonishes those who hesitate to sacrifice their lives when “asked [by their spiritual leader] to go forth in the cause of God” because “little is the comfort of this life, as compared With the Hereafter.”
“Soon shall we cast terror Into the hearts of the Unbelievers, For that they joined companions With God, for which He had sent No authority: their abode Will be the fire: and evil Is the home of the wrongdoers!” [3:151]
At first blush, it would seem odd that Islam, which draws so heavily on the Old and New Testaments, would be so hostile to Jews and Christians. Not so when we remember that these verses were added to the Koran after Mohammed was rejected as a prophet by the Jews and Christians. And a further verse, added after Mohammed was rejected by the Jews, claims that the Jews “Heard the Word of God, And perverted it knowingly After they [the Jews] understood it.” [2:75] The Commentary to Surah 2 Verses 40 – 86 is more blunt. It claims that the Jews “falsified Scripture.” [C26]
Now, the one verse we hear quoted most often by Muslim scholars, and also Islamic apologists, to ‘demonstrate’ that Islam is not inherently hostile to the Jews is verse 62 of Sūra 2 [see also 5:72]. It says this: “Those who believe in the Koran, and those who follow the Jewish Scriptures, and the Christians and Sabians, Any who believe in God and the Last Day, and work righteousness, shall have their reward with their Lord: on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve.”
I am always amazed at how Muslims and their apologists can refer to this verse with a straight face when they claim it shows that Islam accepts Judaism and Christianity as on a par with Islam – as just a different route to the same end.
Because the very next verses refer again to the Covenant on “the towering height of Mount Sinai” which the Jews “turned back” on. It then says this: “And well ye knew those amongst you who transgressed in the matter of the Sabbath: We said to them: ‘Be ye apes, Despised and rejected’. So We made it an example to their own time and to their posterity, and a lesson to those who fear God.” [2:65-66. A. Yusuf Ali’s note 79 to the “apes” verse says this – The punishment would be, not for the breach of the Sabbath in itself (by the Jews), but for their contumacious defiance of the law.]
There is a great deal more invective against the Jews and Christians in the Koran. Take this for example. “And when there comes to them a Book from God [the Koran], confirming what is with them, … when there comes to them that which they should have recognised, they refused to believe in it but the curse of God is on those without faith. Miserable is the price for which they have sold their souls, in that they dent (the revelation) which God hath sent down, in insolent envy that God in His grace should send it to any of His servants He pleases.” [2:89-90. A. Yusuf Ali’s Note (note 95) to these verses says this: “Racial arrogance made the Jews averse to the reception of Truth when it came through a servant of God, not of their own race.”]
So what does the Koran mean when it says that Jews and Christians “shall have their reward with the Lord”?
As any Muslim will tell us, the Commentaries say that it means that those Jews who obeyed the true Message from God would be ‘saved’. But by this is meant the Scriptures as ‘corrected’ by God through Mohammed, not the Scriptures which the Jews falsified because, having “heard the Word of God, [a party of Jews] perverted it knowingly after they understood it.” [2:75]
So the ‘genesis’ of the current (and past) ‘divide’ between the Western world and Islam is not the state of Israel – it is the contempt and hatred of everyone and everything that does not conform to Islamic teaching as espoused in the Koran.
If Israel had never come into being there would still exist the present conflict between Islam and the West. So please, stop blaming the Jews for the world’s problems – it has become a tired and worn out cliché.
Joseph BH McMillan
http://www.freedomvrights.com
Comment by Joseph BH McMillan | December 11, 2007
>The number one grievance for the 1.5 billion Muslims around the world is the lack of just resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
No. It's not. For self declared spokespeople it is.
>The world is playing a dangerous game against the Palestinians.
No. Arab goverments (and a Persian one) are the one playing a game. They have been using the "issue" to deflect critisim from themselves.
>Ahmad Al-Akhras, PhD., is the Vice Chair of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. His parents were forced out of Palestine at a very young age.
Forced from Palestine Mandate? Or Israel or Jordan?
CAIR speaks for its paymasters. Not Muslims.
Comment by Leigh | December 11, 2007
There's a saying: "If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you do not have the facts on your side, pound the table". We're seeing this demonstrated here in CAIR's anti-Israel propaganda. Hardly surprising given the organization's history of nothing but the same. Jailing people only appears to be an egregious injustice when one ignores the reason for jailing people - that they are guilty of crimes. Similarly, building a dividing wall only appears to be an egregious injustice if one refuses to acknowledge the justification for it - protection from murdering suicide bombers and rocket attacks. "Occupying" other people's land only appears to be an egregious injustice when one falsely presumes that the inhabitants of the land have some inherent right to it in the first place. That is why, if you want to propagate those falsehoods, you must prevent anyone from observing the actual facts. You must pound the table.
Comment by Patrick Mulligan | December 14, 2007
Well said, Patrick. As the philosopher Alf Ross said, “invoking justice [in support of an argument]is the same thing as banging on the table.”
Joseph BH McMillan
http://www.freedomvrights.com
Comment by Joseph BH McMillan | December 15, 2007