Salim Nazzal

The American sponsored negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis has not so far generated any serious hope for Palestinians looking forward to ridding themselves of the last occupation in history. The reason for this pessimism is that Palestinians have lost hope after endless negotiations which began in Madrid 1990 and nothing of these negotiations indicated a happy ending of the Zionist occupation. Even while negotiations were going on Israel has continued its illegal settlement activities in which they steal more Palestinian land and Palestinian water sources. This policy is clearly aiming at the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homes.

Their policy for this ethnic cleansing has been intensified through the ultra-right Israeli government, which aims to destroy any existence of any non-Jewish culture in Palestine. Many observers view this government as a reflection of the socio political changes, which took place after the arrival of Russian Jews to the Zionist state, after the fall of the soviet regime in 1990. These immigrants, most of who were members in the soviet brutal state have come from a culture that has no respect to human rights, which explains the brutality of this group.

The former American president Bill Clinton notes that Russian immigrants are the real obstacle for peace in the region. Not a surprise when it was the Russian immigrant Jews who established “Israel Beituna” an ultra-right group that has contributed much in the spreading of the racist culture in the state of Israel.

Therefore the problem in the state of Israel is not only in the lack of a political class, which believes in peaceful solutions, but of a culture based on a philosophy of violence, and the ideology of contempt towards Palestinians and Arabs .

This culture is well expressed by a central Israeli Rabbi who wished that the Palestinians would disappear by a plague, which reminded us with Isaac Rabin, the man who ethnic cleansed two Palestinian cities, the lod and the Ramle in 1948, and wished to see Gaza drowning in the sea.

This view acquires its power from the fact that Israel taught in schools and the army all of which produces a culture that goes against peace in the region. All this has contributed in the consolidating of the right wing culture and the retreat of the pro peace culture in the Israeli society. At the same time the international society which mobilized troops to push Iraq from Kuwait is paralyzed when it comes to the state of Israel if not to say that it takes the side of the Israeli occupant.

After 62 years of enforcing the Zionist project in Palestine, Israel is unable to understand that Palestine lies in the heart of the Arab region. The ghetto culture that Zionist Jews brought with them from east Europe does not work in Palestine. History has provided us with several types of states, from the city state in the antique times, to the modern state. But we do not have one single example in history of a ghetto state.

One cannot built peace without peace believers, in the same way one cannot built democracy in the absence of democracy believers. This indeed raises the question about the Israeli culture, and its capacity to integrate into the region and to accept the logic of peace instead of the logic of war.

Therefore the possibility of a future peace in the region is much linked to the Zionist choice to live in a ghetto state while oppressing the native Palestinians or to recognize the Palestinian rights which is the only way that opens the possibility for real peace in the region.

The Israeli verbal talk about peace while stealing Palestinian land has become something the world is aware of. Israel cannot play any longer on a world conscious of the fact that occupying Palestine is the reason for all the wars that took place in the last seven decades and also the reason of much of the current East West tension.

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Dr. Salim Nazzal is a Palestinian-Norwegian historian in the Middle East, who has written extensively on social and political issues in the region.