The Mutual Dehumanization Of Occupation
NEW YORK, Feb. 28 (UPI) — I have been following and writing about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for more than two decades. 
I have never been more saddened and enraged about the senseless and tragic waste of human life and for what? This is not a rhetorical question because try as they may to change the ultimate outcome Israel and the Palestinians will fail. The only viable solution is staring them in the face–a two-state solution, with Israel and a Palestinian state, to be established on the West Bank and Gaza, coexisting peacefully side-by-side. The Israelis and the Palestinians are simply stuck with one another. They can either live in peace and dignity or slug it out until they lose what is left of their humanity.
Every human being with a conscience must appeal to the Israelis and the Palestinian people: you have paid dearly for past mistakes; it is time for soul searching, time to face the inescapable truth. The Israelis must remember that whether the Palestinians are wrong or right, people under occupation are duty-bound to resist, deny and defy occupation. Since the Roman Empire the indigenous people of Palestine have lived under occupation. For the past 500 years the Palestinians have been ruled respectively by the Turks, the British, the Jordanian-Egyptians and now the Israelis. They have not known a single day without foreign occupation. They have been used and abused by their own brethren–the Arab states. They have seen and lived through more than their share of misery, pain and despair. Nothing will compel them to succumb to more of the same. There is no dignity in occupation, no honor in submission, and no hope for a better tomorrow.
Israel was not created to rule other people's against their will. Israel was created to offer a home, a refuge to a shattered Jewry in the wake of the Holocaust. Israel was established so that the Jews, after a millennium of dispersion, pogroms, expulsion and genocide, could become like any other nation, with a home of their own where they can offer hospitality and even a light for other nations. Instead, the occupation is creating a new Israeli character–distrustful, cynical, suspicious and self-absorbed. However justified, the occupation started a process of dehumanization. The brave Israeli soldiers trained to defend their homeland from outside enemies have been sent in the name of national security to fight children in the streets and to destroy the homes of defenseless parents in front of their offspring. These proud Israeli soldiers subject whole communities to humiliating search and seizure operations while imposing debilitating restrictions on the movement of goods and people.
Obsessed with the settlements' policy, successive Israeli governments have lost sight of the very meaning and purpose of Israel's existence. The redemption of the Israeli people cannot go hand-in-hand with occupation, and the majority of the settlements in the West Bank constitute an occupation. Israel can fulfill its promise only when it can live in harmony with the Palestinians who inhabit the same land. Those Israelis who still dream of greater Israel encompassing half (or more) of the West Bank will end up burying their dead and their dreams in no-man's-land. Israel must not adopt policies premised on the assumption that the Palestinians will never settle for only the West Bank and Gaza. 
These policies have been self-defeating. They have nurtured a mentality of national siege. And they have played into the hands of Israeli right-wing extremists who in their shortsightedness and selfishness have subjected the new Jewish commonwealth to a terrible and tragic conflict with all its dehumanizing consequences. A new generation of Palestinians have been condemned to live a life of shattered dreams and dismay, a life of anxiety and despair. Unforgiving, they are growing up resentful, consumed with even deeper hatred and malice. They will defy anything that stands in their way and rebel against the reality they have been thrust into, because they do not understand why it must come to this. Is it any wonder, then, that 18 months of mindless violence has seen hatred replace amity, mistrust do away with cooperation, revenge take over sanity and reason eclipsed by blind fanaticism?
The Palestinians themselves have caused most of their own troubles. The Palestinian leaders and the rulers of the Arab states stand accused of committing a tragic mistake by perpetuating the plight of the Palestinian people and leading them astray. They are guilty of dehumanizing their own people because they continue to pursue blind-sighted policies that have led to nothing but more pain and suffering. The Palestinian leadership must sooner than later come to grips with the reality of Israel. They must understand that their legitimate claim to statehood and economic prosperity cannot be achieved at Israel's expense. Israel is here to stay. Israel is anchored in the Middle East, and Israeli Jews are not going anywhere else. Ten thousand suicide bombers will not budge a single Israeli from a single inch of territory beyond the 1967 lines. For years the Palestinian leaders have been cynically claiming that they are willing to accept only 23% of Palestine (the West Bank and Gaza), but then they have turned around and demanded the repatriation of all Palestinian refugees (more than 3 million) to their original homes inside Israel itself. Did they think they could trick Israel into committing political suicide by demographic means? There will be compensation for the Palestinian refugees, but no mass repatriation. The sooner the Palestinian Authority publicly accepts this fact of life and acts on it, the sooner and the closer will it come to a permanent and dignified solution.
No buffer zones and no separation, no incarceration or even the expulsion of the Palestinians will provide the Israelis with the security for which they wish. Only when the occupation ends can Israel's legitimate security needs be realized. Indeed, only then, can Israel walk the high moral ground and defend itself with all of its might if it must. The Palestinians, especially the extremist right or left such as Hamas, Jihad or the Front for the Liberation of Palestine, will then have a choice– to live with the Israelis in peace or suffer the wrath of the Israeli military which will then fight for the survival of the state. No military countermeasure or tool will be spared to destroy those who are bent on usurping Israel's right to live in peace. Besides, the new leaders of the Palestine state and the Palestinian people will have the highest stakes in preventing extremist Palestinians from undermining Israel's security. They will have too much to lose knowing that no Palestinian nation will ever rise on Israel's ruins.
Fate has it that Israelis and Palestinians must now coexist. Yes, many Israelis still dream of a greater Israel, and many Palestinians dream of a state occupying all of Palestine. These are not dreams, but dangerous illusions. If pursued, they will leave nothing behind but ashes. They must now be replaced with new dreams–dreams of mutual national redemption, the core of which must be two states coexisting in a peace of reconciliation. Such a peace will restore their national dignity and mitigate over time the mutual dehumanization they have inflicted on one another. If, as reported, the Arab states led by Saudi Arabia will offer Israel a comprehensive, secure and lasting peace with the Arab world in exchange for the return of territories captured in 1967, with some minor mutually agreed upon territorial adjustment, the Israeli leaders owe it to every man, woman, child and soldier to accept. Here in lies the future and the fulfilment of biblical prophecy of the ingathering of Jews living in peace and harmony in their ancient homeland side-by-side their cousins, the children of Abraham.