Bullets and tear gas for Palestinians

JEAN ANTOINE-DUNNE

THE PAST week was one of the worst in history for the Palestinian people. It has perhaps, in fact, been the most traumatic, since for those demonstrating at the border fence in Gaza, the week has marked a deathblow to their claims for repatriation.

Following President Trump’s formal opening of the American Embassy in Jerusalem last week as a sign of apparent approval of the city as the capital of Israel, Palestinians in Gaza protested with slingshots and stones. Their attitude was simple in the face of an instant retaliation by the Israeli government and troops with bullets and tear gas. For them there is nothing to lose.

Several European states, including France and Ireland, have protested what is seen to be an outrage by Israeli troops and have called their respective American ambassadors to account. But America’s attitude remains completely in tune with Israel. The state has a right to protect its borders and there was restraint on the part of Israeli troops.

That over 60 people died because Israeli troops used live ammunition and there was no equivalence in terms of danger in the demonstration appears to be irrelevant to both President Trump and his advisers. That thousands were injured at the boundary fence in what is estimated to be the worst catastrophe in Gaza since the 2014 war with Israel when over 2,000 Palestinians were killed, is also apparently irrelevant.

In retrospect it seems extraordinary that any group of people in 1948 could have been forced to flee their land and their homes to right the wrong of another group of people. In the wake of the holocaust and the horror and deaths faced by Jewish people, I imagine that the conscience of the world was in dire need of healing.

There seems to be no possibility of an end to hostilities and further killings since both sides see their cause as right. And there are indeed two sides. This is a situation that is all about how we create narratives about our right of possession. There are different versions of the story about why Palestinians fled and abandoned their homes and land in 1948 at the establishment of the new Israeli state on the day that Palestinians call the “catastrophe.”

In one version of history, the leaders of the Palestinian people advised that the elderly and the young and women should be taken from their homes to protect them after the establishment of the new Israeli state. But many Palestinians were also evicted and forced to flee. Since then those who remained have become powerless in what was once their homeland. Land once owned by absent Palestinians has been taken possession of through legislation so there appears to be little possibility that even were Palestinian refugees to return, as they demand as right, that they would have anything.

Both sides feel they have a legitimate claim. There is no disputing in my mind, however, that the Palestinians have been rendered homeless and that they have a claim to repossession. Experts tell us that reinstating the Palestinians would lead to even greater problems. Is it possible that the approximately five million Jews now resident in Israel could live harmoniously with an influx of perhaps five million Palestinians? Would there be another exodus?

Apart from the distress that observers might feel as this situation continues, the war between Israel and Palestine remains one that raises questions of how to resolve an issue that is fundamentally about how one perceives the past. And as I think about this it becomes even more apparent that the recurring question of our time is simple. How do we put ourselves in the place of another and see two sides rather than with one myopic eye?

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"Bullets and tear gas for Palestinians"

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