In looking for the next participant in the revolutions, it dawned on me that little attention had been given to one of the most tension-ridden regions in the world — Israel and Palestine.
According to a report by BBC News Online, 10 Palestinians have been killed in the past week alone. Militants in Gaza have retorted to Israel’s numerous bomb raids with unceasing fire.
It is thought to be one of the most violent encounters since Operation Cast Lead two years ago, in which 1,300 Palestinian lives were lost and only 13 Israeli, BBC News Online reported.
The Palestinians offered a cease-fire to the occupation on Saturday, in hopes of preventing any further deaths.
The oppression under the Israeli regime is tangible, and evidence as to why they deserve to be freed from Zionist chains is plentiful. Treated as subordinates, they are corralled to impoverished areas of the region and are forced to answer to Israeli forces on a daily basis to merely take part in day-to-day activities.
The interminable suppression under Israelis is evidential of the differences that the Palestinians must address under their sovereign. While the rebels in Libya, Egypt and Tunisia are assembling against rulers that have interests similar to their own, Palestine must amass against the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Although this is a weird statement to accept, by comparing Palestinians with Egyptians, it becomes apparent that former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak would be a better-suited rival for the Islamists than a Zionist.
Not only does the strife encountered by the Palestinians stem from the treatment they receive from Israel, but also varying political parties within their own religious sect.
Two prominent parties under the Palestinian umbrella reside in that region. The ongoing negotiations to resolve the conflict have to take into account the Israeli and Palestinian factions, as well as the Hamas and Fatah parties.
Their complexity is their detriment.
The Fatah can be roughly compared to a political faction that desires an extreme change in the current administration, while the Hamas are an ages-old offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.
At a lecture mean at the Tempe campus meant to shed light on the conflict Wednesday, the fissures that divide the Hamas and Fatah were evident in heated discussions, marred with angry requests for the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s (PLO) Ambassador Maen Rashid Areikat, Chief Representative of the PLO U.S. Delegation, to resign.
The hatred is deep-rooted; neither religious group can relent in their claims that the Holy Lands belong to them alone.
As for the desires to join a secular world, the population of Palestinians has a goal similar to many Islamists throughout the region, and yet rifts that cover an entire spectrum defeat them.
It’s almost a double wager of sorts. The Palestinians have double the work, must invest double the effort and will revel in the same victories that the Middle East and Africa exults in.
A disheartening factor, it is easily surmised why the struggle has floated along in tumult for the past 60 years. It will still be many years until the situation is resolved, but the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is dying a slow and painful death.
Reach Brittany at bemorri1@asu.edu
