Join us in Appleton Tower LT2, Edinburgh University, Wednesday 22nd February, 7pm
We are hosting a panel discussion with three young Palestinian activists:
Aghsan Barghouti
Aghsan is a coordinator with Stop the Wall, and active in the independent Palestinian youth movement, campaigning around BDS and against normalisation
Wassim Ghantous
Wassim is from Haifa and active with many Palestinian youth movements inside 1948 Palestine. He is currently living in Belgium, where he is active with a number of NGO’s and campaign groups working on BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions)
Murad Jadallah
Murad is a young Palestinian activist working with Addameer, the Palestinian Prisoner Human Rights and Support Association
Ray, I agree with most of what you have to say.The Palestinian/Israeli cicflont, in particular, along with many other cicflonts around the world, call for reason and common sense to trump ideology. People believe in a whole lot of things. People’s notions of justice differ widely. Jews can argue their rights, and Arabs can argue theirs. Everyone has excellent arguments, God bless them all.But the time is quickly appoaching when the best argument will be: What is the best way of sustaining ourselves as a species? In other words: What is likely to work?The one state solution may sound good on paper, but as you suggest, it will never happen, and if it does, it will never work. Jews will not allow it because Jews have gone through the hellhole of the Holocaust, and they are not about to take an existential risk by losing their state. Whether or not this position is just, is not the point. It is reality.And Palestinians, who feel disenfranchised by the Jews, are not about to live in harmony with the very same people who they feel cheated them out of their homes and their land. Thinking otherwise is make-believe.If you want justice, don’t waste your time on senseless blather. Look for what works. What is likely to work would be something along these lines:A Palestinian State with East Jerusalem as its capitol.Palestinian control of Muslim holy sites.Limited reunification on humanitarians grounds, but compensation for most of the refugees, who would live in Palestine.Dismantlement of most of the settlments, but land swaps for a few.Heavy duty investment by Israel and the West in the Palestinian economy, financed in part with Arab money from the Saudis, etc.Heavy duty public diplomacy to condition people for the possibility of peace: a media campaign, a student exchance, a cultural exchange, an expanded version of the peace corp, international conferences, a program to empower women, etc.Such an outcome may not constitue a theoretical justice as perceived by the extremists, but it will be a defacto justice if it brings quality of life to the vast majority of Palestinians.It is time, with regard to this issue, and so many others, to get off our high horse, and to come down to reality. We owe it to ourselves to let go of some of our beliefs in favor of what makes sense. A failure to come to terms with reality is an insult to everything we think we believe in. In the final analysis, this is a real world, as created by our Maker, and He has little patience with people who care not to see things as they are.