How a Pro-Palestinian American Reporter Changed His Views on Israel and the Conflict

[Ken Burch]

20. Israel as a country has humanity, as do ordinary Palestinians on a person-to-person basis.

Netanyahu as an individual has no humanity. If he did, he would not have written two books opposing the very concept of a Palestinian state. To oppose a Palestinian state is to oppose ever achieving peace. And it makes perfect political sense for Netanyahu to oppose peace, because the Likud party and the rest of the Israeli Right will instantly vanish if peace is achieved.

There are terrible Palestinian leaders and good Palestinians. There are terrible Israeli leaders and good, decent, salt-of-the-earth Israelis.

Immiserating the people of either country can't ever make anything better.

And it's impossible to get any peace deal to hold if there's an insistence on humiliating the Palestinian side for past bad choices. Any outcome that can be painted as "Israel wins-Palestine loses", will cause any Palestinian leadership that agrees to such a deal to be overthrown by an alternative and more intransigent leadership. When that happens, everyone is back where they started from.

There needs to be peace without anyone being humbled, with face saved on both sides.

And remember, Palestinians have suffered far more deeply in this conflict than Israelis. For the Israeli side, it's mainly been inconvenience. For Palestinians, it's been collective punishment, collective harassment on a daily basis such as checkpoints that make a thirty-mile drive WITHIN Palestine take eight hours, land confiscation, theft of the olive and citrus groves, limited access to water, absurd acts of retribution like the destruction of NGO-built solar panels just because the Occupation authorities hadn't approved of them(as if alternative energy could be weaponized). Is it that hard for you to understand that these people have some valid reasons for anger and resistance, even if they haven't always chosen the wisest tactics?

And are you totally unaware of the fact that there have always been forces in Israeli politics trying to take the West Bank, thus giving Palestinians good reason to trust Israeli willingness to actually let Palestinians have a state at all?

It's not as simple as saying "they'd have what they wanted if only they'd just done this and that and that one other thing".