In Dan Schuster’s recent column (The Roadblock to Peace, 04/06/2005), he states that the majority of Israelis hold that the Israeli occupation of Palestine is a necessity as a means to achieve a two-state solution. Occupation is defined as invasion, conquest and control of a nation or territory by foreign armed forces. I’m not sure what kind of society we live in where that kind of activity is considered permissible, let alone necessary. The occupation has resulted in the loss of millions of lives, and violence cannot be considered necessary to achieve the peaceful two-state solution that the Israeli government claims to be striving for.

Schuster also claims that the safety of Israelis must be guaranteed and that the security fence, while controversial, has been successful in that it reduced Palestinian “attacks” by 90 percent. What needs to be realized is that Palestinians see these attacks as being their only method of defense against their occupiers. How badly beaten down does one have to be to resort to giving up his life to fight his occupiers? The checkpoints, roadblocks, shootings, aerial bombardments, creation of settlements, land confiscations, assassinations, house demolitions, destruction of olive groves and the imprisonment of entire Palestinian neighborhoods are part of what Palestinians have to endure on a daily basis. To imply that the violence only comes from the Palestinian side, or that Palestinian safety is a non-issue, is an extreme misconstruction of reality. On the scale of justice, the crimes aforementioned are far greater, in duration and number, than the suicide bombings which first took place in the past 10 years and have occurred regularly in the past four years. And while the “security fence” has supposedly decreased the “attacks,” it has also reduced what little income Palestinian workers earn by keeping them from their jobs, and has kept students from achieving an education.

Schuster cites a poll which reports that 66 percent of Palestinians support suicide bombing, and 51 percent favor the goal of the intifada as “liberating all of historic Palestine.” As I mentioned before, these bombings are seen as a defense method. This is clearly embodied in the fact that the first suicide bombing was in 1994, 27 years after the start of the occupation — 27 years of nonviolent resistance constantly being met by violence from the Israeli military. As for the second statistic, the word “liberating” alone should tell of the situation that plagues the occupied territories. Liberation is only needed when an occupier is enforcing a military government upon a state and oppressing its citizens. So instead of taking the percentage to mean Palestinians support replacing the Jewish state for a Palestinian one over a two-state solution, it can be taken as a desire to live in a free society, inclusive of all who live there, rather than the militarized, exclusive one they are subjected to today.

If the goal of the Six Day War was to eradicate the Jewish presence in the Middle East, the goal of the current 57-year occupation is the eradication of Palestinians in Palestine. Former Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion stated in May 1948, to the General Staff: “We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population.” The influential Israeli Rabbi Ovadia Yosef exclaimed during a sermon preceding the 2001 Passover holiday: “May the Holy Name visit retribution on the Arab heads, and cause their seed to be lost, and annihilate them.” He added: “It is forbidden to have pity on them. We must give them missiles with relish, annihilate them. Evil ones, damnable ones.” (Former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir has stated that there is no such thing as a Palestinian.). Sharon can be quoted as saying: “It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism, colonialization or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands.”

I urge Schuster to take his own advice and examine the situation clearly before pointing the finger at Palestinians. It is not as black and white as he makes it out to be.

Abdelfadeel is a LSA junior.