After a couple of hours, we had to leave for the Arab League, which is kind of like the Arab version of the United Nations. There, we met a representative who discussed a couple of issues involving the Arab nations. One of the main issues we talked about the Arab-Israeli conflict. Before I start talking about what he said, I just want to make it clear that I did not always clearly hear what he was saying. Even though he was speaking into his microphone, I had a hard time understanding what he was saying because I didn’t feel he was loud enough and also because his accent kind of threw me off. So I just want it to be known that I may have misheard what he said—I’m just going to talk about what I thought he said. In terms of negotiating over Gaza, he said that if Israel was really serious about the negotiating over eventually returning Gaza, they wouldn’t have already hired contractors to start building on it while negotiations are taking place because that means that they don’t negotiate on faith and don’t plan on returning the land. He also mentioned that while Palestinians are at the negotiating table, they Israelis divide up the land. Therefore, because Israelis have no faith in their negotiations, the Arabs don’t fear there will be any progress.
One of my classmates asked about Hamas and he answered that the situation with Hamaas is complicated because of something that happened with the 2006 election (again, I couldn’t hear everything he was saying). Some Islamic people are willing to accept Islam as Hamas does, but others are not as comfortable with this level of Islam. It seems that Hamas is arguing for resistance and negotiations in the war on Gaza, but they don’t know where to go because they see that resistance is not working and negotiating is not working. He mentioned that the main question of debate is, “Whose side is time on?” There are those who talk on the side of the demographic bomb and these are the ones who say that Israel should ask more people to come to Israel so that they can have greater demographic growth than Palestinians as the Israelis expel the Palestinians. Then, he mentioned the significance of the wall put up the Israelis. The wall tells the Israelis and the rest of the world, and I quote him, “This is the land that they want and the rest can go to hell.” This wall lets Israel keep as much land as they want, but what Israel doesn’t recognize is that Palestine will either want Israel to abide by their 1967 agreement or if they want all the land then they should take all the people, too.
I thought that this last point that he made was the most important one. If Israel really just wants all the land to put under their name for religious reasons, then they can have all the land in their name. All they have to do is accept the Palestinians, not even as Muslims, but just as human beings and treat them as such. I feel that if Israel wanted to take over all the land and their sole reason was because they believed the land is holy for them, then they should have no problem taking in the Palestinians and treating them as part of their country. But in my opinion, this is not what Israel wants, and so it will never do this. They simply want to slowly but surely wipe out the Palestinians in a very “legitimate” and systematic way, similarly to the way white Americans systematically wiped out the Native Americans.
From the viewpoint of his job, he also mentioned that if Israel established good relations with Palestine, it would be able to establish better diplomatic relations with 56 other countries. When one of my classmates asked why people perceive the Arab League to be so inefficient, he answered that the Arab League is only one tool that can help resolve issues, but it can’t do it all by itself and it shouldn’t be blamed for being ineffective because even though there are failures, there are also successes. I am very much in agreement with his last point. One organization cannot be expected to solve such a serious and long-lasting issue on its own—it takes much more effort.
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