No Justice No Peace in Palestine

My wife and I grew up across the lines between Israel and Gaza. For us to watch the growing anger and frustration between blood kindred, who as Jews, Christians, and Muslims worship the same God, trace their roots to Abraham, and share a love for this sacred land, has been heartbreaking. The prophets we revere - Isaiah (58:6-12), Jeremiah (7:3-7), and Micah (6:8) - call us to live together with justice, mercy, and humility before God. We must find the way to do so, wherever the lines fall.

Over 1250 people have died over the three week War and thousands more are injured and dying in Gaza. Israel’s attack on this besieged population has compounded what was already a humanitarian crisis. Gaza has endured what Desmond Tutu has called the equivalent of apartheid, even before this onslaught.

People are now living without food, medicine, clean water, electricity, and heat in Gaza, utterly dependent on aid. Hospitals are overwhelmed. Mothers and their traumatized children are walking through the rubble of their devastated homes and city to piece together their lives. The United Nations estimates that 90,000 people were displaced in the War. Many have little to go back to, or money to buy what they now need to survive.

I was struck by this Letter in the Sydney Morning Herald January 17: "Nearly 70 years ago, in a small eastern European city, an oppressed and occupied people were under siege, living under atrocious and brutal conditions, lacking food, medicine, electricity, water, and slowly being strangled in the hope they would just disappear. Warsaw Ghetto 1941 - Gaza 2008. Israel, you are a disgrace. - Zaid Khan.”

Cutting words, but sadly fitting. Sir Gerald Kaufmann, a Jewish Member of British Parliament echoed the same sentiments ( click here to watch). This is a demoralizing realization for Jews who see in the faces of Palestinians, images of themselves 68 years ago.

I understand Israel’s fears of rockets; I experienced them myself in Israel in 1967 and 1973. But despite our fears we must realize that violence will solve nothing - guns, missiles, rockets, bombs, and tanks do not settle injustices. They only add grief and anger to the festering grievances in peoples’ minds, and fuel to the fires.

Of the 1.5 million people in Gaza (72 percent are women and children, 47 percent are under the age of 14), most just want to live a peaceful and productive life. They have been caught between Israel’s increasingly oppressive occupation and a leadership over whose militancy they realistically have no control.

Palestinians have lived for 60 years with injustices that were foisted upon them in the wake of a holocaust they had no part in creating and have been demonized as a people for their efforts to reclaim the homes and lands they lost. Tragically, resorts to violence have led to more violence. It is time to resolve these injustices, difficult and painful as that will be. Jews are not the only victims of history in this sad state of affairs. Unfortunately, Palestinians are victims too.

Our unilateral sympathies for Israel have served neither party to forge a just and meaningful peace. This peace cannot be achieved as a zero-sum game, where one wins at the expense of the other. Everyone deserves the terms of justice – apart from that, there is no justice, and there will be no peace.

Israel's war on Lebanon in 2006 was a horrific tragedy that only consolidated Israel’s extremist adversaries. Analysts at Israel’s highly-regarded Reut Institute responded with an assessment concluding Israel’s national security strategy was in crisis, calling for political rather than military action. It is unconscionable that this has just been repeated in Gaza. It is time to address the root causes of this conflict through dialogue. This is in Israel's interests, Palestinians' interests, and America's interests, to engage these issues that also lie at the heart of our “War on Terror.”

Playing blame games with each other is not helpful. We must address these injustices head-on, and recognize our own culpabilities in them, if we are to diffuse them. The human spirit, as Desmond Tutu has said, does not tolerate injustice - they cannot coexist in peace.

David Kreider lived in Israel from 1953-1974; his wife Mary Ann lived in Gaza 1956-1974. David is completing an MA in Peacebuilding and Conflict Transformation at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. He can be reached at kreiderart@gmail.com.