Significant barriers to Middle East peace
Re: How to bring peace to Palestine — Dec. 28
Mike Fegelman and Philip Carl Salzman are quite right to cite Palestinian extremism and intransigence as significant barriers to Middle East peace.
Yet the casual reader might infer from their articles that Israel has done everything it can to reduce tensions and effect positive change. Neither mentions some very real steps it can take to promote peace:
First, it could cease building illegal settlements on the Palestinian land it occupies. Today, nearly 800,000 settlers live on these settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, contrary to international law. Settlements are strategically placed to control aquifers, providing settlers with four times the amount of available water than Palestinians in occupied areas. The settlement roads (where Palestinian traffic is prohibited) cut off Palestinian communities from one another, separate farmers from their land, and workers from their livelihoods.
Second, Israel could revise its housing demolition policy in occupied territory. Israelis grant very few building permits to Palestinians. When, for instance, a young family wants to start a home and are refused a permit, they often risk building without one. Israeli officials learning of this will send written warning of demolition. Often demolitions are carried out quickly, in the middle of the night with only an hour’s notice to vacate. The homeowner is then billed (about $30,000) to cover the cost of the demolition.
Some demolitions are done to make way for settlements, and some to stifle resistance. Some 48,000 Palestinian homes have been demolished in this way since 1967. In 2016 alone, more than 1,400 Palestinians were displaced by demolition: more than 700 of them minors.
Third, it could acknowledge that the security barrier, built during the second intefadeh, cuts families off from one another, and creates significant economic hardship. Not to mention the number of Palestinian homes and farms expropriated and destroyed to build it.
My point for Messers Fegelman and Salzman is this: in the numbingly complex tangle of the Middle East, surely honest reporting begins with an acknowledgement that neither side is completely right, or completely wrong. Mike Tennant Kitchener