The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict from this Cuban’s Perspective

By Vicente Antonio de Castro

“Those old people who call upon youth to be violent, because they can’t, are they worst kind of people.” Fernando Savater.

HAVANA TIMES – There isn’t anyone in the world that understands the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, not even the Talmud’s wisdom and the Quran’s inspiration can shed any light on who is right and who is wrong (that is if we accept that a holy book has ever been able to shed light on anything).

At this point in time, it doesn’t matter whether Israelis are “entitled” to the space they occupy or not, whether the Palestinian people are attacking them or defending themselves. National identity or religions and their fanatics don’t matter, none of this matters. At least none of this matters to me when there is so much real suffering happening today, suffering in blood being shed and bones piling up, suffering in orphans and widows’ tears, suffering in mothers’ cries when they have to bury their children’s bodies in pieces.

Enough of International Law appeals already, which is a myth that is only respected when it suits those involved and which nobody abides by when it doesn’t. Enough of using the United Nations scarecrow to whip one side and then the other. Enough of finding reasons to continue the resistance!

There is only one Law in international politics, the law of strength and interests. Both sides have interests, but only one of them has strength. Give them the right then, the right to conquer, the right to impose themselves, the right to do what the other side without strength can’t, and therefore the right to stop the conflict. Give them everything, even if it isn’t just.

Is it so hard to surrender when there isn’t the slightest chance that you can win?

How many young Palestinians have to set themselves alight before the old people who govern them stop these blazing and inflammatory cries for resistance?

How much inconvenience and routine shortages, which have lethal consequences a lot of the time, must the Palestinian people endure until these leaders who nobody has elected, give in?

British imperialism isn’t to blame for today’s conflict, it isn’t Zionism’s fault, it isn’t Pan-Arabism’s fault. This conflict is the responsibility of the 20th century and the incomplete evolution of international politics.

Trying to end barbaric acts with international theoretical laws is just irresponsible, even more so when neither party needs an excuse to blow up the other, as these deaths don’t seem to cause them any pain.

Three hundred years ago, a conflict of this kinds would have ended in 10 days as a result of differing levels of strength. The defeated army would have surrendered or disappears, its people would have integrated within the winning side’s population after bloody excesses and probably the displacement of thousands, that is to say, the exact same thing that is happening today would have happened, just that the war would have lasted 10 days and it would have taken a month to establish peace, instead of the 100 years throughout which we’ve been watching Palestinians die in vain.

Wilson and the US made international legitimacy founded on justice and not on strength fashionable, which is an extremely praiseworthy effort but even they don’t respect it. Until the day comes when this is our reality, conflicts embed themselves deeply when strength is on one side and public opinion is divided.

There is only one real solution to this conflict: giving Israel free reign, letting them occupy what they will eventually occupy, Palestinians accepting their crushing defeat and absolute defenselessness, integrating as best they can thinking about the real people who are alive and suffering, and not about ideals, causes, justice, rights or reason.

The International Community is causing great harm by giving wings and excuses to Palestinian leaders, who are pressuring the masses to cover their faces and run out in front of war tanks from their air-conditioned offices or comfortable living rooms in Brussels or New York, swapping bullets for stones, pyrotechnic rockets for telecontrolled missiles, which transform their country’s youth and children into the greatest commercial claim of the product that they sell so successfully, human suffering.

Israel’s leaders’ merciless politics disgust me, the extravagant extremism of its “holy men” who are so proud of their forefathers’ massacres, imitating Joshua and his sword, they disgust me, but, even though they aren’t just, they are right, because they have strength.