The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict in Historical Perspective
By Vicente Morin Aguado
HAVANA TIMES – The murderous bombs fall on Gaza without discriminating against hospitals. The territory is populated mostly by Palestinians, concentrated in an aberrant urban density, a direct result of the incessant expansionism of a powerful and obstinate neighbor, whose predominant culture is Jewish.
Gaza is today a small kingdom where, paradoxically, a string of discriminations imposed by generally accepted secular precepts operate, with the support of a religion close to fifteen hundred years of existence.
The rulers of Gaza, their visible face, preached openly by themselves, identify with the terrorist organization Hamas, which does not discriminate against hospitals or mosques to hide soldiers and combat means in an unequal war, in the face of the indisputably superior power of an opponent. whose disappearance is proclaimed a sacred objective of these so-called fundamentalist Muslims.
Although Hamas began the escalation of hostilities that today reaches an unprecedented level in a long history of clashes between Jews and Palestinians, the 1,400 deaths initially caused by the senseless brutality of this criminal organization have multiplied four times since then, due to the retaliation by the Israeli state, with no hope that the macabre arithmetic operation will diminish.
The most diverse comments are read, and above all many historical allusions, long stories, somewhat biblical because the Koran does not abound in history, while the Bible, much older and descriptive, is essentially a historical book. It does not even occur to me to deny the sacredness of both texts, a matter that remains in the hands of the faithful.
I am interested in a brief reflection on what history is and what it really serves us for, regarding current events.
History is the branch of knowledge concerned with explaining, not just narrating, the social movement, based on the evolution of cultures, human ways of relating to the environment and at the same time among ourselves, because we are inevitably part of the environment.
The peculiarity of history as a science is that humans are matter and spirit at the same time. Only humans, and this happens in society, challenge natural laws, imposing our questioned will. This quality determines that the laws of other sciences, their way of applying, do not work like this in the social movement.
Humans are by nature opposed to scientific determinism applied to their actions, even though when doing politics, telling the facts in a self-serving manner, we resort to the supposed demonstration that what has happened or what is about to happen is previously determined by assumptions of history.
Nothing further from the truth. If the events are told with strict adherence to what happened and not to what the narrator wishes had happened, or what they would like to happen, then it will be seen that there is no predetermination, much less that the past, HISTORY, can offer solutions to the present.
History is at most, in the words of a doctor, clinical history, diagnosis. The solutions will be in the existing means when making decisions, operated according to the sagacity of the protagonists, moved by their interests, starting from a difficult reconciliation between what works and the morality of the actions, that is, the ethics accepted according to Time and place.
The past does not justify or can it offer valid solutions to today’s problems.
I reiterate, the solutions depend on what we want as a future, the means at our disposal to achieve it, our ethics and the ability to, like in chess, play the game without making a mistake in the order of the moves.
There will always be adversaries because the social movement is contradictory, as much as there are contradictions, intrinsic, in the movement of matter.
The substantial difference, advantage and challenge given by nature or by God, depending on whether you wish to invoke or accept, is free will, will, human intelligence, capable of knowing the environment, without forgetting that we are part of that environment.
Contrary to the acceptance that we as students perceive, it is history and not mathematics, the most complex of the sciences.
Returning to today’s case, the most accurate account that can be read of the Arab vs. Israel conflict, or perhaps it should be presented in reverse order, if we appeal to chronology, tells us how the present situation was reached, but it does not in itself provide the possible solution. It barely suggests, according to the real facts, possible answers.
The first thing is to consider what the parties in conflict have at their disposal to resolve the dispute. The second is what are their objectives, what will assists them, what future do they want for themselves and, if we are sensible when giving our opinion, and above all the protagonists are sensible when acting, what result could be achieved in exchange for avoiding a future conflict, as destructive as the one experienced today in Gaza.
A couple of questions:
Can the Palestinians in Gaza live and progress without Hamas and without its weapons, erasing the supreme objective of destroying the State of Israel?
Can Israel live and progress in peace with neighboring Arab states, including a Palestinian state?
As for discriminations, at the height of the third decade of the third millennium of humanity after Christ, almost 1,500 years after Muhammad, I abhor all of them, they are contrary to the progress of humanity, its future aspirations, together the best we have achieved as a species today.
I hope at least that this last paragraph is shared.