Premise: I try to think “outloud” and to be impartial without
digging up the past again. Not because the historical facts are not important,
but for the mere reality that they already happened and cannot be changed. We
should not ponder on what “could have been.” If people want to have a
conversation and give opinions, they are free to do what they want; but that is
not my goal today. The state of Israel does exist. The way in which it was
established can be put to question. People might take different stances, but as
things are right now there is nothing we can do and I do not want to think that
is right to speculate over what can be done to make Israel disappear. If I were
a Jewish living a normal life in Israel today, and by normal I mean a life like
each one of us, and I was not harming anyone, this speculation would really
bother me, and I would think of how to defend myself.
Israel cannot be well-seen or bad-seen because of right or
wrong reasons. I accept it because everyone has the right to have his/her own
opinion. Israel is inhabited not only by Jewish people but also by Christians,
Arabs, Druzes, etc. And for this reason, I would like to underline that
this “article” does not speak of the people of Israel, unless it is explicitily
specified, because the people are the only ones who always take the beating
during war times. When I will speak of Isreal, I will refer to the government
or to its politic behavior, not its people. The same applies to Palestine.
As I was saying in the premise, historical events cannot be
changed, whether they were good or bad, what's done is done. Everything is
tragically just like you see it now; this is the reality from which we need to
start, and from which we need to carefully go back to the source of the
conflict. With this in mind, I try to think about what could be done or about
which could be the right way to go. The topic is of course the Israeli and
Palestinian conflict.
The whole world is indignant because Israel is bombing Gaza.
It is right to feel indignant, I myself could be from Gaza, but I was born in a
different country. I wonder why the world is not indignant even when children
are slaughtered in South Sudan, just to give an example; after all children are
the same everywhere in the world.
I ask myself, “Does Israel find pleasure in killing
Palestinian civilians?” I would obviously like to think it doesn't, trying to
be impartial because I think that Israel wants to hit Hamas' missiles base or
the organization itself which bravely launches its missiles from places
sorrounded by civilian dwellings. I don't feel like Hamas really cares
about the future of its people, since Hamas was elected in Palestine with a
majority vote in 2006, unless it considers shahid and all the civilians who are
been killed inevitable in order to accomplish its purpose. In many other
countries, military zones are well-separated from the cities, but I don't think
I can compare Gaza Strip with any other country.
Hamas sends missiles on Israel, obviously the comparison does
not make sense since their military forces are not comparable. But why does
this organization hate Israel so much? Some think that the state of Israel
does not have the right to exist simply because before the Jewish, there were
already other people in that land and even some Jewish groups who have always
lived at peace with the Arabs. On the other hand, other people believe the
exact opposite. Everyone knows how this state was established; therefore, I
won't go back on it. The state of Israel exist and this is an
incontrovertible reality.
Hamas does not recognize the state of Israel; not only
because that land did not belong to the Jewish but also because it was
“conceded” to them legally by the Balfour declaration (after which the Jewish agency made a big effort in buying
land. As of today, many think that Israeli people merely occupied a land that
did not belong to them.)
The movement of the Islamic
Resistance (Hamas) believes that Palestine is an inalienable treasure (waqf):
Islamic land given to Islamic generations until the day of resurrection. It is
not acceptable to give up any piece of it. No Arab State, or all the Arab States together, no king or
president, neighter all kings nor all presidents together, no organization, or
all Palestinian and Arabs organizations
together have the right to decide to give up even a little piece of it,
because Palestine is an Islamic land given to Islamic generations on the day of
judgement. After all, who in the world has the right to act on behalf of
all the Islamic generations until the day of judgement? This is the rule of
the Islamic Law (Shari'a), and the same rule applies to every land that Muslims
have conquered with violence, because at the time of the conquer, the Muslims
have consacrated those lands for all the generations to come until the day of
judgement. (Article 11 of the statute) -fonte
memri.org-.
This is the reason why Hamas doesn't accept Israel and it
fights against it in every way it can. Hamas was founded in 1987; the state of
Israel in 1948. It seems clear that Hamas was created specifically to hunt
Israel and to retake the Islamic territory as it is written in the statute. In
fact, the statute says that any territory taken with force is destined to
Islam. Considering the Islamic dominion through history, even North Africa,
amost all of Spain and Portugal, all the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq, part of
Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan and other lands should belong to Islam.
Now I understand why Israel is fighting against Hamas, not
against the Palestinians, but against Hamas. On the other hand, probably, or
I'd say certainly, Hamas wants to fight the citizens of Israel, due to Article
11 of the statute mentioned above. Thinking again about this
article, I might think that if, reputedly, Hamas is situated in Portugal
just as it is in Palestine right now, Spain would become the same of Israel, in
the sense that it would try to defend itself from an organization that does
not divide religion and government and that claims territorial belongings of a
far away past. Just like if Italy would claim all the territories of the
Roman Empire.
Palestinian civilians, for the most part, pay the
consequences for all this under the eyes of every nation and news report that
do not leave room for any other theory but that of death and destruction in the
name of those lands destined to Islam. This massacre must end.
We all know that Netanyahu is certainly not a saint, but
he is cunning. In the light of everything I said until now, he has every reason
to do what he is doing to defend Israel. Finally, perhaps, a
hypothetical solution is no longer clear: “if you put water under the duck, it
floats; if you drain the water it does not longer float.”
With this I mean that the only way, I suppose, to stop all
those deaths of children, women, and men is to remove any reason that justifies
Israel's defensive behavior. Therefore, Hamas should stop trying to take back
every land that was dominated in the past by Islam because this, only by
thinking about it, is impossible just like it is impossible for Italy to take
back all the land of the Roman Empire.
I would say “let's set Palestine free from Hamas” but we
ought to remember that the Palestians gave the majority vote to Hamas in 2006.
Some might argue with me saying that Israel should not
exist because it was established without taking into account those who lived in
that land before. Honestly, I agree, but as of today
Israel does exist and if we want to find the right way out of this mess,
this argument is not longer useful to fix the problem. We can even say “let's
boycott Israel,” but in so doing we won't stop Hamas, we won't stop Netanyahu,
we won't stop the number of deaths.
Stefania Battistella
English translation by Karen Costa