I would love to congratulate Faris Khader's Viewpoint ("Stealing Water," Oct. 23), but unfortunately I cannot. Khader makes strong arguments to both humanize the Palestinian plight and expose some of Israel's mistakes, but to conclude the article by calling for economic sanctions against Israel is ridiculous.
To assign blame to one side in this conflict is not only impossible, it is laughable. The sad truth is that the Jews and the Palestinians have more in common then they care to admit.
Both groups faced expulsion from Spain under the inquisition. Each side was promised their independence by the occupying British forces - the Jews in the Balfour Declaration and the Palestinians in a letter from British High Commander in Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon. Each side was again promised a homeland by the UN partition of Palestine in 1947.
It is, however, crucial to the understanding of the Israeli position to recognize that as soon as a Jewish state was created, it was invaded by Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Transjordan. From 1948 until the present, Israel has been under pressure from its neighbors to the North, East, and South.
In 1967, Jordan, responding to an Israeli invasion of Gaza, attacked Israel hoping to crush the Jewish state. The result of the 1967 war was the occupation of the West Bank. That means that from 1948 to 1967 Gaza was under Egyptian control, and the West Bank was under Jordan's administration.
Never during this period did Egypt or Jordan foster the creation of a Palestinian state. In fact, it was during this period that Palestinians first faced refugee camps. The conditions that Palestinians in the camps have consistently faced were, and still are, so horrendous that it is easy to empathize with the Palestinians and even understand why there is so much pent-up rage and lingering resentment.
A Palestinian terrorist group known as Black September (possibly most famous for the slaying of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics) was named after the brutal atrocities committed by the Jordanian army on their "brothers," the Palestinians, in the refugee camps in September of 1970. The irony is that despite the fact that the group Black September was formed in retaliation to Jordanian attacks, the majority of their attacks were against the Jews and Israel, not Jordan. After that initial feeling of betrayal felt by Palestinians wore off, the terrorists went back to a tried and true target: Israel.
Since 1970, Israel has faced numerous attacks, such as the surprise attack in 1973 (on Yom Kippur, the holiest of Jewish holidays) in which the attacking armies of Syria and Egypt actually lost territory.
The Palestinians have been scattered among refugee camps in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and the "Occupied Territories." Currently, about half of all Palestinians reside in Jordan, another one third in the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel. The remainder of Palestinians are spread among other Arab countries and the West.
One year ago, Palestinian leadership was faced with a choice: gain an autonomous state (including the entire West Bank and parts of Jerusalem) or escalate the violence against Israel in complete opposition to the actual existence of a Jewish state. It was Arafat's choice of the latter that sparked the current violence. He could not move forward from a dogmatic hatred of the fact that Israel is still in existence.
So Faris Khader: "Isn't it time that we, the international community, deal with Israel in the same way that we dealt with Apartheid in South Africa? That we ask our governments to cease international aid and arms to Israel? That we impose economic sanctions on Israel?" Is it time? Not now.
Daniel Kahn is freshman who has not yet declared a major.
