It’s absolutely, without question, time to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. People have been engaged in a brutal territorial dispute for over seven decades. Hundreds of children are being killed by bombs. And ethnic and religious groups are being violently persecuted, targeted with economic discrimination, and systematically evacuated from their homes. And I’m just hearing about it now.
Like, seriously; I just found out yesterday.
This is all news to me, and now I know we need a solution. The fighting has to stop, and a two-state solution with 1967 borders strikes me as the only feasible outcome to ensure stability in the Middle East and security for Palestine and Israel. I’ve done a lot of thinking since I heard about this whole thing the other day and the fix is obvious: We must end the problem by solving it.
The competing claims to land in Israel and Palestine are irreconcilable, and countless lives are being lost in this relentless jurisdictional violence. Until the international community fully commits to a strategy of boycotts, divestment, and sanctions against the military occupation in the West bank and Gaza strip, WE CANNOT REST. How can any one relax at a time like this? How are people so blind to this problem?!
Did you know there are dwindling opportunities for Palestinians to find housing in their country without being subject to legal, economic, and educational discrimination as well as constant threats to their lives? Obviously the international community doesn’t support the continuation of colonization, occupation, and ethnic cleansing perpetuated by the Israeli government, but if they really knew how hard these conditions have been making my week, maybe they would try harder to make it stop? By applying economic pressure or something? Why isn’t anybody doing anything about this?
And did you know that U.S taxpayers are giving the Israeli government an average of $8 million a day in military aid to fuel the ongoing violence? Eight million dollars. I just read that. Whoa! We can’t let this stand now that I know about it.
The 65 years of endless territorial and religious warring that just lately came to my attention have caused me serious emotional despair over the past seven days. We need this to stop so that I can enjoy my latte at Starbucks without being reminded of the milky International response to Israel’s continued military occupation and confiscation of land in the West Bank in blatant violation of the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords. The stress this situation has caused me over the past week clearly demands a mutually agreeable solution acknowledging Palestine’s land claims and legal equality and the need to abandon biblical arguments to justify ethnic cleansing, military occupation, and blatant racial discrimination against Arab-Palestinians. I just threw out my Sodastream, so let’s make this stop, once and for all, ’kay?!
