Can Israel live with its own moral dilemma?

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]

The justice the Israeli society sought to build has backfired. Many may feel that the end of an era has come but the fact is it is only the beginning. If Israel does not find itself and get out of the quagmire it has created, no citizen on this side of the wall or the other side will ever have peace and security.

Israel must change its face in the 60th anniversary of its conception. Otherwise the world which has turned its back on the Palestinians will have also have to give up on a "democratic state" in the midst of corrupt monarchies and one man Republics. The Israelis will be remembered as people who created their country out of the ashes of World War II but upon the destitution of others. Isn't that a real moral dilemma? Isn't the "transfer" of a majority of the populace, the Palestinians, wrong and immoral and that they, the Palestinians are in fact dying a slow death? How can a people who felt and went through all the agonies and losses take the hopes and livelihood of others? Shouldn't the compassion that the Jews expect from the world be reciprocal?

At a fundraising event for a democratic congressman a few years ago, I met Nancy Pelosi who had not yet become the Speaker of the House. I told her until the issue of Palestine and the Arab- Israeli conflict is unresolved, the Middle East would never see peace. She just nodded.

Even if Palestinians are scattered throughout the world, in small communities, and many of them are portrayed as violent, far from the reality of what and who they are, they are still a nation. What is the definition of a nation anyway? ”A nation is a defined cultural and social community. In as much as most members never meet each other, yet feel a common bond, it may be considered an imagined community. One of the most influential doctrines in Western Europe and the Western hemisphere since the late eighteenth century is that all humans are divided into groups called nations.”

The world in general and the Middle East in particular need to see a real country and a state for the Palestinians, for everyone's sake and for Israel's peace of mind. And humanity owes the Palestinians a home they once had and is now lost. As the late Edward Saeid said in an article in 2002, "Palestinians will not go away."