Civil Disobedience

What would Ghandi or Martin Luther King, Jr. think of the current violence in the Middle East? Do you think they would approve of the methods used by the Israelis and Palestinians to solve their differences? Most definitely, both would strongly disagree with the policies undertaken by the Palestinian Authority to bring about a Palestinian homeland.

For starters, civil disobedience according to Ghandi or King would have meant using nonviolent means to disrupt and gain the moral high ground. Rosa Parks energized the civil rights movement in the US with her simple desire to not give up her seat on the bus. It led to the bus boycott that eventually led to the desegregation of the buses (which were used predominantly by the African American community, many of whom worked for white households as cleaners and workers). The parallel to the bus boycott is eerily similar to the Palestinian and Israeli relationship.

Palestinians stream into Israel every day to work at Israeli factories, worksites, and shops to provide essential services and goods within Israel. Every day, those Palestinians return to their homes, passing through checkpoints and having their basic dignity attacked by waiting in line to be checked for firearms or bomb-making equipment. Following terrorist bombings, Israel often retaliates by shutting off the territories and preventing the Palestinian workers from going to their jobs. This has the result of depriving the Palestinians of badly needed money and the Israelis lose valuable workers who they depend upon.

The Palestinian Authority continues to utilize violence in order to achieve its goals of a Palestinian state in Gaza, West Bank, and in Jerusalem. This occurs through the tacit approval given to the Palestinian people through radio, television, and newspapers distributed throughout Palestinian controlled territories. Media in the territories is dominated by the Palestinian Authority. They control the message - and it is far from the friendly face that the Palestinian Authority puts on for the US or the European Union. Chairman Arafat is shrewd in that manner - he knows that the US public will fall for lip-service and that's precisely what he's giving.

However, his strategy costs human lives practically every single day. Terrorist cells are being hunted by the Israelis before they can do more damage. Individuals who are seen as masterminds are finding that their daily lives are disrupted by boobytraps or missile attacks by Israelis. Sometimes innocent Palestinians are injured or killed in these preemptive attacks.

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