Column: No justice, no peace

In order for there to be a lasting peace in the Middle East, it is also necessary to consider what is just. Though it is easy to say that both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have done wrong, this perspective erases the history of the conflict and the reality that exists today. Only in working to understand the situation can we look for possible solutions or a general peace.

The fight for the creation of a Jewish state became a colonial project once Zionists decided to create a homeland on land inhabited by the Palestinian people. The assertion, first made by Israel Zangwill in 1897 that Palestine was a "land without a people for a people without a land" displays a belief in the ideology necessary for colonialism. In fact, there were close to a million people inhabiting this land. However, the dehumanization of these people allowed for a discourse that denied their existence.

Dehumanizing people of color has been a necessary act in U.S. and European colonialism all over the world. This Western tradition, rooted in racism and exploitation, has contributed not only to worldwide poverty but also to many of the conflicts that we see emerging today.

It is not that the idea of a Jewish state in itself is a form of colonialism; rather, it is how and where the Jewish state was created that presents the problem. There is no doubt that European Jews have been oppressed throughout history. They have always been the victims. This reality does not excuse the creation of a racist, oppressive state that seeks to displace a group of people.

The Israeli state originally displaced 700,000 indigenous Palestinians in what it now calls its war of independence; a date the Palestinians simply refer to as Al-Nakba, or, the Great Catastrophe. Today this brutal oppression and displacement continues by Israel's encouragement and financing of settlements in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, the only small territories left that are supposedly still Palestinian. Approximately 200,000 Israeli settlers are now living in these areas, with access to disproportionately high amounts of the tillable land and water.

Palestinians remaining in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip are subject to Israeli military occupation. They are denied citizenship as well as civil and political rights. Israel is a constant presence in the daily lives of these nearly 3.5 million Palestinians with military checkpoints, color-coded license plates and special ID cards. Palestinians are required to have permits to work, to build and to move and are subjected to home demolitions, torture and often curfews and random searches.

In addition to human rights abuses, Israel has violated various international treaties and agreements. The Israeli government has ignored international law time and time again, violating the Fourth Geneva Convention, the Convention against Torture, the U.N. Declaration of the Rights of a Child, as well as U.N. Resolutions 194 and 242, which call for the right of return for Palestinian refugees and the withdrawal of Israel from the occupied territories.

This helps to explain the worldwide solidarity for self determination of the Palestinian people in formerly colonized states such as South Africa, where Desmond Tutu has publicly spoken out against the occupation. In the words of Abdullah Al-Arian, a former Duke student who has written in depth about the Middle East, "All that remains, yet again, is one glaring reality: an appallingly inhumane occupation that must end."