Arab observers can rightly ask about the reaction of the western world, its media, and pro-Israeli groups if Arab soldiers had committed the crimes that Israeli soldiers have acknowledged during the war against Gaza.
The versions relayed by these soldiers about how an Israeli sniper shot a Palestinian mother and her two children when they left their home, because she went the wrong way; the testimonies of the UN envoy for protecting children during armed conflict, including how Israeli soldiers used a Palestinian 11-year old as a human shield during the attack on Gaza; and accusations by an organization of Israeli activist medical doctors that Israeli forces violated medical ethics during the military operations in Gaza, are all humanitarian scandals carried out by Israel, and met with silence by the world.
The testimony of Israeli soldiers and Israeli films, like Waltz with Bashir, are all types of acknowledgment that Israel has committed massacres, from Gaza to Sabra and Shatila, with local Lebanese complicity in the latter case. Despite all of this, the leader of the Israeli government that resulted from "democratic" elections is the hard-liner Benjamin Netanyahu, who is not expected to bring any change to Israeli dealings with the Palestinians.
And despite all of the testimonies about violations by the Israeli army during the Gaza and Lebanon wars, the Israeli mentality has not changed toward the Palestinian people and its right to its land, a dignified existence, security and stability on territory of which a part was taken away in order to ease the conscience of European peoples due to the crimes of Hitler against the Jews. The Palestinian people and the Arab people continue to pay a high price for the crimes of the west against the Jews, as if they were responsible for them.
A day from now, UNESCO will hold a big celebration in Paris to launch the Aladdin Project, with the attendance of former presidents, based on dialogue between Judaism and Islam and the translating of books on the Holocaust into Arabic and Farsi. Certainly the Holocaust was a crime against humanity, rejected and condemned by every thinking person who is aware of the barbarity of Hitler. However, the crimes that Israel committed in its wars in Gaza and Lebanon are also crimes against humanity! Qana, Sabra and Shatila, Gaza, offensives against Lebanon in 1982 and 2006, and then the attack against Gaza are unforgivable, and have only brought more hatred and despair of any peace and the establishment of a Palestinian state. What kind of Palestinian state is this, bordered by a Jewish state that violates the rights of the Palestinian people every day, and does not want a Palestinian state on its borders?
Israel attacked Lebanon in the summer of 2006 on the pretext that it wanted to eliminate Hizbullah. And yet, it achieved a contradictory result. The secretary general of Hizbullah, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah was transformed into a leader of the Arab street. Israel then said it was fighting in Gaza to halt Hamas' attacks against it. But after its war in Gaza, Hamas has become a focal point of negotiation by all sides, in order to arrive at a solution. Israel negotiates with Hamas via Egypt, Turkey, Qatar and Syria, to exchange soldier Gilad Shalit for hundreds of Palestinian detainees in its prisons.
There is an initiative put on the table by King Abdullah bin Abdel-Aziz of Saudi Arabia, and endorsed by the Beirut Arab Summit. This initiative, as the Saudi monarch said, will not be on the table forever and if the Israeli people want peace with the Palestinians, its leaders should take advantage of this opportunity.
The administration of American president Barack Obama has a big responsibility to pressure Israel to accept this initiative. It is time for the wars and violations to stop, because they are not a solution, but instead increase hatred, extremism and terror in the region. The question remains: is this possible with Netanyahu?