Israel-Palestine conflict: Looking to future rather than past

A federal political model as a solution?

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The geographic terms “Israel” and “Palestine” have a long history and specific connotations for Jews and Arabs with respect to their competing claims to the same land. The only way forward for Jewish Israelis and Palestinian Arabs is to cease looking backwards. Dr. Daniel Miller — https://www.internationalaffairs.org.au/ australianoutlook/israel-and-palestine-whereshould-history-begin-and-should-it-matter/

THE article by Dr. Daniel Miller, Chair of the Dept. of Religion, Society and Culture at Bishop’s University in Sherbrooke (Quebec), Canada, titled “Where should history begin, and should it matter?” sums up what all forward looking and those who are for a mutually beneficial solution to this conflict which has simmered and flared over centuries will welcome. The real cost of this conflict is the insecurity of modern Israel, which increases as they decimate Gaza, and the ongoing suffering of the ordinary people of Gaza and more broadly in all of Palestine.

As Dr. Miller says, “Israel and Palestine are one land, two names, where both Jews and Arabs have claimed it as theirs alone. From a purely historical perspective, “Israel” predates “Palestine” by more than a millennium. But, with the Jewish people then dispersed from their homeland, “Palestine” became home to a substantial Arab population, again for more than a millennium. From a perspective of justice and equity, both peoples have a legitimate claim to the land”.

Dr. Miller goes on to say, “The wrongs and brutalities done by each side to the other have become too numerous to count. It does no good to try to assign blame for the latest war between Israel and Hamas. The war and the specific events that led up to it are just more entries in a ledger written in blood and tears. The stark fact is that there is now no act of vengeance or retribution that Jews and Arabs could do to the other party in the conflict that would allow them to say that accounts had been settled on their side.”