Issue No. 592
Opinion
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27 June - 3 July 2002 Issue No. 592 Opinion |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Resolution and violence
There are those who demand an end to violence as an essential condition before any further attempts are made at resolving the Palestinian question. The truth is that violence is neither new nor recent but an unavoidable aspect of human nature that must be confronted. It is present even in those countries that do not suffer from foreign occupation: that it should rear its head among Palestinians is, therefore, hardly surprising. All we can really do is eliminate its credibility, because it tends to gain in credibility when problems take a strong enough hold on people to seem intractable. As solutions begin to emerge, violence loses any credibility and soon disappears.
There are those in every society that resort to violence regardless of circumstance and to use these groups as an excuse to pursue peace compounds the issue. It amounts to a refusal to accept the very idea of a resolution.
I believe this, in a nutshell, is the position of the Israeli government, which insists that violence must cease before it will consider any possibility of resolution. Israeli violence, in the meantime, surges ahead with terrifying intensity. This points to a mistaken understanding of the issues at hand, since the rise in violence is a result of current conditions; the horizon contains no signs of resolution. Reaching a resolution will no doubt reduce the extent of violence, but at the same time there will remain groups on both sides calling for and practicing violence. It is not right to place the future of a final resolution in the hands of such groups. Violence can be the rule or the exception; it is up to us to decide.
Based on an interview by Mohamed Salmawy.
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