Letter: Israeli-Palestinian conflict resolution key to ISIL defeat

The United States must resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in order to defeat ISIL and similar Islamist extremists.

I know the Middle East well from living there. I offer here a coherent U.S. foreign policy in the region. I speak the truth about Arab-Israeli issues that politicians refuse to do because of political correctness. The persistence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict benefits ISIL in two ways: by increasing the appeal of its recruiting tools, including “constantly” referring to the Palestinians’ situation, and making it “very difficult” to secure cooperation from leading Arab states to bring about changes on the ground. Despite much behind-the-scenes cooperation, countries such as Saudi Arabia cannot openly engage with Israel while the conflict persists. We must not forget that Saudi Arabia (Sunni Muslim) supports a conservative radical Islamic agenda, including before – ISIL…. while Iran (Shiite Muslim) supports a much more moderate form of Islam.

We must realize the critical point is that “the absence of a resolution is fueling extremism” and that “it stands to reason that resolving this conflict would at least help. It would be a major contribution to stemming the rise of extremism and to allow the kind of cooperation that is needed [to take on] what should be a common challenge, which is the challenge of [ISIL] and of other extremist organizations.”

If ISIL generates the will in Washington to tackle the conflict more seriously and equitably, all concerned parties should take advantage of this window and move quickly in that direction.

The reason for this is not only that Palestinians, Israelis and all others in the Middle East deserve to enjoy the fruits of national self-determination, the rule of law and stable statehood but also that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been the most destabilizing force in the Middle East for nearly a century. Resolving it would contribute immeasurably to a more peaceful Middle East — just as leaving it unresolved for decades has contributed to the sort of mass frustration, humiliation and radicalization that ultimately spawned ISIL. I contend that it is the US imbalanced diplomatic and monetary support for Israel that greatly contributes to this problem.

The U.S. has a leading role to play here because it remains the only mediator that both sides trust, despite producing zero results since the 1993 Oslo Accord. This trust is slowly being eroded by the current Trump mantra. The U.S. has no more ideas about how to break through the current stalemate in peacemaking. Perhaps a place to start would be to broaden the circle of mediators beyond the U.S. biased approach to the process, which favors Israeli perceptions over the equal rights of both sides. American are only exposed to news what Israeli allows. The U. S. news media is greatly controlled by the Israeli government and American Jewish ownership. The American public seldom hear the Palestinian side of the conflict and are routinely referred to as terrorists by Israeli media.

There is no reason for the U.S. insistence that commitments to Israel’s security must be guaranteed. Since Israel has approximately 400 nuclear weapons according to CIA estimates, maybe the U. S. should guarantee the security of the Palestinians. A genuinely impartial mediation effort would quickly improve public perception of the U.S. throughout the Arab world. Polls have repeatedly shown that Arab public opinion has always judged the U.S. through the lens of how Washington deals with the Palestinian issue.

Many other tangible benefits would accrue to the region and the rest of the world by resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For example, the grotesque modern legacy of Arab military rulers and presidents for life traces its origins to military officers — such as Syria’s Assad, Libya’s Gaddafi, Egypt’s Nasser and Iraq’s Hussein — who seized power by arguing that only their military rule could protect Arab states from Israeli threats and promote national development. Their decades in power drove Arab economies and political systems into the ground because of corruption, incompetence, autocracy, ravaged environments, wasteful wars and misguided foreign alliances that served only their incumbency.

The expansion of Israeli settlements fuels widespread Arab perceptions of Israel as an instrument of Western imperial and colonial power in the Middle East. Washington’s imbalanced diplomatic support for Israel (largely based on corrupt American politicians accepting “contributions” from the American/Israeli PAC) contributes to chronic tensions between Arab citizens and their governments. It should be noted that the U.S. gives Israel $11 million a day in aid, even though Israelis enjoy a higher standard of living that the U. S. on average, like free socialized medical care and free college education.

Maybe we should ask our elected representatives why.

Radical Islamist movements have grown steadily over the past half-century, in part because of popular resentments against Arab governments’ failure to check the Israeli threat to Palestinian territories and adjacent Arab lands. The conflict has aggravated Iranian-Israeli and Iranian-Arab tensions, so ending it could improve relations on those fronts as well.
Because I am against the United States sending billions of hard-earned American taxpayers’ dollars to Israel, some call me anti-Semite. I just do not like the fact that we have to borrow billions of dollars to support a country that provides free health care, education and free abortions to their citizens.

Am I anti-Semite? Nothing could be further from the truth. I detest the desecration of multiple Jewish cemeteries and countless number of bomb threats to Jewish Cultural Centers or any other acts of hatred like the recent killing of immigrants in Kansas. This is not the America I grew up with which tolerates and welcomes the diversity of races, cultures and religions.

I was taught we were the mixing pot of the world.

Dan Barrett
Jasper, Ind.