The Middle East and Peace


The Gaza tragedy seems to have given birth to desperation. The world is getting angrier and people feel their hands are tied after the deaths of 600 Palestinians, 80 percent of which were civilian casualties and 25 percent of which were children. Countries with international clout such as the U.S., Russia, and Germany give the green light to Israeli state terrorism instead of acting humanely. Furthermore the United Nations downplays Israel's violence and warns Palestine . The world has never been a rose garden without thorns. Yet even in the modern world, the Middle East is made to shower in a bloodbath and millions of people live as refugees in sub-human conditions. In Syria, 180,000 people are dead as the fighting continues. All these catastrophes have forced us to think that democracy is an empty term. It is clear that when you are careless about education and developing tolerance and understanding radical organizations like ISIS and al-Qaida spawn. Thus, we continue to struggle within this vicious circle. Ignoring a dictatorship's massacre in Syria simply because of the al-Nusra and ISIS factors, or preferring al-Assad over them, makes controlled war politics a normal way of life in the Middle East. In fact, Israel's safety in the Middle East depends on a permanent peace. In order to achieve this permanent peace, even if Israel leaves its war paradigm, the addressees must be democratic countries. This will not happen in one day. Yet, for instance if Morsi, who was democratically elected after the regime of Hosni Mubarak was toppled by the Arab Spring, had lost his power instead of being unseated by a military coup, it would have been a huge win for both Egypt's democracy and the Middle East. Moreover, if the compromised unity government of al- Fatah and Hamas had been seen as an opportunity by Israel instead of a threat, if Israel had not pulled out of negotiations and if they stopped the expansion of it settlement policy, we would have been in a more positive place today. Israel's lopsided military superiority and its domination over propaganda enhance the belief that this order may go on forever. But, unless the Palestinian nation is wiped from its lands, it will be a Pyrrhic victory. It must be hard to live as a military nation in a country where there is no peace. By Hamas firing ineffective missiles at its neighbor and not recognizing the existence of the state of Israel are problems. Yet blockading Gaza right after Hamas won the general election in 2006 and the savageness in 2008 are not helping the process of normalization. Hamas' efforts at democratization should be supported like the efforts of the Muslim Brotherhood. It does not seem possible for Israel to accept this at the moment however; the path to the normalization of the Middle East must pass through this acceptance. The Middle East has come to this breaking point because of the same logic as the Sykes-Picot Agreement. This unjust order cannot be sustained. We witnessed the first chapter of this fracturing with the Arab Spring. It is naïve to think that these "outbursts" are not going to continue. The only way of avoiding it is to support just and democrat administrations not prevent them.