Having taken a class on the Modern History of the Middle East last spring, I know a little bit of the information behind the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. The movie Paradise Now shows two Palestinian men in their last few days preparing to become suicude bombers in Israel. In the end, one man decides he can't go through with it, while the other feels like he has no other option.
The movie left me with more questions than answers. What organization was behind the bombings - was it Hamas/the Muslim Brotherhood? Is this whole thing using religion to get believers to do things for publicity? If that's true, then what the world needs to do is not sit around and do nothing, or in the US's case, supply Israel with weapons.
As an outsider to this whole conflict, I can easily ask "don't they understand that violence just begets more violence?" But when living in your own home town means sporadic bombings, houses bulldozed over for sketchy reasons, being unable to get to work or to a hospital because you have to cross a checkpoint into Israel with fickle and sometimes mean guards, or having children who go to school in Israel and are sometimes killed, and often heckled or beaten by Israelis and need guards to escort them, and now, the wall being built, this can lead to an immense feeling of desperation. Of loss of dignity and hopelessness and anger. Now we can begin to understand why some feel that they have no other option. Not that retaliatory killing is the answer, but it can start to sound like a good idea if you've lived under these oppressive circumstances your entire life, and not just you, but the ones you love too.
Knowing what I know about the whole situation, it's all a big, stinking pile of injustice. To both sides it's personal; it's religous, it's political, and neither can seem to let go of their anger and pride in the name of peace. But I hope they will soon anyway. Like the main female lead in the movie, Palestinians can go about their lives seeking justice through civil rights movements and organizations, and above all, never tire of hoping. And as for the rest of the world, we can help by advocating for the full civil rights of the Palestinians, and at the very least, a two-state solution, and not be disuaded by people who plead for us to let them continue to oppress others just because their grandparents were oppressed by Hitler. What they themselves are doing - today - is wrong, and not excusable by any historical fact, no matter how brutal or unspeakable. Answering evil with evil is not right and never will be, and we have no right to condone it either.
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