Israel-Palestine: The Suffering of Two Nations
In a land where stabbings, shootings and bombings are a common occurrence, it is hard for me to imagine how one can live a safe and normal life in Israel-Palestine. I am not going to attempt to determine which side is right in this essay; I do not know enough about the history of the conflict to accurately analyze the situation. Also, the situation is far more complex than a conflict where there is one “good side” and one “bad side”; there are multiple people groups, (e.g., Jews, Muslims, Christians, Druze, non-religious, religious, Zionist), that are involved in or affected by the situation for this to be true. What I will do, though, is show how both sides suffer from the conflict. Most stories that I see about the events that take place in the land, portray one side being the innocent victim of the other, when in reality, both sides experience pain. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, from 2000 to 2007, at least 5848 people have died in result of the conflict. This includes civilians and soliders on both sides of the issue.
I want to start off by talking about Israeli suffering because I believe that it is overlooked most of the time. Since 2000, there have been over 1000 Israeli deaths resulting from the conflict. According to the Human Rights Watch, in 2012, about 1500 rockets were fired into Israel from Palestine over a period of eight days. Innocent citizens are killed frequently, sometimes by stabbing and other times by suicide bombers. When I visited Israel this past summer, I was able to talk to a Messianic Jew named Richard about his thoughts on the conflict. He told me that at one point, there were daily terrorist attack attempts in Jerusalem and that he always had to be cautious and on his guard. There was a sense of fear among the people in the land. Bomb shelters are constantly being made in preparation for future attacks.
The Palestinians also suffer greatly. Movement between different town in between Israel and Palestine is limited because of Israeli security fences. Innocent civilians are killed in the crossfire between the Israel Defense Force (IDF) and Palestinian military forces. Corey Gil-Shuster, an Israeli Jew who interviews different people groups in Israel on different topics, asked Palestinians the question “How much do you suffer under occupation?” on a scale of 1–10 and most of of them replied with a 10. The video provides first hand testimonies from the people and most of them rank their suffering at a 10.
During my time in Israel, I had the pleasure of listening to an Arab-Christian pastor named Taysir Abu Saada share some stories about his life in Palestine. He said that a few years ago IDF soldiers brought a tank in front of his house and broke into his room while he and his wife were sleeping. They pointed automatic rifles at him and told him that an informant said that Saada was storing weapons in his house. Saada told me that this is a common occurrence that the Palestinians go through.
Sometimes it is hard to exactly know who to blame for the travesties that occur. Saada also told me about the deaths of two Arab teens that converted from Islam to Christianity. He was discipling the teens in their new faith when one night he got a phone call informing him that the two boys were bombed in their homes. Apparently an informant told the IDF that the boys were storing guns in their homes so the IDF, without investigating the claim, decided to just bomb the house with the boys in it. Saada was devastated to hear the news and later found out that the informant most likely told the IDF this because the boys left Islam to follow Jesus.
While the IDF was clearly in the wrong for the bombing, the informant purposely gave the IDF false information to make the innocent teens look like terrorists.
No matter which side you look at, there is suffering. Many people have lost their lives and many more live in fear. Regardless of which side holds most of the guilt, one thing remains clear, something needs to change if this suffering is ever going to end.
