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  • The Lucrative Arms Trade Behind the Occupation Must End
  • Raja Shehadeh (bio)

As it now stands, Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories is lucrative rather than costly. No nation in possession of territory it seized from another has been known to give up that territory merely because of a change of heart. The Israeli people will not support withdrawal from the occupied Palestinian territories unless the continuation of the Occupation causes them to suffer, whether materially or in terms of their standing in the world.

One way in which the continuation of the conflict benefits Israel is that it helps Israel test and sell more of the weapons and security systems it manufactures. If activists across the globe can convince the Israeli public that peace will be more lucrative, then the shift toward a peaceful resolution of the conflict, rather than its perpetuation, will become possible.

Boycott is certainly one way of achieving this. Another is the approach Tikkun is advocating: challenging the notion that security is achievable through the domination of the Palestinian nation and replacing this with a strategy of generosity toward the other.

To end the conflict, all parties must recognize that the Occupation is at the core of the problems in the region. A new period of peace and prosperity for the two nations living in Palestine/Israel will not materialize until Palestinians exer cise their right to self-determination and Israel acknowledges the Nakba and the right of return of the Palestinian refugees. These are principles; how they are realized should be left for negotiations. After these principles have been recognized, many of the issues that now seem insurmountable will likely come to have a different meaning. It is not impossible to imagine that the meaning now attributed to where a person lives and what religion he or she follows will cease to matter and that open borders and new mutually beneficial relations will come to exist between the nations of the Middle East: Israel, Jordan, Palestine, and eventually the rest of the states that have been created since the region was carved up in the wake of the First World War.

Raja Shehadeh

raja shehadeh is a writer and lawyer. His books include Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape (2007), for which he won the 2008 Orwell Prize, and more recently Language of War, Language for Peace. He is a founder of Al Haq.

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