Real people helping to foster peace Part two
Interview: An insight into life in an area of conflict.
Read Part one of the interview here.
When asked why the EU-funded trip didn’t include any Israelis (aside from one of the organisers) and whether an opportunity for bringing people from across a divide together had been missed, Paddy explained that tensions were so raw that it wouldn’t have been possible to include members of both communities.
“We would have had no participants otherwise,” said Paddy. “The group of Palestinians that came with us went for two reasons really. Firstly, under the idea that this would be a project where there wouldn’t be any Israelis and the second one was basically to escape what was going on.”
What about some people’s contention that there is a heavy media bias against Israel? Surely the Palestinians are not sole victims of the conflict? Paddy had this to say: “Hamas putting rockets into Israel is unwarranted and is just plain stupid, but Israel doesn’t have any justification, to my mind anyway, for doing what it did in Gaza. It just seems to be a case of wanting destruction...It is very rarely in geopolitics that there is an absolute right and an absolute wrong and I accept that.”
Paddy said that, while he understood Israel has its reasons for a robust response, the country’s actions were a case of “burning down the whole house for the sake of the rats”. He also admitted that he didn’t know what a solution to the situation could be, but said that Israel’s approach was the wrong one.
Paddy is of the view that “you can’t really have peace negotiations until there is some manner of [a]level playing field”. As far as he is concerned, “Israel won’t be taken credibly by any force unless they relent on a lot of the human rights issues that are going on over there”.
He then explained to me how the very word “peace” held negative connotations for many Palestinians. “As far as they are concerned it is tainted because it is a word that Israel uses, not as they see it. It is something they use in the interim stages between inversions or whatever. Having negotiations suggests that there is some level of equality there, and as far as Palestinians are concerned there is no sense of proportion in what is going at all”.
Drawing parallels with Northern Ireland and how the IRA was eventually persuaded to decommission it’s weapons, I asked whether a peaceful co-existence between Palestine and Israel was possible while Hamas continued its military operations.
“There is definitely blame on both sides,” he said. “When we were in Jericho...public hand-holding with a girl, or hugging in public, that’s an arrest-able offence. There are human rights situations on both sides that need to be seriously addressed. I think really that is the first block. Until you have a sense that people are on an equal footing...you can have all the accords and missions to Camp David all you want. But as long as people have to pass through check points like that or, going through back into their own areas are subject to curfews...it is not worth a damn really.”
So was Paddy happy with what the trip achieved? For him, on a personal level, the experience gave him a new understanding of what life in an area of conflict is like.
He said: “That whole phrase of life-changing experience is one that’s bandied about with reckless abandon really, but it has in a very real way affected my outlook on things...I certainly got more than enough of a sense of context and a sense of perspective about it. I am much more interested in the situation now.”
Read Paddy’s account of his trip here.
By: John Power
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