Can Israelis and Palestinians co-exist?

Even though it does not affect the Philippines directly, the conflict in Palestine and Israel has worldwide consequences. The violence caused by this conflict has begun to escalate way beyond the borders of Gaza and Israel. For example, the Houthi rebels in southern Yemen have begun to send missiles to all ships passing through the Red Sea. This has forced shipping between Asia and Europe to avoid the Red Sea and Suez Canal and take the longer route passing around the tip of Africa.

The story of the conflict between the Palestinian Arabs and the Jewish settlers really started after the Second World War. It was then that most of the Western world were supporting the idea of establishing a Jewish homeland for all the predominantly European Jews who had been subject to persecution by the Nazis of Germany.

Like many others in Europe, the Americas and even Asia, I was personally sympathetic to the establishment of a Jewish homeland. I realize now that a lot of the sympathy was the result of Western propaganda. The book that really influenced me was the historical novel “Exodus” written by Leon Uris. It is basically the story of the war of independence in 1948 when the waves of Jewish migrants coming from Europe were able to drive out the Palestinian Arabs from Palestine.

At that time, Uris portrayed in his book the “birth of a new nation in the midst of enemies.” The Palestinian Arabs were portrayed as enemies rather than as a people that were actually the inhabitants of that land.

The Jewish migrants anchored their claim on the biblical story that they were the original inhabitants of this land called Israel. A new emerging story, however, is that the Western world believed that the only solution to racial prejudice against Jews was to help them establish their own homeland. This was successfully accomplished, except that it was done by driving away Palestinian Arabs who had settled there for centuries.

It is understandable why the Palestinian Arabs believed that the land belonged to them. The result of this conflict was that there were two very different peoples residing virtually next to each other – but not as equals. The Jews retained all the power and the