Who’s Really To Blame?

I must start this by stating that I am either pro-nor-anti Israel or Palestine. The few people I have met from both groups have always treated me respectfully and I hope they feel I have done the same. What I am attempting to do with this essay is to expose an underlying cause for everything that has gone wrong with Israel and its neighbors.

For months now, every news outlet around the globe has gone out of its way to show us the death and devastation taking place in Gaza, as well as the suffering being endured by the families of Israeli hostages. The situation is barbaric, as war often is, and a resolution is no closer to being found today than it was the day Hamas attacked the concert venue. When asked who’s at fault, each side points to the other. It’s my opinion that no one is placing the blame where it actually belongs, which is the United Nations. I know this sounds ridiculous, but let me explain my point of view.

World War II ended in 1945. The world, forced to face the aftermath of the terrible atrocity that was the Holocaust, needed to heal. A solution had to be found that would bring reparation for the survivors and closure for the rest of humanity. The Jewish people had been without their own country for hundreds of years and had always claimed the land between Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon as their ancestral homeland. In 1948, the United Nations granted the Jewish people what they had asked for and created the country of Israel.

This solution had several problems that the U.N. members either didn’t understand or ignored. The Israelis and both Muslim and Christian Arabs have been fighting over this patch of land for centuries. When the place we now call Israel was ceded to the Jews, there was already a sizeable Muslim population living there and had been for several hundred years. Why the U.N. members thought the two factions could peacefully coexist is baffling. Let me use an analogy to help explain the situation.

One day, the leaders of the Cherokee Nation petitioned the U.N. to be given their ancestral lands back. It had been theirs since the beginning of time, but several hundred years ago, white settlers seized their land by force. Since the takeover, they have been forced to live on reservations and treated as second-class citizens. The nations of the world must end this travesty, and the U.N. agreed.

They divided the United States into three sections: the East Coast, the West Coast, and the Great Plains, which became the Cherokee Nation. Now that they had their land back, the governing council had two choices: 1. Form an all-inclusive government and society, or 2. Decree that all non-Cherokee people must either leave their new nation or if they choose to remain, forfeit all rights and property. They chose option 2. You can imagine how things went from there.

Now let’s return to 1948 and how the U.N. handled, or should I say mishandled things. Even back then, it was no secret the way the two groups felt about each other. They did the right thing by giving the Israelis a place to call home, but it should have come with a strict set of guidelines. First, in order for Israel to become an independent country, they had to form a coalition government consisting of both Israelis and Palestinians. Given the amount of animosity between groups, the United Nations would establish an oversight committee to work out any differences and find compromise solutions.

Second, no one would be forced from their land. No party could take over a neighborhood or farm claiming it was theirs by birthright. Unclaimed land would be divided equitably according to a mutually agreed-upon formula.

There are hundreds of other issues that would need to be resolved, but solutions through compromise, not war, must be found for each of them. An embedded U.N. presence would ensure that happened.

I’m not a skilled diplomat or trained negotiator, just a simple observer of history and human nature. War breeds hatred through multiple generations. Compromise fosters goodwill over time and eliminates the desire for war. The United Nations should have recognized how flawed their plan was from the start and come up with a better one. After all, they are the experts.