Israel Vs Palestine – Let The Eagle Perch And Let The Kite Perch…

By

Jesutega Onokpasa

I just came across a YouTube video with some rather bland talk about an impending confrontation between the Turks and their American allies over the ongoing crisis between the Israelis and their Palestinian neighbours in Gaza.

It is, of course, just watery propaganda by some woke commentator on issues they clearly do not sufficiently understand.

The last thing Turkey, even under Recep Tayyip Erdogan, would (or could) do would be to have any kind of military confrontation with the United States.

Indeed, playing to the gallery, aside, I don’t think the Turks are even remotely interested in going head to head with the Israelis, not to talk of the Americans, and I’m pretty sure Erdogan’s own armed forces would mutiny if he ordered them to take on the Americans, and, for all his bluster and saber rattling, he is smart enough to realize that.

The truth of this matter is that all kinds of hypocrites are just trying to profit off the grief of the Israelis and the misery of their Palestinian neighbours.

I think there’s something rather quite unhinged with both Israelis and Palestinians regarding their attitude to land – funny enough, I cannot think of two peoples more similar in their commitment to intransigence and selfharm than Israelis and Palestinians!

Both nations hunger for land they don’t need when there is actually more than enough for them to share amicably.

Hong Kong has over 7 and a half million people making do with just a land area of 1,073 km² or 414 square miles.

Singapore has a total land area of 728.6 km² on which 5 and a half million people dwell.

Israel and Palestine have a combined population of less than 15 million with a total land area of almost 28,000 km².

That is way more than 10 times the total land area of Hong Kong and Singapore combined yet with a similar population size!

There is an African saying that where there is no greed, even the leg of an ant can be shared.

Nothing justifies what Hamas (cheered on by many Palestinians, if we are to tell ourselves the honest, bitter, inconvenient truth) did in Israel about a week ago, even as nothing justifies the abhorrent condition of the Palestinians, as a people.

It is extremely difficult to see how Israel has any choice other than to retaliate, just as it is absolutely impossible to see how there will be a lasting resolution of the underlying cause of the crisis other than by virtue of a Two State Solution.

Chinua Achebe once reminded us of an African proverb: “let the Eagle perch and let the Kite perch and if the one should say to the other ‘you shall not perch’, let its wings break”.

Indeed, the whole world must now come together in one accord to impose a settlement and an enforced peace that sees the Israelis with their own state and the Palestinians with theirs, as well.

Both states shall be sovereign and independent, indeed, equal members of the international community with mutual respect for each other and a commitment to peaceful coexistence on both sides.

Anyone who violates the resolution, be it Israel or Palestine, should immediately be sanctioned even harder than Apartheid South Africa was economically buffeted for the purpose of dismantling that diabolically racist state that most horrifically assaulted our common humanity for more than a century.

We have past the stage of exhorting the Israelis and Palestinians to resolve their differences – they clearly have no interest in doing so.

It is time to read them the riot act and tell them exactly what to do.

As for Recep Tayyip Erdo?an, the fellow is a clown looking for cheap popularity upon the misery and demise of multitudes and the only side he has chosen is his own.

Unfortunately, that is exactly what too many others across the world are doing while people on both sides keep needlessly suffering and dying.

Shame on us all, as a world, for letting this insanity tarry this long.

God bless Israel, God bless Palestine.

Onokpasa, a lawyer, writes from Abuja.