Between Iraq and a hard place -25/6/04

By Greg Rollins

In general, the Arab world loves to harp about the issue of Palestine, but they find Palestinian refugees a bother. Many Iraqis are afraid of becoming the next bother. They are also afraid of becoming an endless smoldering affair, of becoming another example of the politically sticky Western interest in the Middle East.

Iraqis have every right to be afraid of these things. Listening to Iraqis talk about suffering under the hands of Coalition troops and policies is like listening to Palestinians talk about the Israeli occupation. At the hands of their occupiers, both experience similar ordeals.

Many Iraqi families, have a father, a son, brother, or even a cousin who lives and works somewhere else in the Middle East or the west. He sends his money back to Iraq so his family might eat, go to school or buy clothes. This same thing has been happening in Palestine for over fifty years.

Right now, there is hope that Iraq will become its own, independent nation. There is a future. There is a timeline and structure. There is the newly elected Prime Minister and the cabinet he has formed, a cabinet that has begun to criticize the U.S. and the unbalanced power structure it installed.

In the latter half of the 1990s, there was hope in Palestine. The Israeli government gave the Palestinian Authority (PA) some hope of land, power and status. Palestinians legally voted Yasser Arafat into office. The PA took control of cities and set up ministries. Today, the Israeli government ignores the PA. It uses its military to control the Palestinians and achieve its goals in the West Bank and Gaza. If the U.S. so desires, at any time it too could override--even dismantle--the new Iraqi government for the sake of its own interests. It has announced that the international military force wil remain under U.S. rather than Iraqi authority.

There are other parallels: detention techniques used by the two militaries, checkpoints, villages encircled with barbed wire, the rules and regulations. But the Iraqi people are not the next Palestinians yet. Right now, what separates them from the Palestinian people is their spirit. The U.S. occupation has not crushed the spirit of the Iraqi people as the Israeli occupation has crushed the Palestinians. Thinking like victims, many Palestinians believe they cannot help themselves, that others must help them. Most Iraqi people have yet to reach that point, but if no real change appears, if they fail to obtain real independence from their occupiers they may lose their spirit too.

If they do not achieve real independence, the Iraqi people will eventually declare their own Intifada (shaking off.) The tension and fighting will continually grow and diminish like a tide. The news from Iraq will become depressing and tedious. The world will look somewhere else. This is what most Iraqis are afraid of: they are afraid of turning into a cause people have forgotten.

Greg Rollins worked with CPT's Hebron team in the West Bank for three
years and currently works with CPT's Iraq team

Christian Peacemaker Teams is an initiative of the historic peace churches (Mennonites, Church of the Brethren, and Quakers) with support and membership from a range of Catholic and Protestant denominations. Supporting violence-reduction efforts around the world is its mandate.

Article reproduced with the kind permission of Christian Peacemaker Teams