Media Contacts: Dr. Akram Khater, 919/513-2218 (campus), 919/781-8289 (home) or [email protected] Potter, NC State News Services, 919/515-3470 or [email protected]
Oct. 13, 2000
Middle East Historian: Flawed Peace Process to Blame for Violence
The ongoing eruption of violence in the Middle East is the result of a flawed peace process that must be reinvigorated by putting Palestinians and Israelis on equal footing, says Dr. Akram Khater, assistant professor of Middle Eastern history at North Carolina State University.
Khater -- a native of Lebanon who is an expert on Middle East current affairs -- is available to comment on the situation from both political and historical perspectives.
For seven years, Khater says, frustration about the peace process has been building among Palestinians, who do not feel they have been treated as equals by the Israelis. The Israelis, he explains, have continued to build settlements in occupied Palestinian territories while ruling out the possibility of an independent Palestinian state. "There are no peace dividends from the perspective of the Palestinians," he says.
That frustration exploded on Sept. 28 when Likud party leader Arial Sharon, accompanied by 1,000 Israelis soldiers, visited the disputed Temple Mount compound in Jerusalem. Since then, more than 90 people -- nearly all of them Palestinians -- have been killed in clashes between protesters and the Israeli military.
"It's horrifying to see what's going on, and I oppose violence by anyone, but it's even more horrifying in many ways that we're not learning the lessons we need to learn from this situation," Khater says.
Those lessons: That the Israelis and Palestinians treat each other as equals, and that all parties abide by United Nations Resolution 242 - which calls for Israeli withdrawal from all areas it occupied in 1967, and for mutual recognition of sovereignty and guarantees of security.
Khater adds that television broadcasts from the Middle East, which he monitors daily, indicate that the United States has lost credibility as an "honest broker" among Arabs -- in part because the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates have declared that the United States is more sympathetic to the Israelis.
"The violence we're seeing is an indication of the frustration with the United States," he said.
Still, the U.S. can still play a role in restarting the peace process by refusing to take sides. "What I have no doubt about is that peace is the only answer," he says.
-- potter --
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