How do you explain a mainstream Palestinian viewpoint about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to an American audience?

I am not the first person to struggle with this question. As a Jordanian student of Palestinian and Iraqi origin, I get asked about the Middle East all the time here in the United States by colleagues, friends and even strangers.

Sometimes, believe it or not, I find the process of fielding questions on Islamic terrorism or on Iraqi politics far easier than answering questions about Israel/Palestine. Most of my Arab friends here, as well as a number of intellectuals I have read, also feel the same way.

There are a number of reasons for this. The main one, though, is that Iraq and even Islam are less controversial than Israel/Palestine. For the most part and with only a handful of exceptions, the vast majority of Americans are convinced that the war was a mistake and that the United States needs to find an exit strategy.

More and more people also understand that the terrible acts of Islamic terrorists, such as the 9/11 attacks, are an awful aberration and that most Muslims are not crazy fanatics. A number of columns and talk shows increasingly allow a variety of viewpoints to be heard about both Iraq and Islam. To its credit, for example, the New York Times consistently gives Maureen Dowd ample space to critique the Bush Administration’s policies on Iraq. Similarly, the Washington Post also deserves applause for publishing a number of articles that give Americans a view of Muslims and Islam that does not just hover around terrorism.

On the other hand, you don’t see that kind of vision on the part of the American media when it comes to Israel/Palestine. There are exceptions, but on the whole it is just very difficult to debate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict here. The state of knowledge and discourse in this area is very one-sided and pro-Israeli. Neocon columnists and anchors such as Fouad Ajami, Mortimer Zuckerman and Bill O’Reilly as well as otherwise liberal but pro-Israel pundits like Thomas Friedman and Nicholas Kristof are able to publish or air the most polarized opinions in favor of the Jewish state all the time.

In Israel, this is not the case. The Israeli daily, Haaretz, gives authors Gideon Levi and Amira Hass the opportunity to publish freely and critically on Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza without censorship. Similarly, al-Jazeera, while less “objective,” invites Israeli representatives on an almost daily basis. European papers like the Independent and news channels like BBC are also much more even-handed than American ones.

In the United States, however, the range of published viewpoints is restricted, at least in mainstream sites of information distribution (CNN, Wall Street Journal, Fox News, New York Times, etc.) Palestinian, or pro-Palestinian, voices are few. There is a lot of intimidation and abuse waiting for those who will, in former US congressman Paul Findley’s words, “dare to speak out.” Many people are afraid to get labeled as anti-Semitic if they criticize Israel.

As a result, I often get bombarded with honest but uninformed questions from otherwise educated onlookers. For example, a recurring theme upon which people’s curiosity and knowledge about Israel/Palestine and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in general very often seems to revolve around religion. The conflict is viewed as a struggle between Judaism and Islam, which it is not. For anyone with a deeper knowledge about what is going on, this is a flawed starting point because, for the most part, this has been a modern national struggle between two peoples claiming the same land and in which both sides have blood on their hands.

So what is the Palestinian viewpoint on the conflict? It is actually very basic. We have been given the short end of the stick. In 1900, the Arab population of Palestine constituted 94 percent of the inhabitants of the land (skeptics can consult the distinguished demographic scholarship of Justin McCarthy, a leading and careful scholar of Ottoman history). We also had a continuous, lived history as the majority on the land for centuries. For reasons that were external to us, Israel was imposed on Palestine, wresting us of our homeland, ruining our lives and depriving us of a natural right to our property (many Palestinians, like my family, still retain the title deeds, keys or even floor maps of our homes). The Arab refusal of the 1947 Partition Plan, while a seeming error in retrospect, was anathema to Palestinians at the time: would Americans today agree to give half of their homeland to another people who were a clear minority and who were coming in to the country by external decree (in this case the British)?

Yet many Palestinians today would wholeheartedly and permanently accept Israel’s right to exist and would live peacefully with Israelis if Israel would fulfill its duties as a neighbor (i.e. no more settlements, no more land grabs, no more killings). Palestinian spokespersons, even ones from Hamas, have indicated that this is their wish. But when Israel continues to inflame Palestinians by building a wall deep into Palestinian territory or by disrespecting contested religious and civic space in Jerusalem, is it any wonder that the Israelis do “not have a partner” for peace?

Sadly, these questions are not asked with enough vigor in the United States today. It is unfortunate because there are many Americans, including vast numbers of American Jews, who want to see a peaceful and fair resolution to this conflict. The more hawkish supporters of Israel on the American right, are doing Israel a disservice by terminating any real chance for debate and dialogue about what peace requires and what peace implies.

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Marwan Hanania ’00 is from Amman, Jordan. He is currently writing his Ph.D. dissertation in History at Stanford.