"What have Palestinian done to you?"

Wendy Pearlman

Here in Cairo, Egypt, where I currently live, I am addressed this and similar questions everyday. The vendor at my favorite vegetable stand can't understand why my government watches as Israel uses live ammunition and missiles against a largely unarmed civilian population and then demands that Palestinians "stop the violence". The waiter at the neighborhood café asks me for one good reason why my country stands behind Israel as it fires at ambulances, drops bombs on radio stations, and imposes curfews and closures that turn millions of Palestinian men, women, and children into virtual prisoners in their homes.

I don't know how to answer, because I am just as bewildered as they are. Were Israeli soldiers somehow serving America's strategic needs when, during the past eight weeks, they injured 10,000 Palestinians, thousands of them crippled for life and dozens blinded? I suppose the experts in Washington determined that Americans are more secure when kids in the West Bank and Gaza Strip can't see or walk. Is Israel acting as our loyal ally when it bulldozes hundreds of acres of Palestinian farmland? Maybe the thousand year-old date and olive trees were threatening our vital interests and simply had to go. Does America benefit as the Israeli blockade pummels the Palestinian economy at an estimated loss of $10 million a day? Seeing that pounding the Palestinians into poverty is hardly a good way of opening new markets, I just can't figure out how it makes us Americans richer, either materially or morally.

In fact, it makes us poorer. By acting as the neighborhood bully we are generating anti-American sentiments all over the world. That's dangerous for our commercial, professional, and personal relationships everywhere.

As my taxi driver pointed out yesterday while stopped in traffic on the Nile Bridge, the problem is not that America just stands back and watches what Amnesty International has termed as "Israel's war crimes". Rather, our unconditional support for Israel makes it possible. With an annual aid package topping $2.8 billion, we give more American tax-dollars to Israel than to any other country - far more than we offer to the entire continent of Africa. At this very moment Congress is considering an additional motion to grant Israel $250 million in extra emergency military aid. We can't deny the truth: we're accomplices to everything Israel does.

The most perplexing part of the whole mess, Egyptians will suggest, is that Americans are unable to see that Palestinians are struggling for the same principles of freedom and independence that America represents. After all, their fight for an end to Israel's occupation of their land is not much different from what our own founding fathers fought for -- life, liberty, and maybe even the pursuit of happiness. The fact is that Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem after the 1967 War. The occupation, And the very existence of settlements, violates international law and UN resolutions. Nonetheless, our government scolds the Palestinians for not accepting occupation and oppression gracefully, while excusing Israel at Every violation. Check out a map the next time you hear that Arafat turned up his nose at an offer of 92% of the Occupied Territories. A glance at the actual geography is enough to see that the plan left the Palestinians with nothing more than isolated islands of territory segmented by a grid of Israeli by-pass roads, settlements, and soldiers, and very little water.

So Egyptians I meet on the street each day have a point when they call Israel the 51st American state. Maybe they even know more about American politics than most of us Americans. Maybe we do have some grudge against the Palestinians. Why else do we use our economic and military might against them? If we had even the mildest respect for Palestinians as a people looking for the same freedom that we already enjoy, don't you think we'd do something to change America's actions?