Former Nobel Peace Prize nominee Jeff Halper spoke to Cal Poly students about his ideas for peace between Israel and Palestine Wednesday.
Nominated for his peace activism in 2006, Halper talked about his experiences in Israel and what he thinks needs to be done to achieve stability in the region.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been one of the most intensely-covered world events in recent history. People on both sides of the conflict claim rights to the land between the east side of the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan River. During the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel captured multiple territories in the region including the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Since then, Isreal has periodically moved settlers into those territories.
According to Halper, this transportation of settlers creates conflict for housing space among Palestinians and Israeli settlers. This involves housing demolition, a tactic used by the Israeli Defense Force in the occupied territories.
“Israel has demolished about 24,000 Palestinian homes (in the region) so far and its an attempt to really drive the Palestinians out of the country or at least confine them to little islands within the country,” Halper said.
This is why Halper co-founded the Israeli Committee against Housing Demolition (ICAHD) which according to its Web site is a “non-violent, direct-action group originally established to oppose and resist Israeli demolition of Palestinian houses in the Occupied Territories.”
“The American people have got to say to congress, ‘Look, this is an issue that concerns us, it really is compromising American interests in the world and we want you to do something about it’,” Halper said. “Members of congress want to get reelected so as long as they feel that people are pro-Israel, they are not going to speak out. So we have to let people know that this occupation should be ended in general, but it also should be ended because its in the interest of the United States to end it.”
The second part of his speech chronicled the work of ICAHD, in which Halper told an emotional story of a Palestinian family that had their house bulldozed and destroyed four times. Halper and a team helped rebuild it. Helping is the only way to begin to understand their situation, he said.
“I’m not just some guy that has an opinion, but I’ve been in the occupied territories. I’ve been in the Israeli army; I’ve lived in Israel for 40 some years, so I know what I’m talking about,” Halper said. “The Palestinians are living under occupation and they’re caught between a rock and a hard place. If they resist, they’re called terrorist and they’re anti-semetic and if they don’t resist and simply accept oppression then they will be oppressed forever.”
Religious studies professor Stephen Lloyd-Moffett said the short amount of time alloted for his speech made it difficult to grasp of such a complex issue. However, he added that Halper played on people’s emotions too much.
“Halper comes with an activist agenda that necessarily simplifies the narrative in order to lure people to a conclusion, which is inevitable in some cases in the course of an hour talk,” he said. “But his goal is not for people to understand the complexity of the issues but to illicit an emotional response in order to create activism.”
Halper said individuals should perform their own research and come to their own conclusion about the conflict.