The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been transpiring since the mid-1940s, and little to no positive progress has been made. Palestinians are still the victims of human rights violations at the hands of the Israeli government. Whilst movements and individuals are fighting for change, governments around the world have slowly begun to take the side of the Israeli government and normalize relations with them. This not only is a direct attack on the human rights of Palestinians but also creates the idea that it is acceptable to normalize relations with an abusive government. The Israeli government has caused Palestinians to suffer for the past decades by stripping them of their land and forcing them to live in secluded areas such as Gaza and the West Bank that are still controlled by Israeli forces.
The normalization of relations with Israel, which has recently risen in the Arab world, is a prominent issue for numerous reasons. By normalizing relations with Israel, you are complicit in the abuse of Palestinians and disregard of their human rights, as well as human rights issues as a whole. When you witness abuse, you want to distance yourself as far away from it, otherwise, you will be considered as an accomplice and accepting of this act; this directly applies to the issue at hand. While administrations of different countries have stated that their reasoning for normalizing relations is that they can put pressure on the Israeli government to stop their abuse, we have not seen any progress. The United Arab Emirates and Morocco are prime examples of countries that have normalized relations for that reason but failed to advocate for the rights of Palestinians. Digging deeper shows that normalization itself isn’t the problem: the problem is that normalization does not lead to support for Palestinians. The entire notion of normalizing relations with Israel is bluntly and ignorantly overlooking human rights, which only reflects on that country and their morals.
What can youth do about it? How are we going to use our voices to stand up to a large government that unfortunately has many allies? Young people are always engines for change. Discussing these inhumane acts with Palestinians themselves to comprehend the matter at hand and understand their stories is critical to raising awareness properly and using our voices. Also, it is imperative to remember that a large majority of Palestinians living in the West Bank are young people around the age of fourteen.
The goal is not to turn Arabs and Israelis against each other: that only prevents progress and leads to anti-Semitism. It is important to note that there is a chief difference between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. Standing against the Israeli government is not the same thing as hating Jews. What we as youth need to understand is that Palestinians are being stripped of their human rights. We need to fight for them because if we allow nations to normalize their relations with Israel, we normalize abuse and restrictions of human rights.
Written by: Ayat Younis