Compare And Contrast Kashmir And Israel/Palestine

Parallels drawn between Israel-Palestine and Kashmir

In the world media, the propaganda war rages fiercely, paralleling the conflict it describes. Nighty talk shows air programs with Israeli or Palestinian guests screaming a bewildering array of claims, counter claims, propaganda and information, leaving the uninformed westerner with the impression that this is a bad family feud far from which a wise person should remain. It is virtually impossible to sort out the arguments presented by Israelis and Palestinians without a lot of effort, but one thing is painfully obvious: both sides can't even agree on the historical facts that spawned today's conflict. Although, not receiving the media as other hot spots in the world, India and Pakistan have propelled themselves toward a scaled down "Cold War." Both being nuclear powers and investing heavily into their military with Kashmir stuck in the middle, should raise a global eyebrow. These two conflicts seem to divide the worlds 2 largest religions. The West imposes it's ethnocentric values upon the middle east by Spreading democracy in a righteous manner, hoping to stabilize oil rich areas for it's own self interests, but ironically these parallel disputes reflect the West's lack of ability to impose it's will on the area. This great divide is separated by two fundamentally incompatible worldviews, something the global community needs to address before pointing to religion as the cause of all the world's problems. In both Palestine and India, political leaders responsible for the crises consistently utilise a rhetoric of peace to justify their policies, and to pretend that those policies are geared toward a higher aim of resolving conflict. However, in both cases, the peace talks and overall peace process have meant nothing for the people under occupation. In both cases, the irrelevance of the peace process, the indifference and indeed open hostility of the international community to justice, has meant that the indigenous population realizes that the only solution is an armed struggle.

In 1948, as a result of the British Mandate, the Jewish Community in Israel under the leadership of David Ben-Gurion reestablished sovereignty over their ancient homeland. Declaration of Independence of the modern State of Israel was announced on the day that the last British forces left Israel. A day after the declaration of independence of the State of Israel, armies of five Arab countries, Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, Lebanon and Iraq, invaded Israel. This marked the beginning of the War of Independence. Despite the numerical superiority of the Arab armies, Israel defended itself against five different wars and each time won. Afraid of Jewish control, Palestinians fled the city to neighboring countries and have been fighting for it back ever since. The argument for palestine is, did the partition of Palestine into two states defied state sovereignty of Palestine? By international law, yes. But Palestine already being occupied" by the British, arguably they had sovereignty. Yet, amid such great expectations by the Palestinians, the British colonial government had promised the Jews, for free, a national Jewish homeland in another people's land, making the Jewish immigrants also hope of practicing some kind of sovereignty. On June 5, 1967, Israel launched a sweeping war on the Palestinian people, Jordan, Egypt, and Syria completing the occupation of the remaining parts of Palestine, and expanding the boundaries of the Israeli state into Syria, the Jordan Valley and the Egyptian Peninsula of Sinai.

Israelis imposed a very strict military rule and started to construct many Israeli settlements on Palestinian-owned lands in different parts of the occupied Palestinian territories.Yet, the Palestinians have never given up; they continued their fight on the path of independence and sovereignty, particularly their popular uprising (Intifada) in 1987, which compelled the late Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, to admit the Palestinians' right to sovereignty by signing the Oslo peace accord with Palestine Liberation Organization's chairman, late Yasser Arafat helped establish the first sign of sovereignty on parts of the Palestinians' soil. The escalating conflict in Palestine that we witness today, indeed, is not a unique phenomenon as far as Muslim countries are concerned the problem of Kashmir bears strong parallels to the ongoing crisis in Israel

One year earlier in 1947, Kashmir was similarly handed over to the Indian Government by the British . When India was partitioned, muslim forces from Pakistan invaded Kashmir.The Hindu ruler fled to Delhi and there agreed to place Kashmir under the dominion of India. Indian troops were seen to kashmir to expel the Pakistani forces. The fighting was ended by a UN cease-fire: as a reoccurring theme in foreign policy, the region was divided again between India and Pakistan along the cease-fire line. This disputed region set off two of the three wars India and Pakistan have fought since they emerged out of the remnants of the British Empire in. India won all three, and since the latest war in 1971, the conflict has smoldered on, driven by Pakistan's support for the Kashmiri insurgency. The situation grew exponentially more dangerous when each state deployed nuclear weapons, revealed to the world in tit-for-tat nuclear tests in the spring of 1998. The presence of nuclear weapons on both sides could prevent another major war. By making the risks of war unthinkable, nuclear weapons create a balance of terror, sobering leaders and necessitating dialogue, as in the Cold War. Yet today in Kashmir the threat of war looms despite these weapons. Are nuclear weapons then containing or causing conflict in Kashmir? Perhaps both. Because both states have nuclear weapons, neither is likely to intentionally launch an all-out war. But nuclear weapons permit the states to take lesser violent actions or risks that attempt to exploit the chance of catastrophe for strategic gain. Ultimately, progress on Kashmir will come only when one of the main players Pakistan, India, change their minds about the conflict. India's and Pakistan's unwillingness to come to a common point is the main cause of the dispute. This is a clear general parallel between the Israel-Palestine conflict and the territorial dispute in Kashmir, yet difference in religion seems to add more fuel to the fire.

The Middle East conflict has been sliding towards full-blown war since September, 2000, as the last shreds of the Oslo Peace Process dissolved into an intifada and successive terrorist activities. Even today waves of Palestinian suicide bombings