Britt's Final Thoughts on Peace Summit

In English we have learned a lot about this topic, and even though I am not a Palestinian or Jewish I think there should be peace. I also realize how complicated the matter is and that because of that peace will be hard to reach. Yesterday in class from characters' perspectives we made peace proposals. I think a lot of peace proposals could work, or would be passed but some both sides would never agree to. It's very complicated.

The first proposal is that Palestinians should have the same rights as the Jews and that they also have freedom of travel. This would be hard to pass for a number of reasons. The main reason is that to make this happen the Jews would have to really lessen the security, which they don't want to do. Due to that and other reasons, I don't think this one could happen anytime soon, but if it were to be passed it would be a huge step in the direction of peace. The only bad thing that could arise from that one is that once the checkpoints are gone, the Palestinians could plan an uprising.

The next proposal is to take all the checkpoints away. My thoughts are the same on this as for the first one. This would cause problems for the Jews who want security, but it could also bring peace because when there is no tight security the Palestinians might not feel the urge to use force anymore.

The next proposal made was for the Israelis to give back the Palestinians homes that they had before, or a fair compensation. If this could ever actually happen, it would be a big breakthrough to peace, because one of the biggest things the Palestinians are mad about and are fighting for is to have their houses back. They are mad because the Israelis came in and demanded all of the Palestinians leave. The thing is that this would be almost impossible because the government doesn't want to make room and spend all of the money for the Palestinians.

The next proposal was that Jerusalem should become an International Zone with total freedom of movement for everyone, without checkpoints to and from West Bank. First of all, this has a few different changes and so maybe one could happen but not the others. The only thing that's really logical here would be to make Jerusalem an international zone with checkpoints, but even that would be hard to do because the Jews don't want to give up their holy Jerusalem.

The next proposal was for the U.S. to give half of whatever aid (not military though) to the Israelis and half to the Palestinians. Instead of this idea, I think that if the U.S. is going to give aid they should make logical decisions of who needs what.

The last proposal was to make Israeli Arabs and Palestinians into full Israeli citizens. If this were possible, it would probably make things fairer, but even if this happened, who knows if the Palestinians would have the same rights.

To sum it up, peace will be a long and hard process, but it is possible in the long run.