THE recent Israel-Palestine conflict reminds me of a brief yet memorable encounter with a Palestinian outside of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Turkey.

For starters, Hagia Sophia is a special house of worship as it was originally built as a Christian Orthodox church during the Eastern Roman Empire.

However, it was soon turned into a mosque, a museum and back to a mosque with different regimes ruling Istanbul.

For better or worse, Hagia Sophia has now come to symbolise Turkey’s government ruling ideology and yet it never loses its lustre as an important piece of international monument symbolising the diversity of beliefs and coexistence of different religions the country possesses.

August 9, 2014, was a day when the sky was painted blue accompanied by dark clouds, which soon materialised into drizzling rain, yet that did not dampen the mood of those coming to visit Hagia Sophia, as I recalled the crowd stretches out beyond its vicinity well into the streets of Sultan Ahmet.

In the middle of waiting for more than an hour, this is where I first began to strike up a conversation with a Palestinian in the rain, beside the Hagia Sophia souvenir shop.

The conversation began with the usual pleasantry of two foreigners exchanging greetings with each other and it was then that I found out that this friend, who was lining up as patiently as I was just to get a glimpse of the holy mosque, was a fleeing Palestinian currently seeking refuge in Turkey.

To him, Hagia Sophia reminds him of a long, distant past that had now been abandoned in his land of his birth where Muslims, Jews and Christians used to coexist in Palestine and equally shared the splendour of Jerusalem under the rule of Ottoman Empire.

From much of the conversation, he was passionately describing the dreadful conditions of Palestinians living under illegal occupation of Israel.

It was from this Palestinian that I heard first-hand about how Palestinians were being denied of basic welfare, such as healthcare and water, because of Israel’s discriminatory policies, and the bullying and harassment by law enforcement officers that has become a norm in the everyday life of Palestinians living in occupied territory.

The conversation struck deep and so visceral that it still reverberates in my mind today.

He was also speaking forcefully, but with logic and reason, about how the established media manipulated facts and employed biased reporting to cover Israeli atrocities.

Lest we forget the term ‘fake news’, backlash against media and populist politics of Trump and Brexit had not entered the scene in 2014; the world at that time did not treat news reported by the media with scepticism.

The 2021 Israeli-Palestinian conflict has since recorded at least the deaths of 228 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, at least 63 of which were children.

Meanwhile, there were only 12 casualties in Israel, which shows the one-sided nature of the conflict and the imbalance of military power. This is often missing in assessing this contentious issue.

While a recent ceasefire was welcomed, as any deaths on both sides should be mourned and a further escalation of conflict should be avoided, there is a sense of disturbing familiarity for long-time followers of this conflict: a ceasefire is merely a temporary halt until the next escalation, rather than a permanent ceasefire with the intention of seeking peace.

For starters, the ceasefire does not signal an end to Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine and the basic rights of Palestinians continue to be ignored.

Rather, the ceasefire is merely delaying the inevitable, where Israel will continue its illegal settlement strategy by building homes for its citizens at the expense of displacing Palestinians.

It is wishful thinking to expect Palestinian representatives to initiate or continue any sort of two-state solutions negotiations – which I still unreservedly support – with Israel under such circumstances.

The British-Israeli historian Avi Shlaim described Israel’s current action as akin to someone continuing eating the pizza, while negotiating the division of it.

There is also the question of Hamas militancy, which is subject to much international criticism and might risk derailing the movement of liberating Palestinian.

However, Israel’s illegal occupation and abuses towards Palestinians far precedes Hamas’s existence.

While I personally believe there is no defence for Hamas firing rockets into civilian areas, history provides an undoubtedly clear answer that Israel will continue to subjugate the Palestinians regardless of Hamas’s actions.

Despite the familiarity of the Israel-Palestine conflict, the hope is that public opinion is finally turning against the wishes of Israel.

US President Joe Biden might have thrown the usual trope of Israel has the right to defend himself, but it is also noteworthy the same president has told Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he expects “a significant de-escalation on the path to a ceasefire” in Gaza.

The US might still be on the side of Israel in all matters, but the bond appears to be loosening, compared to the time when former US president Donald Trump unapologetically defended Israel.

Non-Muslims in Malaysia are also growing more sympathetic towards the cause of Palestinians.

This is in no small part thanks to how the conflict is being structured and viewed through the lens of human rights and Palestinians’ right to self-determination, rather than a battle between Judaism and Islam.

The conflict is never about a triumph of a religion but rather a conflict borne out of the spectre of colonialism and nationalism.

My encounter with my fellow Palestinian friend ended with him saying that peace in Jerusalem could only be achieved through understanding where more and more non-Muslims like me empathise with the plight of the Palestinians and argue the case on humanitarian grounds.

Although we are still a long way from there, we are slowly but surely achieving that. – May 23, 2021.

* Kenneth Cheng has always been interested in the interplay between human rights and government but more importantly he is a father of two cats, Tangyuan and Toufu. When he is not attending to his feline matters, he is most likely reading books about politics and human rights or playing video games. He is a firm believer in the dictum “power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will”.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.