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Rachel Fredman Editorial in the UNM Lobo

On March 26, the Daily Lobo published an article by Bryan Gibel discussing the campus visit of Hisham Jabi, a contractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development. Presenting a hackneyed, utopian view of the impasse between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA), Gibel fails to discuss any of the political complexities of the situation. Jabi’s comments are particularly absurd, claiming the conflict stems from a lack of “mutual respect and direct human interaction” between Israelis and Palestinians. These rosy-tinged scenarios prove ludicrous when analyzing the regional political situation.

Jabi claims that traveling the distance from Albuquerque to Santa Fe, a one-hour trek, takes 3 1/2 to eight hours in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip, depending on how much inspection the government imposes. First, what government is Jabi referring to? Since he mentioned Gaza, he must be referring to the PA. Since August 2005, when Israel unilaterally withdrew from this piece of land, Gaza has been under the sole jurisdiction of the PA. Rather than use this land to build infrastructure and create jobs, the PA has done nothing to develop a viable state since Israel’s …