Is there a chance for a ceasefire in the Middle East?
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Editor's Note
: Dean Obeidallah, a former attorney, is the host of the SiriusXM radio show "The Dean Obeidallah Show" and a columnist for The Daily Beast.
You can follow him at @DeanObeidallah.
The opinions expressed in this text are yours.
See more opinion pieces on CNN.
(CNN) -
There are no winners in the current battle between Hamas and Israel.
The loss of life on both sides, although uneven, is heartbreaking.
As of Sunday night, the number of Palestinians killed is 212, including 61 children.
At least 10 Israelis have been killed by Hamas rockets.
If history is any guide, however, after a ceasefire is reached, the conflict will slowly fade from the headlines, the world will go back to business, and the Palestinians will be largely forgotten once again.
For those who sincerely want a just and lasting peace in the Middle East, this time should be different.
The world, and especially the Joe Biden government, cannot look the other way, but has to engage with the Palestinian issue.
It is 2021: a nation has long been needed for Palestinian Christians and Muslims, as well as security and equality for them.
Will Biden react to conflict in the Middle East?
2:24
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember.
My Palestinian father - born in the 1930s in what was then Palestine (controlled by Britain until 1948) but now the West Bank - told me stories about it when I was a child in the late 1970s.
It was not a political discussion, but focused on how my relatives and other Palestinians coped with everyday life under the Israeli military occupation.
The limited freedom of movement, the multitude of Israeli military checkpoints that denied personal self-sufficiency, my grandmother's land stolen by Israeli settlers, and so on.
During the decades that followed, few US elected officials from both parties prioritized the human rights of the Palestinians.
Fortunately, Senator Bernie Sanders changed that during the 2016 presidential campaign when he declared, "We are going to have to treat the Palestinian people with respect and dignity."
Sanders, while defending Israel's right to exist, called for the United States to stop being "one-sided" in the conflict.
Although unthinkable a decade ago, last week a diverse group of 25 Democratic House members - including Marie Newman, Ayanna Pressley, Mark Pocan and Judy Chu - called on the Biden administration to condemn the effort by Jewish groups. ultranationalists for evicting Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem.
Situation in Israel: minute by minute of the conflict with the Palestinians
And on Thursday, a group of Democrats from the House of Representatives demonstrated in plenary in support of the human rights of the Palestinians.
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez noted that although President Biden asserted that Israel has the right to defend itself, she asked, "But do the Palestinians have the right to survive?" .
Pressley delivered an impassioned speech that first linked the Black Lives Matter movement to the human rights of the Palestinians, then declared: "We cannot stand idly by and complicit and allow the occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people to continue.
Others joined in these speeches, including Representative Rashida Tlaib, a fellow American of Palestinian origin who summed it up well: "The Palestinians are not going anywhere else."
Is right.
According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, there are more than 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank and 2.1 million in Gaza.
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel says there are some 358,000 Palestinians in Jerusalem.
The reality, however, is that Israelis are not going anywhere either, with a population of more than 9 million, of which almost 7 million are Jewish.
As Pressley declared on Thursday, "the destinies of the Israeli and Palestinian peoples are linked."
But although the future of both is linked, it does not mean that the respective peoples are equal, neither in terms of resources, political power or level of suffering.
Israel-Gaza conflict: historical facts you need to know
For example, in Gaza, 95% of the residents do not have access to clean water and 80% of the population depends on international aid to survive.
Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch recently published a 213-page report in which it accused the Government of Israel of applying an "apartheid" system with policies that favor Israeli Jews over Palestinians who are both in Israel and in the territories. .
(In January, the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem made the same accusation.)
To be sure, a comprehensive peace agreement currently seems almost impossible given the leadership.
Who in Hamas can Israeli officials speak to?
Conversely, when it comes to the Palestinians of the West Bank, who could be their partner for peace when Israel's current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has declared that there will be no Palestinian state under his rule and vowed to annex large swaths of the West Bank?
Not forgetting about the Palestinians is about more than promoting peace: it is for the United States to take a position in favor of the human rights of the Palestinians.
For example, there are not only the threats of eviction of Palestinians from their homes and the "extensive restrictions for decades on freedom of movement and basic civil rights" of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, detailed by Human Rights Watch, but also the alarming increase in Israeli extremists taking to the streets threateningly chanting "death to the Arabs."
Once a ceasefire is reached, President Biden must make it clear that Palestinians are deserving of the same security, equality and homeland as Israelis.
The days of denying the humanity of the Palestinians must end.
And importantly, Biden must declare that he is willing to use the $ 3.8 billion in annual aid that the United States provides to the Israeli government - along with the US leadership role in the world - to achieve this.
This impartial approach is the first step in laying the foundations for a lasting and just peace agreement.
Israel Palestine Palestine