CEO of Three Arches Palestine: Muslims are Not Linked to ISIS

Liputan6.com, Jakarta Proliferating news surrounding Islamic State and its ventures around the world have shifted focus of many people from stories of subjugation and conflicts that are occurring elsewhere. Enduring territorial dispute over status of Jerusalem between Israel and Palestine is one that many seems to ignore every now and then.

The story about this particular area resurfaces with the need to settle the dispute once and for all growing more vocal than ever. The thriving belief hitherto is that Israeli-Palestine conflict is spurred by lack of ability by both sides to tolerate religious coexistence.

As neighbors of regions such as Syria and Iraq where ISIS members are reportedly present, CEO of The Three Arches Co in Bethlehem, Palestine Maher N. Canawati informs Liputan6.com that both Palestine and Israel never had ISIS in their conflict.

“A lot of people think ISIS is in Palestine or Israel,” Maher shared on 15 January 2016 to Liputan6.com during visitation.

“We have the same situation in our region between Palestine and Israel. We fight for our state, there is something to fight over, something that we deserve,” he continued explaining.

According to him, many people have resort to linking ISIS with the conflict within this region due to the bold religious gap between Israel and Palestine that often clouds the underlying reason of it being territorial dispute.

He felt that it is necessitated for such clarification to be made and that the two sides have been battling over the state of Jerusalem on a daily basis, the kind of battle that the rest of the world currently faces in a more occasional order.

Despite being grown accustomed to seeing conflict back home, Maher admits that the attacks in Indonesia’s capital Sarinah Plaza, Thamrin “was a shock” and that he was as frightened as when he was in the U.S back in 2001.

“I remember during the September 11 attacks, I was in Florida and everyone was watching TV,” he informed, depicting similar kind of shock he felt on January 14 2016 when the Indonesian news headline centered its focus predominantly on live terror attacks.

“I think that crazy people are everywhere in this country. They want us to feel unsafe, we should not let them get what they want.”

When he describes ‘unsafe’, it applies to all kinds of security; it can be physical, mental, national, and even to the well being of businesses. While it is true that the terrorist attacks in Jakarta only affected businesses momentarily, it cannot be denied that it successfully halted any movement of business that day.

“Last year in our country, our industry of tourism drops down by 30% due to conflict in Gaza,” he said.

Maher believes that the real Muslims around the world lacking in “actions” to show the truth and to show the rest of the world that Muslims cannot be linked to ISIS and that the two are in no way connected to one another.