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Well, for all my efforts to bring Jews and Muslims and Christians together you might ask; Who does he think he is this American pissant believing for one minute that he has the answer to this endless war and forty one years of occupation and counting? But the amazing thing is that I do, and so do you!
It's really only impossible if you wait for the "other" to move first. And unfortunately, everyone is trapped in a giant game of chicken with no one willing to make the first move but the Americans and they don't count. We should learn a lesson by looking in the mirror at the health care debate in our own back yard. Dozens of interest groups jump up and down to stifle progress once again. Well, Israel has twenty plus political parties and an electoral process that only works through coalition building. The Palestinians are divided depending on when you take the poll about 60 to 40 in favor of Fatah over Hamas. But lots of people on the streets have little faith in the promise of peace and see it only as another political ploy. The same is true in Israel. so, in this environment who wins by sticking their neck out and maybe literally getting it cut off like Sadat and Rabin by home grown extremists. Even though Sharon was felled by a massive stroke he lived his final year in office under the constant threat of an assassin's bullet for giving up the settlements in Gaza.
It's not easy this peace. But I believe it is doable if all sides do their share of the work necessary to reshape the public appetite for peace. My friend, Rabbi Froman talks about a People's Movement and he is right. But it is bigger than that. This process must engage George Mitchell and Tony Blair and Shimon Peres and Salam Fayyad and a slew of leaders from the Arab league, the European Union and the Quartet every day in working to jointly educate and prepare the two publics for the coming of a real, tangible and lasting peace. This people's peace will sweep together right and left, Arab and Jew, religious and secular by knitting together the fabric of both people's and the refugees in a collaborative process that requires compassion, education, understanding and reconciliation as byproducts of a new public initiative that grows from the bottom up and the top down simultaneously. This crazy quilt of new and evolving relationships will work to re-inspire politicians and sweep away those that resist the power of a growing wave for peace.
You have the same ability as I to make this popular movement for peace happen. Write a letter to your Congressman, join a local peace group, join ICMEP, the Interfaith Community for Middle East Peace. Spent ten minutes a day reading one article on peace and email it on to ten friends. We over here in the colonies have to help our sisters and brothers across the river and our President in the District of Columbia to do this vital thing. I want you to think about what will happen to the nature of our problems in the world if we act together to extinguish the ongoing fire of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Jerusalem will become the City of Peace and fulfill the promise of three great religions. This is all possible if you decide to make it possible.
