Can we just acknowledge that there is no
"road map" to peace in the Middle East? Under Bush, there is no
U.S.-sponsored avenue or boulevard or street or back alley that could
possibly take the parties to a solution. In sum, there are no shortcuts to
peace.
But there is a longcut that could work: A comprehensive peace treaty.
One worked out by the Israelis and Palestinians themselves, perhaps within
a short period of negotiation, that takes all the most difficult issues --
the Occupation, settlements, Jerusalem, right of return -- and arrives at
an overall agreement.
It would be a peace that gives no veto power to Arab or Israeli
terrorists.
If there dedication and commitment to peace, and a bomb blows up a cafe
or a car, the two governments do not let it interfere with the peace
process; instead, they proceed apace and seek to arrest the perpetrators.
After awhile, when the extremists see that neither side uses this kind of
violence as an excuse to stop the peace, such bombings will grow fewer and
fewer.
Once there is peace, both battered societies, bloodied by decades of
brutality (by the Others and by themselves), will begin initiating joint
projects for jobs, water, agriculture, etc. Those positive developments on
the ground -- which will yield employment, steady income, lessening of
tension, hope for improvement -- will further marginalize the extremist
groups.
*****
So with that as a goal -- yes, I know it sounds like a well-worn
fantasy, but stick with me on this one -- how do we get from here to
there?
The Mideast realities in the Autumn of 2003 tell me that the rivers
haven't run red enough, the slaughter hasn't cut deep enough, the
politicians aren't smart or courageous enough. In short, the situation is
hopeless. Too broad a section of both societies believe they can still
"win," i.e. drive the Others away, make them disappear like
magic.
Extremists on both sides (egged-on, unfortunately, by their elected
leaders) believe that their claim to the disputed land is given by God.
The Israeli fundamentalists want a Greater Israel, the Palestinian
extremists want a Greater Palestine, with no Israel.
Ordinarily, when two religiously-oriented groups claim that God is on
their side, there is no room for accomodation, because it is believed that
a compromise would be an affront to God.
But in this extraordinary situation, it is not required that either
side forsake their God. If and when both sides can finally agree that the
continuing slaughter is intolerable, that their economic and social
situation are intolerable, that the constant stress is intolerable, that
each losing its moral way is intolerable -- if and when they get to that
point (which, unfortunately, probably means after Arafat and Sharon have
died), then both sides can say to themselves something like this:
"Dear God/Allah: We have remained true to your desires for decades
upon decades, but our peoples have grown weary with despair and
never-ceasing bloodshed.
We want to continue the battle for your rule, but the reality is that
neither of us can make the other side disappear. If we don't come to some
sort of agreement -- not to like each other but merely to recognize that
the others are here and they're not going to go away -- we will provide
nothing to our children and grandchildren but hopelessness and despair and
perpetual slaughter and unbearable tension. Therefore, in the name of
reality -- and, we hope, with your blessing -- we will make a peace. It
will not get us everything we and you want, but it will reclaim the
likelihood of a future for succeeding generations."
Having come to this mental/spiritual/political decision, the necessary
accomodations can then be made, those same compromises that have been
evident to everyone for decades: Israel ends the Occupation and withdraws
into its secure, pre-1967 borders, its settlements abandoned to the
Palestinians in need of homes, and officially recognizes the new state of
Palestine; the Palestinians now have a contiguous, economically and
administratively viable state, and officially recognizes Israel's right to
exist, and promulgates the necessary laws, and translates and
broadcasts/publishes them in Arabic; Israel permits some Palestinian
families to return to ancestral lands, but most are provided monetary
compensation; Jerusalem becomes an international city.
The ultra-Orthodox extremists in Israel and the Hamas/Jihad extremists
in Palestine are made parties to the ultimate agreement, if possible; if
not, they are restrained as much as they can be. These terrorist groups
become fringe elements within their respective societies. And if and when
they carry out a terrorist atrocity -- be it Ultra-Orthodox attacks on
Arab citizens, or Hamas/Jihad suicide-bombings in Tel Aviv or Haifa -- the
political leadership simply and resolutely maintains the peace, while
hunting down the assailants.
Since there is now peace and re-construction can fluorish, new jobs are
created, leading to water rights being developed and expanded, joint
artistic and economic projects initiated -- and the extremists are
marginalized. They begin to lose their hold on the imagination of the
populace, since other things, more positive things, are happening on the
ground. The attacks grow further apart.
*****
Again, how does one get from here to there? Is the United States
involved? Is the United Nations involved? Is the Arab League involved?
Clearly, all three have to be majorly involved. Without their
third-party legitimacy, financial backing and moral suasion, none of this
can happen.
The United States -- and it's likely we're talking about post-Bush,
since his much-ballyhood "road map" was little more than a
device to buy some quiet on the Arab street while preparing to invade Iraq
-- has to realize that it's in America's national-security interests that
there be a true and effective and comprehensive peace in the Middle East.
Bush&Co. sometimes say those words, but never follow through with the
actions that would help make a peace happen.
Instead, they continue to place all their chips on Ariel Sharon as
their proxy enforcer. The result is to pour gasoline on a smoldering
regional-political fire.
If and when the U.S. is serious about helping bring peace to the
region, it will threaten to withdraw all financial aid to the Israelis and
Palestinians -- and if pushed to it, actually will withdraw the aid --
until the necessary steps are taken that will lead down that road to
peace. Once all that is done and the peace is made, with U.S. help,
American can contribute a flow of funds and experts to the area.
The Arab League can be most helpful here in convincing their
Palestinian brothers and sisters -- the same people they've abandoned for
so long -- to make the peace, and to help them enforce the peace. There
might also be consideration of turning over small border areas to the new
country of Palestine where many Palestinians currently reside . And, of
course, there would have to be massive financial aid to the currently
impoverished, devastated state.
The United Nations in this post-treaty phase likely will have to
contribute peacekeeping troops on the ground, to separate the two sides
temporarily while the transitions are being made (Israelis withdrawing
from the settlements, when the separation wall is torn down, etc.), to
supervise the administration of Jerusalem as an international city, to
bring all its moral suasion to bear, to help raise and funnel aid and
expertise to the area.
In other words, probably none of this will happen, or can happen, until
the entire world becomes involved in helping to create the conditions and
context and moral power for peace. Lest we become too pessimistic at the
possibility of peace ever coming to the Mideast, let us remember how
intractable the Northern Ireland situation looked for hundreds of years,
and likewise how hopeless the South African apartheid situation looked for
so many decades. But peace and economic/social progress are now being made
in both areas long torn by religious, class or ethnic divides. The focus
of the world on those seemingly unsolvable disputes helped bring about
those peaceful solutions.
But, of course, the hardest work has to be done by the Israelis and
Palestinians themselves. Not just the leaders -- or not even mainly the
leaders, who are caught in a time-warp of violence-revenge -- but ordinary
citizens, longing for peace and stability and economic progress in their
lives, and a different, more positive life for their kids. American Jews
and American Arabs have much to contribute to this momentum for peace as
well.
When the Israelis and Palestinians finally recognize that violence and
intimidation and brutality simply won't get them what they want -- to
eliminate the other side -- and are willing to take action to convince
their leaders to make the compromises that need to be made, then the
wheels of the peace bus will begin turning for real. (This just might be
the right time in history for a massive non-violent movement to emerge on
both sides. What can they lose except the lives they already are losing in
their pro-violence societies?)
Only then will the realization be made by the Sharons and Netanyahus,
and the Arafats and Hamas/Jihad leaders, that their policies have brought
nothing but perpetual bloodshed to their peoples and to the region and
that they simply can't go on any longer down that brutal road.
But unless we are able soon to get to this place of peace, this haven
of hope, the future is clear: years and years, decades and decades, of
further slaughter, revenge, brutality, escalation, another generation and
then another lost to hate and despair -- the type of negative energy and
attitude that increasingly threatens the stability of the entire region
(and, Americans and Europeans take note, the flow of oil), and provides
rich bloody humus for the growth of increased international terrorism
worldwide, etc. etc.
Unless the forces of peace prevail, soon, the rivers of blood will
destroy both societies, not only their populations but their sense of
themselves as peoples with a moral core of righteousness. And the
whirlwind of destruction will