After seven years of diplomatic neglect, George Bush has set aside a day – yes, one day – today – to try to work out the intractable six-decades-long Israel/Palestine problem.
What, pray tell, do they think they can accomplish in one day? Ask the people in the Middle East and you discover that Arabs and Jews can indeed agree on at least one thing: When asked that question, they all answer “Not much.”
Oy vey. Even the choice of location is damning: The United States Naval Academy is the setting, and the motto of the Navy is “Don’t give up the Ship” – invoking tenacity and determination, not diplomatic acumen and compromise. In Arabic, “Ana” means “I” and people the world over know the word “police.” A Saudi humorist joked that the choice of location was an arrogant message from Bush to the Middle East “I am the police.”
The question of borders has plagued both Israel and the neighbors for over 40 years, since June 4, 1967; and the implementation of the Six Day War armistice. Since then, conservative, some would say fundamentalist whack-job, settlers have made the occupied territories their home. Kicking them out of the West Bank will not be as easily achieved as the same feat was two years ago, when the settlers were evicted from Gaza. The Gaza Strip is not biblically significant. Jews do not have deep emotional or historical attachments to Gaza. Not so the West Bank, which is historically, theologically and emotionally significant to most Jews worldwide – let alone the “fundamentalist whack jobs” I just referenced. I can’t see removing them without violence. The issue of borders certainly isn’t going to be achieved in a day.
And you can’t talk about the borders without acknowledging the 800-pound-gorilla playing the zither in the sitting room: Jerusalem.
On paper, the equation balances. The Arab neighborhoods would fall under Palestinian control, and the Jewish neighborhoods would be controlled by Israel. Except it gets dicey real quick – the neighborhoods are intertwined.
Ask any chemist – when you are working with volatile compounds, the slightest variation from the recipe and it will blow up in your face. And what cocktail could be more volatile than the 35 acres of the walled city of Old Jerusalem? All three of the major monotheistic religions consider Old Jerusalem and the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount to be sacred ground.
The problems are exacerbated by Christianist Zionists (who should make with the butting out already) who stick their noses where they don’t belong and urge their constituencies to pressure the Israeli government to take Jerusalem off the negotiating table. Fortunately, we are making headway, and even the occasional Zionist Rabbi Is waking up and smelling the coffee. But before any Jew throws in with that lot, remember they are mentally ill. They want to precipitate Armageddon and damn us all to their hell. Those Jews who wake up pissed every morning that the Messiah didn’t come last night find natural allies in them. The rest of us find ulcers, migraines and anxiety. Again we have a problem that’s going to take more than a day to sort out.
And then you have nearly four and a half million Palestinians living in limbo, many still in refugee camps. And everyone, Jew and Arab alike, needs to be scolded by my grandmother for being obstinate jackasses and using the Palestinian people as pawns, especially the Arab world. They really screwed the Palestinians in 1948, the bastards. All of the Arab neighboring states should be held accountable. They are every bit as culpable as Israel in contributing to the suffering of the Palestinian people and need to be called out on that publicly. There is plenty of sin and blame to go around. Everyone has behaved abominably and nobody gets a pass. This can’t even be mentioned at Annapolis. Hell, it would take a good 6 months of Arabs storming the door every time that little bit of reality comes up and is said aloud. I shake my head in disbelief. They offer a day? Oh, the humanity…
And how the hell do they even bring up security in the time allowed?
This is why I don’t often write about Israel and Palestine. It’s damned infuriating. No one is asking me, but if anyone did, I would say Frost was employing irony; good fences do NOT make good neighbors. The first order of business should be to tear down that damned fence and fill in the trenches, and restore the 10% of the territory that it’s construction seized.
Then I would say let Gaza go to Egypt. Give the West Bank to Jordan. Give the Golan Heights to Syria, and let a disinterested third party settle the border with Lebanon, and nobody would get to whine about it. And suck it up. Learn to live with a divided Jerusalem.Until everyone concerned learns how to act, I would make Old Jerusalem a U.N. protectorate. Don’t like it? Learn how to act.
Byron DeLear said:
Annapolis and Some Reasons for Low Expectations…
Good article Blue Girl, having worked directly in Israel and Palestine with different NGO and political efforts concerning the realization of an acceptable settlement to both sides of the Palestinian / Israel conflict, for me, the incomprehensible nature of the continuing conflict, is best summed up by contrasting all the “support” for a resolution with the fact of never getting there.
How is it that virtually ALL the main actors support a two-state solution and yet the hot war persists with children on both sides continuing to die needlessly, populations denied the lifeblood of safety and security, and the perpetual regional instability and conflict further exacerbating the already inflamed Middle East; not to mention the impact this intractable civil war has upon our larger global intercultural crisis?
I have to say that the blame for the seemingly eternal impasse lay with the political leadership, most specifically the US, Israeli and Palestinian leadership.
And with our current American example of our leaders not being able to shut down the most unpopular war in 100 years, maybe we as Americans opposed to the war in Iraq, can get an idea of either 1) the spinelessness at the heart of the inability for the Israeli leaders or Palestinian leaders to arrive at a peace settlement or, 2) the presence of a more hidden and nefarious agenda that perpetuates the nightmare.
I remember in 2004 meeting with retired Israeli Rear Admiral Ami Ayalon (currently #6 Member of the Knesset with the Labor Party), and collaborating on a popular six point peace plan called the Ayalon/Nusseibeh Initiative that eventually garnered close to 500k signatories among Palestinians and Israelis – in a region of only six million.
We all felt a sense of hope and faith in the growing understanding that the single path delivering the deserved safety to both populations was going to involve compromise on both sides, and that this was the only way to serve the people of the region and to be responsible to any brand of morality.
But just like current US Democratic leadership terrified of looking “soft” on terror and continuing to finance and support the worst foreign policy conducted by our country in decades, the Iraqi War, leaders from both sides of the Palestinian and Israeli conflict are, for all intents and purposes, politically mute, paralyzed and unable to respond to the deafening clarion call of reason.
There is such a popular desire among the peoples in Israel and Palestine to stop the madness and arrive at some sense of safety and normalcy; decency.
70% of Americans want our troops home — and polls in Israel have mirrored these kinds of numbers in regard to the desire and support for a two-state settlement.
But fear prevails and the situation is never helped by a main stream media operating by the edict “if it bleeds it leads”, or by politicians bent upon electoral success by framing their platforms and steering their constituencies with alarm and trepidation.
Ami Ayalon and Sari Nusseibeh were not acting in fear and were attempting to bring to light some of the most encouraging and hopeful stories in the region, like victims of the conflict actually working tirelessly to foster reconciliation and understanding between the Arab Muslims and Israeli Jews — constructing stone by stone a culture of peace.
If the parents of the fallen victims to the intifada could actively work for peace to prevent any other children or families from suffering, wouldn’t this be the kind of example that if amplified could engender hope?
Sadly, these stories and their efforts were all too often marginalized by media outlets or political leaders attuned to a different and more militarized cadence.
Let’s look at our own bevy of promises and professed desires on Israel/Palestine…
How is it that George Bush supports a two-state solution, Dick Cheney supports a two-state solution, Condi and Colin – two state – even Wolfowitz supported two-state, along with Palestinian Pres. Abu Mazen and Olmert – and even in the light of the lion’s share of the populace supporting, and the mainline political actors supporting, all that happens is the possibility more time consuming chatter and no completion nor fruition to these supposed pledges for peace?
There is an industry that profits off of conflict; war.
There is a culture that locks down change to secure power; incumbency.
In the case of the Israeli – Palestinian conflict, in my book, the source of blame for the persisting impasse and unrelenting conflict largely lies with the implacable and callous powers that be.
The solution is for a new breed of political intercessors to press forward holding to their hearts the singular motivation of stopping the hot war, familiar with the emotional and reactive terrain upon which they traverse, breathing strength into the fearful and the power of perspective into the blinded, hand-holding them into sanity, compromise and a survivable future.
Let’s hope this new attitude toward results is present in Annapolis.
Nitzahon la Shalom, Mansour ya Salaam and Victory to Peace!
Byron DeLear