How to Achieve Peace in the Middle East

Of all the complex and dangerous problems in the world, the most dangerous and the least complex is the Israel-Palestinian situation. It is the least complex, that is, on rational terms. In fact, it is now so simple that while it may still lead to world war, it is still likely to bore us all to death first.

This is a case in which I have sympathy for both sides and neither side, or rather, none of the major players. So many people have been killed, and so many living in poverty and oppression and fear for so long, it sickens the heart. Some of the conflict in the early years of Israel had a certain inevitability about it, and was in some sense cleansing. But enough is enough. Particularly in the last decade or so this violent stalemate has become inexcusable.

Everyone involved knows what the final settlement will look like between Israel and Palestine. (I’ve heard experts on both sides say as much on national television.) Everyone has known for years, right down to where the borders will be. But the leaders involved have failed to make this settlement, at least some of them because they’ve used this conflict for their own political ends. That includes the current U.S. administration.

Whatever the reasons and whoever specifically is at fault, the solution is painfully simple. In recent years, whenever a faltering step towards a peace settlement is taken, there is an incident in which people are killed by Palestinian terrorists (or terrorists who advocate for Palestine) and Israeli soldiers, one after the other, though not always in that order. Every killing is an outrage that derails the peace talks and begins a cycle of revenge. It’s happening right now: the so-called Middle East roadmap is announced, some faltering steps are taken, suicide bombs explode in Israeli shopping malls, and the peace process stops dead.

This repeats the same cycle so dear to braindead news organizations who just have to fill in the names to produce the latest version of the same old story: peace talk, terrorist attack, shock, grief, anger, angry retribution, followed by shock, grief and anger, and revenge from the other side, and the collapse of peace talks.

Whatever one can say about those repeated emotions, it does seem that they are being indulged and used for political purposes, probably with a degree of consciousness if not downright cyncism.

In a world in which not much is dependable, you can take this sequence of events to the bank. As for the terrorist violence, I think this is what the military theorists call “asymmetrical” warfare, though physicists might call it a “non-linear” system in which a small action can have large consequences. In this case--- though nobody much points this out-- a few terrorists are in complete control of the peace process that involves entire nations, including the most powerful one. So those leaders purporting to be fighting for peace are defeated every single time by terrorism. “We won’t give in to terrorists,” they all say, and then they all do, by shutting down the negotiations, which is exactly what the terrorists want.

The way to a settlement which is the beginning of peace in the Middle East is therefore very simple: all the leaders involved get together and state unequivocally that they are going to negotiate this settlement, and no terrorist attacks will stop them. They will defeat terrorism by refusing to be terrorized into stopping the process.

This requires political courage. It also tests the sincerity of the parties: do they really want peace, or are they using this travesty of a peace process for other ends? But clearly there is not going to be a peace settlement until something like this happens.

POSTSCRIPT: Rachel Corrie was an American activist crushed by an Israeli military bulldozer as she tried to prevent the destruction of a Palestinian home. That's about all the U.S. press has reported about her. But there is more, much more. Her moving and articulate emails home are published in the June issue of Harper's Magazine. They are also on the Guardian Unlimited website here,here and here. For more on what happened to her and other peace activists in Palestine as well as what our ignorance plus blatant abuses using the war on terrorism as an excuse, there is this Guardian Unlimited story.