And So?
Much ballyhooed, and now it's over. Done with. History. Hope still lingers, however, despite that the Annapolis peace overture truly was a photo op, all good intentions aside. For truly, how long can this wearyingly intractable situation continue? Little wonder that the little people themselves, not the elite, the politicians, the spokespeople, the academics, but the Israeli and the Palestinian population harbour little faith in a conclusion approaching a peace settlement.Sixty years is far too long to maintain a neighbourly disagreement. One whose emotional decibels and bloody violence has stained the living psyches of both sides. There seems little point in observing that none of this need have happened. That initially and at many points since the birth of the State of Israel, some kind of accommodation could have been met to satisfy at least some of the requirements on both side.
But it was not to be. Not that Israel and her politicians were blameless, but in comparison to the raw and hostile violence of the Palestinians, paragons.
Now the conference has been convened. The two belligerents enjoyed the opportunity to be feted at a state dinner, complimented and congratulated by their interlocutors for agreeing to agree to an agreement that would enable them to promulgate a final grand announcement. They jointly pledge to launch new negotiations toward the creation of an independent Palestinian state. Now there's a news-stopper.
Significantly, the transition from enemy combatants to tender neighbours in the space of a year yet to come. Small wonder the world nods its cynical head. Still, people do have hope, and why not, when all other avenues have led to uncontrolled strife and spilled blood? Try and try again. If you do not speak, do not make an effort to learn about one another, to recognize one another as one's living, breathing counterparts in survival, nothing can ever be achieved.
Other than hostility, more grief, greater commitments to larger atrocities.
And which country bears the brunt of expectations? Israel has much to gain from a future which might yet see something named "normalization" with her Arab neighbours. Yet if normal is considered to be that which exists: regular, standard, conforming to standard, typical - then normalization with her Arab neighbours can be construed as the status quo, more of the same.
For the fact is that agreeing to others' terms, in part or in full, equates in the Arab tradition with surrender, defeat. The looked-for "breakthrough" in negotiations from the Arab perspective aligns nicely with Israel accepting all of the PA's and the Arab League's demands. Which, in turn, equates with the pain of self-liquidation, agreeing to dilute Israel's purpose and mandate, its existence as a universal home for world Jewry.
Jerusalem is indissoluble. The sacred historical site of Jewish faith cannot be divided. Israel's first prime minister warned in 1949: "The attempt to sever Jewish Jerusalem from the State of Israel will not advance the cause of peace in the Middle East or in Jerusalem itself. Israelis will give their lives to hold on to Jerusalem, just as the British would for London, the Russians for Moscow and the Americans for Washington." But David Ben Gurion alluded to the historical political-secular values of these capitals. For Israelis there is another, overriding value of ancient history and dedicated faith.
Palestinians too stridently claim Jerusalem as their future capital, claiming that without it there would be no Palestinian state. That would figure in a culture and a tradition which is ingrained with an oppositional vibrancy in facing adversity, one which has historically met resistance with bitter resolve. Resolution requiring accepting a middle ground, a modicum of accommodation for all concerned, goes against the tribal grain.
So too is it with the insistence that "right of return" be accepted, that the original hundreds of thousands that fled or were encouraged to flee by both their Arab neighbours and their new overseers, the Israelis, be accepted back into the land, along with all of their descendants, a staggering number of Arabs to effectively dilute the Jewish presence in Israel, transforming it into yet another Arab state with a sizeable Jewish population.
As though there aren't sufficient problems existing between the majority Jewish population and the minority Arabs in Israel. The country would compound its problems beyond endurance and certainly beyond existence as it now recognizes itself as a Jewish homeland where its population remains internally safe and secure. Relatively speaking. For in the Middle East so much is "relative".
A safe and secure existence is not beyond possibility - for everyone. Absent long-range rocket attacks and very short-range suicide-murder attacks. There must but be the will. Nowhere is it expressed honestly at the present time. None of the politicians appear to have the courage to move forward, to declare unequivocal positions that yet offer manoeuvrable opportunities to satisfy each part of the equation.
Still, as the director of international outreach for the independent Israel Democracy Institute sighed: "In the Middle East, if you don't talk, you shoot, so talking is good for everybody."
Labels: Israel, Justice, Middle East, Troublespots
posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, November 27, 2007
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