The elusive
peace
EDITORIAL: THE DAILY STAR
For right-minded people everywhere,
the quest for peace is the first thing that comes to mind
whenever the subject of the Middle East is broached. Some of the
best intellects in the world have been applied to this quest,
constantly probing in a decades-old expedition to arrive at the
solution for one of the world's most compelling conflicts. But
the reason they have been unsuccessful so far is because they
have failed to accurately define that which they so avidly seek:
They know full what they want for the region but have absolutely
no idea what it will look like when and if they find it. This
unfortunate state of affairs was made almost inevitable by the
nature of the Zionist dream and by the massive resources
required of the Zionist project. The belief that God himself
promised Palestine to the Jews was troublesome enough, implying
as it does that non-Jews were somehow inferior. To make matters
worse, though, "building the Land of Israel" would have been
impossible without heavy funding from international Jewry, and
it was determined very early on that attracting such donations
could best be accomplished by selling the process as a venture
allowing "pioneers" to "make the desert bloom." The prime
obstacle to this scenario was the inconvenient presence of a
people, the Palestinians, on the land in question and so they
were ascribed the role of "savages" whose lack of civilization
justified Jewish claims to be "taming a hostile climate" in
"uncharted territory."
From this troublesome seed came all
that has followed, so that even today, many Israelis advocate
what amounts to apartheid as a means to achieve the "peace" that
has been so elusive. They don't call it apartheid, of course,
but the term "separation" fools no one, especially when one
considers the collective fate of those Palestinians who have
accepted Israeli citizenship. Their "separate" villages,
"separate" municipal councils, "separate" schools, and
"separate" state services all have in common that they pale in
comparison to those enjoyed by Israel's Jewish citizens: The
Arab-Israeli community has horrendous unemployment, grossly
under-funded municipalities, a comparatively dilapidated
educational system, and paltry access to household and
irrigation water. To make matters worse, they are banned from
certain types of employment, and their political representation
has been deliberately diluted. This sprawling collection of
economic and socio-political depredations cannot help but fuel
distress when one considers that so far, official Israeli
visions of peace whether they contemplate a "final-status"
agreement or unilateral "separation" must of necessity have an
even worse fate in store for the Palestinians, who would not
enjoy the "benefits" of Israeli citizenship.
On top of all these temporal issues
sits the Holy City of Jerusalem, one held dear by all of the
monotheistic religions but illegally annexed politically and
steadily devoured culturally by a state that freely admits to
speaking only for one: Judaism.
Against this backdrop of
institutionalized racism has grown up an Arab response whose
sorrows have been outnumbered only by its failures. US aid to
Israel made military victory impossible, but that was never the
most essential front in the first place: The key venue was the
ideological one, the one that decided the outcome of the
propaganda struggle, the one that determined the two sides'
claims to credibility the one on which the Arab world has failed
more spectacularly than on any battlefield because its leaders
lack the cloak of legitimacy that democracy alone can provide.
The Arabs have not fallen behind in this all-important race
because they are stupid, but because their governments have
ranged from the benignly dictatorial to the unforgivably
despotic.
Principal among the failures of these
graft-ridden and incompetent regimes has been their refusal to
accept that Israel is home to more than just the Ariel Sharons
of this world. It also features people like Israel Shamir, whose
passionate and eloquent words in defense of Arab rights graced
this page yesterday. This is hardly the first time Shamir has
expressed such enlightened opinions, and his views carry
considerable influence on public opinion in the Jewish state. If
Arab countries were competently ruled, this man would have more
invitations than would be possible for him to accept. Anyone who
can help the Arab cause is ipso facto a friend, be he Israeli or
Martian, Jew or fire-worshipper. What sort of entity rules out
the possibility of making new friends and therefore the chance
to change the thinking of its enemies? One whose faculties are
clouded by the laughable notion that governments know best and
must therefore prevent their citizens from mixing with their
opposite numbers on the other side of the great divide; one
whose outmoded dogma seeks to further a siege mentality by
keeping its people from discovering how much they have in common
with those whom they have been told to despise; one whose
greatest fear is that "peace," whatever it looks like, will make
tyranny that much more untenable and therefore jeopardize its
own ability to retain power.
Israel Shamir should be warmly
invited to visit Arab countries such as Lebanon, Syria, and
Saudi Arabia, where he would no doubt find that the great
majority of people harbor no intrinsic hatred for him or his
religion: After all, Jews lived among Arabs Muslims and
Christians both for an awfully long time before all of the
tragedies engendered by Zionism. The resentments that exist in
Lebanon, for example, are the result of what his governments
have done to our country, not of anything that he as an
individual has ever done to any one of us.
After all the stops and starts, after
all the conflicting effects of local and world wars, Arab
nationalism, Arab socialism, the Cold War, and the staggering
peace process, the principals Arab and Jew are still the same.
Much of the clutter has been lifted, but we still cannot see
what peace looks like. That's why bringing people like Shamir
here would be so helpful. Real peace looks like him but only if
we are willing to take him by the hand and look him in the eye.
DS: 21/02/01
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