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Middle East Security: Looking for the Tunnel
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| JohnSmith |
Thought this might be a useful contribution to the Israel-Palestine Issue:
| quote: | Middle East Security: Looking for the Tunnel
by Landrum Bolling
Whole Earth Magazine, Fall, 2002
[Dr. Landrum Bolling, journalist, educator, former president of Earlham College, and citizen diplomat, has been engaged in Middle East peace efforts since 1968, when he headed a Quaker peace mission to the region. He authored Search for Peace in the Middle East (1971; out of print). For that work he was praised and condemned by people on both sides.
Over the years he has known many of the leading political figures in Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. Because of Bolling's access to Yasir Arafat, President Carter and subsequent administrations used him as a private messenger when direct official communications with the Palestinian leadership was forbidden. Now 88, he is director at large for the humanitarian relief and development organization. Mercy Corps (www.mercycorps.org); senior adviser to the Conflict Management Group, of Cambridge, Massachusetts; and a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy in Washington, D.C. In the interest of full disclosure, he is also my father. - DB]
Middle East Security: Looking for the Tunnel
by Landrum Bolling
Whole Earth Magazine, Fall, 2002
Any discussion about global security inevitably leads to worrisome debates about how to deal with turmoil in the Middle East and specifically, with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and US involvement in the region. For Americans, here is a formidable political and security challenge we cannot evade or abandon.
No other nation, or combination of nations, has the economic, military, and political capabilities, and the moral authority, to lead the way toward constructive, practical solutions in the Middle East. Only the US, with the partners it may enlist, can have any hope of ending the violence, human suffering, and social and economic chaos that has overwhelmed the eastern end of the Mediterranean, with spillover into so much of the rest of the world.
American involvement, however, is not merely a magnanimous gesture of benign interference in other people's troubles. The security of the United States, the peace of a strategically important region, and the outcome of the "war on terrorism" are all inextricable intertwined with the fate of the Israelis and the Palestinians. We have no choice but to be deeply concerned and active for the vital best interests of both peoples -- and for ourselves.
To be effective, we must know where to apply our resources, our military power, and our political capital. We have to be clear about where the greatest dangers lie, what problems must be tackled first, and which life-threatening conditions must be eliminated. We must be part of the advance team looking for light at the end of the tunnel.
Our effectiveness, however, would only be compromised by an all-out, unpredictable war against Iraq--and with no willing ally but Israel. It is far more urgent that we deal directly and in a sustained way with the festering problem of the Arab-Israeli conflict. We will se this necessity, I believe if we can understand that there is real hope.
Decades of diplomatic explorations, multilateral negotiations, and countless UN resolutions--plus several tragic wars--have utterly failed to achieve a resolution to this decades-old problem. In recent months, an orgy of Palestinian suicide bombings plus Israeli retaliatory raids and targeted assassinations have only deepened fears and hatreds.
Meanwhile, a persistent, pernicious stream of conventional wisdom, passed on by outside observers and local fanatics on both sides, holds that Middle East violence can never end. The Christians, the Jews and the Muslims, it is said, have distrusted and hated each other so deeply and for so long that they can't and won't stop killing each other. Perhaps one side, eventually, will win. For now, however, these commentators argue that there is no light, and no tunnel, in sight--that peace and security in the Middle East is an impossible dream. The best that can be done is to limit the violence and hope that, maybe, after another fifty years, changing conditions will eliminate the dangers of open warfare.
This fashionable pessimism has assumed the authority of divine revelation in the same hawkish circles that have determined a war against Iraq is the only way to get rid of Saddam Hussein--the essential precondition for moving the world toward stability and the end of violence in the Middle East. To it proponents this view is self-evident "political realism."
A different analysis is much more widely held by informed observers with long experience in the Middle East--and by peace-minded majorities of both Palestinians and Israelis. Their considered judgment is that a genuine peace of mutual accommodation is possible, even soon, if all the interested parties, including the United States, work hard enough toward a fair and comprehensive deal for all.
Credible public opinion polls among both Israelis and Palestinians reveal that clear majorities want a resumption of serious, comprehensive peace negotiations. They don't have much faith in "cease-fires" or "reorganization of security forces" or "reform of the Palestine Authority"--or any other stopgap, intermediate, "confidence-building" measures. They want to see a carefully considered, fairly negotiated "package deal" put on the table. And then they want a full, searching public debate--to be followed by an up or down vote in whatever decision-making process either side chooses and is prepared to live with.
What is both surprising and encouraging is that most Palestinians and most Israelis who profess a desire for peace (roughly two-thirds on each side) are in remarkable agreement on what the basic outline of a mutually acceptable peace deal would like like. During three visits to the area during the first half of 2002, even at the height of the violence in Ramallah, Jenin and Bethlehem, I heard from both sides the same poignant witticism: "Of course, there's light at the end of the tunnel. We can see that light very clearly; both of us can. It's just that we can't find the tunnel."
Ask for a sketch of what is seen in that light and you get, from both sides, a virtually identical vision of the key provisions of a workable, mutually acceptable agreement:
* Two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace, with extensive and close economic, cultural, and political relations.
* The two capitals for the two states in the one, holy city of Jerusalem: El Quds (the traditional Arabic name for Jerusalem), home for the 200,000 Palestinians of East Jerusalem on about 20 percent of the city's total area; and Jewish West Jerusalem, home for roughly 500,000 Israeli Jewish residents, with about 80 percent of the total municipal territory.
* Permanent borders between Israel and Palestine to be drawn along the so-called Green Line that marked the armistice boundary from the end of the fighting in 1949 until the beginning of the Six Day War of June 1967. Recognizing the substantial post-1967 Jewish expansion onto Arab lands adjacent to older Israeli neighborhoods, however, the Palestinians would accept the annexation by Israel of these newer urban districts(now populated by approximately 200,000 Jewish residents). In exchange, the new Palestinian state would receive from Israel a compensatory transfer of lands along the border, in places and under terms to be mutually determined.
* Evacuation over a three-to-five year period of most Jewish settlements in the West Bank and all in Gaza, and relocation in comparable housing inside Israel of displaced Jewish families, with ample compensation.
* Claims of the right of return for Palestinians who were themselves displaced from homes and properties inside Israel (or are heirs of persons who sustained such losses) would be satisfied through provisions for settlement in any area within the boundaries of the state of Palestine, or assistance in resettling in any other country that admits them. All would be provided appropriate and substantial compensation for properties lost due to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the establishment of Israel.
* Access to holy places in Jerusalem and to religious institutions and monuments within both Palestine and Israel would by unrestricted. The issue of sovereignty over the Western Wall, sacred to Jews, and the adjoining Temple Mount (known to Arabs as Haram al Sharif; The Noble Sanctuary), site of the Dome of the Rock and the Aqsa Mosque, can be laid to rest by creative diplomatic language. There could be a joint statement that both states affirm the ultimate sovereignty of God over those long-honored holy sites in the Old City. There is broad agreement that face-saving formulations can be found that would minimize communal sensitivities about the issue of holy sites. Care for and control of them cannot be seen as an insuperable barrier to peace.
* It would be wise to state explicitly that the peace embodies commitments to respect, and to avoid the crossing of, "Red Lines" of vital importance to both parties to the agreement.
* For the Israelis, it is essential that any agreement reached with the Palestinians should not contain any provision that would allow an influx of Arab Palestinians into Israel and thus threaten the permanence of a Jewish majority within the state of Israel. Even the most dovish Israelis declare they would never accept any peace that would lead to Jews becoming a minority in their Jewish state.
* For the Palestinians, it is equally important that the new state of Palestine have control of territory that has geographic contiguity: it should not be cut up into separated cantons divided by Israeli military roads connecting permanent Jewish settlements established on confiscated Arab lands and guarded by Israeli troops. That is the situation that has developed steadily over the past thirty years and has contributed to the endless violence. The Palestinians have seen the Jewish settlements as a scheme for permanent occupation and the prelude to an eventual mass expulsion of Arabs from the West Bank and Gaza. Even some Jewish members of Knesset now publicly say: "If we want to have peace, we must give up the settlements; we should never have allowed them."
At the most fundamental level, there must be agreement on the answer to this basic question: Whose land is it, anyway?
To that there can be only one answer: it belongs to both people. By history, by right, and by political necessity, it must be shared. Most Israelis and most Palestinians know and accept this as the elementary reality. Most people within the leadership ranks agree, as well.
It is estimated that no more than 20 percent of the Palestinians and a similar percentage of Israelis still live in that dream world of religious fanaticism and nationalist chauvinism that inspires doomed hopes for total victory. The Arabs will never destroy Israel and expel the Jews. The Israelis swill never carry out ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians and drive most of those who remain across the borders into Jordan or any other Arab state.
Today, the overwhelming majority of both Israelis and Palestinians share these convictions:
* Neither side can win total victory in this struggle.
* The violence has to stop.
* Too many of our best people are moving away.
* To rebuild our shattered economies, to revive the vital tourism business, to bring in foreign investments again, we need peace.
* Our old political leaders are stuck in old ways of thinking, they have let us down, and they should be replaced.
* We want to get on with our lives.
* We need a chance to develop a broader vision of peace and cooperation so that we can make this truly a shared quiet, stable, and prosperous Holy Land.
These are the simple practical concerns and desires of ordinary people.
Their leaders, and the leaders of the international community--including, most urgently, the political and religious leaders of the United States-- must seize the opportunity to support these desires. For those willing to take off their smoke-dimmed glasses and look, the light at the end of the tunnel is clearly visible.
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| Izzy |
well, by in large i agree with everything stated there, actaully nothing really surprising there
"the majority of palestinians and israelis want to leave in peace" :eek: no way! ;)
the article fails to address the real problems and means to go about and solve them. this is the closest thing the article mentions about it
| quote: |
A different analysis is much more widely held by informed observers with long experience in the Middle East--and by peace-minded majorities of both Palestinians and Israelis. Their considered judgment is that a genuine peace of mutual accommodation is possible, even soon, if all the interested parties, including the United States, work hard enough toward a fair and comprehensive deal for all.
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well duh...
it fails to say that the problem is we may not have parties willing to negotiate true peace.
there are no orginizations withing israel bent on clearing arabs from the land of israel, which is not the case on the palestinian side when one looks at the charters of the islamic jihad and hamas.
on the same topic, it is my personal belief that yasser arafat and the PLO party he represents is not interested in attaining a compramisable peace plan, leaving the question, if israel and the US want to talk to the palestinian side to attain peace, who do they go to? should they take matters into their own hand?
edit: elections in isreal in 5 more days, i can hardly contain myself. go shinui! |
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| Nadi |
| Last night I was talking to my uncle who teaches political science at the University of Jerusalem, and he said basically the same things as what the author did, but he said the real obstacles is greed and egos. Both sides I want a little more, and neither is willing to compromise, and until they do, all thats going to happen, is the deaths will contineu to increase. |
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