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Getting out of the Mental Straightjacket
Several countries in the world have tried in one way or another to address the Israeli-Palestinian conundrum, but none of them has succeeded in a sustained manner. As far as the world is today, without the moral and effective leadership of a major power, which today is the United States, this whole situation is going nowhere. Keep in mind that the US is handicapped first by its own accumulating problems, and then by the fact that the American body politic is continuously bowing to the extremists within the American Jewish community and their allies, the Christian evangelical fundamentalists, as well as to Israel’s subtle and veiled nuclear blackmail.
The situation within all other neighbouring Arab countries in the region has changed so much since 1948; and the current Palestinian and Israeli leaders are neither capable nor equipped to establish peace, partially because some of them do not have peace on their agenda, and others are unable to obtain it. ِAny solution would call for a totally new approach and state of mind, which the current leaders in all the countries of the Middle East, including both Israel and Palestine, are hopelessly ill-equipped to even consider.
Despite the complexities of the issues, the key premise remains that Israel must leave the Palestinians alone, and the Palestinians must understand that they cannot undo today what their own leaders and incompetent Arab governments led them to in the past, and continue to pursue along the same path in the present. The internal divisiveness and ongoing push and pull among Palestinian leaders since the end of World War I will end up erasing what’s left of Palestine from existence before the Israelis do it.
Before even mentioning the word “peace”, there must first be a will on each side to genuinely take the other into consideration, until both people regain a certain sense of normalcy in their respective lives. The Palestinian and Arab people need to simmer down, regain their humanity and live like human beings. They need schools, job opportunities, dignity and peace of mind. This is not a problem of security as it is almost always described. Lack of security is the reflection of the problem, and not the problem itself. Therefore, establishing a cooling-off period in the region as a whole is a condition sine qua non to start with, during which the Palestinians will be able to breathe and live like human beings. This period will also allow the Israelis to catch their breath and live peacefully without having to be at war, generation after generation.
The peace that we must seek is the one between the people, and not mostly between public servants, generals, and “elected” politicians who are only interested in playing the game for fun or for personal gain. For many among them, this is a zero-sum game. The millions who stand to gain or lose are treated condescendingly like little children who do not know what they want. With these types of secular and religious “leaders”, who have imposed themselves and their interests or their ignorance on the people, there is simply no hope for humanity in this world.
Now, getting there calls for competent leaders who are capable of thinking in conciliatory rather than in adversarial terms. Most of today's Arab and Israeli leaders unfortunately represent the narrow interests of certain groups, while maintaining their own personal financial or ideological goals. That is leaders whose brains’ “search engines” cannot recognize terms such as decency, sharing, humanity, or justice. The Berlin Wall has fallen. It is time for other walls to fall too such as those of stupid ignorance, self-justified greed, backwardness, narrow-mindedness, arrogance and self-righteousness beside the blind association of mythologies and fairy tales with the Creator. Man-made religions neither solve municipal problems nor ensure the necessities of daily life.
Under the existing realities on the ground, the starting point should not begin by pondering again over a contentious non-starter, i.e. haggling over a division of cities and real estate between Israel and the Palestinians, not even talking about it. It is too early for that. We must think in terms of people rather than in terms of real estate. Furthermore, expecting that the two antagonists could talk or listen to each other rationally under the current conditions would be an exercise in futility. It is also of major importance to constantly keep in mind that the warring parties come from two totally different cultures.
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