Monday, January 19, 2009

Tunneling Toward Peace in the Middle East

As the smoke and rhetoric clears from yet another armed conflict in the Middle East, Gazans weep for their lost and face a $1 billion humanitarian crisis as Israelis question their political leaders, in shock, about undeniably widespread civilian casualties. Thoughtful people, regardless of their allegiance, are asking what has been accomplished, and what can be learned.

From this conflict — one that has raged, in one form or another, over what three faiths consider their Holy Land — no lasting good has ever come. This latest bloodletting — months of rocket attacks by Hamas on civilian neighborhoods in southern Israel followed by a short, inevitable and bloody Israeli backlash, with the equally inevitable "collateral damage" — is no exception.

For Israel, whose right to defend itself is recognized by international law and not disputed here, the move has been costly on two fronts. Inside Gaza, Hamas has hardly accepted defeat. Instead, it has declared victory. Although that claim is ludicrous, it is, nonetheless, very unlikely that Hamas has been weakened sufficiently to prevent future rocket attacks. Rockets continued to enter Israeli airspace and randomly strike civilian settlements throughout the offensive and only stopped when Hamas joined the cease-fire. If Hamas rescinds the order, rockets will almost certainly fly again. Hamas will redig the tunnels through which it smuggles arms and aid. Outside Gaza, Israel forfeited the "public relations" battle on all fronts, losing face with foe and friend alike. Nothing works against one more than to be a bigger fellow with a bigger stick, going after an smaller offender — even when the latter deserves all he's about to get.

Make no mistake: Hamas had it coming. Even friends of Hamas, at least privately, have wondered why the democratically elected Hamas leadership authorized (or at least permitted) the rocket attacks. To the rational mind, they accomplished nothing but a seemingly useless provocation, literally forcing a centrist Israeli administration, during an election year when it is being challenged by right-wing hardliner, Benjamin Netanyahu, to put on a show of force in order to remain in power. But Hamas — powered by the bone-chilling, cold-bloodedly insane logic of the fanatical — appears to have wagered that lots of civilian casualties would somehow help its cause.

There is little doubt in my mind that Hamas used Gazan civilians, especially women and children, as shields. I have no doubt that rockets were fired from the courtyards of U.N. facilities, schools, and mosques. I wouldn't be surprised if Hamas itself was responsible for some of the civilian casualties, knowing that, in all the chaos, Israel would be blamed.

As I watched and listened to the news coverage, I recalled a day 40 years ago when I sat with a Palestinian student in a bistro near the inner city college we both attended. I'll never forget his face as he told me, quite calmly, that he would kill women and children to get what he wanted: His was a countenance that confidently enjoyed — was deeply satisfied by — the look of shock he had carved into mine. Nor did he specify whose children. No, I do not doubt for a moment that Hamas is capable of killing its own.

Unfortunately, this cold-blooded Hamas strategy has been brilliantly successful. Hoping to score campaign points with its populace by way of an election-year show of force, Israel's current governing coalition instead got branded with the "bully" label by the gathering crowd of international onlookers, most of whom rarely look below the surface drama. Israel's denial of press access and frustration of relief work for Gazan civilians — not to mention firing on U.N. facilities — not only aroused the predictable condemnations from Syria and Iran but also enraged the few Middle Easterners who try to maintain a middle ground. Egyptians turned on what they saw as their "do nothing" government and mourned for brothers and sisters in Gaza as Egypt's Mubarak refused to open its borders to displaced Gazans. Secular Arab regimes friendly to the West sometimes brutally interrupted dissent in their streets, further weakening their holds on power and playing into the hands of Muslim extremists. The Gazan suffering even prompted a stunning public denunciation from a high-ranking, always westward-leaning Saudi prince.

The press, now allowed in the Gaza Strip, has filled the air waves with the anguish of Gazans who once disdained Hamas but now have been radicalized. Israel's European allies publicly question the enormity of the response. Israel's own press finds it difficult to plead the party line. And that, surely, was Hamas' intention.

In its single-minded defense of the homeland granted to it in 1948 by the international body whose educational compounds Israeli tanks demolished two weeks ago, Israel has forgotten the lessons of its history: Israel's people and culture were nearly destroyed by another power with a big stick. The Palestinian people were displaced to make room for Israel and now live as refugees, some in Lebanese camps for 60 years, with accommodations little more inviting than those Jews died in during the Holocaust. Israel cannot afford the comparison.

Nor can Palestinians any longer sit idly by while their leaders, elected or otherwise, continue to smuggle weapons and permit missiles to be lobbed into Israeli neighborhoods. Can a Gazan actually be surprised that Israel would finally retaliate? Those who dream of a Palestinian state must come to realize that a terrorist state is one Israel would never permit. And the U.N. could not, and would not condone it. Worse, states built on terror survive on terror. Palestinians willing to trade the hope of statehood for government by terrorists will see a change only in the ethnic background of the oppressor who carries the nightstick and gun. Freedom cannot be won by compromising freedom.

The new Obama administration has appointed George Mitchell, a former U.S. Senator and veteran U.S. diplomat, to be the special envoy responsible for daily peace efforts in the Holy Land. Mitchell has credentials. He helped bring to a end the decades of bloodshed in Ireland. His selection has been praised from all quarters. Opinion is that if the job can be done, Mitchell can do it.

Although Mitchell has eloquently spoken of the possibilities for peace, based on his experience with nominally sectarian Irish unrest of a few hundred years duration, he faces the challenge of heading off a conflict the potential horror of which has roots in millennia of hate, the proportions of which are Biblical in every sense of the word.

Mitchell cannot do it alone. He cannot do it even with the aid of the U.N. and allies in international community. Not as long as the fires of hate are fanned by Middle Eastern hardliners on both sides.

Someone has to stop hating. Someone has to say, enough. Governments on both sides of the Gazan border have callously gambled with the future posterity of their citizens, in large part to prop up their questionable regimes and maintain a tenuous hold over the passions of their people. Those people would do well to cultivate a deep distrust of their leaders. The wise among them have got to seek tertium quid — only a radical third option can promise any fulfillment to the hopes held for peace on both sides of the Gazan border.

Peace does not, as too many have for so long mistakenly believed, involve the protection and security of borders, thinking that by doing so, they protect the inhabitants within those borders. Just the opposite is true. Those borders must be breached. Tunnels must again be dug ... but this time, between Gaza and Israel.

What might happen if ordinary Israelis clandestinely guided relief workers under the border to supply the needs of Gazans? What if Israeli doctors sneaked into Gaza to help Gazan physicians heal their wounded? What if Israel Defense Force reservists shed their uniforms to help rebuild the homes and U.N. compounds they so recently destroyed? What if ordinary Gazans stopped looking the other way when the neighborhood militia fired rockets or recruited "martyrs," and refused them entry to mosque, home and U.N. compound? What if both the Israeli and Gaza populace thought better of the votes they have cast in the past, and replaced hardliners with those raised up from among their own number who would rather give their own lives to wage peace than sacrifice a voter's life to wage war?

Against those who carry a stick too big to oppose, the only effective weapon is no weapon at all. It is, in fact, to act in accord with tenets of compassion and kindness that both Torah and Qu'ran command. It is to recognize that one's enemy is, all too often, little more than a political prisoner — a victim of subtle secular or sectarian oppression just like yourself, in need of a truer homeland.

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