HISTORY

It is Time to Impose Peace on the Middle East

by Larry DeWitt
August 5, 2006

The Burning Cedars of Lebanon

The current conflict in Lebanon is not a prelude to World War III, as Newt Gingrich rather stupidly suggested recently. Gingrich's ego is such that whenever he speaks he feels the need to scale his words to global and historic proportions, so that they better fit his sense of himself.

Rather, the current conflict is something in a sense more depressing than that. It is just another episode in a seemingly endless series of more-of-the-same. It is just the latest flare-up in a conflict that has been going on more or less continuously since the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. The current conflict has its unique aspects to be sure; but it exhibits an all-too-familiar pattern.

Rather than just repeating the same old shibboleths, and taking the same sides, it might be time to step back and try something new. Perhaps we can see a way out of this fractured impasse, a way to free ourselves from the tyranny of more-of-the-same.

The Perils of Not Taking Sides

An American writing about this topic bears special burdens. Indeed, I must confess to a certain reluctance on my part. I have long avoided writing on the issue of the Arab-Israeli conflict-for two reasons. First, the whole mess often seems so hopeless that one might as well not waste one's breath. But also, I have not written on this topic because Americans are expected to side with Israel, and when we do not, there seems to be only two possibilities: 1) we are some kind of far-left loony, in the mold of such chronic America-bashers as Noam Chomsky; or 2) we are presumed to be anti-Semitic. To suggest that one finds it hard to see any clearly innocent party here, and any pure villain, is to risk being demonized by being stuffed into one of these two categories.

During the second week of the Lebanon conflict, Maryland's two leading political combatants-Republican Governor Robert Ehrlich and the Democratic Mayor of the City of Baltimore, Martin O'Malley-joined together for an unprecedented show of political unity. They attended a rally in front of Baltimore's Holocaust Memorial, where the podium and the backdrop were draped with banners expressing the only idea on which these two apparently agree: "Baltimore Supports Israel." When politicians like these join together in this way, those of us who do not pander for a living find such simplistic unity on such a complex issue to be little short of vulgar. But we well understand why pandering is in order here: failure to be simple-minded in just this way would bring down upon them the wrath of the Jewish community-whose voters vastly outnumber voters of Arab descent.

Of course, the Arab side in the conflict demonizes the middle-of-the-roaders too. But their antagonism is spewed forth primarily overseas, as they have relatively little voice here in the U.S. So an American refusing to take sides in the conflict can expect to be attacked by the Jewish lobby, but to escape pretty much unscathed from the other side. Which might cause some to mistakenly believe there is an asymmetry here, but there isn't. Neutrality is hated by both sides. Which is pretty much how it always is when two parties are in conflict-they both only want contributions from those who are taking their side. Which is why we need to break out of this two-sided perspective and frame the problem in a larger context.

The Perils of Nation-Building

Creating the state of Israel in the midst of an existing Arab population in the Middle East was lousy nation-building-a virtual formula for endless conflict. There were already a fair number of Jews living in Palestine-more or less peacefully with their Arab neighbors-in the interwar years. But the creation of a formal Jewish state-defined in religious and ethnic terms-and whose borders forcibly encompassed millions of non-Jews, meant that Israel could never be a nation at peace-it could never really assimilate the non-Jewish people living in its midst. The Jews, naturally and understandably, wanted a homeland where they could feel safe to live without the threat of periodic pogroms driving them out. The Arabs, naturally and understandably, resented having this homeland created in theirs.

Creating a Jewish homeland in an Arab and Islamic part of the world was a mistake that probably had to be made, for at least four reasons. First, there was the Zionism of the founders of the State of Israel, who, for reasons of religious zealousness, insisted their homeland had to be in that place-in The Holy Land-and in no other. Then there was the fact that the Western nations had been using the Middle East for their nation-building exercises since before World War I, and they presumed a kind of geopolitical license to go on building in this region. Then, frankly, there was fact that nobody else really coveted that particular barren part of the world at the time. And finally, the nations of Europe had failed in their duties to provide welcoming homelands for the Jewish diaspora. At the end of World War II, the Jews of the world needed a homeland. And the Middle East was destined to be that place.

All of this gave to the creation of the State of Israel a certain historical inevitability, one might say. Even so, no one should be surprised by all the endless strife that has been the result.

So, the United Nations, acting on behalf of the nations of the world, created the state of Israel in 1948 and imposed its presence on the unwilling residents of the region. Then time passes; events come and go; history accumulates in the region, its weight stifling rather than liberating the parties from their predicament.

So here we are: on the one side a Jewish state whose disproportionate military power allows it to often act like a bully against its neighbors; and a set of neighbors who use terrorism to endlessly attack Israel. Those of us who are neither Jewish nor Arab find it hard to find anyone to respect in this conflict-we find it hard to take sides. No party here is wholly innocent. There are no blameless victims (or to put it the other way: they are all victims). All parties have doled out their measure of horrific brutality upon their neighbors. Their justifications differ; and for some of us, they are all equally irrelevant. It simply does not matter whether you kill one another in the name of the Holy Land, or Zionism, or the Martyrs, or Eretz Israel, or to avenge the long-suffering Palestinian peoples, or because you are acting only on the noble principle of self-defense, or because you presume to know the Will of God in the matter. Whatever stories you tell yourselves to rationalize your inhumanity to your fellow man, none of this really matters. You would be better served if we sweep all this aside. We would all do well to simply forget about history here. History has become a mill-stone around everyone's neck, pulling everyone down into a pit of endless suffering.

But the parties themselves are unlikely to ever escape the gravitational force of their own histories. They need help.

The Way Forward

The costs to America and to other nations for this endless conflict-monetary costs, political costs, human costs-have become unbearable. It is time to fix this problem in the same way we created it: the United Nations must convene an international conference, devise a fair two-state solution, and impose it on the parties, whether the nations of the region like it or not.

No doubt, the parties will be unified in resentment of this idea. But they have shown no prospects of ever being able to resolve their differences on their own. No matter how many times we convene meetings at Camp David, the Israelis and the Palestinians are unlikely to ever devise a fair and balanced solution themselves. Each side-and their partisans-hope and expect to be able to impose a solution tilted in their favor. So the nations of the world-acting in concert through the UN-will have to resolve matters for them.

This is probably the only way the Palestinians will get a fair-shake and a viable state. Because political and military power is so asymmetric in this conflict-because Israel is so much more powerful than the state-less Palestinians-Israel is unlikely ever to advance a unilateral solution that will satisfy the real needs of the Palestinians. Nor can America-or anyone else-broker a solution between disputants with such vastly unequal bargaining positions. The United Nations needs to redraw the map of the Middle East, to finish the unfinished business from 1948-the creation of a viable State of Palestine to go along with the State of Israel. The UN needs to demarcate a state for the Palestinians, and to resolve the other outstanding territorial disputes entangled in this conflict, in as fair and balanced a way as it is humanly possible to do. Then the nations of the world need to unite behind this solution, and make it clear that we will no longer support any nation who refuses to accept this fair two-state solution.

This is also the only way that we can isolate the truly unreconcilable elements who will be forever unwilling to allow Israel to exist in their midst. The problem now is that there is always cover for these diehards because they can always claim to be fighting for justice for the Palestinians. So let us give the Palestinians their justice, and then we will see who remains unreconciled to the presence of Israel. In these circumstances-where there is an actual two-state solution in place which virtually everyone can see as fair-then Israel can become a truly innocent victim of terror campaigns, in defense of whom the international community can then unite behind efforts to eradicate any remaining anti-Israel terrorist groups. But this cannot happen until there is a two-state solution in place which people can recognize as fair. Without this as a foundation, the smoke and fire will always be greater than the moral clarity in the matter.