Israel/Palestine: Peace Is Locked in a Closet of Denial

Palm Beach Gardens, May 30, 2007


Israel/Palestine: Peace Is Locked in a Closet of Moral Denial


When refugee host-regimes like Lebanon, Syria or Jordan face intense political pressures they tend to displace their anger on the marginalized communities. The confrontation between the Lebanese army and the pseudo-Islamic militants has focused attention on the 350,000 Palestinian refugees in the country. As Lebanon faces its third political crisis in ten months the Palestinian community may become a scapegoat in this troubled country.

However, I wonder how extreme elements like Fatah-al-Islam emerge to “defend” Palestine with such cruel irrationality? As usual, it is often helpless civilians who pay the heaviest price for counterproductive rebellion. Unacceptable political resistance detracts from international compassion for Palestinians.

Many friends here in Florida have asked me about my family visit to Lebanon this month. On learning about my visit, Steve asked about the violence in Lebanon’s refugee camps: “Who are these refugees?”

I answered, “My friend, these Palestinians are the people who lost their homes in one of the Arab-Israeli wars, either in 1948, or in the second war in 1967”. Steve commented, “I thought these were Lebanese refugees from last summer’s war between Hezbollah and Israel”. I did not convey any surprise.

He then wanted to know why the Palestinian refugees were still living in camps after several decades of dispossession. I explained that as long as they were not able to return to Palestine, the refugees did not want to live outside their camps in the host countries. The majority wanted to live as homogeneous communities in order to retain their memories and their hopes to return to their homeland. In fact, the Palestinians have always expected to return to Palestine and had never thought that their land would be taken away from them indefinitely.

Steve innocently remarked, “But isn’t it unreasonable for the Palestinians to hold on to their dreams to return for so long?” I asked him rhetorically, “Have the Jewish communities forfeited their claims to Eretz Israel after over two thousand years of Diaspora?” He gestured in the negative.

At this point, Steve seemed unsure of where this conversation was going. After an anxious moment of silence he expressed a classic objection: “The Arabs should not blame the West for the Palestinian situation.”



Here I got defensive; I reminded him that for centuries the Jews had been persecuted by the Europeans, not by the Arabs. The persecution that culminated in the Holocaust was a major reason for the Western Allies’ pledging to the Jews a homeland in historic Palestine. At the time only about ten per cent of the population was Jewish. The Western governments did not compensate the Jews for their global suffering with Western assets. The Europeans paid for their moral crimes of discrimination and persecution of the Jews with Arab land and resources – by giving away the larger part of what was historic Palestine.

I continued my “lecture” to poor Steve: Furthermore, many Palestinians hold Washington partially responsible for their current situation. In 1967, with much US support, Israel won the second war against the Arabs and expanded its occupation of Israeli land into the Occupied Territories. Since the 1967 occupation, the US has been a staunch ally and a major funding partner of the Jewish state.

I knew our conversation was coming to an end as Steve grew more uncomfortable with my criticism of America’s support of Israel. He did ask one more question:
“Do you blame the West and the Jews, but forget about the Arab’s mismanagement of the Palestinian cause?”

“You have posed a fair question, Steve. All parties must assume their fair share of responsibility to be liberated from the travesty of Palestinian Diaspora and the oppressive occupation.” At this moment, I thought of the well-known biblical verse, John 8, 32: “Ye will know the truth and the truth will set you free”. In the context of the Middle East cpnflict, these biblical words mean to me that all the accomplices must confess their role in the Palestinian crisis.

For the parties involved in this crisis, speaking the truth would lead to a collective moral catharsis. No single party must take all the blame. If the guilt associated with displacing Palestinians is placed on the Jewish community alone it would be counter productive and too much to bear. Similarly, if the guilt is put on the Arabs for exploiting the Palestinian cause, it would be unjust and too much to process. And finally, if the West, alone, is accused of the crime of orchestrating the displacement of the Palestinians, it would be unfair and too intense to assume.

Relief from the suppressed moral burden would facilitate political problem-solving in the Middle East conflict. Such an authentic encounter with the truth would lead to fair sharing of the responsibility of empowering the Palestinians politically and humanely. Peace in the Middle East has, for too long, been locked in a closet of denial and fear. To avoid the overburden of full responsibility, until now, no party has been ready to assume any moral responsibility for the Palestinian tragedy.

What Steve conveyed in his innocent conversation about Palestine is standard perspective in American society today. As groups like Fatah-al-Islam assume responsibility for the defense of Palestine, albeit illegitimately, they make it hard for folks like Steve to gain insight, much less sympathy for the Palestinian cause.

Lebanon's unity before its justice

This week’s two bloody explosions in Beirut and the sudden eruption of deadly fighting between the Lebanese army and the little known Fateh-al-Islam militia are indications that extreme opportunists are on the scene to exploit the political vacuum resulting from the deadlock between the government and the opposition. Since the July war of 2006, Lebanon has polarized into two main political camps: a pro-Western government and a populist opposition.

Last week, after four years of absence from Lebanon, I spent six days visiting my home country. The modern airport and its easy formalities were reassuring. I found Beirut streets cleaner than even before the civil war. The renovated downtown overlooking the Mediterranean sea makes a perfect postcard scene. The majesty of the many mountain resorts is arresting. In this country preparing and enjoying food is almost a national sport. Restaurants are relatively busy; hotels are active; tourists’ reservations for this summer are normal and planning for the annual Bait-el-Din music festival is in progress. The Lebanese are thirsty for tourists, especially Western visitors. Their passion for life is incredible and their memory for political pain is short, a phenomenon which serves their positive thinking.

The Lebanese love the West and Americans in particular. I asked Sa’eed, my cousin’s six-year old son, what he wanted to be when he grew up. “A General!” “In the Lebanese army?” “No! The American!”

In the Lebanon I visited, the only American product in question is US politics. Even those opposing the policies of Syria and Iran in Lebanese affairs are weary of the US Middle East foreign policy.

Seize-the-day mentality is pragmatic, but it has made the Lebanese blind to the future and deaf to the past. My long absence from Beirut reflects my growing doubt about the political future of a nation that is divided in identity and too dependant on external powers. There are two political communities in Lebanon: one obsessed with modernity and Western consumerism and the other (the opposition) delusional about its role in political reform and territorial liberation.

In a region which values authority over freedom, the excessive tolerance for political dissent makes this tiny country a perpetually insecure democracy. Consider how dissent is expressed in this Lebanon. The Republic has a pro-Syrian, weak, president and a pro-Iranian parliament speaker. Both of these leaders are on the side of the opposition that has ties with Hezbollah, the center of challenge to the government. There is a strong pro-Western prime minister whose cabinet has six withdrawn ministers and one minister assassinated six months ago. The cabinet represents a parliamentary majority, but it lacks the support of the Shiite community, about a third (or more?) of the Christians and a sizable minority of Sunnites.

The tight balance of tension between the government and its opposition was evident after Harriri’s death. On March 8, 2005, mobilizing a million people, the Hezbollah-led opposition demonstrated defensively to show its popularity. A week later, on March 14, another million people angrily demonstrated asking for accountability for the assassination of Prime Minister Harriri. Dates of political demonstrations have become labels of ideology. The “March 14” political camp commands one half of the Lebanese; the “March 8” community is the opposition. The Harriri legacy now stands larger than life in Lebanon.

The country is heading to a new crisis this summer as its politicians fail to agree on the process of election for the new president, an election that is due in September 07.
Had there been no opposition, the current parliament would elect a pro-Western leader. This president would be critical of Hezbollah’s militarization and distant from Syria and Iran. He would also be eager to see the United Nations investigate the murder of the former Prime Minister Rafic Harriri. He would follow the signs that point to Syrian involvement in the Harriri affair. However, he would be cautions, patient and diplomatic since, after two years of search, there is no concrete evidence.

An alienated opposition community views the world differently. This community challenges “domestic injustice and Western interference”. The opposition is composed of the Shiite-oriented Hezbollah and the secular, Christian Reform and Change party that accuse the government of severe and crippling corruption. The opposition defends the existence of paramilitary resistance in response to American and Israeli “hegemony”. Moreover, the opposition expects the Lebanese state to investigate the Harriri assassination domestically, but not through the United Nations. And finally, the opposition considers the incomplete cabinet defunct, and unauthorized to facilitate the election of the next president.

Both sides of the domestic conflict lack sensitivity to the nation’s drift toward chaos in the absence of national consensus. The government is too dependent on foreign aid that comes with tight strings attached; whereas, the opposition is an artificial alliance of two major insecure movements.

Neither the “March 8” nor the “March 14” political community is able to distance itself far enough from foreign powers in order to negotiate the future of an independent, neutral and unified nation. The Lebanese opposition speaks for Tehran and Damascus and the pro-government speaks for Washington and Europe.

Three days after my departure from the country a battle between the national army and an extreme Islamic militia, known as Fateh-al-Islam, took the lives of over 50 people- soldiers and rebels. The extreme rebels are not connected to Hezbollah or to Syria, but they contribute to the insecurity of the country along side the opposition. In Lebanon there are 350,000 Palestinians living in camps ridden with squalor and deprivation. The war in Iraq has brought Al- Qaeda culture to Lebanon through the camps of Palestinian refugees, where there is room for underground activities for all sorts of marginalized groups. Ironically, the Lebanese army may soon discover that it needs Hezbollah to assist in controlling a brewing sectarian revolution, Iraq style. The culture of civil war allows all a myriad of reconfigurations to restore security or to undermine it.

Sooner rather than later, the Lebanese government will have to sober up and sort out its priorities. To bring back the country to normality, the Lebanese will have to realize that unity precedes security, and security precedes justice. The international discussion this week of a proposal to launch the UN investigation for the murder of Harriri is very poorly timed. As the country is today extremely unstable, focusing on the murder of a politician that died two years ago in a society that is dripping with injustice is peculiar.

As one astute local commentator opined in a recent article, the worst compromise solution between the March 8 and the March 14 camps would be better than a continuation of the existing stalemate. A reconciliatory president is badly needed this summer. But if one side is to compromise painfully, it should be the government, given the fact that time is on the side of the opposition. Why?

Today the Lebanese national army is already at the center of attention of the entire country. While the Shiite community is the largest constituency of the opposition and of the Hezbollah movement, it is also the largest demographic contributor to the national army. If Lebanon approaches the September elections without finding a compromise of power sharing among the two sides of the domestic conflict, the balance of power is likely to tilt toward the side of the stable. Considering the backing of Syria and Iran to the opposition and the natural affinity of the Lebanese army to Hezbollah, the government would have to yield and offer substantial compromises. Should Hezbollah come out of this crisis with some political gain, it should reciprocate by reassuring the Lebanese society that its militarization is temporary.

A neutral reconciliatory leader would go a long way in calming Lebanon this summer. He would pave the way for a new government that would allow sufficient room for the opposition. The UN investigation of the Harriri crime is a diplomatic stumbling block that needs to be shelved for a better day, if Lebanon is to survive a new hot crisis this summer.

I left the country with the same degree of concern that I had before the visit. For the last three decades I have been convinced that Lebanon is not expected to arrive at a full political solution until two important conditions are met. The region which surrounds it must first join the rest of the world in understanding how the modern state functions. These same neighbors must also begin to appreciate how economic and social reforms are pre requisite for democracy building.

Cross-Cultural Fundamentalism

In the brewing conflict between the US and the Arab world religious fanaticism plays a role. Religious zealots are on the military frontline in the Arab world and on policy boards in America.

Cultural context has a role in the development of fanaticism. In America, people seek extreme religion in order to deal with the alienation of living in a rapidly changing society. In contrast, Arabs are mobilized by extreme religion in order to change a stagnant political culture. In the west, original ways of worship evolve to calm down society in an over stimulating environment; in the Muslim world, radical religious movements are formed to agitate people politically.

Moderate, mainline churches in the US are losing membership to radical, mega-churches that operate to sooth people’s nerves. Why? In America, family structure weakens from generation to generation, divorce and remarriage are frequent, the neighborhood communities are in flux, jobs are short-term, and houses are bought and sold as casual commodities. People are desperately trying to cope with the constantly accelerating pace of life.

Nevertheless, many of these conservative churches are able to serve people with honesty and authenticity. Millions of Christians in this country and abroad find spiritual healing and wholesome worship in fundamental churches. There are no easy ways to screen fake from genuine pastoral care or to distinguish the spiritual agency from the business- oriented, televangelical station. There are no easy ways to decipher politically-obsessed, xenophobic ecclesiastical structures from ecumenical churches oriented towards social justice.

In this hyper-achieving society, too many conservative churches in the US are exploiting the congregations’ growing needs for programs that will provide cheap and easy comfort to the troubled mind and the anxious soul.

Some charismatic churches have gone wild in offering believers celestial, guilt-reduction products for this life and the hereafter. These closed-system religious institutions deliver recipes on how to access “God’s Kingdom”. They render arbitrary judgment on good and evil, using the scripture selectively and outside its original context. They offer exclusive guidelines for marriage, divorce, family and friendship. They issue “fatwa”- like policies on abortion, scientific research and sexual orientation. They are aggressively prescriptive on family values, on government intervention, on taxes and on foreign policy. More significantly, they reject the validity of other religions, particularly Islam.

In America, fundamental churches tend to stimulate fear and guilt in society and they supply their stress-relief products. Watching the televangelical, fundamental church offerings on the TV screen, one can learn slick marketing skills and appreciate the art of attitude change with vulnerable audiences.

Now I turn to Muslim fanatics. Good and evil are side-by-side in the practice of religion, both in open and closed societies. Arabs live in politically closed societies. Mainline religion in the Middle East is also on the decline, whereas radical Muslim movements are on the rise. But make no mistake about it, the majority of the world’s billion Muslims live in peace and remain faithful to authentic, mainline Islam. Indeed, without the integrative force of religion, the Middle East would be a political volcano.

Arabs want change in response to the worsening of many socio-economic pressures: the decline of living standards, demographic density, urbanization, rising unemployment and dislocation from rural living. In addition, Arabs face oppressive rule, political humiliation (in successive wars), and Western colonial intervention. The growing agony of the people can not be ignored forever.

Leaders of mainline religious institutions are unable to speak the truth openly to oppressive Arab political rulers. On the other hand, radical religious groups are able to organize underground. Their leaders target both ruling regimes and colonial powers. Muslim fanatic groups are popular because they are expressing the people’s frustrations.

However, despite their popularity, Arab fundamentalist groups lack political maturity to innovate democratically. Arabs’ religious fanatics follow tradition obsessively, literally and coercively. In particular, Arab fundamentalist groups are not sensitive to empowerment of women in society. They demonize the West, and blame their ills on the outside world.

Fanatics rely on brutal force and ignore human investment. When Arab fundamentalists become deeply self-critical, they may eventually find their way to real reform. They expect Islam to condone suicide killing, but authentic Islam will never give these religious fanatics the moral license to disregard universal rules of combat and insurgency.

Western and Arab fundamentalists are trapped in a cycle of mutual demonizing. As the world becomes a global village, fundamentalists across cultures and borders are waging ethnocentric wars. They are busy canceling each other ideologically. Arab fundamentalists demonize western modernity; whereas, US fundamentalists demonize Islamic ideology.

In each society, the future of fundamental religions is tied to the future of mainline religion.

In the Arab world, where the economy worsens and politics deteriorate, fundamentalism thrives. As long as moderate religious institutions are inhibited by the autocratic state there is little hope in containing fundamentalism.

And in America, as long as main line churches are losing their relevance to a rapidly changing and competitive society, the fundamental church will continue to grow in size and in political impact. In an age of growing anxiety about the future of the world - and in particular, the future of Western civilization - fundamental churches seem to be able to respond with concrete, albeit superficial, answers for which people are thirsty.

What fundamentalists of all cultures share is the industry of fear and anxiety. Irrational fear is the renewable resource that fuels their theology and economy.


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The author is former Secretary of the Middle East of the Geneva-based World Council of Churches

Regional peace should accompany withdrawal

Regional Peace Should Accompany Withdrawal of US troops from Iraq.

Today, Al-Qaeda is fighting America in Iraq, as it fought the Soviets in Afghanistan, its home base in the 1980’s. Ironically, Al-Qaeda then was in partnership with the US fighting the Sovietization of Afghanistan. Now, an international coalition of Al-Qaeda has joined local Iraqi insurgents in fighting what they perceive as the Americanization of Iraq.

The victory over the Soviets encouraged Al-Qaeda to continue its form of “Jihad” worldwide. As the Soviet empire collapsed, Al-Qaeda next turned its aggression to the US which it now considered “satanic”, for its military presence in the Islamic world.

In September 2001, Al-Qaeda attacked the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. Naturally, the 9/11 events hurt the US deeply and inflicted an emotional wound on America that generated deep and far reaching retaliation. In effect, the response to 9/11 started a third world war on the Jihadist and Jihadism.

The US attacked Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan; but instead of liquidating Al-Qaeda then, the Bush administration opened another war front in Iraq, thus diverting its attention from the source of global terrorism. As a result, Al- Qaeda was able to rehabilitate itself and continue its aggression against the US in Iraq. Al-Qaeda gained added strength by joining forces with Saddam’s retreating army, now a guerilla militia. This militia’s opposition to the US, as invader, provided the motivation for the alliance with Al-Qaeda.

Political developments in the Middle East and especially in Iraq continue to baffle the distant observers. We witness in Iraq mounting carnage, disintegrating communities and growing uncertainty of a future with no winners and no losers. Debate over our country’s future in Iraq rages on and public opinion is deeply divided.

Republicans want our troops to dig in. They argue that to stay the course in Iraq is to fight for “goodness against evil”, the “patriotic, American way.” With some validity, they argue that withdrawal risks a worsening conflict in the future. Democrats want our troops to pull out. They advocate phased withdrawal and criticize the administration’s surge strategy; yet they are not clear on the alternatives to war.

In the meantime, public patience with the war (and its partisan politics) weakens. Politicians increasingly interpret Iraq in ’08-election calculus. Legislators who are eager to withdraw troops don’t mind washing their hands of Iraq. They argue that the Iraqis need to shape up politically, to unite, and to defend their country. The US has sacrificed too much already, they say. It is “up for Iraqis to continue.”

Some Iraq-war critics reveal mental fatigue. Many call for splitting the country into three states as if the political knife can out perform the gun. In effect, this split would add three quasi ethnic/religious states -- Sunni-stan, Shia-stan and Kurdistan.

In the Middle East, US behavior in Iraq has elevated ongoing Arab political paranoia to new heights. Arabs associate the present US-Iraq strategy with the US-Lebanon strategy of support of sectarian and non-credible rulers: e.g. the ideologically divisive US troop deployment in 1958 and again in 1983. Now, as sectarian tensions resurface in Beirut, the Arab world suspects an American/Israeli plot to fragment the entire region.

The dynamics of Iraq’s civil war are confusing, but it is a mistake for Americans to label the Muslim-to-Muslim killing as a “sectarian” civil war. Though Iraqis are tribal by background they are not as sectarian as portrayed in the US media. In normal times, Iraqi Shiite and Sunni citizens were proud Arab nationals. The high rate of mixed marriage between Shiites and Sunnites is a sign of this social integration. If the dream of a just political solution were fulfilled, Iraqis from all backgrounds would be eager to make peace. Every society has some level of religious or ethnic tension; Iraq is not an exception.

The fighting in Iraq is between thugs from different religious communities, but the local war is not about religion. It is not clear to what extent the Iraq thugs participate in civilian and religious targeting. The Sunnis’ targeting of Shiites in Iraq is mainly engineered by international Al- Qaeda agents who flooded into Iraq in the wake of the US invasion. These Al- Qaeda agents would love to see the US dragged into a new war with Iran. Will today’s Washington neo-cons forgo negotiations and launch an attack on Iran and by doing so fulfill the dream of Al-Qaeda?

Going back to the debate in the US on the timing of the withdrawal of US troops, both sides have valid arguments: immediate withdrawal opens Iraq to Al-Qaeda and worsening of civil war; staying the course deepens the quagmire. To find a solution, we need to think of widening the debate beyond withdrawal guidelines or conditions.

There is need for a new strategy that shifts foreign policy from unilateralism to multilateralism, from coercion to soft diplomacy, and from moral confrontation to cultural cooperation.

I suggest a strategy of three simultaneous operations: withdrawing troops in phases, building an international coalition for conflict resolution, and organizing a regional response to simmering and explosive crises.

If Arabs and Iranians could cooperate with the US in Iraq, an orderly and phased US troop withdrawal would motivate Iraqis to find a political solution. For this scenario to succeed, Iran should be offered strong incentives to cooperate with the US in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Lebanon.

Al-Qaeda should be confronted with a stronger multi-national force at its home base. Afghanistan and Pakistan’s border areas remain the source from which Al- Qaeda receives its support, training and planning.

The strategy requires limiting US military leadership. US troop participation in Afghanistan should not be disproportional in order to allow for more American involvement in deep economic empowerment. Under NATO coordination and mixed heavy European and Arab participation, the Taliban and Al-Qaeda would have no chance to survive in Iraq or in Afghanistan.

With regional support, Iraqis would be able and willing to defend themselves against insurgents, to fight Al- Qaeda intruders, to unite across ethnic lines, and to rebuild their country.

For these measures to work, several regional peace processes have to be activated and fostered by the US and international diplomacy. India and Pakistan should energize the debate on Kashmir. A better US-India-Pakistan partnership would effectively halt the Al-Qaeda and the Taliban movements.

The continued attention to Middle East peace efforts must include Israel, Syria and Palestine. Syria and Israel are due for restarting negotiation on the Golan status; and on the Jewish normalization with the Arab community. Palestine and Israel should accelerate the talks on the two-state solution

The fixation of the debate on surge in deployment vs. withdrawal is too narrow a focus. Phased withdrawal from Iraq is necessary but not sufficient. When international diplomacy prevails the world’s Muslim community is the best partner for the US to fight Al Qaeda in its home base.