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The Imperatives of Peace
“With scarcely a peep from the American professorate or intelligentsia, we have all succumbed entirely to the promiscuous misuse of language and sense, by which everything we don't like has become terror and what we do is pure and simple good, to fight terror, no matter how much wealth, and lives, and destruction is involved. Swept away are all the enlightenment precepts by which we attempt to educate our students and our fellow citizens, replaced by a disproportionate orgy of vindictiveness and self-righteous wrath of the kind that only the wealthy and the powerful, it would seem, have the right to use and act upon…
“The worst misrepresentation of all is that in the 54 years since 1948, never has a narrative of Palestinian heroism and suffering ever been allowed to emerge. We are all depicted as basically violent fanatic extremists … imposed on the consciousness of a stunned and systematically misinformed population, aided and uncritically abetted by an entire army of commentators and media stars - the Blitzers, Zahns, Lehrers, Rathers, Brokaws, Russerts, and their ilk….”
The multi-dimensional nature of the human tragedy enacted in the Middle East could have hardly been more truthfully spelled out than in this graphic observation of Edward W. Said. As the death toll mounts and casualties multiply, there is little to suggest that words like remorse, compunction, empathy or fair play have any meaning in contemporary lexicon. The resultant suicide-bomber acts staged by hapless Palestinians, including hijab-sporting teen-age youthful girls, is a cause of concern. So are the innocent Israeli civilians gasping for precious life and helplessly scrambling for help. It is a haunting spectacle – on both sides of the religious divide.
Both the Palestinians and the Israelis are experiencing a bloodbath, though of a varying degree. In this swiftly spiraling human catastrophe the question of paramount importance is: Does Islam or Judaism preach violence and should the losses experienced by adherents of the two Abrahamic faiths be incurred in such a wanton fashion given the fact that both Muslims and Jews have stakes in the region and neither one can succeed in surviving at the expense or exclusion of the other? A spirit of mutual accommodation must prevail in any strategy or scheme of initiatives chalked out to bring about peace in the region. Israel, with its marked military superiority, is better poised to take the initiative. It must, as well-known peace negotiator George Mitchell observed, realize that “a military victory is an illusion” and the two parties should “get back to the negotiating table.” His message for the Palestinians is equally important: the pool of suicide bombers has multiplied lately but it is not going to achieve the Palestinian objective of an independent state.
As for the other main actors on the world stage, there is little to suggest that the West would act with promptitude to reign in the two combatants. What is particularly disconcerting, while the UN Security Council has asked Israel to check its adventurism against the Palestinians the US has held Arafat responsible for the latest round of violence! With the situation presently obtaining the catastrophe is likely to compound as time passes. The death count of helpless Palestinians and innocent Israeli victims of suicide bombers will multiply.
A glimmer of hope comes from the majestic portals of the Vatican where the Pope in his Easter address emphasized the paramount importance of coexistence. The Beirut Declaration, offering peace to Tel Aviv in exchange for a complete Israeli withdrawal from all occupied territories, is a manifestation of the same spirit. The US could play a pivotal role in mustering support for such peace initiatives. It has acted nobly in Bosnia and Kosovo and rescued Europe in the two world wars. It alone has the power to bring the Israelis and the Palestinians to the negotiating table to ensure that the two arrive at an arrangement which ensures the well being of both. If memory serves right, it was Charles Dickens, well-known English novelist, who observed: “Let’s conserve a livable world. Let’s contemplate existence.” A sane advise. One that both the Palestinians and the Israelis need to heed today. Conflicts are created and ended by human beings.
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