Tikkun Magazine, January/February 2008

After Annapolis—Middle East Peace?

We hope so. We pray so. But we don't think so.

by Michael Lerner

The negotiations that began after Condoleezza Rice's one-day "summit" at Annapolis are a hopeful sign. Raising hopes for a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle and an end to the longest-running post-WWII occupation anywhere on the globe, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority Chair Mahmoud Abbas both have strong political motivations to achieve a lasting peace. Olmert's popularity sunk to close to zero after the disastrous Lebanon war in 2006, and Abbas has effectively lost control of Gaza to Hamas and is barely able to contain terrorist attacks on Israel from the West Bank. A reasonable peace accord would not only bolster the chances of political survival for these two leaders, but would also bring them a place of honor in the history of their respective peoples.

Unfortunately, neither Abbas nor Olmert has been willing to speak frankly and unequivocally to their own people about the concessions necessary to make a peace agreement that would actually work. Without challenging the fear and depressive certainty that the other side can't be trusted and is filled with hateful people, both leaders will find themselves under huge pressure not to make the necessary concessions. But at the moment, denial reigns supreme, and nowhere more powerfully than in the discussions of what is needed by the U.S. government. The Bush propaganda machine is so hopeful that it can show some positive achievement of the Bush presidency, that it is likely to be proclaiming victory for very partial and inadequate accomplishments. And frankly, the rest of us are so hungry for peace that we too may be willing to avoid the tough questions and pretend that we've accomplished more than we have. So, the task of the Tikkun Community and the Network of Spiritual Progressives is this: to continue to articulate the fundamentals that would make a peace accord viable. Here are the elements that are essential for a lasting peace:

1. Return of Israel to its pre-1967 borders with minor border modifications mutually agreed upon (language adopted at Taba in 2001) by both parties to indicate that some of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank near the 1967 boundaries and the Jewish sections of Jerusalem including the Wall should be incorporated into Israel, while trading an equal amount of land from Israel contiguous to the Palestinian border to the new Palestinian state. Arab sections of Jerusalem (those that held a majority of Palestinians before the Oslo Accord) including the al-Aqsa Mosque would be incorporated into Palestine with free and unimpeded entrance to Israelis and all others, and Palestine would be granted a strip of land connecting the West Bank and Gaza.

2. Creation of an economically and politically viable, democratic, and human-rights-respecting state in all of the pre-1967 West Bank and Gaza, including Jerusalem, except as modified in point one.

3. An international fund to provide compensation to Palestinians and to assist in resettling Palestinian refugees inside the borders of the new Palestinian state, and to provide compensation for Jewish Israelis who fled from persecution in Arab lands, and to resettle Israeli settlers within the pre-1967 borders of Israel (while allowing Israelis who remain within the territory of Palestine to do so, conditional on their willingness to become citizens of the Palestinian state, live in accordance with its laws, vote only in its elections, and renounce any claim for Israeli intervention or adjudication of their situation, which will be governed by the courts of Palestine).

4. Peaceful relations, economic cooperation, and diplomatic recognition of Israel and the Palestinian state by surrounding Arab and Islamic states.

5. Sharing (by Israel, Palestine, and surrounding Arab states) of the water and other natural resources of the area, and joint cooperation to preserve the region's ecological well-being.

6. Active participation of Palestine and Israel, in cooperation with international forces, to protect both countries from the inevitable violence and terrorism that will continue after this peace agreement has been implemented—recognizing that some groups on each side will continue to use violence against the other side, and that a joint effort supplemented by international forces and funding will be needed to contain and eventually root out that violence (which in any event will decrease as cooperation on the ground becomes something people on both sides can count on).

7. International guarantees of the safety and security of both Israel and Palestine backed by ironclad military agreements to protect both countries from any states or terrorist forces that have hostile intentions.

8. The creation of institutions in both countries designed to foster mutual understanding and an open-hearted reconciliation between both countries, including but not limited to: a. the elimination of the teaching of hatred and stereotyping in the media, religious communities, and educational systems of each side; b. support for educational and social practices aimed at building trust and cooperation between the two peoples, including the learning of the other's language and history; c. public and private acts of repentance and atonement for past violations of human rights, including the creation and intense publicizing in both the countries and in their respective diaspora communities of a Truth and Reconciliation process modeled on South Africa's, but shaped to the specific cultural and religious realities of the Middle East.

Look for these features in an agreement. Teach others about these requirements so that they too can make independent assessments about how significant the agreements they are hearing or reading about in the media really are. And then, ask this question: is what either the Palestinians or the Israelis are doing at any given moment contributing more to the development of hope, trust, and open-heartedness, or is it contributing more to the development of fear, distrust, and the need to defend oneself against a hostile Other?

"Ok," you may say, "that's fine for the outcome, but isn't what is happening now a significant step toward more trust and hope?"

Our answer: Maybe. We hope so, we pray so.

Apart from hoping and praying, however, there are steps that each side could take to increase trust:

A. Israeli and Palestinian leaders could write personal letters to the families of those on the other side who have been impacted by violence, terrorism, and the Occupation, acknowledging the pain that this has caused, and apologizing on behalf of their own people in a language that feels moving and real to the people in the culture to whom they are addressing these remarks.

B. Israeli and Palestinian leaders could command media time to allow the other side to tell their own story and how they see their plight in a language that is sensitive to the potential viewers and listeners. They could also seek to have the other's story told to students in Israeli and Palestinian schools.

C. Palestinian and Israeli leaders could both declare that in 2008 they will use the holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Ramadan to encourage public acts of repentance and atonement for the killings of people on the other side of the struggle.

D. Israel could release all the prisoners now being held in Israeli detention centers for whom it is unable to provide a non-military trial within the next three months. Palestine could put on trial people who have engaged in acts of terror in the past ten years and it could try in absentia the people who are holding Israelis hostage at the moment.

E. Each side could begin a massive program to teach the other's language and culture in their own school systems including in religious schools.

F. The leaders of each side could explain to their own population why an approach of compassion and open-heartedness to the other side is the indispensable foundation upon which peace and security must be based.

From the perspective of many of the people in the Israeli peace movement, both sides are far from taking the confidence-building steps of A-F or seeking to build public support for agreements that would include 1-8 above. But you can use these two sets of criteria to make your own assessment whenever you hear statements or bargaining positions from either side: do they look like they are moving toward the points specified here? If not, don't count on this process yielding lasting peace. Moreover, the process could harden each side's extremes as they get plenty of chances to denounce even the halfway measures as a "betrayal of the true needs of our people."

Of course, there's another possible scenario: At the end of an enormous amount of foot-dragging and halfway measures and proposals that make little sense, suddenly the leaders on both sides make dramatic concessions, act in ways that build enormous confidence on the other side, and miraculously pull the rabbit out of the hat. Didn't Anwar Sadat do something like that with his trip to Israel when he was able to convey in his being a sense of true peaceful intent? It was that visit, after all, which switched the Israeli public opinion (80 percent opposed to withdrawing troops from Sinai before Sadat's 1977 visit, 80 percent in support after his visit).

But there was one huge difference: Sadat was the dictator who controlled Egyptian society and hence could deliver on his promises of peace. Even though he could not protect himself from the assassin's bullets, and was murdered for having signed the peace accord with Israel, he represented a military, political, and economic elite that had decided that it wanted that peace and the economic aid that the United States threw in as an incentive. Thus, even after he was murdered by Islamic fundamentalists, his agreement with Israel was solid. There is no such figure today in either Israel or Palestine who can make an agreement that actually delivers the peace that they promise.

Does that mean that the process is useless? No. It could be very useful if the political leaders on both sides, including in their diaspora communities, were to commit themselves to taking the confidence-building measures meant to create a climate of mutual understanding and reconciliation. Imagine if, for example, the Conference of Presidents of Major (sic) American Jewish Organizations, the Anti Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress, and the Jewish Federations all around America were to make a serious effort to teach their members Palestinian history as Palestinians understand it and to join in a massive effort of repentance and atonement on the High Holidays of 2008 for the ways that the Zionist movement and, later, the State of Israel, had been inadequately sensitive to the needs of the Palestinians people. Imagine if the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Muslim American Society, and other relevant Palestinian and Muslim diaspora organizations were to do the same, teaching their members Israeli history, as Israelis understand it. Imagine if each side demanded that their politicians make no more one-sided statements. That kind of spirit would have an important impact in supporting Israeli and Palestinian leaders who were starting to take the kind of steps toward reconciliation in A-F above, and that, in turn, would start to provide a political foundation for building mass support on both sides for the 1-8 points that are necessary for a political agreement to work.

And since it is too early to write-off the possibility that these steps could and would be taken, it seems appropriate for the Tikkun Community and the Network of Spiritual Progressives to be advocating for these ideas, projecting them into public discourse, and praying that they catch on and influence the relevant decision makers. This is our task, and we can each do our part. I hope you'll join us.

Lerner, Michael. 2008. After Annapolis—Middle East peace?: We hope so. We pray so. But we don't think so. Tikkun 23(1):9-11.