...I'm okay with being REALITY-based.




Wednesday, June 04, 2003
      ( 2:07 PM )
 
Just Because You've Got a Roadmap
Doesn't Mean You Can't Ask Directions

I'm struck today by history meeting current events in the middle east - a situation that is all too common. Today, brimming with hopefulness, promises are made and declarations proclaimed by the leaders of Israel and Palestine (with the vacuous mutterings of our own appointed leader sucking the life out of the entire episode), a NEW PATH TO PEACE IS FORGED in the middle east. Have we heard this all before? I'm sure this is what the Palestinians are saying to themselves.

This news is juxtaposed for me today on to my current reading of the autobiography of Queen Noor. Run, don't walk, to your bookstore or library to get this book and read it. It is fantastic, written beautifully and full of incredible description and personal as well as first-hand political history. Intertwined in her love story with King Hussein are the threads of the politics of the middle east. They are an inescapable part of her life's story, and told by her, they are not only fascinating, but seem so much more relevant. Reading today her recollection of King Hussein's experience of the Six Day War in 1967, I was struck by the bitter blow he felt following what he thought would be a resolution of the crises and a path to peace in the region.

In November 1967, King Hussein traveled to New York and stayed in the same hotel as Egypt's foreign Minister, Mahmoud Riad, Israel's Foreign Minister Abba Eban and Arthur Goldberg, the US ambassador to the UN. They conducted separate and secret meetings and finally agreed to the groundwork for UN Resolution 242, which was the "land for peace" deal, and directed a return to the pre-1967 war borders.

After being given assurances by US Secretary of
State Dean Rusk, and President Lyndon Johnson
that Israel would return a substantial portion of the
West Bank to Jordan within six months, King Hussein
accepted Resolution 242 and its formula of "land for
peace." "I was assured by the Americans that Israel
was 'on board,' " King Hussein said. "They told me
that six months would be the outside limit for its
implementation. I believed them."

But just as his great-grandfather had been
deceived in 1917, so was King Hussein let
down in 1967.

...in 1978 [they year they began seeing each
other], Israel still had not withdrawn from the Arab
lands it had seized more than a decade earlier.
From the terrace of the palace, we could look over
and see the lights of historic Jerusalem nearly
obscured by the lights of the encircling settlements
and developments that the Israelis had built around
the holy city. The reminders o the impasse were
everywhere...Yet King Hussein remained optimistic.

The implementation of Resolution 242 would become
a mainstay of our life and work together as he tried
again and again to reach a lasting peace with Israel
and justice for the Palestinians. This quest would
take us to many places, and it would test the mettle
of our marriage.

It is just so interesting to read a first hand, personal account of a situation that is now repeating itself 40 years later. Peace talks are always fraught with tension and compromise is always so hard to come by. Drawing on my own experience working in communities in the north of Ireland before and after the tenuous 1998 Good Friday Peace Agreement there, I can imagine what the communities in Israel and the occupied territories are going through right now. A step forward brings hope, but reality soon darkens the horizon and it's hard to forge ahead, especially when smaller dissenting groups on both sides decide to act out their frustrations and disrupt the process.

However, I can't help but wonder about the foundation on which this current agreement is being built. It's a foundation of unkept agreements and lies, provocation and backlash. The hypocrisy of our own government once again rears its ugly head today. As George Bush stands with the Israeli and Palestinian leaders and declares that he will see this peace process through...the media and everyone around BushCo conveniently put aside the last year as if it were long-passed history. Weren't we just 8 months ago making a gigantic stink in the UN about Iraq keeping to UN Resolutions? Did we not use Iraq's so-called disregard for a UN Resolution as our basis for declaring war and invading a country and setting up an occupation? And yet, here we are, "brokering" a peace plan that simply ignores the fact that we've aided and abetted Israel in disregarding a UN Resolution for 40 years... a disregard that has directly led us to where we are now. It's incredible. How the US and Israeli play-actors in this drama can keep straight faces is beyond me.

Conflict Resolution is a tenuous process at best. The fact that the Palestinian Authority is willing to go forward at all shows a courageous spirit. Just as in the north of Ireland, just as in South Africa, the onus is on the group that has the most power to make the sacrifices to even out the playing field. Whether Israel will ultimately step up and take that mantel on itself is the question now to be answered. The Palestinians have already given up their homelands, their property and their families' land and houses. They have lived under an oppressive, discriminatory and violent occupation in ghettos and refugee camps. It is now time for Israel to relinquish the land they occupy unjustly in order to make this plan a reality and a success that will lead to the greater peace and security of both populations. A serious pursuit of resolution in this land will mean that despite acts of violence by factions on both sides, the process must continue forward.

Having the Road Map is one thing. Stopping to ask directions of history and taking the time to view the bigger picture will make following the path all the more easy for both travelling sides.

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