More than 70% of Israelis and 70% of Palestinians favored a two state solution in 2009. In absence of any progress on Peace Talks those numbers have dropped precipitously, though majorities in both Israel and Palestine still want negotiations which would lead to peaceful coexistence. It is not the will of the people that has killed the chance for peace it is the timidity of political leaders. Netanyahu does not want a two state solution and he has spent two terms as Prime Minister doing everything he can to derail any chance for progress. He has been a major proponent of settlement activity and has taken an eye for an eye approach to every provocation. Thomas Freidman once said that Arafat never missed an opportunity to waste a chance for peace. In the succeeding years every Palestinian leader has pretty much followed that playbook. Though I understand the frustration and political calculations that lead the Palestinian Authority to align in a pact with Hamas, in its way, this is just as great wound to the Palestinian aspirations as Settlement activities by the Israelis in the occupied territories. I would call the alliance a catastrophe, except we all know how many other foolish and damaging steps each side has taken previously. Was the Infitada which sent Palestinian boys into the streets with rocks to battle heavily armed Israelis a catastrophe? Was the 1982 invasion of Lebanon which led to the massacre of 2000 civilians at the hands of militias working directly with the Israeli Defense forces a disaster? In 1946 Zionists, some of whom would later have significant leadership roles in Israeli government, were battling the British occupation and they blew up the King David hotel decades before terrorism was part of the modern vocabulary. Was that a catastrophe? What about Munich and its bloody aftermath?
Leadership in both Palestine and Israel governed large majorities willing to take a chance for peace, but they have squandered opportunity after opportunity, either out of fear of the militant fringe in their community (which is real) or because the leaders themselves did not have the political desire to seek peace. Arab governments in the area have spent a lot of time exploiting the crisis over the last 50 years, without lifting a finger, or taking any risk, to push any real chance for peace forward. Here in America the hard right is myopically committed to an absolute defense of Israel, no matter the circumstance.
Considering this history, those who defend one side or the other without acknowledging the sins of those that they defend, miss the point almost completely. Both sides have wronged the other, sometimes with great pain, and sometimes with catastrophic results for their own political goals and any moral standing they would hope to project to the world. In my heart, I think I instinctively feel more defensive about the Palestinian cause than that of Israel, but this is only because while the political wheels spin in the mud, the Palestinians continue to suffer grave depravation of basic human needs like housing, food, and medical care in their everyday lives, not to mention gross indignities as they move through the terrain of occupation. The fact that Israel confronts the land of those they occupy with tanks and other high powered weaponry which is overwhelming in every way to anything the Palestinians can muster feels like it should ascribe a greater moral obligation to Israel. Yet I hesitate. We can be certain that the mothers of those three Israeli teenagers-- slain for the furtherance of no cause-- feel no more or less pain than the mother of the Arab teenager who was kidnapped and brutalized—also for no cause. A dead child is a dead child. As the father of a teenager myself, who lives every day with both the joy he brings and the foolish choices he sometimes makes, my heart feels broken for this most recent loss of life. I see the news, and then I think of my all arms and legs, 6’3, 165 pound, beautiful, son and I shudder, feeling tears of fear and worry that won’t come. As human beings our collective soul is scarred by these heinous acts in the way that Newtown and 9-11 scarred us. We do not recover from these cuts, we merely endure. We are not scarred because I or anyone who reads this wasted those lives, but because we were so helpless and or disinterested to prevent the horror we then had to witness. Those of us who consider ourselves as citizens of the world have a lot of work to do and speaking personally I feel that during the course of my life far too much is left undone. Perhaps, far more than anything else, there remains too much hate in this world, too little love, too little acceptance, and too little commitment to dialogue.
Which brings me back to the words of Dr. King which I posted yesterday: "That old law about 'an eye for an eye' leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do the right thing."
There is no reason for hope right now, except in our lifetime we did get to watch the Berlin Wall come down. Though we lost Steven Biko, we watched the heroic Mandela walk out of prison and lead his beloved South Africa in an inclusive and forgiving way. Though Burma is now besieged by ethnic violence, we saw the magnificent Daw Aung San Suu Kyi leave her house arrest of more than 15 years. We lost Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney, Viola Liuzzo, Medgar Evers, both Dr. King, and Malcom X and countless others, but this week we saw one of my great personal heroes, John Lewis, alongside millions of other Americans celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights act. No matter those that would turn back the clock and the miles we still need to go, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act which followed a year later fundamentally transformed America. So, I guess there is also this: “The Arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
