Audacity and peace

Editorial

United States Sen. Barack Obama's book is titled The Audacity of Hope, but the most audacious hope in Washington today is that of George W. Bush, who has decided, since little else has worked out on his watch, that he will attempt to resolve the longest outstanding international conflict of our time – before he leaves office in slightly more than a year.

Viewing Israel and Palestine as a linchpin that will resolve the broader problems of the Middle East conflict is not the most outrageous idea the Bush administration has championed. Although the Israeli-Palestinian conflict now pales in bloody comparison with the situation in Iraq and even Afghanistan, and while the Sunni-Shiite conflict is likely to live on long after other ancient enmities are resolved, there is a justifiable belief that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian issue will hasten peace on a larger scale. This may be a fair assessment.

On the face of it, such a suggestion is offensive in that it might imply that Israel is the source of the entire region's conflicts, which is essentially the argument that Arab states have been able to get away with purveying for decades. In fact, the American hope of a resolution between Israel and the Palestinians may be an effort to separate the truly ideological reprobates in the region from the comparative pragmatists.

The Annapolis conference convened last month by the Americans may have appeared to be an unfairly one-sided affair – with the Americans in the middle, Israel on one side and almost the entire Arab world on the other. But this is in fact a realistic view of the balance of power in the region for the past 60 years and to deny the role that the Arab states have played in perpetuating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is to blind ourselves to reality.

Canadian Jews have deep personal, spiritual, cultural and familial ties to Israel. We care deeply about peace there and about the security of our families there. But most of us do not have the daily reality of the stresses of life there, so we cannot, from our peaceful point of observation, understand why Israel continues to negotiate with people who have demonstrated, in the form of Hamas, no interest in peace and, in the form of Fatah, that their promises of peace are empty words.

Those who live with the carnage and stress caused daily by the absence of peace can be forgiven for seeing even the faintest hope for peace as one worth pursuing. Holding grudges is a luxury reserved for we who live far away, in a land of peace.

Even so, while we hope that the Annapolis conference began something that will flourish into lasting peace, it is impossible not to raise the issue of Palestinian behavior and the world's reaction to it since 2000.

The incessant retroactivity of blame that exemplifies this conflict – arguments over who was there first, which claim is paramount and who threw the first punch – is seemingly useless. But is it?

The world community, overwhelmingly, has blamed Israel for the catastrophe of the past seven years. While the response with which Israel met Palestinian uprisings is open to criticism – obviously and loudly – the fact remains that the violence was initiated by the Palestinians while a peace partner was sitting at a negotiating table. If only for the sake of future international relations precedent, should the Palestinians not face some repercussions for starting seven years of war?

The question is probably moot given the overwhelming world perception that Israel is the bad guy. The court of world opinion believes that, despite seven years of violence since the Palestinian decision to abandon negotiation for violence, we'll just pick up where we left off, as if Israel and the Palestinians are equally to blame for the collapse of the last peace process.

At the very least, shouldn't there be an acknowledgement by the world community that the Palestinians deserve some form of admonition, if only a verbal slap on the wrist, for walking away from peaceful negotiations and inciting a war that has killed thousands? If only so that other parties in future diplomatic negotiations worldwide do not think they can ease from civilized negotiation to savage violence and back again with no deleterious impacts to their position, shouldn't there be some recognition of the Palestinians' destruction of the last peace process before a new one begins afresh? If there is no reward for peace and no punishment for violence from the court of world opinion, why would the Palestinians – or any other party – not resort to violence to get their way every time negotiations get tough?

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