Arabs Need to Break Bread with the "Other Israel"
Editorial,
The Daily Star (Beirut)
(2 February 2002)
There is another Israel, one which Arabs need desperately to engage in dialogue and on which the Jewish state's supporters among world Jewry need to focus. At present, the most visible element of this parallel nation is made up of a few dozen reserve officers who have publicly declared that they will no longer serve in the Occupied Territories. They include veterans of previous Arab-Israeli wars who say they will no longer take part in the repression of West Bank and Gaza Palestinians for the sake of settlements that lie outside Israel's borders and are destined to be abandoned in any eventual peace agreement. The days of looking at Israeli society as a monolith should have passed long ago, but they remain in existence thanks to the stubbornness and shortsightedness of an Arab ruling class that fears nothing so much as change.
On the other hand, the days when Arab regimes threatened the hurling of "Jews into the sea" are gone in reality but live on in many quarters because their echo serves the interests of Israeli hard-liners and so is amplified whenever possible by the Jewish state's less thoughtful advocates in Washington. The irony in all this is that with the exception of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's camp, conflict does not serve the interests of Israelis and apart from die-hard militants groups like Islamic Jihad and Hamas, it does nothing to help Arabs either. The culprit is a powerful dissonance that blocks communications between the moderate majorities in both Israel and the Arab world, preventing them from recognizing their shared ambitions of peace and security within clearly defined borders. The beneficiaries of this "dialogue of the deaf" would seem on the surface to be mortal enemies, but the truth is that Arab extremists can only thrive when their would-be base of support is under siege and Israeli extremists can only take power when they can successfully sell the image of a Jewish state facing existential peril.
A cursory reading of any newspaper will tell you that the only people who view the post-Sept. 11 world as one necessitating a "clash of civilizations" are Sharon and Osama bin Laden. That speaks volumes about their common goal of conflict. It would be unfair to heap all of the blame for this state of affairs on both sides' hard-liners, for they could not have silenced the rest of us without our tacit acquiescence. The way forward will therefore require genuine seekers of peace to acknowledge that we have not always had the courage of our convictions and resolve to make up for lost time. This will be more difficult for Arab moderates than for their Israeli counterparts because while the latter run only a diluted risk of being branded "defeatist," the former stand to be accused of outright treason.
This is not only completely unfair but also grossly untrue. No less a fighter for Arab rights than the late Hafez Assad was a believer in contacts with right-minded Israelis and other Jews, a fact with which today's Arab peace camp would do well to arm itself in any argument over its loyalties. No two peoples can live alongside one another without having disagreements. But the molding of a better future for the grandchildren of both sides demands that both Arabs and Israelis start trying to solve today's disputes instead of using them to spark tomorrow's.
