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January/February 2001
Brainstorming
the Middle East: An old Green friend asked me to join in putting forward a reasonable proposal toward peace in Israel and Palestine. I began drafting some ideas: basic principles, bones. What is my peace dream, if I could dream it into reality? Where is my heart in this tragedy? When two rights collide and struggle, both for coexistence and mutual exclusiveness...what have I remembered of all I heard? The objective is an agreement leading to, creating, and describing a just, enduring, comprehensive peace, providing security, respect, and economic improvement for Palestinians, Israeli Arabs and Jews, and everyone in the Middle East. A peace must recognize and permit the visions of both peoples to be realized in their fullest.
A context is needed. This war is not a separate war. It is a continuation of the unresolved struggles of the last century-the Second World War and the processes of imperialism, colonization, de-colonization, self-determination, globalization, and humanization. It is imbedded in the Middle East as a region and in world politics as a whole. A central responsibility must rest on European anti-Semitism, which produced the Zionist movement, organized to flee the holocaust its proponents foresaw and which indeed came, hand in hand with fascism. European history and the mythology of white supremacy produced the Jewish imperative to have a safe place and never again be subject to the murderous malevolence of anyone. Jews would protect Jews; Jews would look out for one another. In this spirit, settler colonialism and prophetic return to the homeland converged to invade Palestine, buy land titles from absentee landlords, talk about displacing indigenous populations. Then there was blood, back in 1929 and 1936. And then there was war with the British, and then terrorism and more terrorism, and grievances multiplied and magnified, and war upon war, and now how do we untie the Gordian knot and imagine peace? Early Zionists believed of the Palestinians, "the old will die and the young will forget." This self-deception allowed the founders of Israel and their successors to avoid many questions that are now demanding resolution. The old will never die because the young will always remember. The land is not for sale, even if Jews arrive from all comers to come home and claim a share, after being exiled by the Roman Empire and its armies in the year 70 AD. Peace now requires the voluntary acceptance of a mutually beneficial agreement about justice and hospitality in the land. The ultimate objectives are safety, well being, sustainable communities and societies, and a relative and increasing prosperity for everyone: a wider justice and a freer life for all. The measure of future leadership in the Middle East is a rejection of violence. The Middle East as a whole must become a zone free of weapons of mass destruction. A system of inspections and transparencies is needed to remove offensive capacities from the militaries of the Middle East. Multilateral discussions on these topics must proceed as part of the overall peace process. A system of collective security is needed, with international guarantees and United Nations presence, to insure the defensive security of all states, peoples, autonomies, and communities. "Acceptance and respect of Jews" is a command of Qur'an. "One law for ourselves and those with whom we live" is a command of Torah. "Jubilee"-the relief of oppression, the freeing of prisoners, the redistribution of land and cancellation of debts to establish the foundations of justice-is a periodic necessity called for by Jewish tradition. The teachings, traditions, laws, and commands impelling toward peace need to be amplified, repeated, taught to the children, broadcast through the grapevine, the media, the Internet, so no one will not have heard.
A process of "truth and reconciliation" must be part of a comprehensive peace agreement. Some process of recognition, apology, confession, remorse, reeducation, and amnesty is needed to provide a moral equivalent of revenge and an acceptable way to settle blood feuds. All religious authorities in the area should be invited to a symposium to discuss and formulate religious rituals necessary to cleanse the land of blood, to redeem the blood of the Palestinians, to redeem the blood of the Jews, to redeem the blood of the brother that cries out from the land. A mutual toleration of all religious traditions is needed in the holy lands: Jew, Christian, Muslim, Druze, Samaritan, Baha'i, Buddhist, and also the faiths of those travelers and pilgrims who come from the ends of the earth. In peace there is no superior religion. There is a mutual longing for union with God, Allah, the Great Spirit, the Larger Soul, the Unnamable, the Beloved. Peace seekers should be counting the names of God. The vision of the Jews coming home to live in or visit the holy homeland should be accepted and embraced by all parties to the peace, along with a prayer for the rapid arrival of the moshiach/messiah/Second Coming or whatever divine expression might follow fulfillment of this prophetic call. Israel is the Jewish homeland. The vision and right of all Palestinians to return to their homes and homeland, from wherever they are in the world, should be accepted and embraced by all parties to the peace. Palestine is the Palestinian homeland.
International aid is needed to provide water to a growing population. Secure, long-term water contracts should be negotiated with Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and other potential suppliers to guarantee future water resources. Development of desalinization, water conservation, solar energy, and other sustainable technologies should be part of the economic plan for Palestine and Israel at peace. A democratic sustainable development plan is needed to guide development and resettlement within the expanding limits of available resources. Four voices, at least, need to be represented in the discussions of a democratic development plan: Jews in Israel and the Occupied Territories; Jews in the diaspora; Palestinians in the areas of Palestinian authority in the Occupied Territories and in Israel, including the Bedouin and the unrecognized villages; and Palestinians in the diaspora. "Eco-teams" are needed on the ground to gather ideas, identify needs, facilitate innovation. Women need to have parity representation in all discussions at the peace table. Young people need to be at the peace table. A team of accountants and lawyers should be empanelled to make an accounting of all material claims arising out of the war since the 1947 UN resolution partitioning Palestine. These claims should include Palestinian and other Arab claims against Israel, and Israeli claims against Palestine and against Arab countries where Jewish property was confiscated or abandoned without compensation. This accounting should aspire to include every olive tree, house, business, carpet, bank account, or whatever, whose loss is felt and remembered as a grievance. A comprehensive material settlement should be envisioned where every aggrieved individual receives some material recognition. A comprehensive history should be written and an oral history recorded, and these should be taught in the schools. Museums and historical markers should be placed to remember all significant places in the interlocked story of Israel in Palestine since the beginning of Zionist settlement and Palestinian nationalism, including all 531 destroyed villages and neighborhoods, and places of massacre, battle, terror, peace demonstrations, refugee camps, settlements, etc. The 1967 "green line"should be accepted as a nominal working border for negotiation to establish final borders. Any land maintained for Jewish settlement on the Palestinians' side of the line should be balanced by equivalent land opened for Palestinian settlement on the Israeli side of the line. Palestinians would be permitted to live in West Jerusalem and return to homes that had been confiscated or occupied without due process. Palestinian and Arab Israeli neighborhoods in mixed towns would be permitted to expand and absorb returning refugees. Old keys would be honored. Jewish settlements, except in Gaza, would mostly stay where they are, with corresponding new Palestinian settlements in Galilee and Negev, especially in areas the 1947 UN partition originally assigned to Palestine. Palestinian new settlement towns might also be projected in the border areas of South Lebanon, Golan Syria, Jordan, and Egypt. A system of dual citizenship should be envisioned whereby Jews on the Palestinian side would have citizenship rights in Palestine and in Israel, and Palestinians on the Israeli side would have civil and political rights guaranteed in Israel, and also representation in the Palestinian National Authority. A democratic inclusive confederation should be established to oversee inter-communal relations between "Israel" and "Palestine" and to create a civil judiciary, a third option. Those who chose to live under Jewish religious law would have the opportunity to do so. Those who chose to live under Islamic shari`ah law would have the opportunity to do so. Those who chose to live under civil law with "separation of church and state" would have the opportunity to do so. An option of neighborhood or communal autonomy and self-determination should allow neighborhoods, towns, or settlements to associate with Israel or Palestine or the inclusive confederation embracing both. Nationality needs to be recognized in the heart of the person, not in the coercive authority or exclusive contiguous territorial jurisdiction of the state. A more innovative conception of nationalism is needed, one that envisions the reality of states as states of mind, overlapping, interpenetrating, side by side and non-exclusive in their claims of sovereignty. Temple Mount/Noble Sanctuary/ Haram al-Sharif should be left as it is, awaiting the return or arrival of the Messiah, and as a place of Islamic reverence and prayer, open to all Muslims and reverent pilgrims.
The place of a new Jewish temple similarly needs to be debated. One possibility would be in the air on a raised glass platform built over the excavations of the city of David, south of Temple Mount, over the area that some archeological evidence suggests was the actual site of the first Jewish temple. Another would be east of the existing east wall of the old Roman fortifications and city wall. The capital of Palestine will be in the eastern part of Jerusalem. The capital of Israel will be in the western part of Jerusalem. The city is undivided. Neighborhoods have autonomy. Neighborhoods meet in regional councils and inter-regional councils as necessary. The name of the place is Jerusalem-al-Quds: City of Peace-The Holy. A system of vocational schools should be established and expanded for all people in the lands of Israel and Palestine to receive basic education and technical preparation to participate in the growing prosperity. International educational aid is necessary to support the school system, along with the publication of new textbooks, computer connections, libraries, etc. needed for peace. A system of hospitals for peace should be established to help heal and rehabilitate the wounded. International medical aid is needed to allow people to recover from the war and participate in building the peace. All roads should be open to everyone, and access designed to facilitate inter- village travel as well as inter-settlement and inter-urban travel. Safe unimpeded travel should be possible between all areas of Palestinian settlement, connecting Jerusalem and the West Bank and Gaza, including a seaport, an airport, and land port border crossings with Egypt and Jordan. Safe unimpeded travel should be possible between all areas of Jewish settlement, and with open borders between Israel and Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt. The particular grievances that produce the conflict and oppression should end immediately with the peace, if not sooner. The violence stop, the stone throwing stop, the shooting stop, the closures stop, the curfews stop, the demolition orders stop, the residency permits be returned, political prisoners be released, water be shared fairly, land confiscation stop, olive tree uprooting stop, the occupation end, destroying property, beating people, shooting people, brutality and racism, bombings, terrorism, all of it: stop! Besides the basics of a principled compromise, peace seekers must concentrate on the turning of hearts. Without this, the parties will never see how close together they really are and can be, and how good peace could be, when everyone wins. The parties need to make a peace place in the land itself. The peace cannot be brokered in Washington, Camp David, Wye River, Oslo, Madrid, Geneva, Paris, New York, or Sharm El-Sheikh. Somewhere in the land that is to be shared, there must be a meeting place, where the parties can see one another and sit together in different combinations, and look at all outstanding questions on the table, and do peacemaking. Art must be part of the peace process. Unless there is something beautiful about it, more than the same old men signing papers, ordinary people are unlikely to engage their imagination in the peace. Unless the creative and hopeful energies of almost all the people are engaged, there will not be the social transformation and conscious evolution needed to realize the enduring, comprehensive peace that is our objective. A delegation of veterans of nonviolent civil rights movements in other parts of the should be invited to tour Israel and Palestine and teach about the social change experiences in which they participated. The international attention to a culture of peace should be given official recognition and public and government support in Israel and Palestine and in the local municipalities of each authority. Mixed communities, wherever they are in the diaspora, should take all opportunities to meet, to overcome traditional social separations, mutual ignorance, and lack of personal acquaintance with neighbors of the ìotherî group. Libraries and video collections of each group should be expanded to include books and films from the other group. A multi-faith peace vigil should maintain a spiritual focus on the peacemakers and be a reminder of a higher accountability beyond pragmatic politics and exclusive loyalties. Closed summit meetings and retreats have produced proposals without popular support and undermined the democracy and consensus needed to support peace. The terms of a workable principled compromise, such as is imagined here, touching on all outstanding questions, should be translated into Hebrew and Arabic and circulated among both peoples. Public discussion of the details of peace proposals should be encouraged. It should be acknowledged that neither in Israel nor in Palestine is there one governing authority that completely represents the diversity of the people. There is no sole legitimate representative of either the Jews or the Palestinians. The terms of any peace agreement must be approved in referendums by the people of both communities. An effort should be made to explain and campaign for the peace principles and enlist the entirety of civil society in the affirmation of the consensus reached at the negotiating table. How do Jews discover and apply the wisdom of Solomon when two children struggle for possession of the same mother? How can people conceive the transformation of Israel without the destruction of Israel? What gates, walls, and fences can create security without making prisoners of both sides? How can people share water and wash together and become cleansed? Peace is a matter of art, engaging the heart. Without attaching blame, peace permits transforming pain and memory and loyalty to the dead into an acceptance of the other side as part of one's own victory. These questions, and the big-picture character of the peace we seek, should, I think, be the focus of a peace meeting. These ideas, or some similar expression of basic principles of peace, should be the subject of discussion, amendment, broadcast, reformulation, improvement. Your comments are requested. Please feel free to circulate these ideas where you think they might receive constructive, critical response.
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| ©2001 Fellowship of Reconciliation |
International
law is ultimately the governing law in the Middle East, as everywhere
in the world. The charter of the United Nations; the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights; the Geneva Convention relative to the protection
of civilian persons in time of war; the conventions against all
forms of racial discrimination, against discrimination against women,
against torture, against genocide, for civil and political rights,
for social and economic rights and the rights of children; the relevant
United Nations General Assembly and Security Council resolutions-this
is the body of international law as it applies to Israel and Palestine.
The ultimate judicial authorities are the World Court and the International
Criminal Court. 
All
parties to the peace should make accommodation and provide aid and
assistance to facilitate return of refugees and Èmigrés from the
respective diasporas of Palestine and Israel. A holy land at peace
will be very attractive and it should be anticipated that many will
want to return. Planning will be necessary for significant population
increase. International aid will be needed to build new villages,
new settlements, new houses in already settled areas, new industrial
facilities, new schools, and to rebuild demolished houses and buildings
damaged in the warfare. All parties whose past policies contributed
to the impasse of which the present war is a product should jointly
sponsor the international aid fund: Italy, Spain, Turkey, Britain,
Germany, the United States, and the Arab states that supported past
military action against Israel. Other states should be asked to
contribute. 
A
new Jewish temple should be permitted, and debated among the Jews
as to design, and built as a place of spiritual focus for the Jewish
people and allowing for appropriate renewals of temple service.