Written by Patricia Smith Melton - the founder, board chair, and former executive director of Peace X Peace.
“It’s simple, if you want it to be.” With those words Dr. Mohammed S. Dajani, head of the American Studies Institute at Al Quds University (Jerusalem), gave me a new schema to process the realities of Israel and Palestine—radical simplicity, not only as an external schema but also as an internal one. Dajani, a Peace X Peace Advisor, recently launched the Wasatia Movement whose concepts of socio-politico moderation are rapidly gaining advocates throughout the Palestinian Territories.
After my third trip to the region in January 2007, my commentary re-stated the complexities, and I can provide masses of conflicting “evidence,” un-meldable narratives, and mutating “facts on the ground” (my new favorite slippery regional phrase).
Yet, after my trip in June and July, it feels clean and accurate to cut through the complexities. The mantra I heard across diverse sub-systems of the Israeli and Palestinian societies is: Peace could be created in a day, if they wanted to.
Who is “they”? The governing bodies—specifically Israeli and Palestinian males at the top of hierarchical pyramids, most of whom are considered by the majorities in both populations as lacking in one or more qualities of integrity, power, or creativity.
Yet, most people say, “Everyone knows what is going to happen.” Eventually.
And what is this “what is going to happen”—even as armed conflict between Fatah and Hamas throws into jeopardy Gaza’s (and Hamas’) early inclusion in this “inevitability”?
Answer: A two state solution with borders more or less along the green line (the borders prior to 1967, when the Six Day War began Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza); East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine; recognition by Palestinians of Israel’s right to exist and relinquishing of the “right of return” to their lands prior to 1948; dismantling of most, if not all, Israeli settlements on occupied territory; freeing of most, if not all, Palestinians held in Israeli jails; release of finances to the Palestinian Authority. Part of the package, it is expected, would be the dismantling of the 8-meter-high concrete wall separating the two areas.
Simple, isn’t it? Ask entire peoples to forgive each other for atrocious acts, work out details of prisoner exchanges and where each other’s citizens can live peacefully, get to the timetable and functional agreements, provide enough aid by Israelis and internationals to the moderate factions of Palestinian governing bodies so they are stable, and get down to the business of rebuilding a Palestinian state that is financially viable and moderate. Then, put this package together with even more wisdom—and prayers for grace—to find a working relationship with Hamas either separately (in Gaza specifically), or integrated into a Palestinian whole. (Of course, the women should be leading this; more on that below.)
One other key piece is that some textbooks on both sides need rewriting—in Palestine that Israel has the right to exist, and that it’s not heroic or divinely blessed to kill Jews, even if you kill yourself in the process; in Israel that Palestinians lived on the land for on-going generations before 1948 and that these people did not leave of their own volition unless fear of death spread as rumors of massacres is of one’s own volition. This problem is now receiving attention on both sides, including from Dr. Dajani, as educators confront the distortions. It is worth noting that Israel just authorized changes in the telling of the events of 1948 for the Israeli Palestinian schools, though not for the Jewish texts.
Getting to these “inevitabilities” does require pre-conditions: people need to talk to each other nicely, humiliation and confinement need to be lessened, and there must be funds to maintain day-to-day Palestinian infrastructure. Maybe not so difficult if people simply do what needs to be done?
