A completely absurd proposal-Part 1 Where are we now?

One of the reasons that I began writing these essays was to force myself to be more coherent and consistent in my thinking about complex issues. Some might argue that this is an entirely hopeless endeavor, but I will continue to struggle along. This piece and the two that will follow are therefore mostly for me as I try to answer two of the questions that have frequently been posed to me since I have returned from Israel/Palestine. Do you think any solution is possible? What do you think should happen? Most will probably say enough, enough. Only Middle East junkies, who, unfortunately, I think I have become, will want to get through all the complexity. If you decide to leave here, thanks for listening to my rambles. See you in a few weeks. Back to the questions- My off the cuff, flippant answer was been: “The US needs to get the hell out”. But these are valid questions and they deserve more consideration. Lets start by looking at where we are now. People say that we need to return to the “peace process”. What “peace process”? In the thirteen years since the Oslo agreements in which Yassar Arafat gave up his strategic vision of a single secular state in return for a bunch of promises (none of them lived up to) and invitations to state dinners all over the world (I hope that the food and wine were good), the situation has continuously deteriorated. Neither side has lived up to its commitments and the proposed Palestinian state has been carved up into separate enclaves bounded by fences/walls, bypass roads and military reserves with no open borders and little internal communication and access. The Israeli governments of Benjamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon have, since 1993, attempted to establish irreversible facts on the ground in the form of settlements and annexations. They have succeeded. There are now approximately 400,000 settlers east of the 1967 armistice line who would have to be evacuated in order to return to these borders. The evacuation scenario of 8000 settlers in Gaza last year gives one some sense of what this would look like. When we asked if evacuating the settlement in Hebron would create an Israeli civil war, the spokesperson said “I wouldn’t call it probable, but I would call it possible.” This scenario is not politically feasible for the Israelis. The Sharon/Ohmert convergence/disengagement plan “only” requires that 50 – 100 settlements be dismantled and 50-100,000 settlers be expelled from their homes. Even this plan has a lot of opposition in Israel. (Click here to see how much) The disengagement plan (see the map) creates untenable borders for the “Palestinian state” and will never be accepted by any Palestinian government be it Hamas, Fatah or a reincarnation of Yassar Arafat. Can the US help resolve this seemingly irresolvable situation? Simple answer- No! The US has no role as an effective mediator. A mediator needs to be unbiased, willing to listen to the interests of both sides without judgment and find the common ground. With over 50 years of uncritical support for one side of the conflict, the US cannot be seen by Palestinians as unbiased. At Camp David, Palestinian negotiators dealing with Ehud Barak, Bill Clinton and AIPAC staffers Dennis Ross and Martin Indyck felt like they were negotiating with both Israel and the US. (They were probably right) That leaves us with question – Where do we go from here? Easy answer – beats me, but let’s look at this next time.



Israel
Palestine
Current Affairs

The Grandmother Effect

During our time on the West Bank of Israel/Palestine, I spent a day in the West Bank city of Hebron. Hebron is the site of the traditional tomb of Abraham and is therefore a holy place to all three monotheistic faiths. In many ways Hebron is a microcosm of the conflict in Israel/Palestine. This seems appropriate as this conflict is a conflict within the dysfunctional family of Abraham. It probably would have been better if he had had only one wife. Hebron is in the southern portion of the West Bank 30 minutes or two hours south of Bethlehem (depending on whether you are on the Jewish by-pass road or the Palestinian road). In Hebron there is a Jewish settlement of about 500 settlers (mostly American) in a city of 150,000 Arabs. (mostly Muslim) The settlers here represent the radical religious right of Jewish Israelis. David Wilder (an American from New Jersey), the spokesperson for this settlement, told us that his two state solution was Israel/Palestine for the Jews and Texas for the Palestinians. (I am not sure that he has consulted with George Bush on this.) Because the settlement is east, from an Israeli perspective “outside”, of the separation barrier/wall, the settlers are guarded by 2000 Israeli soldiers and security personnel. The result of this situation is a very unstable and sometimes violent relationship between the two populations. For this reason an organization called “Christian Peacemaker Teams” (CPT) has sent a group to monitor the situation and “get in the way of violence”. They call this “the grandmother effect”. There are some things that you won’t do when your grandmother is watching. (I think that our grandchildren could relate to this.) One of the things that they do is walk the Palestinian children to school in order to keep them from being hassled by the settlers or the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) at the checkpoints.
John Lynes, a lawyer and a grandfather from the UK, told a story of needing to go to the market in order to prepare dinner. In order to get there, he had to pass down a street where the IDF and Palestinian “militants” were fighting each other. When they saw him, they stopped fighting and allowed him to pass. By the time he returned from the market, they were fighting again. Once again they stopped fighting and allowed him to pass only to resume when he was gone. Our Gospel reading for last Sunday was from the Gospel known to the church as John 15:13 “…no one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends”. CPT seems to me to be the embodiment of this philosophy of unconditional love. Sometimes they lay down their lives literally as did Tom Fox in Iraq (if you don’t know this story, click here), but mostly they just lay down their normal lives, like yours and mine, to go where they are needed. (For more on CPT click here) Grandfathers and grandmothers encouraged to apply.

Tractors

When I was growing up in rural upstate New York, my brother and I used to wake up in the summer to the “put-put-put” of a 2 cylinder John Deere tractor that our neighbor down the road used to till his fields. This tractor has a very distinctive sound as it has a very large fly wheel and it seems like the engine only fires about twice a minute. To this day the sound of this vintage tractor still conjures up visions of green tractors, green corn fields and the smell of fresh mowed hay. Our recent trip to the West Bank of Israel/Palestine exposed me to a whole different vision of tractors. The rumble of an Israeli armored bulldozer combined with the “rat-tat-tat” of machine guns presents a completely different scenario. The image of these huge yellow pieces of equipment painted over in camouflage destroying olive groves, leveling houses and occasionally killing young American women (if you don’t know this story click here) can hardly be called bucolic. The destruction of homes and lives reeked by these tractors has brought the Caterpillar Company to the forefront of efforts by some liberal Protestant churches to encourage divestment from companies that facilitate the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. (for more on this click here) When Caterpillar was contacted about this issue their response was that “we have no right to control how our customers use the pieces of equipment that we sell them.” For me it is hard to visualize what productive use could be made of an armored bulldozer with a machine gun on top. Maybe someone can enlighten me.

Shared Values

In a recent Washington Post op ed piece, "No, It's Not Anti-Semitic", columnist Richard Cohen comments on the controversy surrounding the paper on the Israel lobby by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt. Much of the criticism of Walt and Mearsheimer by such people as Eliot Cohen, professor at Johns Hopkins and Alan Dershowitz of Harvard argues that the paper reflects the anti-Semitism of the authors. In this piece Richard Cohen disagrees with this point of view. Instead he maintains that Mearsheimer and Walt’s argument that the Jewish community has a large influence on US policy is accurate. He states that “Israel’s special place is deserved, in my view, and not entirely the product of lobbying. Israel has earned it, and isn’t there something special about a relationship that is not based on oil or markets or strategic location but on shared values.” This got me to think that perhaps it is shared values that accounts for the US’s uncritical support for Israel and it’s policies. What might these shared values be? The first one that is usually cited is that we are both democracies, however flawed. This cannot be the only explanation as the Palestinian Territories and Iran are also democracies, however flawed. Another value that is frequently cited is that Israel is a strong ally of the US in the “war on terror”. In both countries this war effort defines “terror” very loosely including everyone from al Quada, ETA, Palestinians, the IRA, etc. in the same category. If your only tool is a hammer every problem looks like a nail. In both countries the war on terror is the number one foreign policy issue and justifies indefinite detentions of “militants” both citizens and non citizens. It also justifies surveillance, wire tapping and perhaps torture. Both countries also seem to believe that 40 ft walls will protect them from those who are different. We certainly do have shared values, but what kind of values are they? Are these the values that we want to teach our children? As I recall, there was a guy wandering around the Middle East 2000 years ago who had a different idea about what we should teach our children. It seems to me that Pastor Gary Arnold had it right. “Teach them to how to care about persons. Teach them to feel free enough to cry with others when they hurt. Teach them to offer helpful directions. Teach them to reach out and love, touch, and hold other persons when it feels like that is what you need to do. Teach them to be in touch with abiding values.” It seems that the values of our citizens and our governments are different. Our Arab friends when questioned about their feelings about Americans have often said “we know how to separate individuals from their government.” Why does that need to be?

Reaching out

We, in the US, are often accused of being very insular and inward looking. Most of us only speak English and many of us have never traveled outside of the US. (Why should I do this when there is so much of this beautiful country that I have never seen?) We, however, are not the only ones with this attitude. The very conservative Gulf States in the Middle East keep many of their citizens, particularly the women, isolated from other cultures and the rest of the world. Recently, when I was in Jordan looking at some of the development projects with which I have been involved, we discussed with our friends at Habitat for Humanity-Jordan the upcoming work project by a group of very wealthy young women from an exclusive school in the UAE. They were concerned about what could be expected from these pampered and isolated young women. Could they lift the cement blocks? How would they interact with the people in the poor village? I said to Nancy at HFHJ "You have to send me an email after this work camp. This will be very interesting". I just received this email. What a great story of reaching outside your isolating borders. The story is at once uplifting and hopeful and also sad that they may never experience it again.

Nancy writes:

Happy Easter,
In this time of rebirth and transformation I have an incredible experience I
would like to celebrate with you. Last week we hosted the first all women's volunteer build in Jordan, maybe
the Middle East, but that has yet to be confirmed. The ladies were from
Sharjah College which is located in the United Arab Emirates, a small
country in the Persian Gulf. There were 12 students and 4 chaperones, one of
them being American. She was my main contact, Linda, an American teacher
with the school and she and I had many conversations about what this build
was going to look like given many factors. Some of those being that these
were wealthy young women, from very conservative families, one of them was a
princess from the current ruling family and they all wore the traditional head
scarf and robes. All but two of the girls had never traveled without a
member of their family before, several had never been in an airplane and for
most this would be the first and last trip of this nature. After graduation
they would be married and would not likely have this kind of opportunity
again.
We were anxious and apprehensive as to how this would all work out. Taking
young women into a poor community to build alongside men and members of a
community so vastly different than their world? Would they even be able to
lift a brick, much less be outside for hours at a time? By the end of the
very first day of building our fears were washed away in delight as we saw
the transformation of these women through their determination anopennessss.
As the staff sat together that evening we marveled at this and talked about
how we were going to have to change our build schedule to accommodate the
girls obvious ability to work harder than we had anticipated, this was a
challenge we were more than happy to have.
After the girls had dinner at night they gathered as a group to talk about
what they experienced that day. I wish I had the space here to share all of
these but will use this to share a few;


- Thuriyah - when I was walking back to the hotel from Petra I became very
sad because I realized this would be the last time that I would be on a trip
by myself. I love the way this trip makes me feel freedom, of just being me
and being able to be with my friends.
- Noorah (who actually is a princess) - I kept thinking all day about how
God made it possible for all these people from so many different places to
be here, today, right now, in the same place. I think that is amazing.
- Alawiah - I am so surprised at how easy it is to work around men, I don't
feel uncomfortable at all. I really like how different it is than being with
just women and people that I know well. It makes me feel good about myself.
(Linda tells me that this is an important chance for the girls who will be
allowed to take jobs and work in a place with men and women.)
- Moza - I am overwhelmed that people live like this. I have always known
there are poor people but have never seen them and could not have ever
dreamed that their lives would be like this. I feel so happy to have an
opportunity to help them and make a difference in how they live.

On a humorous note, Linda tells me that Noorah shows up at the airport with
her maid. When she realizes that she can't go through the check point with
her, she asks, who is going to carry my bags? Linda says, well you are.
Noorah says, OK, but I've never done that before. Later in the week she
tells Linda that she some of the things she has learned during the week were
to pack her own bags and do some laundry, she feels pretty proud of herself.
We all have different things to learn right?

The last day I sat in wonder as I watched with delight as these confident
young women, laughing, working side by side created contests to see who
could make more bricks. I also realize that being a woman has given me
incredible access to this whole experience and for that I am grateful.
This is grace, this is the kingdom.
Yours in love,
Nancy

This looks like the kingdom to me as well.

Jordan
Habitat for Humanity
UAE