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Ray Hanania

Let's go back to the future

Let's stop giving in to extremists and keep hope for peace alive

It's been 40 years since the 1967 War and the beginning of the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.

 

The occupation could have been the basis for a new vision of compromise, but instead it triggered different responses from each side.

 

The Arabs rejected the concept of two states in 1947 believing they could "right the injustice." They failed. In 1967, they failed again. But in the 20 years after, Palestinians took control of their own destiny and in the 1980s secular Palestinians accepted the inevitable - two states were unavoidable.

 

So what happened?

 

Maybe, failure is the result of the fact that Palestinians and Israelis are never in sync.

 

When Israelis are hopeful, Palestinians are the most pessimistic. When Palestinians are hopeful, Israelis are pessimistic.

 

Worse, when fanatics use violence to block peace, instead of rejecting the power of the extremists, the Palestinians and Israelis surrender to terrorism, halting peace and giving the terrorists on both sides what they want.

 

So here we are in a 40-year purgatory, the same old familiar place we've always been. Why?

 

For some Israelis, the 1967 War and the occupation implanted the belief that they could expand their nation into new lands through settlements.

 

For Palestinians, it forced them to recognize that the old Arab bombast that was the foundation of the so-called "Arab Front" was in fact lame and ineffective. So they took control of their own destinies.

 

For a while, under the great Palestinian revolutionary but not-so-great government leader and negotiator, Yasser Arafat, Palestinians forced the world and especially the Israelis to recognize the rights of the Palestinian people.

 

When Palestinians and Israelis do come together, the extremists on both sides turn up their fanaticism and use violence.

 

The extremists in Israel murdered a convert to peace, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, just as extremists in Egypt murdered a predecessor, President Anwar Sadat.

 

The extremists in Palestine have done everything they could possibly do to create such ugly horrors that they hoped they could make peace so distasteful to Israelis that Israelis would reject it. Every time Palestinians and Israelis negotiated an agreement, Hamas fanatics used suicide bombings and the murder of innocent civilians to undermine it.

 

Less optimism about future

Meanwhile, the failure of the peace process created what I like to call the "happy talk" extremists. People who claim to support peace but say everything and anything to really avoid peace.

 

The Israeli happy talkers say ignore the Palestinians. Eventually they will leave. The Palestinian happy talkers argue that since two-states failed (thanks in a large part to their own roles,) then we should be focused on a One State Solution.

 

Basically the "One State Solution" melody is sung by both Palestinian and Israeli Extremists, although the lyrics are different.

 

Palestinians sing "a secular Democratic State where Christians, Muslims and Jews live together as equals." Exactly where - anywhere - do Arabs, Jews, Muslims and Christians live together as equals?

 

They want Israel to disappear through absorption and domination by the growing Islamicist majority.

 

Israelis sing the "One State" tune of arrogance. We exist. We have our state. And we'll build walls to keep you out. Using oppressive policies, Israeli extremists hope they can chase out the non-Jews.

 

Forty years of occupation and all we have both become is worse. We are worse off today than we were 40 years ago. And the way things are going, we'll probably be at each other's throats for another 40 years.

 

There is less optimism about the future. There are fewer and fewer visionaries who can still see peace based on compromise through the fog of conflict.

 

We need to "go back to the future." We need to reject the past. We need to stop using the past as a reason to prevent peace. We need to start looking to the future. Instead of using the growing hatred, the continued conflict and the oppressive suffering to turn away from peace, we should use these pains to motivate us to turn back towards peace.

 

Yalla, people. Let's do it. Let's start a new movement for peace that recognizes that the past is filled with tragedies committed by both sides. Errors made by both sides. Failings achieved by both sides.

 

Let's define a new future based on hope and don't let the tragedy drag us down. Harness the power and passion of the conflict and redirect it towards the only solution to our future.

 

Compassionate compromise in which we both concede, giving not what we want but on what the other needs.

 

Common sense concessions where we accept that "difficult choices" must be made so that our children and our children's children can live together in an era of peace.

 

I see the future of peace. I know it's there. I won't let hatred, tragedy, failure and the actions of the extremists on both sides keep me from seeing that peace.

 

The extremists can stop us from getting there only if we allow them to. Let's take back the momentum. Let's stop surrendering to terrorism. Let's stop giving the terrorists on both sides what they want.

 

Let's take back our future and let's fight for peace.

 

Ray Hanania is an award winning Palestinian columnist, author and standup comedian. He can be reached at www.hanania.com

 


פרסום ראשון: 05.23.07, 18:03
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