Dennis Fox’s Weblog

That the planning and subsequent cancellation of last week’s OneVoice Summit and concerts in Jericho and Tel Aviv generated controversy didn’t surprise me. One Million Voices to End the Conflict describes itself as “an unprecedented mobilization of moderate voices to achieve a two state solution that fulfills the overdue aspirations of the Palestinian and Israeli people to end the occupation, to end all forms of violence, to permanently end the conflict, and achieve international recognition, respect, peace, and prosperity.” This sounds okay as far as it goes, but the carefully worded self-description seems to skip over many of the key issues. It doesn’t go far enough.

I’ve discussed here before efforts to seek peace and reconciliation based on little more than a mutual longing to end the fighting. Unfortunately, dialogue groups, neutral moderation, and similar approaches too often ignore, by explicit design, history, context, and power. Without acknowledging the fundamental imbalance in power and responsibility between Israelis and Palestinians, I just don’t see how a meaningful peace can come about.

In recent months I’ve addressed this problem in several contexts, from the Dialogue on the Wall panel discussion in Minneapolis to Moises Salinas’s book on the psychology of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to a planned March “Pathways to Peace” conference in Connecticut. These are among many examples of efforts to set up a symmetric two-party framework that imagines that the conflict and the solution are even-handed. Both sides are portrayed as equally victimized. So to end the conflict, one side gives something up, the other side gives something else up, and everyone walks away with a down-the-middle compromise.

What this framework ignores is that compromise between two sides with vastly different resources and degrees of power is bound to over-represent the interests of the stronger side. At last in the short- and medium-term, Israel can afford to be stubborn and unyielding, since the longer the conflict persists, the stronger the Israeli hold on occupied Palestine. But for those Palestinians who still seek a two-state solution, however, the pressure to settle for something, for anything, no matter how remote from justice, becomes increasingly desperate.

There’s been much written recently about public opinion in the US, for decades reliably pro-Israel, beginning to slip. The hysteria over Jimmy Carter’s book for using apartheid in the title, over Walt and Mearsheimer’s book on the Israel lobby, over Mazin Qumsiyeh’s talks around the country eventually led even to banning Desmond Tutu from a Minneapolis college, a development so ludicrous that even the ADL issued an appeal to reconsider. I’ve mentioned all these incidents in earlier postings, and there are many more.

Next week Tutu will be in Boston again, for the Sabeel conference on “the apartheid paradigm in Palestine-Israel.” I plan to attend, and am curious to see what ground is covered and how much both sides — including protesters and counter-protesters — focus on terminology versus substance. Whether Israeli policy should be called apartheid by whatever legal definitions apply, or instead merely “the equivalent” of apartheid, or “apartheid-like,” seems to me a semantic point detracting from the more important discussion of how to oppose unjust policies, whatever definition they fall under.

And next month, maybe, there’ll be the US-sponsored peace conference Condoleeza Rice is running around the world trying to drum up support for. As Neta Golan and Mohammed Khatib wrote last week,

Even the participants in the summit realize that the Israeli occupation is no longer sustainable in its current form.  If we, the peace and justice community, manage to expose this latest maneuver for what it really is, Israel could be forced into fair negotiations for the first time.

For this to happen we must mobilize immediately. It is our job to educate the rest of the world about what these talks really mean and the truth about what is happening. The writing is literally on the wall and on the ground. It took many months if not years to expose the ugly truth behind the first “generous offer.” Let’s not make that mistake again.

It’s a busy time. Lots to do.

Technorati Tags: conflict resolution, Desmond Tutu, international law, Israel, Palestine, Sabeel

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 20th, 2007 at 6:26 pm and is filed under Israel/Palestine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.