Nonviolent Change Journal

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the development of human relations on the basis of mutual respect.

ARTICLES

WAKE UP! WASHINGTON'S ALARMING FOREIGN POLICY

Chalmers Johnson

Reprinted from the April 18 issue of In These Times (http://www.inthesetimes.com)

with permission to republish.

The Rubicon is a small stream in northern Italy just south of the city of Ravenna. During the prime of the Roman Republic, roughly the last two centuries B.C., it served as a northern boundary protecting the heartland of Italy and the city of Rome from its own imperial armies. An ancient Roman law made it treason for any general to cross the Rubicon and enter Italy proper with a standing army. In 49 B.C., Julius Caesar, Rome’s most brilliant and successful general, stopped with his army at the Rubicon, contemplated what he was about to do, and then plunged south. The Republic exploded in civil war, Caesar became dictator and then in 44 B.C. was assassinated in the Roman Senate by politicians who saw themselves as ridding the Republic of a tyrant. However, Caesar’s death generated even more civil war, which ended only in 27 B.C. when his grand nephew, Octavian, took the title Augustus Caesar, abolished the Republic and established a military dictatorship with himself as “emperor” for life. Thus ended the great Roman experiment with democracy. Ever since, the phrase “to cross the Rubicon” has been a metaphor for starting on a course of action from which there is no turning back. It refers to the taking of an irrevocable step.

I believe that on November 2, 2004, the United States crossed its own Rubicon. Until last year’s presidential election, ordinary citizens could claim that our foreign policy, including the invasion of Iraq, was George Bush’s doing and that we had not voted for him. In 2000, Bush lost the popular vote and was appointed president by the Supreme Court. In 2004, he garnered 3.5 million more votes than John Kerry. The result is that Bush’s war changed into America’s war and his conduct of international relations became our own.

This is important because it raises the question of whether restoring sanity and prudence to American foreign policy is still possible. During the Watergate scandal of the early ’70s, the president’s chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, once reproved White House counsel John Dean for speaking too frankly to Congress about the felonies President Nixon had ordered. “John,” he said, “once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it’s very hard to get it back in.” This homely warning by a former advertising executive who was to spend 18 months in prison for his own role in Watergate fairly accurately describes the situation of the United States after the reelection of George W. Bush.

James Weinstein, the founding editor of In These Times, recently posed for me the question “How should U.S. foreign policy be changed so that the United States can play a more positive role on the world stage?” For me, this raises at least three different problems that are interrelated. The first must be solved before we can address the second, and the second has to be corrected before it even makes sense to take up the third.

Sinking the Ship of State

First, the United States faces the imminent danger of bankruptcy, which, if it occurs, will render all further discussion of foreign policy moot. Within the next few months, the mother of all financial crises could ruin us and turn us into a North American version of Argentina, once the richest country in South America. To avoid this we must bring our massive trade and fiscal deficits under control and signal to the rest of the world that we understand elementary public finance and are not suicidally indifferent to our mounting debts.

Second, our appalling international citizenship must be addressed. We routinely flout well-established norms upon which the reciprocity of other nations in their relations with us depends. This is a matter not so much of reforming our policies as of reforming attitudes. If we ignore this, changes in our actual foreign policies will not even be noticed by other nations of the world. I have in mind things like the Army’s and the CIA’s secret abduction and torture of people; the trigger-happy conduct of our poorly trained and poorly led troops in places like Iraq and Afghanistan; and our ideological bullying of other cultures because of our obsession with abortion and our contempt for international law (particularly the International Criminal Court) as illustrated by Bush’s nomination of John R. “Bonkers” Bolton to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Third, if we can overcome our imminent financial crisis and our penchant for boorish behavior abroad, we might then be able to reform our foreign policies. Among the issues here are the slow-moving evolutionary changes in the global balance of power that demand new approaches. The most important evidence that our life as the “sole” superpower is going to be exceedingly short is the fact that our monopoly of massive military power is being upstaged by other forms of influence. Chief among these is China’s extraordinary growth and our need to adjust to it.

Let me discuss each of these three problems in greater depth.

In 2004, the United States imported a record $617.7 billion more than it exported, a 24.4 percent increase over 2003. The annual deficit with China was $162 billion, the largest trade imbalance ever recorded by the United States with a single country. Equally important, as of March 9, 2005, the public debt of the United States was just over $7.7 trillion and climbing, making us easily the world’s largest net debtor nation. Refusing to pay for its profligate consumption patterns and military expenditures through taxes on its own citizens, the United States is financing these outlays by going into debt to Japan, China, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and India. This situation has become increasingly unstable, as the United States requires capital imports of at least $2 billion per day to pay for its governmental expenditures. Any decision by Asian central banks to move significant parts of their foreign exchange reserves out of the dollar and into the euro or other currencies in order to protect themselves from dollar depreciation will likely produce a meltdown of the American economy. On February 21, 2005, the Korean central bank, which has some $200 billion in reserves, quietly announced that it intended to “diversify the currencies in which it invests.” The dollar fell sharply and the U.S. stock market (although subsequently recovering) recorded its largest one-day fall in almost two years. This small incident is evidence of the knife-edge on which we are poised.

Japan possesses the world’s largest foreign exchange reserves, which at the end of January 2005 stood at around $841 billion. But China also sits on a $609.9 billion pile of U.S. cash, earned from its trade surpluses with us. Meanwhile, the American government insults China in every way it can, particularly over the status of China’s breakaway province, the island of Taiwan. The distinguished economic analyst William Greider recently noted, “Any profligate debtor who insults his banker is unwise, to put it mildly. … American leadership has … become increasingly delusional—I mean that literally—and blind to the adverse balance of power accumulating against it.”

These deficits and dependencies represent unusual economic statistics for a country with imperial pretensions. In the 19th century, the British Empire ran huge current account surpluses, which allowed it to ignore the economic consequences of disastrous imperialist ventures like the Boer War. On the eve of the First World War, Britain had a surplus amounting to 7 percent of its GDP. America’s current account deficit is close to 6 percent of our GDP.

In order to regain any foreign confidence in the sanity of our government and the soundness of our policies, we need, at once, to reverse President George W. Bush’s tax cuts, including those on capital gains and estates (the rich are so well off they’ll hardly notice it), radically reduce our military expenditures, and stop subsidizing agribusinesses and the military-industrial complex. Only a few years ago the United States enjoyed substantial federal surpluses and was making inroads into its public debt. If we can regain fiscal solvency, the savers of Asia will probably continue to finance our indebtedness. If we do not, we risk a fear-driven flight from the dollar by all our financiers, collapse of our stock exchange and global recession for a couple of years—from which the rest of the world will ultimately emerge. But by then we who no longer produce much of anything valuable will have become a banana republic. Debate over our foreign policy will become irrelevant. We will have become dependent on the kindness of strangers.

Ugly Americans

Meanwhile, the bad manners of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and their band of neoconservative fanatics from the American Enterprise Institute dominate the conduct of American foreign policy. It is simply unacceptable that after the Abu Ghraib torture scandal Congress has so far failed to launch an investigation into those in the executive branch who condoned it. It is equally unacceptable that the president’s chief apologist for the official but secret use of torture is now the attorney general, that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld did not resign, and that the seventh investigation of the military by the military (this time headed by Vice Admiral Albert Church III) again whitewashed all officers and blamed only a few unlucky enlisted personnel on the night shift in one cellblock of Abu Ghraib prison. Andrew Bacevich, a West Point graduate and a veteran of 23 years of service as an army officer, says in his book The New American Militarism of these dishonorable incidents: “The Abu Ghraib debacle showed American soldiers not as liberators but as tormentors, not as professionals but as sadists getting cheap thrills.” Until this is corrected, a president and secretary of state bloviating about freedom and democracy is received by the rest of the world as mere window-dressing.

Foreign policy analysts devote considerable attention to the concept of “credibility”—whether or not a nation is trustworthy. There are several ways to lose one’s credibility. One is to politicize intelligence, as Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney did in preparing for their preventive war against Iraq. Today, only a fool would take at face value something said by the CIA or our other secret intelligence services. China has already informed us that it does not believe our intelligence on North Korea, and our European allies have said the same thing about our apocalyptic estimates on Iran.

Similarly, our bloated military establishment routinely makes pronouncements that are untrue. The scene of a bevy of generals and admirals—replete with campaign ribbons marching up and over their left shoulders—baldly lying to congressional committees is familiar to any viewer of our network newscasts.

For example, on February 3, 1998, Marine pilots were goofing off in a military jet and cut the cables of a ski lift in northern Italy, plunging 20 individuals to their deaths. The Marine Corps did everything in its power to avoid responsibility for the disaster, then brought the pilots back to the States for court-martial, dismissed the case as an accident and exonerated the pilots. The Italians haven’t forgotten either the incident or how the United States treated an ally. On March 4, 2005, American soldiers opened fire on a civilian car en route to Baghdad airport, killing a high-ranking Italian intelligence officer and wounding the journalist Giuliana Sgrena, who had just been released by kidnappers. The U.S. military immediately started its cover-up, claiming that the car was speeding, that the soldiers had warned it with lights and warning shots and that the Italians had given no prior notice of the trip. Sgrena has contradicted everything our military said. The White House has called it a “horrific accident,” but whatever the explanation, we have once again made one of our closest European allies look like dupes for cooperating with us.

In its arrogance and overconfidence, the Bush administration has managed to convince the rest of the world that our government is incompetent. The administration has not only tried to undercut treaties it finds inconvenient but refuses to engage in normal diplomacy with its allies to make such treaties more acceptable. Thus, administration representatives simply walked away from the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on global warming that tried to rein in carbon dioxide emissions, claiming that the economic costs were too high. (The United States generates far more such emissions than any other country.) All of the United States’ democratic allies continued to work on the treaty despite our boycott. On July 23, 2001, in Bonn, Germany, a compromise was reached on the severity of the cuts in emissions advanced industrial nations would have to make and on the penalties to be imposed if they do not, resulting in a legally binding treaty so far endorsed by more than 180 nations. The modified Kyoto Protocol is hardly perfect, but it is a start toward the reduction of greenhouse gases.

Similarly, the United States and Israel walked out of the United Nations conference on racism held in Durban, South Africa, in August and September 2001. The nations that stayed on eventually voted down Syrian demands that language accusing Israel of racism be included. The conference’s final statement also produced an apology for slavery as a “crime against humanity” but did so without making slaveholding nations liable for reparations. Given the history of slavery in the United States and the degree to which the final document was adjusted to accommodate American concerns, our walkout seemed to be yet another display of imperial arrogance—a bald-faced message that “we” do not need “you” to run this world.

Until the United States readopts the norms of civilized discourse among nations, it can expect other nations—quietly and privately—to do everything in their power to isolate and disengage from us.

Future Reforms

If through some miracle we were able to restore fiscal rationality, honesty and diplomacy to their rightful places in our government, then we could turn to reforming our foreign policies. First and foremost, we should get out of Iraq and demand that Congress never again fail to honor article 1, section 8, clause 11 of the Constitution giving it the exclusive power to go to war. After that, I believe the critical areas in need of change are our policies toward Israel, imported oil, China and the proliferation of nuclear weapons, although the environment and relations with Latin America may be equally important.

Perhaps the most catastrophic error of the Bush administration was to abandon the policies of all previous American administrations to seek an equitable peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Bush instead joined Ariel Sharon in his expropriation and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. As a result, the United States has lost all credibility, influence and trust in the Islamic world. In July 2004, Zogby International Surveys polled 3,300 Arabs in Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. When asked whether respondents had a “favorable” or “unfavorable” opinion of the United States, the “unfavorables” ranged from 69 to 98 percent. In the year 2000 there were 1.3 billion Muslims worldwide, some 22 percent of the global population; through our policies we have turned most of them against the United States. We should resume at once the role of honest broker between the Israelis and Palestinians that former President Clinton pioneered.

The United States imports about 3.8 billion barrels of oil a year, or about 10.6 million barrels a day. These imports are at the highest levels ever recorded and come increasingly from Persian Gulf countries. A cut-off of Saudi Arabia’s ability or willingness to sell its oil to us would, at the present time, constitute an economic catastrophe. By using currently available automotive technologies as well as those being incorporated today in new Toyota and Honda automobiles, we could end our entire dependency on Persian Gulf oil. We should do that before we are forced to do so.

China’s gross domestic product in 2004 grew at a rate of 9.5 percent, easily the fastest among big countries. It is today the world’s sixth largest economy with a GDP of $1.4 trillion. It has also become the trading partner of choice for the developing world, absorbing huge amounts of food, raw materials, machinery and computers. Can the United States adjust peacefully to the reemergence of China—the world’s oldest, continuously extant civilization—this time as a modern superpower? Or is China’s ascendancy to be marked by yet another world war like those of the last century? That is what is at stake. A rich, capitalist China is not a threat to the United States and cooperation with it is our best guarantee of military security in the Pacific.

Nothing is more threatening to our nation than the spread of nuclear weapons. We developed a good policy with the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which with its 188 adherents is the most widely supported arms control agreement ever enacted. Only India, Israel and Pakistan remained outside its terms until January 10, 2003, when North Korea withdrew. Under the treaty, the five nuclear-weapons states (the United States, Russia, China, France and the United Kingdom) agree to undertake nuclear disarmament, while the non-nuclear-weapons states agree not to develop or acquire such weapons. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is authorized to inspect the non-nuclear-weapons states to ensure compliance. The Bush administration has virtually ruined this international agreement by attempting to denigrate the IAEA, by tolerating nuclear weapons in India, Israel, and Pakistan while fomenting wars against Iraq, Iran and North Korea, and by planning to develop new forms of nuclear weapons. Our policy should be to return at once to this established system of controls.

Finally, the most important change we could make in American policy would be to dismantle our imperial presidency and restore a balance among the executive, legislative and judicial branches of our government. The massive and secret powers of the Department of Defense and the CIA have subverted the republican structure of our democracy and left us exposed to the real danger of a military takeover. Reviving our constitutional system would do more than anything else to protect our peace and security.

Chalmers Johnson is the author of the Blowback Trilogy. The first two books of which, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, and The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic—are now available in paperback. The third volume is being written. The second volume, is available from Metropolitan Books for $25.00.

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ACHIEVING LONG-TERM POLITICAL CHANGE IN THE MIDDLE EAST

Dov S. Zakheim

This commentary is one of a series of articles of views commissioned with permission to republish by the Common Ground News Service (www.commongroundnews.org) in partnership with Al-Hayat newspaper and reprinted by other regional news and media outlets, as part of a series of views on "Enlarging the Window of Opportunity?"

There is a growing consensus worldwide that the Middle East may be on the verge of fundamental change. After years of bloodshed and political stagnation, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process has recovered its lost momentum. The Cedar Revolution in Lebanon has, at a minimum, brought about Syrian force withdrawals at a pace greater than any Security Council Resolution was able to achieve. And elections in both Iraq and Palestine, as well as local elections in Saudi Arabia, have led many observers to hold out hope for a new wave of democracy to sweep the region.

All of the foregoing developments have only taken place in the past few months. For any of them truly to take root, more time has to pass. In the interim, any one of them can be reversed. After all, it is not the first time that the Peace Process generated hope among Israelis and Palestinians. Nor is it clear that Syria is truly prepared to loosen its grip on Lebanon. Various media reports indicate that Syria is already inserting new personnel into Lebanon to replace many of its former secret agents there.

For that matter, elections are not as alien to Middle East politics as some pundits have implied. Indeed, both Palestinians and Iraqis have held elections in the past, while many of the Gulf States have held elections at various times for various assemblies. Nor should it be forgotten that some elections, that took place lately, did not extend the franchise to women.

The key to achieving long-term political change in the region is not an instant recipe that can be conjured up in a matter of months. Instead it involves years of patiently nourishing civil society in all its forms, so as to give people a sense of unity and responsibility, as well as of political empowerment. Political parties are certainly important, but so too are professional associations, cultural associations, labor unions, educational associations and social welfare organizations. Empowering such groups would enable individuals to express their hopes and aspirations in a variety of fora that could then feed into the political process. Such groups could transcend the tribal, ethnic and regional allegiances as well as religious affiliations that form the current bedrock of Middle Eastern society and generally pose an obstacle to societal cohesion.

Civil society in all its forms need not, indeed should not, replace long-standing sources of identity for Middle Easterners. Certainly many Western pundits would like to see secular societies emerge in the Middle East. Yet in seeking such societies, these Westerners are guilty of Kiplingesque cultural imperialism. Just because they have chosen a secular lifestyle does not mean that the peoples of the Middle East must do the same. Indeed, even as Europe has become markedly more secular, the United States in particular has taken on a more religious hue. For Muslims, Islam is a way of life rather than a religion, a fact that Western secularists often simply cannot comprehend. Religious leaders, therefore play a very different role in the Middle East than they do in the West, and western notions of pure church-state separation (which in any event overlook the role of European monarchs who nominally stand at the head of established state churches) simply are beside the point.

Nevertheless, while modernity is unlikely ever to substitute for Islam, it need not stand in opposition to it. Civil society can, in fact, provide an effective bridge between Islam, other religions in the region, and the rights and benefits that all freedom loving peoples seek for themselves. By subsuming religious, ethnic, tribal and regional identities within larger commonalities, civil society can identify and nourish needs that encompass nations as a whole and help to provide peaceful channels for the expression of societal aspirations.

A strong civil society is no guarantee of western-style democracy. But western democracy is not the only option for a system of free representative government. In particular, several states in East Asia practice a form of democracy that is quite different from its western namesake. In fact, representative government will and does vary in nature, style and organization from region to region and from culture to culture. What all peoples share in common is the desire to worship, assemble, speak, earn a respectable living and articulate their needs to their leaders freely and without fear.

Current developments in the Middle East are too recent to be called a trend toward realizing this desire for freedom. Achieving it will take time. Nevertheless, if the international community is generous in providing the material, moral and financial wherewithal so as to nurture the various elements of civil society throughout the Middle East, the timeline of progress could be significantly foreshortened. And everyone, not only the people of the region, will benefit if that occurs.

Dov S. Zakheim was Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) from 2001-2004. He is a Board Member of Search for Common Ground.

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THE 'ROAD MAP' IS DEAD; HERE ARE SOME WAYS TO RESURECT IT

Abdul Aziz Said and Nathan C. Funk

Source: The Daily Star (www.thedailystar.com.lb), May 6, 2005.

Distributed by the Common Ground News Service with permission to republish.

There is much less to the peace process than meets the eye. Photo opportunities at U.S. President George W. Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, are one thing; reality is another. A picture may say a thousand words, but the words themselves are not always edifying.

Truth be told, there is no peace process in the Middle East today. Substantive Israeli-Palestinian and Arab-Israeli negotiations have ceased, and the Bush administration has demonstrated neither the will nor the desire to expend political capital on a diplomatic process that would involve difficult compromises. Simply put, Bush would rather negotiate with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon about the details of an imposed, American-Likud solution to Israeli security and settlement problems than mediate between Israelis and Palestinians. The "road map" is leading nowhere.

The scenario looks bleak, but let us think creatively. People of goodwill in the Middle East cannot afford to allow the current pact between Bush and Sharon to demolish hopes of a brighter future. Even if it is not possible to achieve immediate progress toward a livable and humane final-status agreement between Israel and Palestinians, there is much work that can still be done to plant seeds of peace in Israeli and Palestinian societies. One of the first necessary steps is to educate the international community about steps that Arab leaders are willing to take. Here are a few proposals for action:

First, Arabs should underscore the fact that Crown Prince Abdullah's peace proposal approved at the 2002 Beirut Arab League summit is still on the table, even if it is being overlooked. Given the absence of other viable frameworks for peace, efforts should be made to move this proposal to the centre of the table for serious attention and multilateral deliberations. To achieve this, leaders should consider ways of involving Israelis and Palestinians in discussions about how the Arab peace initiative might become the basis for an alternative road map, perhaps through engagement with the civil society leaders who crafted the Geneva Accord. Arab leaders can help to build a new coalition of actors - official and nonofficial - who are willing to work together to jump-start the official peace process and support it at strategic junctures.

Second, Arab leaders cannot afford to allow their positions vis-a-vis the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to be misunderstood. Among Arabs, it is self-evident that the Palestinian Authority desires a return to negotiations, and that many Arab leaders are willing - at least in principle - to recognize Israel after implementation of a "land-for-peace" formula, with due consideration for the rights of Palestinian refugees. Unfortunately, this message does not always reach foreign audiences, and bears repeating in international forums.

Third, Arab governments should sponsor cooperative international efforts to address the plight of the refugees - both those living in Palestine and those in neighboring countries. Participation in Palestinian relief and development efforts should be open to all peoples, including conscientious Israelis who would like to take important new steps toward reconciliation.

Fourth, Arab governments should also seriously reconsider the tired notion that contact with Israeli civilians is equivalent to "normalization" with the Israeli state. This has impeded peace efforts in the region, and has fostered the impression among Israelis and Westerners that the Arab people are not emotionally prepared for peace with Israel or with Jews. It is time for Arab leaders to dispel this myth. Progress could start with a declaration from any Arab leader who has not yet signed a formal peace agreement with Israel: "We are willing to offer our hospitality to all Israeli civilians who come with a message of peace and who express a desire for a negotiated settlement, in accordance with universal principles of equality and justice."

Fifth, Arab leaders can make a statement affirming people-to-people contact in the cause of peace in conjunction with their announcement of an initiative honoring the late Israeli peacemaker Maxim Ghilan: namely, the founding of a "Brotherhood and Sisterhood of the Middle East Movement," to expand and deepen commitment to principles of regional peace, justice and coexistence.

Sixth, to create venues giving life to such a movement, Arab governments or North American universities should host conferences for academic and civil society leaders committed to the idea of a new peace process. A major American university with experience in the field of peacemaking might provide an ideal venue. Invitees should include Israelis, Palestinians, non-Palestinian Arabs and perhaps Iranians as well. If officially sponsored by an Arab leader, such a conference would have the potential to gain international media attention and catalyze debate about the need for negotiations.

Seventh, Arab as well as Western governments should also consider providing funds to support university consortiums that would connect Palestinian, Israeli, Arab and Western universities for cooperative projects in all areas - including conflict-resolution education as well as technical fields. These consortiums should include major Israeli, Palestinian and Arab institutions such as Ben Gurion University, Bir Zeit University, and the American University in Cairo. Such consortiums might undertake projects of great practical and symbolic significance, such as the construction of economically viable and ecologically sustainable communities.

Eighth, Arab and Western leaders should also consider jointly sponsoring a major international conference on Confidence and Security Building Measures (CSBMs) in the Greater Middle East. The purpose would be to draft a document outlining possibilities for a cooperative regional security system, to be developed through high-level dialogue and exchange among military leaders. Important lessons should be drawn from the role of CSBMs during the 1980s between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

There is still time for bold steps that will put new energy into the search for a positive Middle Eastern future. Let us all seek to embark on this new journey.

Abdul-Aziz Said is Mohammad Said Farsi Professor of Islamic Peace at the American University in Washington. Nathan C. Funk is assistant professor of peace and conflict studies at Conrad Grebel University College, the University of Waterloo, Canada.

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UNILATERALISM IS THE PROBLEM

Ghassan Khatib, "Unilateralism is the Problem"

Source: Bitterlemons.org (www.bitterlemons.org), April 21, 2005.

Distributed by the Common Ground News Service with permission to republish.

The Israeli plan to unilaterally disengage from the Gaza Strip has created a lot of controversy, but most of the parties involved in one way or another in the conflict have been excited about the project, with the notable exception of the Palestinians. The different countries that have played roles in the past either directly or indirectly in the conflict are now trying to find new roles in what has become the only game in town as far as the conflict is concerned, i.e., disengagement.

With all this, the main feature of the disengagement project, namely its unilateralism, has been neglected. Israel has already determined the details of disengagement and there is very little role for either second or third parties to play.

The basic plan, which Israeli legislators voted for in the Knesset, includes the evacuation of settlements and army bases and the withdrawal of settlers and soldiers. Overall, however, the Gaza Strip will remain under Israeli control, with access to and from the Strip subject to direct Israeli restrictions.

While the evacuation of settlements is always a positive step, maintaining restrictions on the movement in and out of Gaza will, according to the Palestinian side as well as international agencies, cause further economic deterioration. It is because this is well known by all the countries interested in playing a third party role, and because of the unilateral nature of the project, that most of these countries and parties are having difficulty in finding a role to play.

The Palestinians have been encouraging third party countries to try to convince the Israelis to modify the disengagement plan to make it part of the roadmap. They have met with no success. The US and other major donors, meanwhile, have pledged financial support to the project to improve it, but also with very little success. Finally, third parties have been trying to play a role in both encouraging "coordination" and mediating between the two sides for coordination purposes. These efforts too have met with very little success.

The Palestinian side has asked more than one of these parties to try to ask Israel to clarify some uncertain aspects of this withdrawal. For instance, it is not yet clear what are the positions to which Israel will withdraw. Without knowing where any border will lie, it is impossible to coordinate what kind of border regime will be in place and what restrictions on the movement of goods and people Israel has in mind. This is especially important because most of the industrial and agricultural assets that Israel might leave in the settlements are intended to produce goods for export. Not knowing what kind of border regime will regulate the movement of products from Gaza to the outside world through Israel very negatively affects Palestinian preparations for post-disengagement. In addition, of course, the Palestinian side still doesn't know exactly what assets, if any, will be left behind, and thus cannot prepare for their management with any success.

But criticism directed at Israel for not negotiating the withdrawal with the Palestinian side has fallen on deaf ears. One Israeli politician responded that the project is intended as a punishment rather than a reward and that's why it is being done unilaterally.

In general, by insisting on the unilateral nature of this project, Israel has been making it very difficult, not only for the Palestinian side but also for those trying to help both sides.

There are two ways in which the international community can contribute to make the disengagement a constructive step toward reviving the peace process and thus help both Palestinians and Israelis. The first is to arrange for an increase in financial and technical aid to Palestinians. Without it, the Gaza Strip's current levels of unemployment and poverty will leave the PA with great difficulty in maintaining political and security stability.

The second and most important way, however, is if, through individual third countries' bilateral relations with Israel, third parties were to pressure and convince Israel to cooperate with the Palestinian side, particularly by adding new elements to the project, including a linkage between the West Bank and Gaza. The economy of Gaza is not viable on its own, it is only viable as part of the overall Palestinian economy. In this context third parties can also help by convincing Israel to allow the establishment of a seaport in Gaza and the reopening of the airport to create an environment that might attract some investment and thus create jobs and ensure at least the minimum level of economic and consequently political stability.

The Quartet has appointed James Wolfensohn as its Gaza withdrawal envoy. The Quartet could have been more constructive if it had appointed Wolfensohn as the envoy to move the parties back to the roadmap, and part of that could be achieved by developing this Gaza withdrawal project as part of the roadmap. The roadmap is a process that aims at making peace. The unilateral steps Israel has declared in Gaza and is practicing unannounced in the West Bank do not contribute to moving the parties in this direction.

Ghassan Khatib is co-editor of the bitterlemons family of internet publications. He is the Palestinian Authority minister of planning and has been a political analyst and media contact for many years.

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SEARCHING FOR PEACE IN THE WORLD'S LARGEST PRISON: GAZA

Canon Andrew White

Source: The International Centre for Reconciliation (www.coventrycathedral), April 18, 2005 - the original article was edited with approval. Distributed by the Common Ground News Service with permission for republication.

Gaza City - Sitting in Gaza City surrounded by men with beards is not an unfamiliar experience for me, but to be surrounded by the leaders of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Islamist groups is slightly daunting. I am not naïve enough to think that these people are going to be easy to work with - they are not - but if we are to make any real progress they need to be involved.

The situation in Gaza is very serious, and just because the Israelis are disengaging, it does not mean that it is going to be easy or that the struggle is over. There is the real risk that some groups will think that their continued terrorism has enabled them to gain this victory; it has not. This is not why Israel is disengaging.

As Israel disengages there is a need for a re-engagement of a different kind. This must be an engagement of people with each other: an engagement between Jew and Muslim. I do not say between Gazan and Israeli, because this is going to take a very long time. It is needed, but, in reality, most Muslims in Gaza are not yet ready for this.

The people of Gaza see that they are a forgotten people: forgotten by Israel and the Western world, and seen primarily as terrorists and a hindrance to peace. The real issue is that extremist activity in Gaza is not limited to a few; it is the identity of the masses. As one walks down a street the flags signal who has control of the area, not that dissimilar from Belfast in recent years with its UVA, IRA, Orange Order, and Irish flag markings. Here the majority of the flags bear the green slogans of Hamas or the yellow of Islamic Jihad. Then there are the few red flags for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the even fewer black flags of Fatah and the PLO. Palestinian elections are soon approaching and there is a very real chance that groups like Hamas could win the majority of seats in areas like Gaza.

It is easy to dismiss these popular affiliations, but when one looks at the immense poverty of this small strip of land with nearly one and a half million people, you have to understand that their position is one of desperation. Gaza has not produced a Gandhi, and trying to enable a non-violent engagement with Israel is not going to be easy. Yet it is essential if there is to be any long-term hope and future for peace in the Middle East. Gaza is not just a land in poverty, but in essence it is the largest prison in the world. Entering this tiny strip of land means going through tunnels, electric gates and barbed wire checkpoints. For me it is reminiscent of the daily scenes in Baghdad.

When one spends much of each day dealing with difficult characters in the Middle East, you soon start to realize that there are similarities between the people of Gaza and Jerusalem and of Baghdad. The most dangerous people are always those who feel marginalized: those who are surrounded by poverty, even if not poor themselves. It does not matter if it is the Sunni in Iraq or the Palestinian in Israel or Palestine; the one thing they have in common is the great sense of loss and injustice. To this people will react strongly; they will talk of the tyrannical regime of Saddam or the way that Israel has suffered at the hands of terrorists. All these things are true but they do not negate the pain of the other. I love both Israel and America, but it is this pain that must be dealt with if there is to be a future.

For this reason inter-religious activity in these areas can not happen in a vacuum from the political or the economic. If the role of the external mediator is to have any real purpose, real change must be seen. People need to see a change in their circumstances. They need clean water, a health service, jobs and money in their pockets; then and only then will there be a chance of lasting change.

Yet people do change. The man who I am working so closely with in Gaza is Sheik Imad Faluji. A former minister in the Palestinian Authority and member of the Palestinian Legislative Assembly, he had spent the early part of the week with me in Jerusalem. Meeting with Rabbis, Church leaders, Imams and members of the Israeli government, he has expressed his dream to bring the Alexandria Declaration, the initiative of Lord Carey, to his native Gaza. It was a declaration that called for an end to killing and violence in God's name: a radical document that, three years after its signing, is just beginning to bear fruit. Sheik Imad was one of the founders of the Hamas. He has since travelled the long journey to become a man of peace. He knows it is a long and difficult journey; he wants to bring others with him and, for this reason, next month we will together establish the first centre for inter-religious and community engagement. Who knows, this could be the beginning of the masses walking the way of peace. Maybe, just maybe, Sheik Fuluji is the much needed Gandhi; but for this to happen, he and the small band with him will need the support of the international community.

Canon Andrew White is the Director of the International Centre for Reconciliation.

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HOW SHARON AND ABBAS CAN BOTH WIN

Khalil Shikaki

Source: The Jerusalem Post (www.jpost.com), August 16, 2005

Distributed by the Common Ground News Service with permission to republish.

Ramallah - The Israeli unilateral disengagement policy represents a major turning point in the history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. But it is not without a precedent.

In May 2000, the Israeli government ordered its forces out of south Lebanon without an agreement with Lebanon or Syria. The Lebanese government, public and Hizbullah celebrated victory: forcing Israel to disengage from occupied Lebanese territory, unilaterally, at no cost to Lebanon. Hizbullah did not have to disarm even though the occupation was fully ended; a weak Lebanese government had to acquiesce to its continued armed presence at the country's most sensitive borders.

While conditions may not necessarily be the same in the case of the Gaza disengagement, the net outcome could be the same, or worse.

Let us first look at the only crucial difference between the two disengagements: in the south Lebanon case, none of the Lebanese actors ˆ government, public or Hizbullah ˆ wanted to coordinate, let alone negotiate, the Israeli withdrawal. In the case of Gaza, while Hamas is delighted with Sharon's unilateralism and views it as a victory for armed struggle, the Palestinian Authority (PA) and public are decidedly against Israeli unilateralism and insist on negotiations, or at least coordination.

If Israel fails to negotiate or coordinate the aftermath of its withdrawal from Gaza, Hamas will most likely own Sharon's disengagement. Such a victory for violence, as seen by almost three quarters of the Palestinian public, could assure Hamas of a respectable achievement at the upcoming Palestinian parliamentary elections in January 2006.

Polling findings of the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) in Ramallah show that if conducted today, elections could give nationalist Fatah 44% of the seats, Hamas 33%, others 15%, while 8% remain undecided. If Hamas succeeds in writing the narrative of disengagement, a sure thing if it remains unilateral, the balance will shift, favoring the Islamists.

In the context of such a Hamas victory a PA attempt to disarm Hamas, and indeed to turn Gaza into a success story after elections, is doomed to fail. In this case the Palestinians will fail to address the one issue that has proven most impossible to resolve during the last four years of Yasser Arafat's era: to effectively deal, once and for all, with the question of the role of violence in their relationship with Israel.

The alternative is full coordination of the withdrawal's aftermath with the PA - including addressing vital Palestinian needs such as control over the Rafah crossing, renewal of West Bank-Gaza links, a functioning airport and seaport, and Gaza trade relations with Israel and the West Bank.

In this case the PA, not Hamas, would own disengagement and write its narrative.

Such a PA victory, if accompanied by a freeze in West Bank settlement building, could have highly positive consequences for Palestinians and Israelis. Two in particular are worth mentioning: It could have a positive impact on the outcome of the next Palestinian parliamentary elections, allowing nationalist and moderate forces to win a majority, and it could make it possible for the PA to collect arms from armed groups, a PA commitment in the first phase of the road map.

The Palestinian public not only supports negotiating the disengagement but, more importantly, it is fully supportive of the current cease-fire with Israel and would fully support total cessation of violence from the Gaza Strip once a full Israeli withdrawal is carried out.

In fact a majority of Hamas supporters favors the ending of hostilities between Israel and Gaza in the context of a full Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. But the demand clearly rejected by a Palestinian majority is the collection of arms from the various militias now operating in the Palestinian territories.

Given the clear weaknesses of the Palestinian security services, as recently exposed by the report issued by the Strategic Assessment Initiative, it would be suicidal for the PA leadership to order the disarming of the militias without first ensuring clear public support.

A freeze in West Bank settlement construction could play a central role in facilitating collection of arms by generating public support for such a step. Findings of a June 2005 joint PSR-Hebrew University survey clearly show that those Palestinians who expect West Bank settlements to expand in the post-disengagement period tend to be highly opposed to the collection of arms. But a clear majority of those who expect to see no growth in West Bank settlements fully supports collection of arms by the PA.

In order to ensure that such disarming is done peacefully, the PA must do its best to minimize miscalculation on the part of its potential domestic rivals; the PA must be seen as a credible threat. Israel's stubborn refusal to allow the rearming of the PA forces, as recommended by Egypt and US envoy General William Ward, reduces the motivation of security forces while emboldening the militias.

Recent Israeli political developments seem to preclude the possibility of a positive Israeli response to Palestinian needs, even if such a response could prove highly beneficial to Israeli well being. With Sharon's rival, Binyamin Netanyahu, starting his election campaign by pressing Israel's nightmarish fear buttons, Sharon may become even tougher on his definition of Israel's security needs in the context of disengagement.

Palestinian-Israeli coordination of economic, civil and security matters may become untenable. Following disengagement, Sharon's electoral imperatives may force him to turn to the right, advocating more settlement construction in Arab East Jerusalem and the West Bank in an attempt to justify his disengagement gamble.

This would be a shame, because successful coordination might not only facilitate the dismantling of the infrastructure of violence, but as importantly, a return to meaningful negotiations. Moreover, for the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas and the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, successful coordination promises stronger hands in defeating their domestic foes by delivering economic prosperity and improved security.

Khalil Shikaki is the director of the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah.

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A SIMPLE PLAN

Hady Amr

Source: Common Ground News Service (www.commongroundnews.org), May 13, 2005.

Distributed by the Common Ground News Service with permission to republish.

Last month, United States Ambassador Ed Gabriel, and a former US secretary of defence William Cohen, co-led the production of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies report for its Advisory Committee on US Relations with the Arab world. The report entitled "Writing a New Chapter in US-Arab Relations" has some central findings that the participants agreed upon. Among them are, one, that Arabs with direct exposure to the US have a more favorable impression of the US, and, two, that worsening Arab attitudes towards the US are a reaction against US policies and not US "values".

The group also agreed upon some key recommendations including the need to create an advisory board on Arab development funding; the need to create bilateral task forces to improve relations between the US and specific Arab countries; the creation of an Arab partnership foundation; and increasing educational exchanges.

The important thing is that they were endorsed by a broad spectrum of credible participants and a key policy institution. As such, it stands the chance of being taken seriously, of changing policy, and of making a real difference in US-Arab relations.

The recommendations were sound, but more could be proposed. What makes the report notable is not only its recommendations, but the fact that Ambassador Gabriel is a Democrat, and Secretary Cohen is a Republican. They put aside what differences they may have had to focus on creating common ground for what is best for the Arab region. What is remarkable about the effort is how it was carried out. It's a model that can be replicated in finding ways for Americans to help Israelis and Palestinians move beyond their differences.

The key ingredients of the CSIS Cohen-Gabriel model were as follows: First the participants agreed to build a common consensus around substantive and actionable items. Second, a significant policy centre with a good relationship with the US government anchored the project. Third, leading members of the two political parties -- Republicans and Democrats -- were involved. Fourth, diverse members of the political spectrum with potentially conflicting views agreed to participate. Finally, a practical report was produced and an effort was made to give it a good media launch to help turn the recommendations into policy.

What is needed now is to take this Democratic-Republican model and transform it into Arab-Jewish relations here in America. It can be done in a way that has practical, positive ramifications not only for inter- community relations in the US, but for the Christian, Jewish and Muslim communities living in Israel and Palestine, and may contribute to solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This is how it might emerge and what would be required: First, a prominent Washington think tank convenes a panel of leading Arab-American and American Jewish leaders, along with some former Republican and Democratic political leaders who have worked on the Middle East and have recently demonstrated the ability to work together. Senator Cohen and Ambassador Gabriel have made a number of achievements with this last effort.

Second, bring on board some prominent Palestinian Americans like Senator Sununu along with some prominent key activists from Arab-American and pro-Israel organizations (being sure to include Muslims, Christians, and Jews), as well as involve some key business leaders from both communities.

Third, have President Bill Clinton and President George W. Bush, or whoever the chairs are, strongly impress on participants the need to set aside their differences to make practical recommendations on how the US government could work to strengthen the incentives for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Why? Because Israeli-Palestinian peace will strengthen our American security.

Fourth: once the whole group understands that they are working together as one team, on the same side of the table with the same objectives, have them visit the leadership in Israel, Palestine, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Saudi Arabia, and when they return, have them produce their own blueprint for what the US government, citizens, and business leaders working together might be able to do to move the ball down the field.

What the CSIS report suggests is that in the presence of a clear model, all that is needed to ensure that the problems encountered can be solved is, simply, political will.

Hady Amr served as National Director for Ethnic American Outreach for Al Gore‚s Presidential Campaign and as an advisor to the Kerry Campaign. He is the Co-President of the Arab Western Summit of Skills.

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DECIDING PEACE

Gershon Baskin

Can a peace process be created as the result of a political decision? If so, is the absence of a peace process the direct outcome of the lack of a political directive to build it? Did the Oslo process fail as a result of a lack of commitment to translating agreements into real terms, and of decisions to implement them on the policy level?

Imagine what would happen if Ariel Sharon directed the government and the military to invest maximum efforts in achieving peace. Imagine if Sharon demanded concrete plans from each ministry to create a peace process in each of their purviews. What if the prime minister personally oversaw a full-fledged program of coordination between the civilian ministries and the security apparatuses with the PA?

Imagine, further, that while the Defence Ministry continued to plan for the worst-case scenarios and guard against external threats, a Peacemaking Ministry was charged with advancing, coordinating and initiating governmental efforts toward peace. This ministry would also work with nongovernmental efforts to build cooperation with the Palestinian side.

How long would it take to turn the course of events? Imagine if all the genius and energies in the State of Israel were directed at making peace. The work of the best minds, the most creative thinkers and the financial resources necessary would be viewed as a direct investment in the immediate future, returning the highest profits any investments have ever paid. Imagine the impact on the immediate improvement of life for Israelis, the Palestinians and the region.

The private sector would launch joint ventures that would also be bridges of peace. Israel would utilize all its resources available to encourage these investments ˆ including tax incentives, risk insurance and the use of the best technologies to facilitate the efficient movement of people and goods across borders.

The peace directive would also include social and economic planning. Economic benefits would come through the need to develop the physical infrastructure of normal, peaceful relations. The planning process would deliberately work to ensure that the fruits of peace were felt by all citizens, Palestinians and Israelis, as soon as possible.

Direct involvement and investment from the private sector in such an initiative would be crucial. Support for these efforts from the European Union, the United States and other potential sources of aid would be included, though the initiatives would not be conditional or dependent on outside financial aid. There is enough capital in the world available that could be attracted to concrete investments if the environment were appropriate.

The Foreign Ministry would be directed to launch an international campaign to gather support for the government's new approach. Rather than waging propaganda battles across the globe, our diplomats could engage foreign governments and media in support of our new peace policies.

PALESTINIAN civil society and politicians would respond with skepticism - which would be warranted. It would take time for Palestinians to judge whether or not the new plans and actions were real. Israel would have to take some initial risks in order for this program to succeed. Third-party involvement would be crucial, especially in the early stages.

The direct participation of Egypt and Jordan, for example, would be most helpful and would strengthen the existing peace accords with them. The Quartet would also be a useful body to advance the directives. Imagine a meeting of the principals of the Quartet - held in Jerusalem - where Israel would announce a Declaration of Intent to make full peace with the Palestinians.

Such a declaration would be a formal undertaking of the Israeli government, in an international arena, followed by parallel declarations by the Palestinians and the Quartet to do everything possible to make this succeed.

As part of the new policy Israel would withdraw from all Palestinian cities within a four-week period. Checkpoints in the West Bank would be removed. As the security situation continued to improve, Israel would freeze the construction of the separation barrier.

The Palestinians, for their part, would work swiftly to restore full law and order to the territories under their control. An international conference would be planned and convened within three months of the launch of the program to regather donor assistance for the Palestinian territories.

A major Israeli-Palestinian-international effort would be launched and coordinated by the Peacemaking Ministry and a similar body on the Palestinian side to develop a culture of peace. This effort, focusing on the media and education, would create a work plan to translate the peace directive into a new reality visible to all in a very short time-frame. The highest priority and financial resources would be provided for this effort.

IS THIS vision a naive dream? Perhaps, but one cannot deny the possibility of it becoming reality. Even though most Israelis and Palestinians don't believe peace is on the horizon, a majority still hope for peace based on the two-state solution. The missing element to transform this initiative into reality is leadership with the vision to lead the region into a new future.

It takes great statesmen to make decisions that seem from the outset so unlikely to succeed. It takes great courage and imagination to overcome fatalism and turn the course of events in such a dramatic way. There have been very few leaders who have created, almost overnight, a new and promising future for their people and for the world. South Africa's Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk are examples of such leaders.

Are Ariel Sharon and Mahmoud Abbas up to the task? Probably not, but as long as both of them are in power the prospect should not be dismissed. The proposed peace initiative need not be bilateral. There is no real possibility for conditionality of immediate reciprocity and mutuality. This will come as the initiative gathers steam.

The initiative should be launched by Israel, and advanced with such determination that it would be impossible to withstand the dynamic changes on the ground. It is a policy revolution that requires the kind of determination Sharon has demonstrated before.

There is, in our political arena, perhaps no one but Sharon who has the standing and determination to implement this plan. The challenge is there, the decision is his to make, history will be the judge.

Gershon Baskin is the Israeli CEO of the Israel/Palestine Centre for Research and Information.

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UNDERSTANDING HISTORY AND THE PATH TO PEACE MAKING

James J. Zogby

Source: The Jordan Times (www.jordantimes.com), May 17, 2005

Distributed by the Common Ground News Service with permission to republish

I was speaking of the role that "losing control of their history" had played in defining the Palestinian psyche during the last century, when a somewhat aggravated Israeli in the audience challenged my assessment. He disagreed, he said, because the Palestinians had had many opportunities to define their history and they had squandered each of them. In any case, he insisted, Israel bore no responsibility for this Palestinian problem.

I replied that he could, if he wished, deny the reality of Palestinian history and he could also deny Israel's role in that history. But the price for such denial was great.

Refusing to acknowledge the history of the "other," with whom you are in conflict, and rejecting any responsibility for shaping their history, only serves to prolong the conflict in which you are engaged.

The fact is that Arabs did lose control of their ability to shape their own history in the 20th century. It began with Britain and France's post-World War I betrayal, their dismemberment of the Arab east and their promise of Palestine to the Zionist movement. This loss of control was compounded by the influx of Jewish immigrants into Palestine, the Zionist victory in 1948 and the resultant refugee crisis.

The 1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and, their transformation into „de-developed‰ dependencies, the rapid expansion of settlements and roads into the heart of these territories, the closure and encirclement of Jerusalem, the wall and the daily acts of humiliation and collective punishments to which the Palestinians were subjected, all have combined to complete the picture of a "loss of control".

And so I told my questioner that it might make him feel good to deny this Palestinian experience and to seek to absolve Israel of any responsibility in creating it, but history, current reality and the imperatives of peace require acknowledgement.

As to the argument that Palestinians squandered opportunities, that canard is but an old and hollow cliche. What it suggests is that if Palestinians had, at different points in their history, acquiesced to their dispossession, they could have gained control ˜ by accepting their loss of control.

Such a one-sided reading of history is both delusional and insensitive and a recipe for further conflict.

The audience I was addressing was unusual for me. It comprised 40 Israeli generals and colonels who were in Washington for a seminar in public policy.

When invited to speak to the group, I accepted, hoping to use the opportunity to open a dialogue. For the most part my hopes were realized. There were a few tough questioners, like the one cited here and another who challenged "the right of return" (he called it "the claim to return") and, of course, a few obligatory slaps at "Arafat." But for the most part, the group appeared quite responsive and open to views that challenged their thinking. While, for example, my aggravated questioner was speaking, I noted others were wincing or shaking their heads in disagreement. And when I responded many more were nodding in understanding and agreement.

I came away convinced that more of such exchanges can be most beneficial. Dialogue and the sharing of history are critical to understanding. And peace in this conflict can only be hastened by creating deeper understanding.

Israelis must understand and acknowledge the role they played in the dispossession of the Palestinians. But Arabs, in general, and Palestinians, in particular, must, at the same time, gain a deeper appreciation for the role that history has played in fuelling the vulnerability that defines the Jewish psyche.

As Palestinians tell their story of victimhood, Jews, too, tell a compelling story of victimhood in which they recall centuries of bigotry and pogroms culminating in the horror of the Holocaust. It is, of course, true, that these crimes were largely European. But what must be understood is the fact that the profound sense of insecurity created by this traumatic European history has defined the Jewish psyche that has been carried over by them into Israel/Palestine. Thus, the bombs in the Jerusalem market of the Tel Aviv nightclub not only claim innocent lives and spread fear; they also play out in the Jewish psyche against the backdrop of their last century of suffering, in much the same way that each house demolition in Gaza or the erection of a wall in Jerusalem plays out in the Palestinian psyche as a reinforcement of their vulnerability and loss of control. By not acknowledging the importance of the other side's history, we fail to understand how our current behavior only serves to validate that history.

The key to resolving the conflict is to stop this deadly cycle that only replays and reinforces those old established fears that have come to define the realities of both peoples.

A decade ago, I hoped that it might be possible to end the conflict first, establish two states and let time heal old wounds. That, however, would have required stronger leadership than was forthcoming - to forge an agreement, "striking," as they say, "while the iron was hot." Tragically, that didn't happen and the cycles of violence and fear and anger have only escalated.

What I now believe is that more effort must be made to change hearts and minds. Bold efforts like the Geneva Accords, the One Voice Initiative and the work of US-based groups like Search for Common Ground should be supported. What they seek to do is reach across the divide to create the basis for shared understanding.

In the process of working to understand how the "other" sees their history, the "other" can gain a better sense of our history, as well. And, more importantly, this understanding can help alter behavior.

As I left the discussion with the Israeli group, a number of them came forward and thanked me for my honesty and what some called my "courage" in coming to speak to them. I left thinking that while there may have been a future Ariel Sharon or Rafael Eitan in the group, it was also quite likely that there was an Amnon Shahak and Avram Mitzna there as well. It was my hope that if I had made even some small contribution here, it might have a larger impact in the future.

Dr. James J. Zogby is founder and president of the Arab American Institute (AAI), a Washington, D.C.-based organization which serves as the political and policy research arm of the Arab American community.

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PROMOTE NEGOTIATIONS OR ABANDON THE TWO STATE SOLUTION

Naomi Chazan

This commentary is one of a series of articles of views commissioned by the Common Ground News Service (www.commongroundnews.org ) in partnership with Al-Hayat newspaper and reprinted by other regional news and media outlets, as part of a series of views on "Enlarging the Window of Opportunity?" distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) with permission to republish.

The opportunity which emerged after the death of Yasser Arafat, the election of Mahmoud Abbas as the new president of the Palestinian Authority, and the approval of the Sharon disengagement plan, is dissipating quickly. Unless a concerted effort is made in the next few months to resume negotiations on a permanent settlement to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, it is likely that the door will close firmly on a workable two-state option.

2005 has ushered in a period of substantial fluidity after four years of a deadly stalemate. The impetus for change has been driven by both communities: large majorities in Israel and Palestine are weary of the senseless violence that has yielded little security and no prosperity; even greater numbers are converging around the two-state solution which has fuelled all attempts to resolve the conflict to date. Indeed, in line with the Clinton proposals, the Taba talks, the Roadmap, the Arab League initiative, and the detailed Geneva model, there has been a broad consensus that the objective of the current opening is to bring an end to the occupation and to oversee the consolidation of a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel. The mechanism to achieve this goal is full-fledged negotiations leading to a final status agreement which will formally terminate the conflict.

Little, however, has been done to promote this vision or to hone the tools for its realization. The potential inherent in this brief window of opportunity has been sidetracked by the Gaza disengagement scheme'a unilateral act by the Israeli government which, while setting a precedent for withdrawal from territories and dismantling of settlements, seeks to bypass the core issues of the conflict. The international community (and primarily the United States), fearful of adversely affecting the pullback, has failed to address the strategic question of how to link the one-sided withdrawal to ongoing negotiations. The appeals emanating from the Palestinian Authority (troubled by internal tension, growing frustration and increasing challenges to its authority both from within the PLO and from the Hamas) and the severely constricted Israeli peace camp to set in motion a momentum for the day after the exit from Gaza have gone largely unheeded.

This delay may prove fatal for two obvious reasons: in an area where nothing is static, too many things can go wrong; and, in the absence of a strategic plan for the renewal of the peace process, further changes on the ground can make the prospect of an independent, contiguous and robust Palestine unfeasible. Ariel Sharon has entered into this breach with an overall strategy aimed at consolidating Israeli control over segments of the West Bank (including the large settlement blocs) and promoting a mini Palestinian state consisting of scattered enclaves is a far cry from the vision enunciated by George W. Bush in June, 2002.

The emerging Sharon Doctrine disingenuously relies on Phase II of the Roadmap, which call for a (historically unprecedented) Palestinian state with provisional boundaries (PSPB) as an interim stage en route to a permanent settlement. But Sharon shows no signs of abandoning his unilateral approach or moving beyond it to a final status agreement. In fact, by skillfully diverting the attention of critics at home and abroad, he is fast transforming his concept of a Greater Jerusalem (which replaces the clearly impracticable notion of a Greater Land of Israel) into a reality. Through a series of stepped-up measures, including the completion of the separation wall, the development of the E1 corridor connecting Ma'aleh Adumim and Jerusalem, and the construction of a series of roads and tunnels bifurcating the West Bank, he is seeking to single-handedly predetermine the political outcome.

There are therefore now two competing interpretations of the two-state formula: Sharon's revisionist version which holds no promise of conflict resolution (and is fast assuming concrete form); and the negotiated vision embraced by the international community, the Palestinian leadership and the majority of the Israeli public. Only a small amount of time remains to alter course and to meet the challenges posed by the growing gaps between the promise of a lasting agreement and changing realities, between popular aspirations and hesitant (if not downright recalcitrant) leaders, between the urgency of the moment and long-term processes, and ultimately between success and failure accompanied by renewed violence.

The only reasonable alternative to the unilateralism inherent in the present trajectory is a coordinated, carefully calibrated strategy based on a return to the negotiating table. The first element of such a strategy is preventive: it calls for an immediate and vigorous effort by the international community to freeze Israeli initiatives in order not to prejudice future talks. The second component is proactive: it envisions the fixing of a firm date for an Israeli-Palestinian conference under international auspices (either the United States alone, the Quartet, or a coalition of global and regional actors) sometime in the fall of this year with a view to agreeing on a timetable for the commencement of negotiations on all outstanding issues.

The third ingredient is ameliorative: the encouragement of multiple (quantity is of the essence) encounters-both direct and virtual-between Israelis and Palestinians to begin to break down the layers of enmity and distrust and improve the climate during a particularly charged period. The final portion of the required strategy is innovative: the launching of a series of preliminary meetings to establish the agenda for final status talks (and perhaps reframing the issues of borders, Jerusalem, settlements and refugees along different lines in order to engender a new discourse). These track two gatherings should include civil society leaders as well as official representatives in order to expand the players and increase the possibilities for transparency and informed public debate.

Time, indeed, is running out-not only on the two-state option but also on the hopes and expectations of most Palestinians and Israelis. Only a collaborative salvage operation based on a multi-faceted strategy and a multi-layered group of actors can reverse a trend that threatens to thoroughly destabilize the region and compromise the future of all those involved. It is still in the power of those committed to a just peace to take the necessary steps now to make it happen. The alternative to a viable two-state solution by agreement is unspeakable.

Naomi Chazan is Professor of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Head of the School of Society and Politics at The Academic College of Tel Aviv-Yaffo.

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ONE JERUSALEM FOR TWO NATIONS

Danny Rubinstein

Source: Haaretz (www.haaretz.com), June 10, 2005

Distributed by the Common Ground News Service with permission to republish.

The scenery in the Old City of Jerusalem has changed in the last few months. After more than four years, we are once again seeing groups of tourists from abroad touring the city. These are not only Christian pilgrims bearing crosses and singing hymns as they walk the Via Dolorosa on their way to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, but rather ordinary tourists trekking through the markets and alleyways inside the walls.

Among the tourists are many Israelis, too. Early on Saturday mornings, it is already difficult to find parking on Mamilla Street, from which stairs lead up to the Jaffa Gate. Until not long ago, the road was empty. The markets are filled with many more shoppers than in the recent past, there are few incidents and tourists feel safe. Are the walls and fences constructed around East Jerusalem the reason? Perhaps.

Sheikh Taysir al-Tamimi, the chief kadi (Muslim religious judge) of the Palestinian Authority, said in honor of Jerusalem Day ("Jerusalem Occupation Day," to the Palestinians) last week that the Old City has been turned into a veritable military fortress, with many hundreds of soldiers and police officers constantly on patrol. Cameras follow all movement in every alleyway and corner, in addition to the cameras trained on the city from a blimp that constantly hovers overhead on weekends. And of course, there are the dozens of checkpoints and improvised roadblocks at the entrance points to the city and on its streets. Al-Tamimi called upon Israel's Arabs ("1948 Arabs," as he calls them) to mobilize and help stave off the Israeli assault to "Judaize" Jerusalem. And in fact, each weekend, many thousands of Muslims from the Galilee, the Triangle and the Negev throng to the Old City to pray at Al-Aqsa and shop.

Saeb Erekat, the official negotiator with Israel for the Palestinian Authority, responded yesterday to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's declaration in honour of Jerusalem Day. Sharon said the city would remain eternally united under Israeli sovereignty. "Only the Palestinians will determine the fate of the city, because they shaped its history, tradition and culture," said Erekat.

We should not allow the relative quiet in East Jerusalem to mislead us. Hardly a day goes by without Palestinian publications and activities warning against Israeli attempts to erase the Arab character of Jerusalem and distance its Arab residents. Conferences, sit-down strikes and even a few demonstrations are held. The Palestinian media is filled with discussions of the dozens of demolition orders issued in Silwan, the continued excavations in the Western Wall tunnels, the construction of the tall terminal building for the international crossing at Qalandiyah and the purchase of the Greek Patriarchate assets near Jaffa Gate by a settler organization.

From a Palestinian perspective, the Israeli facts being determined on the ground now in Jerusalem are completely destroying any chance of East Jerusalem ever serving as the capital of the Palestinian state. And without Jerusalem as its capital, there is no chance of such a state ever being established. That is a statement that no Palestinian would refute. Most of the members of the Palestinian leadership agree that a Palestinian state can be established only if the right of return is relinquished by most refugees and with certain corrections to the 1967 borders. But no one believes that a Palestinian state can be established without Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa.

Among the Palestinian public - just as among the Israeli public - public opinion surveys show that the majority still favors the idea of establishing two countries for the two nations. Eliminating the option of a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem means the end of the two-state solution. If any possibility for a solution on the basis of this principle exists, what is being done now in Jerusalem is destroying it. And if there are not two nations for two states here, the only other option is one state for two nations. There is nothing else.

Danny Rubinstein is the Arab Affairs editor for Haaretz.

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FIRST, REFORM THE PAELSTINIAN AUTHORITY

Yezid Sayigh and Khalil Shikaki

Source: The International Herald Tribune (www.iht.com), June 4, 2005

Distributed by the Common Ground News Service with permission to republish

The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, has good reason to feel pleased with the outcome of his recent meetings with President George W. Bush. Bush described Abbas as a "man of courage" and promised direct financial assistance to the Palestinian Authority. No less important was Bush's statement that while the borders of a Palestinian state would have to reflect certain "realities" on the ground - code for large blocs of Israeli settlements built since June 1967 in the West Bank and East Jerusalem - any changes from the 1949 armistice line would have to come through Israeli-Palestinian negotiation.

Yet hopes of reviving the long-stalled peace process may still be eroded by two serious obstacles. One is the possibility, widely feared by the Palestinians, that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel will use his planned disengagement from the Gaza Strip as a means of precluding meaningful Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, and will refuse to implement the next phases of the "road map to peace" - including the start of permanent status negotiations with the Palestinians. The other obstacle is the continuous decline in the standing of the Palestinian Authority and its dominant party, Fatah, in the Palestinian public.

This was reflected in the two rounds of local elections held since December, in which the Islamist opposition group Hamas won a large share of the vote and took a significant number of municipal councils.

If the electorate votes at the general elections scheduled for the second half of July as it did in the local elections on May 5, Hamas could take 35 to 40 percent of the 132 seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council. Indeed, if Fatah is unable to resolve its internal differences, and again fields two or more rival lists as happened in some municipalities, Hamas could achieve a landslide victory and take control of the Palestinian parliament. Even if Fateh did field a united list, that would not be enough. A key issue is the public's perception of corruption in the PA and Fateh, in contrast to the "clean hands" image of Hamas.

Reform is crucial if the Palestinian Authority and Fateh are to project a new public image and to start demonstrating a real difference in policies and performance. The PA has to improve its standing with the public if it is to shift Hamas's share of the vote back toward the 20 percent range that the movement would normally receive, and thus reduce its clout within the Legislative Council and its impact on the peace process.

This is no easy task, and time is short. The PA may not have time to bring about substantive changes before the July election. But it should at least announce the measures it intends to undertake over coming months as a means of demonstrating its seriousness in tackling corruption and poor governance in the public sector.

Most immediately, it must appoint a new attorney general with a reputation for integrity and professionalism and with a clear and sufficient mandate to examine all cases of corruption and other serious violations of the law in a timely manner. The prime minister should also instruct his ministers, particularly the ministers of interior and finance, to refer cases of corruption and violation of the law to the attorney general's office.

This should be accompanied by the appointment of a new chief of police with a clean reputation, and of a new comptroller general who would be directly accountable to the Legislative Council. The comptroller, moreover, should publish all the annual audit reports that were submitted to Yasser Arafat and kept secret by him.

As judiciary reform is critically important in the fight against corruption and as a means of improving public service delivery, the Palestinian Authority should also make a priority of building cooperation between the attorney general and the security agencies, and ensuring that the latter enforce court orders. The justice system is an area of particular weakness in the PA.

In short, the Palestinian Authority must signal its determination to rebuild institutions that are capable of delivering on the commitments it makes to Israel and the international community, and of improving Palestinian social cohesion and political dialogue.

The PA will face a complex and difficult process of negotiations with the government of Israel after it completes the promised withdrawal from Gaza. Reform is an imperative, not a choice, for the Palestinian Authority and its partners in the international community.

Yezid Sayigh and Khalil Shikaki are the principal authors of the ''Report of the Independent Task Force on Strengthening Palestinian Public Institutions'' published by the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

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THE NEW GHANDISTISTS - BELAEN: NONVIOLENT SUCCESSFUL EXPERIENCE

Mohammad Daraghmeh

Source: CGNews (www.commongroundnews.org), June 17, 2005

Distributed by the Common Ground News Service with permission to republish

As the evening of June 9, 2005 approached, the people of Belaen [West Bank], as well as foreign and Israeli supporters, prepared for a confrontation planned for after Friday prayers: handcuffs for demonstrators, to undermine allegations by soldiers that they face violence in this peaceful village, and balloons filled with animal dung to be hurled at soldiers attacking the peaceful demonstration.

As they arrived at the area being excavated in preparation for the separation wall, they were met by a barrage of tear gas canisters. Six were injured, including Ziad Halaby, an Al Arabiya Satellite television station reporter, who suffered a leg injury.

As the soldiers released clouds of pungent smoke and metal bullets, the demonstrators removed their cuffs, and hurled animal dung at them.

According to Abdallah Abu Rahmeh, Coordinator of the Popular Committee Against the Wall in Belaen: "We heard in public media two statements by Israeli army leaders accusing Belaen villagers of violence. Our response was to handcuff ourselves and to demonstrate peacefully."

The people of this small village of 1,500 west of Ramallah exhibit outstanding creativity in devising non-violent methods of protest. When their lands were confiscated four months ago, they responded with peaceful demonstrations, each different from the others, in order to attract more supporters and to surprise the soldiers with something unfamiliar. The first demonstration was restricted to women, and aimed to convey that they came to protest peacefully, according to Abu Rahmeh. The second demonstration was restricted to children.

When occupation forces started bulldozing land and uprooting olive trees, the villagers expressed their attachment to their trees, some of which were more than a hundred years old, by tying themselves to trees to be uprooted. The villagers succeeded in delaying the soldiers‚ work for over five hours while soldiers cut the chains connecting people to their olive trees.

Next, participants entered drums that close from the inside, showing the head only, and tied themselves to the trees. Another time, villagers surprised the soldiers with a march of white coffins, each carrying the name of a respected value, such as justice, humanity, rights, manners, etc. Once demonstrators taped their mouths shut while flying the flags of countries that are active in the international arena, symbolizing international silence towards the suffering of the Palestinian people.

On another occasion, the villagers demonstrated by distributing 1,500 Palestinian flags in a gesture directed internally, where Palestinian factions compete by hoisting their own flags, ignoring the Palestinian national flag. They also used the symbol of the iron wall that runs over the corpses of native Palestinians, wearing a symbol of the wall around their necks.

Organizers of such activities state that they have achieved better results than others using violent methods. Abdallah Abu Rahmeh stated: "These demonstrations have attracted large numbers of Israeli and foreign supporters and directed media coverage at what we do and what we suffer from. Had our demonstrations concentrated on stone-throwing, no supporters or media would have joined us. But through innovative new forms of peaceful resistance, everyone wants to learn these forms and make them succeed."

"Some may say that the end result is that Israel is building the wall. This is true. But this will not happen without a price, and a large one, too. The world and the Israeli people are starting to realize the oppression of this wall. At the same time, we have protected the lives of our people from the soldiers and enhanced group resistance," adds Abu Rahmeh.

Hundreds of Israeli supporters who join the struggle of Belaen villagers have turned into an effective force. On nights when soldiers raid the village they are faced with Israeli citizens who document every violation committed and present it to the media and the relevant authorities. On one occasion, the soldiers abducted two young men and took them to court, but documents and pictures presented by Israeli supporters resulted in their acquittal. Shai Carmeli, a 37-year-old Israeli film-maker who came to show solidarity with the villagers of Belean said: "A few days ago, the army raided the village and started smashing houses. Immediately, I dialed a special military phone number dedicated for reporting army violations, and gave the authorities details of what the soldiers were committing. Shortly afterwards, the soldiers left the village.‰ He added: „I was asked if the residents were refusing to open the doors, forcing the soldiers to break them down, and I answered that the soldiers were breaking down doors without knocking or waiting for the villagers to open."

News of the peaceful methods utilized by the villagers of Belean has echoed throughout Israeli society. One newspaper referred to the villagers of Belean as "The New Ghandists." This had a noticeable impact on soldiers who reduced levels of violence in the face of non-violent demonstrations where increasing numbers of their compatriots are participating, and replaced bullets with less damaging tools, such as gas, electric batons and powerful loud-speakers, which people avoid.

The Belean villagers‚ methods have started to expand into other areas threatened with land expropriation, the Wall and settlement. Abdallah added: "We have recently received invitations from the villagers of Murda and from the tribes of Ramdaniyyeen to help them organize popular demonstrations that attract the media and foreign and Israeli supporters and reduce violence." This may be a new stage in the Palestinian people‚s struggle, adds Abu Rahmeh.

Mohammad Daraghmeh is a Palestinian journalist, media trainer and political analyst.

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PALESTINIAN OPPORTUNITY

Gershon Baskin, "Palestinian Opportunity"

Source: The Jerusalem Post (www.jpost.com), June 15, 2005.

Distributed by the Common Ground News Service with permission for republication

The Palestinian strategy to achieve statehood and independence has focused on ending the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza as well as east Jerusalem. In the absence of trust between the parties, the likelihood of successful negotiations in the near future is remote.

Israel has initiated a process of unilateralism which I had hoped could be leveraged into a bilateral, internationally assisted political process. But real coordination of the disengagement has little chance of taking place.

Israel is not going to make any significant efforts to coordinate the disengagement, nor will the Palestinian Authority make a strong enough case in favour of real coordination for there to be a real possibility of creating a bilateral political process.

In projecting "day after" scenarios, it is essential to conceive of a plan that will ensure that Gaza "first" will not result in Gaza "only" ˆ the biggest Palestinian fear. So something must be done to gain support from both Palestinians and Israelis for a bilateral peace process.

The first condition for creating a new reality on the ground is a Palestinian determination, and an implementable plan, to govern effectively for the benefit of the people of Gaza. The natural Palestinian tendency to reject this idea by saying "What about Jerusalem or what about the West Bank" must be put on the back burner.

The entire world will be looking to see if the Palestinians can control Gaza effectively. The world will also be waiting to see if the Palestinians are ready for statehood, meaning if they will create a regime that governs effectively, without corruption, and democratically, one that provides freedom and dignity for its citizens.

Failure to succeed in this test will probably not create a more tragic reality for the Palestinians than the one they are now living. On the other hand, success is likely to bring about far-reaching possibilities for improvement and better chances of achieving real statehood, independence and viability ˆ in terms that Palestinians speak of: real territorial control, east Jerusalem as a capital, and real linkages between Gaza and the West Bank and peace.

THE REALITY of life for Palestinians is much worse than it was 10 years ago during the Oslo era. It is time for Palestinians to reevaluate their strategy and come up with something new that will actually improve the lives of their people.

Previous Palestinian strategies have placed the most important key issues at the top of the agenda ˆ Jerusalem, the right of return, borders, sovereignty, etc. This strategy is perhaps still valid in terms of a grand Palestinian strategy, a plan for the end game. However, since the second intifada and the emergence of an Israeli strategy of unilateralism, sticking to the old strategy will more likely lead nowhere.

It is time to reverse the strategy, to embrace a plan for reaching Jerusalem, sovereignty and full statehood by working from the bottom up. The foundations for the achievement of the end-game goals can be achieved by accepting the Gaza first plan. If the Palestinians can build the first layer of statehood in Gaza, the other layers will follow with greater ease. The most essential element of creating the Palestinian state is effective and good governance of Gaza first.

It is also essential for the Palestinians to understand that Israel will not make it easy. There has always been a kind dialectic relationship between Israelis and Palestinians that enforces the rule of mutually hurting actions. After the disengagement from Gaza it is unlikely that a sudden behavioural change will occur and that the Gaza-Israel border will look like two states in the EU.

There is little reason to assume that after Israel leaves Gaza, life for the Palestinians will suddenly improve by itself. Israel will be out of Gaza, but Israel will still be there for the Palestinians to blame for any lack of progress or improvement in their lives (and the Palestinians will probably have due cause to blame Israel). This is the normal course of events in the Middle East, but it does not have to be the permanent pattern of developments. It is possible to design a strategy that could turn it around.

President Mahmoud Abbas should immediately move his main seat of government to Gaza. The minister of interior, in charge of the security forces, should also spend most of his time in Gaza.

The Palestinians can issue declarations that the Palestinian state will be within the 1967 Green Line; they can announce their determination that Gaza first will be the first real concrete step toward the establishment of sovereignty and independence for the Palestinian state.

I don't think the Palestinians will adopt this strategy. But I believe that if they did, they would be taking their own fate in their own hands, creating a new and more positive reality for themselves.

Gershon Baskin is co-CEO of the Israel/Palestine Centre for Research & Information.

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THE HONG KONG OF THE MIDDLE EAST

Roman Bronfman

Distributed by Common Ground News service with permission to republish

Two substantial problems dictate our behaviour. One (which is built in) is the definition of the state as "Jewish and democratic," and it contains an underlying logical contradiction; the second (which is acquired) is the ongoing occupation of the territories. With the conclusion of the Six-Day War in June 1967, senior officials in Israeli intelligence recommended to the prime minister that he establish an independent Palestinian state in the territories of the West Bank as quickly as possible. For the next 38 years, this recommendation was not accepted by the political echelon. Over time, the occupation became a part of us, and of our view of life in the Middle East.

The Israeli worldview ranges between two extreme schools of thought: an apartheid regime in the occupied territories, on the one hand, and the desire of some Israelis for an Israel as "a state of all its citizens," on the other. The policy of apartheid has also infiltrated sovereign Israel, and discriminates daily against Israeli Arabs and other minorities. The struggle against such a fascist viewpoint is the job of every humanist. However, in the long run, neither the policy of apartheid nor the "state of all its citizens" will be possible in a future Israeli society: The first eliminates the democratic component in the definition of the state, the second eliminates the Jewish component.

The solution to this dilemma lies in the end of the occupation. But that is not sufficient. The solution lies not only in the establishment of a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel, but also in Israel's genuinely becoming a part of the cultural and conceptual milieu of the Middle East, and in the Jewish people's gradually freeing themselves from several components of the ethos that has been with us since the establishment of the state - the victimhood, the sense of persecution and the fear of extermination.

For decades, Israel has been enjoying the status of a military superpower in the Middle East. This fact, combined with the strategic treaty with the United States, should finally convince Israelis that there is no existential danger in store for them and for the state. Only then will Israel be able to take it upon itself to be an inseparable part of the region where it is located, including open borders with its Arab neighbors.

The fulfillment of this vision depends on Israel - on the integrity and the courage of its leaders, on the atmosphere in Israeli society; but it depends just as much on the Arab world. In light of that, we have to regret the fact that, with the exception of President Moshe Katsav, none of Israel's leaders took seriously the Arab world's proposal for an overall peace, the Saudi Initiative. This document presents a simple and fair formula: an end to the occupation and a return to the 1967 borders, in return for complete normalization of relations between Israel and all the Arab countries.

Whereas the Geneva Initiative is a local peace initiative between Israel and the Palestinians, and the road map is the vision of the U.S. administration for resolving the conflict, the Saudi Initiative is an overall initiative for regional normalization and peace. It is another step for solving the conflict between Israel and the Arab world, on condition that all the sides concentrate on a determined struggle against terror.

The Saudi Initiative, which was adopted by the Arab League in its Beirut convention in 2002, marks a sharp departure from the decision of the Khartoum Conference in 1967, a turnaround that symbolizes the basic change that has taken place in the viewpoint of the moderate leadership in the Arab world. The first step has been taken, and now Israel must respond to the proposal with all due seriousness.

Israel can become the Hong Kong of the Middle East, thanks to its financial, technological and scientific strength, as well as its widespread international contacts. It can also contribute to the development of the region - on condition that the occupation is ended, on condition that Israel is recognized by the Arab countries, on condition that there are international guarantees for its security, and above all, on condition that the rhetoric of war, which is dominant in the Middle East, is replaced by the rhetoric of peace.

Without open borders and regional-economic integration, Israel will cease to exist. A continuation of the present socioeconomic order of priorities, which is dictated by the occupation and the creeping accumulation of arms, guarantees the widening of the gaps within society and the weakening of Israel's economy in the international arena. Social solidarity, which is an existential necessity for the survival of society and of the nation, will weaken even further.

Israel's leadership must honestly reread the geopolitical map and say "Yes" to the Saudi Initiative. It must do so in order to erase the stain of occupation and racism, and in order to ensure prosperity for ourselves and for the coming generations.

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THE ROLE OF BUSINESS IN THE MIDDLE EAST

David Grayson

Source: AMEInfo (www.ameinfo.com), May 30, 2005

(Originally published on The Challenge! Forum)

Distributed by the Common Ground News Service with permission to republish

As Einstein warned us: "we will not solve problems with the same thinking that produced the problem in the first place." It is right, therefore, that we explore new approaches and out of the box thinking to the problem which is so dangerous to world peace and to all our futures.

In this instance, the "out of the box" thinking is how can business contribute to peace in the Middle East - and to one of the most intractable elements of the Middle East Crisis - Israel and Palestine.

A preliminary point to stress is that this is not about business alone but about the contribution that business might play in partnership with other parts of civil society, academia, faith communities as well as governments and international institutions.

The paper prepared by Dale Lawton: "Corporate Social Responsibility and Peace-Building: A Case for Action in Israel and the Palestinian Territories" is a very helpful starting point for our discussions. Dale rightly emphasizes that Corporate Social Responsibility is about business behavior which goes beyond legal requirements.

One crucial point which we make in these is the importance of adapting to different cultures and traditions. I have already mentioned Israel Business for Social Responsibility. I hesitate - in the presence of such distinguished Islamic scholars - to try and interpret CSR in the context of Islamic values - but let me try. Insofar as I have understood Islamic values and traditions, it seems to me that there is a very strong resonance with these ideas of Corporate Social Responsibility.

CSR as Islamic Tradition

Specifically, the Islamic tradition places great store by brotherhood; fellowship; hospitality; sharing your wealth; tolerance, protection of the weak and minorities; and respects learning and ethics. Sustainable development should be a very comfortable idea for a culture which believes in putting back into society more than you take out and in stewardship.

In the short-term I would concur with Dale's argument that business can help cement a peace settlement and/or prevent conflict - what it can't do is stop a war. Perhaps business can play a role in encouraging the antagonists to look faster for peace by committing to investment if they do. Perhaps leading Israeli/Palestinian businessmen - and maybe Israeli/Jordanian businessmen can put co-ordinated pressure on their governments to seek peace rather than continue the killing.

Longer-term, as the paper suggests, there are opportunities for business contributing expertise - for example, to building NGOs and better governance. This might also include help for micro-enterprises. It has been my privilege to help, periodically over the last decade, a pioneering fund in Israel which has helped Olim - new immigrants from the former Soviet Union - with finance and mentoring - to start their own businesses. The Shell LiveWIRE programme which helps young people to explore the option of self-employment is now operating in nearly twenty companies - including Oman. Similar types of small business development programs will be needed in Palestine.

Stability through investment

A crucial part of building peace will be incentivizing business to move in to the region to invest in desalination plants because water is going to be a crucial factor in a comprehensive peace settlement. Investing in eco-tourism - as a diver who has had the privilege of going on dive safaris in the Sinai - I know there is great potential here. IBLF has a long-running International Hoteliers' Environment Initiative. And I know from previous visits to Israel and also to some of the cities on the West Bank and from talking to young professionals from both societies, how businesses which generate jobs and a stake in society are crucial peace-builders. This includes pre-recruitment or customized training - the IFC has been running a small-scale pre-recruitment training pilot in Egypt this year.

More broadly, there is a contribution which any business in any part of the world can make to promoting diversity. In the wonderful surroundings of St George's, perhaps I might conclude with a quotation from a book written by Rowan Williams - the next Archbishop of Canterbury: "Writing in the Dust - Reflections on September 11th and its aftermath."

"We have to see that we have a life in other people's imagination, quite beyond our control. Globalization means that we are involved in dramas we never thought of, cast in roles we never chose."

I have no doubt that this will have to include some brave business leaders being prepared to engage in practical projects across deeply divided communities - all I would ask is for a sense of pragmatic idealism in visioning what forms and extent this might take - and in what timescales.

David Grayson is the director of Business in the Community (BITC). BITC is a unique movement of over 700 of the UK‚s top companies, committed to improving their positive impact on society.

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©2002, 2003, 2004, 2005. All rights reserve. The Nonviolent Change Journal is published by the Research/Action Team on Nonviolent Large Systems Change - an interorganizational and international project of The Organization Development Institute. Opinions expressed are solely that of the writers and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editing staff, Nonviolent Change Journal, Organization Development Institute.