"Syria: Peace is Impossible" reflections on the future of Middle East peacebuilding by Dr. Marc Gopin

This article was published January 4th, 2009 on www.marcgopin.com

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This report in from Sami Moubayed in Damascus. Moubayed speaks with great authority for the official mood in Syria. This cancellation of negotiations by Syria has sent shock waves in an Israeli establishment that thought the talks with Syria were going well. My shock is at their shock:

According to veteran British journalist and Syria expert Patrick Seale Israel's 'savage war' brings home a number of truths:

1) Syria's fate is tied to the Palestinians. It cannot distance itself from the Palestine cause, whatever incentives Israel might in future be inclined to offer it.

2) Only a comprehensive accord can bring peace to the Middle East - but of this there is at present no sign.

3) Third, by its violence and its brutal indifference to human life, Israel has demonstrated yet again that it is not ready for peace. Its primal urge remains to expand and to dominate, as it has since the creation of the state six decades ago.

Marc Gopin, the director of the Centre for World Religions, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution at Ge..., who is a Jewish Rabi involved in inter-faith dialogue with Syria's Grand Mufti Ahmad Hassound, told Gulf News that he expected Syrian negotiations with Israel to falter from the beginning.

"Despite having separate priorities from the Palestinians, no one can expect a leader of Syria to negotiate in the wake of such a catastrophe against fellow Arabs."

I will comment on the article and my own quote. I would not say that I expected the talks to fail from the beginning. What I tried to communicate is that I expected negotiations to fail ultimately if they did not include the needs and interests of the Palestinian people. I don't agree with the characterization of Israel as having a primal urge to dominate. I think that many people suffer from this urge here in Israel, but this is a characteristic of most warriors in most civilizations in conflict.

My sense of deep sadness here at the moment is the way in which military thinking continues to brainwash one generation after another, from one crisis to the next, from one leader to the next, as if clever nonviolent ways to change your enemy, to outsmart your enemy, would not be a far more effective, less costly and more humane approach to a tragic situation.

Put simply, accepting Palestinian elections, making a deal with Hamas for prisoners, opening the borders with inspections for weapons, offering a full, normal life to Gazans and West Bankers, would immediately put the burden on Hamas to decide between being governors responsible to their people versus martyrs dedicated to perpetual war. If they remained obstinate in militarism, and if Israel responded defensively and proportionately, Hamas' popularity would plummet. Especially if Israel and the world actively helped and encouraged a Palestinian leadership that truly addressed Palestinian needs. I cannot tell you how many times average, simple Palestinians have been interviewed saying they would understand if Israel limited their retailiation to Hamas. In other words they are implicitly accepting the logic of defense and the fundamental problem with Hamas' militarism at the behest of geopolitical patrons like Iran. But the moment Israel overreacts and kills civilians, time and again, they prove to the Arab world a fundamental disdain for Arab lives that brings as profound a revulsion to Arabs as Arab suicide bombing has provoked inside Jews. Why is this not clear?

Every single conversation I have ever had for twenty five years with thousands of Arabs and Palestinians has persuaded me that an Israel dedicated to kindness to and respect for Arab citizens and neighbors would be an Israel that would easily outmaneuver groups as objectionable and inhumane as Hamas. The majority in Israel, however, still only see military solutions when they are hurt and threatened.

The threats are real. It is unacceptable for 4-8 hundred thousand Israelis to wonder at every moment if a rocket will kill their child. It is unacceptable for so many people to hate Israelis blindly. But that does not mean that this war is the only solution. This event in Gaza is a failure, this is a failure of human decency, a failure of intelligence, a failure of diplomacy, a failure of peacemaking. I don't care if Hamas falls tomorrow. For sixty years it has been clear that each promised military victory turned out to be a false promise, not because the technical goals were not achieved, but because it never made Jews here--or elsewhere--ultimately safe, happy, sane, or at home in the Middle East. And it never will, as long as the Palestinian people do not share that home. This is what my friends and family fail to emotionally comprehend. I don't know how many generations of blood it will take. But I do know that this wisdom has to come to those here on all sides who still live by the missile as their only hope, their only refuge. Last time I checked the Biblical religions that grew in this soil thousands of years ago all demanded that God be their only refuge. That does not mean defenselessness and passivity but it does mean that the sword can become a form of idolatry, a false god of false hopes. The punishment for idolatry is death, not in the primitive sense of putting someone to death for bowing down to an idol, but in the sense that the idol of militarism is a false god, it is so tempting, so tantalizing, and so disappointing. And it ultimately brings you only death not life.

One last point. I write these words in Southern Jerusalem in a cafe. I have written here for many years, surrounded by cafes and restaurants that have been bombed, sometimes while I was here. I stand in solidarity with people here who fear those bombs. If one of the bombs went off I would run to help the wounded and then come back and write exactly the same thing. This violence is the undoing of these civilizations and its damage can only be undone with a concerted, civilization-wide effort to explore every single nonviolent avenue available for positive change. When that effort is funded as well as the war, and it yields no results I will be happy to admit that I am wrong.

I am here in Jerusalem to do a film series on friendships across the bitter divide. At first I thought that it is so absurd to continue a film series such as this in the wake of such violence. But on the contrary I am learning more and more that it is precisely those people who have deep friends across enemy lines whose eyes are most open here to the whole truth, who see the whole, and who are not fooled by the lure of violence on any side. And it is those people who have no friends across enemy lines who lose their values in the process of facing the complexities of this region and this conflict. Friendship saves lives, friendship makes peace a possibility, no matter how difficult. But, above all, friendship saves the soul from the madness of war.

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