Fresh Thinking is Needed

Submitted by Steve Berman (United States), Jan 4, 2009 at 10:28

Israel, the United States, and--indeed--the world need to adopt new strategies. The two state solution will never work because there is no basis for a second state. The Palestinians are not and never were a separate "people" that can serve as the substrate for an independent country. As they were more properly considered for most of Israel's existence, they are refugees who need to be absorbed by one or more of the surrounding Arab states just as millions of Jews have been absorbed by Israel. They need real homes where they can live and thrive. At present, they are merely being exploited as a weapon to destroy Israel.

If Egypt or other Muslim countries were to take over Gaza, this might work. But I doubt that Egypt could actually govern that area as it is presently constituted. Egypt would have to move a large part of the population elsewhere and run Gaza as a completely demilitarized zone with no weapons of any kind allowed. Nevertheless, one way or the other, we need a solution in which a separate Palestinian country does not exist at all.

What we see in the Middle East today is the result of not one but several "monsters" that for the most part were created inadvertently and which have now gotten out of control.

1) The refugee monster. I do not know whether the Arabs were actually smart enough to deliberately set the refugees up as an anti-Israeli weapon or whether this is just the inadvertent result intransigence and unwillingness to part with even a tiny part of their domain. However, they turned into a weapon that seemed useful to the various Arab and other Muslim states for a while. Now, however, I suspect that much of the Muslim leadership fears the refugees (aka "Palestinians") as a weapon out of control.

2) The oil monster. Ironically, some of the most seemingly pro-Israeli groups in the US have also been pro-Big Oil. They have resisted anything that could reduce the world's dependence on Middle Eastern (and now Russian) oil. This over-empowered the Muslims who have not been able to use the money for true economic development in most cases. That is changing now. The world will turn away from oil, though it will take decades to accomplish fully. The wiser Muslims (and there are many) realize they need real development and trade and not just oil revenues which are unstable. A reasonable peace agreement with Israel is in the best interests of the Muslim nations. Many of them realize that but do not know how to get there.

3) A separate Lebanese monster which consists in part of Lebanon's internal refugees and which is largely fueled by the oil revenues of the surrounding states.

4) The belief that elections and democracy will solve everything. In the end, Democracy probably is the answer but the level of education in some areas is so low that it is hard to see how these areas can govern themselves via a democracy. The world needs to strengthen responsible existing governments and guide them gradually toward democracy in the future.

5) Islamism, which has become empowered by the other "monsters."

6) The almost mindless misunderstanding of the whole Middle East situation by a large part of the people in Europe as well as much of the American "intelligentsia." To some extent, those who actually know better but who fear the economic and political consequences of opposing "Islamic interests" deliberately drive this misunderstanding. Real leaders in Europe and the US (and I am praying that Obama is such a leader) need to rethink the issues and adopt new approaches that are beneficial to and compatible with Islamic interests but which enhance rather than destroy our "Western" (it is not Western anymore--consider Japan, India, Australia, etc.) democratic civilization.

Military action can do only so much. I support what Israel is doing now but in the longer run the world needs to resettle the various groups of refugees, adopt better approaches to energy generation, and support fair and humane governance of some regions of the world that are not now ready for absolute democracy.

By the way, Israel should turn away from its own radical right-wing religious policies that now make it harder for it to absorb many Jews who want to "return." There are actually millions of people throughout the world who claim Jewish heritage and who would love to "return." While I do not think that Israel should or could take them all carte blanche, Israel needs to improve and modernize its policies. Instead, it is making it harder in many ways because the ultra-Orthodox are allowed to dictate the religious policies, which, unfortunately, turn into state policies. On an individual level this has caused significant hardship by prohibiting marriages between individuals who are Jewish by any reasonable standard but not in the eyes of the ultra-Orthodox rabbis who have become sort of Jewish Ayatollahs.

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