For over fifty years, Arabs and Jews within and outside the Middle East have lived with the “Palestinian–Israeli Dispute” as a defining part of their political life. Television programs, family dinner conversations and policy discussions have produced an impressive array of articulate reasons and counterreasons for terrorism, causes and countercauses of injustice. We have generated enough arguments and counterarguments to fill a highway to outer space with our eloquence, offering historians and social anthropologists enough quotations and legalisms to keep them busy for generations to come.
The events of Sept. 11 were the culmination of increasing violence and frustration that were catalyzed by Sharon’s electioneering march on the Al Aqsa Mosque. Now, instead of visions of peace, we are assaulted with “blame game” rhetoric at a higher volume than any of us remember. Televised images of death and human injury consume our lives. Just two years ago our optimism would have led us to believe such words and deeds were a thing of the past. Now, we wonder if the violence can ever end.
It is time to work together to settle this dispute, to move off square one and get on with our lives. Fifty years of conflict has blocked our view of what we are missing in the enrichment of our societies. The “Ground Zero” in New York and the “Ground Zero” in Palestine have been our wake-up calls. While the Arab and Muslim world has focused on fighting this just cause — and suffered tremendously — the rest of the world has focused their daily business on the development and enrichment of their people. It is time for Muslims, Arabs and Israelis to move on, to stop the rhetoric of blame and begin the process of building. For it is only when we know what we have missed that we can comprehend what we should be doing.
I write this as a Saudi Arabian and so I will start with us, our country. In the last six months we have done lots of catching up. Events of the past nine months have given us a clear view of how others see us and, may I say with gratitude, it has helped immeasurably. Faced with this sharp vision, my country has taken a determined look at itself. We are facing squarely how other people view us. We are examining our institutions in an atmosphere of positive criticism. Writers are coming out into the open to examine all the niches and corners of our society.
Most of all, we are exploring the boundaries of our values. We know now we cannot come up with solutions and resolve for others until we are moving toward solutions for ourselves.
During a time when Palestinians were suffering the onslaught of terror by the madman of Israel, they, too, opened their own internal dialogue and self-examination. With the admission that Arafat himself has made mistakes, they have begun the process of mutual participation. Taking this step from square one to square two promises a society capable of creating enduring solutions.
To be self-critical is not a statement of self-doubt. It is entirely the opposite. Only people confidant in their cause, their country and their own people have the courage to be self-critical. Being self-critical is the first step toward being self-creators, meeting challenges within the boundaries of our own values. Our strength will come from our ability to be productive, responding to the challenges we create and helping others to do likewise.
New challenges cannot be created and met while we continue the “blame game” of the past. We know that if there is no peace between Palestine and Israel, and Muslim and Jew, spectators and participants will be sharing the same world of violence, a world where words have been replaced by ever more creative forms of destruction. If we are to encourage the kind of thinking that could bring a true Palestinian state into being, all participants must abandon the old rhetoric.
So, it is not a matter of asking, “Is there any hope?” Hope can only be found when serious risk-taking replaces inflammatory words. Nothing can be accomplished by yet another prolonged period of deciding which side is right or wrong. This is certainly a time when a narrow focus on being “right” runs the risk of being “dead right”!
For months we have been moving between “square one” and “ground zero.” Moving onto square two will require the need for more courage and objectivity than ever before. Words used to rally one side against the other in simple villain-hero caricatures will simply move us back to ground zero, destined to repeat the past, heighten the sense of hurt and delay the realization of dreams for Arab, Muslim, and yes, Israeli people. It is the path of destruction and we must STOP it now.
