Note: Every time I write about the state of Israel, I get in some sort of trouble, or some anti-Semite or conspiracy-monger anonymously sends me all sorts of crap. That is the reason I hesitate to write more on the subject. After hearing a report on NPR this morning, however, I started thinking (as tired as I was, this may come as a surprise).
The NPR report was simple, but hidden within it was the tragedy of fear and mistrust that continues to hamper real progress and understanding between Israel and Palestine. The story detailed one company's struggle to survive the complexities of Israeli security. A small Palestinian metal manufacturing company has had to reduce shipments of its product due to the many checkpoints - there was even a mention of a "flying checkpoint"; good God - and the way the various Israeli highways and byways divide Palestinian lands. From four shipments a day, the company is down to one. Clearly, this creates a problem for any business that wishes to survive.
Now, there might be some who claim that this is Israel's plan, to impoverish the Palestinians, forcing them in to a position where real autonomy and sovereignty is untenable. More evidence for this includes the fact that for close on thirty years, Israel has monopolized access to water sources in and around the Jordan Valley as well as annexed the best arable land on the west bank. These are both inconvenient facts and necessary to understand the root of the conflict between Israel and Palestine. For too many in the US see this as part of some religious struggle, of good Jews versus evil Muslims. It is actually a tad more prosaic, being an old-fashioned land-and-resources dispute. The story of the Palestinian firm being edged closer towards shuttering its doors is just one of many pieces of evidence that the Palestinians are being placed in an untenable position, economically as well as geographically. Divide and conquer has many components.
Were it easy enough to get angry at Israel for the kind of Rube Goldberg security apparatus (as well as highway network to which only Israelis have unfettered access, and which block transport from one Palestinian enclave to another), a solution would be simple. It is not easy, however, because, as one security expert noted, the checkpoints tend to work to reduce the amount of violence perpetrated by Palenstinian terrorists in Israel-proper. Take the checkpoints away, and they'll be back up in forty-eight hours. This fact, necessary for understanding the whole situation, cannot be ignored. While behaving atrociously in its pseudopedal spread across the occupied West Bank, Israel is acting as any state would in its own interests, and the various security measures it has taken are both understandable and well within the limits of reason. Yet, they are destroying the social and economic infrastructure of the Palestinians, a group that cannot be absorbed in to Israel proper even if they wished to be, yet are prevented from exercising independent control over their collective lives because of the actions of a minority among their population, a minority bent on death and destruction.
For decades, Israel has refused to allow UN Peace keepers to operate on their soil, or in fact on soil they occupy (such as in their losing war with Hizbollah last summer). Yet, if ever there were a situation ripe and ready for the UN to intervene, creating a social and military buffer between two populations who, while not liking one another, must live together, this is it. Unlike traditional occupations (read the US in Iraq), UN peace keeping efforts such as the on-going Cypriot and Timorese missions have been both successful and long-term because the UN has a legitimacy and cachet in most of the rest of the world that it does not have here in the US (or, apparently, in Israel). It shouldn't be difficult to convince Israel that there are multiple benefits to turning over certain parts of its very real and legitimate security concerns along its borders to the UN - just in terms of the money it would save and the reduction in corruption (Israel has been scandal-plagued for close to a decade), as well as the possibility of beginning to soften the ill-will it is engendering among the Palestinians. The UN could even begin its work under the current rules Israel practices, modifying them as it sees fit due to changes in circumstances. By giving physical space for the two populations, such a peace keeping mission would allow for political and psychological space as well.
I realize, of course, that such a commonsense solution to a seemingly intractable problem will never come to pass. There are too many in the US who have invested too much emotional and (alas!) religious energy in the status quo, believing it not only necessary, but somehow sanctioned by God, to change it in a way that might actually do some good. Israel, as well, has legitimate concerns over global anti-Semitism and the possible make-up of an international force (how could Pakistan, for example, or Indonesia, the latter the largest Muslim nation in the world, be objective and even-handed in their dealings between Israelis and Palestinians?). This is also not a small matter and should be addressed as well.
Until and unless there is some kind of step taken in this direction, I doubt that any "Peace Process" worthy of the name will succeed, because there are just too many grievances, too many opportunities for one side or the other to commit outrages because there is no space between them.
Virtual Tin Cup
