Santa Clara University

A Dialog of Faith

Question IV: The Future of Peace 

"To have peace," goes the ancient Roman adage, "prepare for War."

While some form of deterrence is often necessary in an imperfect and untrusting world, religious and moral leaders can envision peace to encourage negotiation and foster hope in its coming. 

What is your vision of peace between Arabs and Israelis? How could Israeli and Palestinian basic values be achieved through peace? What steps might lead these two nations in the right direction?

Answers to this question are summarized below, using as much as possible the exact words of the writers but taking the liberty of condensation. We begin with our Muslim participants.

Zeeshan Hasam
Everyone knows how peace can be achieved between the Arabs and Israelis. A lasting peace will have to be a just one, with Palestinians gaining a real state, free of Israeli settlers and their accompanying Israeli military guards. For their part, the Palestinians will have to disarm completely and probably have to give up Jerusalem and the right of return of 1948 refugees. Unfortunately, both groups have leaders incapable of accepting these realities, which have not changed in three decades and were basically reaffirmed in the recent informal Geneva peace proposal floated by pro-peace groups on both sides.

Felix Pomeranz
A frontal attack needs to be launched on the mistrust and growing hatred between the sides. But, again, we may have a positive example, from the time of Ali, the Prophet's  adopted son, son in law, and one of his four "righteous" successors.

Ali was questioned as to who would represent those who were unable to attend an election. Ali responded that those present should bear in mind the interests of those who had to be absent.

Salah Abou-Jaoude, S.J.
Hostility between Palestinians and Israelis in particular finds its roots in the long tragic evolution of the Middle East crisis involving an unprecedented entanglement of religious, cultural, political, ideological and economical factors. Neither repression nor political agreements can eliminate definitively the reasons of that hostility. Treaties about borders, security, and other substantial issues like water cannot advance reconciliation between peoples.

There should be, on the one hand, common social actions involving Jews, Christians, and Muslims, creating their own strategies, in the light of their living conditions and experiences, to reduce tension and violence and enhance peace. On the other hand, there should be specific programs adopted by different educational institutions, aimed at diffusing a culture of peace. These institutions are in fact vehicles that shape profoundly the society. Such activities can help overcome existing prejudices, discrimination, and stereotypes—a set of elements that affect the way each group understands others.

A comment about religion and culture. As Anand Nayak explains it masterfully, history shows that religions, contrary to their true messages, become generators of violence, when different cultures in struggle identify themselves with these religions. In a society where Muslims, Christians, and Jews have to live together, any strict identification with a given culture can provoke conflicts and create serious obstacles hindering peaceful interaction and conviviality. Thus, religious leaders have the obligation to consider peace as the ultimate ideal of their religions, teach their faithful to abandon violence, and look to other persons as their brothers and sisters in humanity, without considering them as representatives of an adversary culture or religion. Moreover, religious leaders have to work as well to dissociate, at least progressively, the exclusive identification of their religions from specific cultures. As a matter of fact, whenever a culture is identified with a religion, it becomes generator of fundamentalism and fanaticism.

Mustapha Hogga
I am not sure we are moving one inch towards peace in the present context. We know that humans have a special genius for harming others and a limited capacity for doing them good. Let us then pray God to give us a touch of charity.

Feisal Abdul Rauf
The road to peace between Arabs and Israelis leads through increasing trade relations, and promoting social and cultural interaction.

Oussama Arabi, professor of Islamic law, The American University, Beirut, Lebanon
Neither morality, nor good will, nor any joint religious peace initiative could result in a peaceful solution to the continuing bloodshed in the Middle East. The principles that ought to guide the resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict stem from International Law: namely [the end of Israel’s illegitimate] occupation of land by force [through] withdrawal to its 1967 borders and security arrangements between the two parties. Unfortunately the international community through the U.N. Security Council lacks the political will to impose these principles. As long as this situation continues, the conflict will not be resolved.

Rabbi Raphael Lapin
How would pre-1967 borders in fact satisfy adequately the need for an independent Palestinian state. Before 1967, the issue of an independent Palestinian state was not really much of a factor; and even within those boundaries, there was no Palestinian state.
Perhaps too much emphasis is being placed on the pre-1967 borders demand. Does it not, in fact limit the parties and inhibit them from searching for creative options (perhaps something very different to what the region looked like pre-1967) that would serve both parties interests to a far greater extent?

Rev. Clyde Dodder
One of ultimate solutions for peace is to make Jerusalem an open city under a United Nations governing council. The passionate feelings engendered by the followers of all the religions who look upon it as a Holy City make an objective and even-handed governing of it almost impossible. Somewhere along the line, I would hope this approach might be considered as part of a larger solution.

Raymond Helmich, S.J.
The Oslo Declaration of Principles had, as its great value, that the two peoples, Israelis and Palestinians, recognized publicly and formally one another's legitimacy as (nations), endowed with full rights. For all the complaint both peoples had about what was lacking in Oslo, this was an accomplishment that they had been unable to reach for many decades, stretching much farther back even that 1948.

I was myself convinced that this achievement was indestructible. Even when [Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu made his government’s principal objective the retraction of that recognition, he was unsuccessful. Rejectionists of both sides, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Sharon, and his allies did what they could to rescind that recognition by each people of the other's legitimacy, but with no success despite the frustration growing among both peoples at the delay in reaching agreement well beyond the five years stipulated, and the Palestinian realization that the circumstances of their lives were constantly worsening, with the continued growth of settlements, confiscations, house demolitions, the deconstruction of their economy, the isolation of their local communities by closures, and the building of the network of limited-access roads.

But the outbreak of violence since September 28, 2000, has given the lie to my expectation. The mutual recognition among the two peoples of one another's legitimacy has suffered vastly over these three and a half years, and by now has to be constructed anew.

When I visit the region, I find Israelis unable to carry on the normal routine of their lives, terrified especially of the suicide bombers. Their fury at this is reinforced by a narrative that it all results from two determinations by Arafat: 1) that he rejected a generous offer at Camp David that should have been the basis for peace; and 2) that his reason for doing that was a prior decision to resort to a violent campaign instead.

Recognition by Palestinians of that mind-set in the Israeli public should signal, for them, the priority requirements if they are to get back to prospects of peace. They need first to disabuse the Israeli public of that narrative, which is demonstrably false. (Israelis have become very reluctant to part with it, because without it they cannot justify the military campaign their government has undertaken against the Palestinian civilian population.) Second, the Palestinians need to convince the Israelis that it is not their program to kill them. They need to do this without simply folding up their objection to occupation. That means replacing all the violence with a serious non-violent campaign.

The Palestinians too have a narrative, that the violence was deliberately provoked by Sharon's visit to the Haram al-Sharif Temple Mount in September 2000, and that every time there is a chance to create calm he calculatedly stirs the pot to inflame the violence again. The Palestinian reaction to all this cannot be described simply as anger. It is closer to despair and gives rise to desperate actions.

This should indicate to Israelis where the priority requirements lie for themselves. It is their responsibility to make sure their government is not doing anything so cynical and inflammatory. And they need to address the Palestinian despair.

What can the United States do under these circumstances? It is the only restraint on the Sharon government to prevent it from undertaking a campaign of total expulsion of the Palestinian population. The Bush administration exercises very little restraint on Sharon, not quite authorizing that extreme action on his part, but excusing anything he does short of that.

I don't actually expect anything better from the United States so long as we have so ideologically inflexible a government. Any American government is rightly going to be strong in its support for the safety and rights of Israel. It needs to recognize that the Israelis can never have safety through making themselves simply a fortress in defiance of the whole Middle Eastern world in which they live.

Israeli leaders would be properly scornful of anyone who suggested that they should rely only on making friends of their neighbors and neglect their military defenses. They should be equally scornful of anyone who tells them they should neglect the making of peace with their neighbors and rely only on their military might. They are a small nation surrounded by vast numbers of peoples they have accepted to treat only as enemies. In the longer term of history, the military superiority they now enjoy over all these other nations together cannot last long enough to be of real significance in the life of a nation. By deciding to live in defiance of their neighbors, they doom their state to eventual dissolution.

American policy has not recognized this elemental fact. It has normally encouraged Israeli governments in their paranoia and helped to arm them against a neighboring world understood only as peril. In this we have not served the Israelis well. The only true help to Israel will be that which leads them to a policy of peace.

A reply from Rabbi Asher Meir:
The previous respondent, in a generally sensitive and balanced contribution, explained very cogently that Israeli anger at the Palestinian leadership is based on the assumption that the massive wave of terrorism launched in September 2000 was "a prior decision to resort to a violent campaign" instead of negotiating. But afterwards he makes the surprising statement this narrative "is demonstrably false." I don’t know how one would "demonstrate" that there was no prior decision, and the respondent himself doesn’t provide any evidence.

There’s actually plenty of evidence to support the Israeli "narrative." Israeli intelligence briefings prior to September 2000 already indicated that an outbreak of violence was planned. Most saliently, news reports later indicated that members of the Palestinian Authority frankly acknowledged that this campaign was planned in advance, and not spontaneous.

In fact, for decades the leaders of the Palestinian groups have made no secret of their plan of stages, which involves getting as much as possible through negotiations and then advancing from their entrenched position through violence. Since the beginning of Oslo, Palestinian leaders including Arafat have made references to this strategy in defending their participation in the Oslo process. While I can’t say that the perception of Israelis is demonstrably true, I can say that there is a very considerable weight of evidence which supports it, and I don’t know of any evidence which contradicts it.

I can understand the sincere effort of the respondent to try and superimpose, after the fact, a more balanced narrative which may present a more palatable basis for further progress than the rather grim and cynical facts. But this effort to find a new, more harmonizing meta-narrative shouldn't clothe itself as an indictment of the palpable experience of the Israeli people who undertook a bold peace initiative with a group that defined the destruction of Israel as its raison etre and then suffered bitter feelings of disappointment and betrayal as they saw the cynical efforts of rival leaders get the maximum benefit from their gestures and afterwards return to violence from a position of renewed strength.

We can agree that progress in the future requires the adoption of new points of view. But I think it is unfair to condemn the quite rational current point of view of millions of people as "demonstrably false" when there is such telling evidence in its favor.

Conclusion and Summary

These conversations over so great a distance and wide a barrier in are in themselves an important accomplishment. Many of the participants could not visit each other’s homes due to governmental exclusion, refusal to recognize their state, or outright hostility. Yet they could exchange viewpoints in this forum, respecting one another, being heard and listening.

The dialog revealed areas of agreement and discord. All supported the idea that any armed resistance should exclude attacks on non-combatants. Muslims argued that civil resistance was the right of oppressed people, and armed struggle was justified morally against an occupying military power as well as against settlers armed to protect their settlements. After millennia of experience with oppression, Jews felt resistance could only be justified if the minority were denied their right to worship according to their conscience. Christians spoke of non-violent, civil disobedience, but recognized the patience and difficulty this entails.

All condemned suicide bombing, but expressed differences in analyzing why this phenomenon has increased exponentially during the past few years. Muslims and Christians focused on the despair of the Palestinian population leading to despondency and depression. Jewish respondents pointed out that the bombings seemed to increase just as peace seemed possible, and explained them in terms of a strategy to force more concessions from Israel. It was less the moral responsibility of young people who surrendered to this despondency by killing themselves and others, and more the responsibility of leaders who recruited them to do so. There was widespread agreement that any act that causes the deaths of innocent civilians should be condemned whether carried out by soldiers or suicide bombers.

The United States should have a major role in the Middle East, according to our respondents. This includes impartial mediation to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; the establishment of a viable, hopefully moral and democratic regime in Iraq, at least fixing what the Americans broke; the enforcement of agreements that disputant parties accepted; and underwriting the cost of peace. Some participants expressed considerable doubt that the present American administration could achieve any of these goals.

Finally, there was considerable disagreement on the future shape of peace. All agreed that attitudes must change, respect for each other must be encouraged through social and cultural interaction, and education should point toward common values, peace, and human development. Muslims and Christians argued for a two state solution based on the pre-1967 borders, while Jews felt these borders should be negotiated and that the "green line" formula might preclude creative efforts at peace making. One such creative suggestion was the administration of Jerusalem’s holy places by the United Nations in some form of shared sovereignty among Israelis, Palestinians, and the international community.

Despite these differences, our Dialog of Faith has provided some hope for the prospects of Middle East Peace. Through the darkness and fear, we must keep alive the vision of Jews, Christians and Muslims living together in harmony.

Shalom, Peace, salam