| Tuesday, March 26, 2002 |
13:37 - Time-sensitive Documents Enclosed
http://www.denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2002/03/Liesdamnedliesandpolls.shtml
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Steven den Beste weighs in with yet another of his observations on how we, with an ocean between us and the issues (9/11 notwithstanding), continue to treat "peace" in the Middle East as some kind of finish line, a goal that everybody wants just as badly but which is separated from us only by bureaucrats being lazy or playing too much golf or something. We still think it's somehow possible for any of us to stride confidently into Jerusalem, look around at the warring throngs in the street, and yell "HEY! Stop fightin'!" And they'll all stop, look startled, look down with surprise at their clothes and who they're grappling with, and like in Babylon 5: Thirdspace dust themselves off and mutter apologies to each other before going home to their nice houses on opposite sides of the Jordan and watch Survivor.
Well, it's not like that. And from what we've been seeing in the press and the blogosphere lately, the reason is simply that what we have is a clash of two peoples with completely different ideas of what's important.
For the Israelis, it could very well be as easy as described above. If they were dealing with an adversary who acted the way they did, a few high-level summits would be all it took for acceptable boundary lines to be drawn and everybody to be happy.
But the Palestinians don't see things that way. And what strikes me is that the reason is that they don't consider the Intifada to be in any way a time-sensitive conflict. To them, it doesn't matter how long it has to take-- the possibilities are victory or death.
Put yourself in an Israeli's shoes. (This isn't as difficult these days as it used to be.) A building explodes, or a bus full of schoolchildren gets blown up, or a suicide bomber kills a dozen people in a mall. What's your reaction? You want to have justice done and peace restored as quickly as possible. You want to get back to business. You want to have the threat removed so you can go back to your life. Hey, isn't that how we all reacted to 9/11? Sure, we knew that there would be a protracted war against terrorism-- but that it would be fought by our military, overseas, while Tom Ridge watched our backs so we could continue playing Ultima Online. We knew there was the threat of another attack any day, but we accepted the risk more and more the longer we went without such an attack. We have an accustomed lifestyle, and if it's interrupted, the kind of resolution we want is one that's all about expedience. Our lives are time-sensitive. We'll do what it takes to get things resolved now so we don't have to change how we live as a sacrifice toward a longer battle.
(My own experiences with having my server be offline for long periods of time-- while some ISP or co-location company held it hostage while its time-sensitive services languished, their usefulness decreasing with every passing offline day-- have colored my familiarity with this mindset. And the current situation isn't helping.)
But then look at the Palestinians. Compared to the Israeli way of life, theirs can hardly be worse. They have no reason to want a quick resolution. It's not in their interest. They've demonstrated that they're willing to live miserable lives, and even kill themselves, if it contributes to what is now a 50-year-plus Holy War. A quick resolution, one that involves compromise (such as the ones proposed by Barak and others in recent years), would not give them any benefit-- because it would involve taking away the only thing that keeps them fighting, which is vindication of their birthright to the land and their cultural superiority. Any offer which requires that they give up even one of the demands for which they're giving their lives seems to them like an insult heaped upon the graves of those who have died. They've been committed to holding this line, fighting this exact cause, for decades now... and for them to keep doing it for decades more is no skin off their noses. Why should they want peace? Why should they compromise? The threat of more conflict is no threat at all, because they're used to it. It's their way of life. There's no incentive to bring about peace, because none of them have ever known peace. It's not something they have to get back to as soon as possible-- it's an unreachable dream. They're perfectly satisfied to keep going as they are.
The Palestinians-- and many of the established Muslim nations who have similar attitudes toward Israel-- do have it in their power to become cooperative players in the world theater, to accept compromises for the mutual benefit of everyone. But the problem is that they are so convinced that their cause is Right, that they are entitled to privilege, and that the rest of the world can take their secular humanity and their religious tolerance and their gender equality and their economic fulfillment and stick it in their ear. They're the Chosen People, dammit, and accepting a peace proposal with any compromise in it is tantamount to admitting that they were wrong all this time. Unacceptable.
Scroll down a little further in USS Clueless, and you'll see a fascinating account of how Japan's cultural chauvinism was defeated to the mutual benefit of both Japan and the rest of the world. (I've been meaning to write for a long time about how since 9/11 Japan has held a weird comforting sort of fascination for me-- a people so materialistic and entrepreneurial as to be the direct opposite of the ascetic fundamentalism of al Qaeda, and therefore the ultimate in sympathetic benign cultural safety.) Steven says that this is ultimately the only way that Islam will be made a functioning part of the modern world, and more and more I suspect he's right.
The next ten or twenty years are going to involve some severe redrawing of boundary lines. Time to buy stock in a cartography firm.
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