Israel's options in the new Middle East

The coming changes in North Africa and the Middle East will cause a huge shift in the balance of power in the region.

Wikileaks have shown the intransigent nature of Israeli negotiations. This will now change. Israel must start negotiating in good faith.

Although Zionism predated World War 2, the Nazi Holocaust motivated Jews to found a state for their people in Israel.

The psychological effect of the horror of the Holocaust must be remembered and understood as a the basic motive for the paranoid and aggressive position of the Israeli Government.

The State of Israel has had an expansionist policy ever since its foundation, displacing Palestinians to an extent that can be characterised as ethnic cleansing, and has also denied human rights to Palestinians. 

In retaliation for displacement and repression, Palestinians have fought back with hijackings, stones, rockets, and suicide bombings.
In retaliation of this, Israel has responded with ever-greater aerial bombings culminating with the disgraceful bombing of Lebanon in 2006 and Operation Cast Lead in 2008-9.

The mutual, retaliatory, violence-based policy is causing immense human suffering to the peoples of both sides, particularly the Palestinians. Militarism is causing polarisation of opinion, and an escalation of violence that could lead to wider conflict in the Middle East and even global conflict, which could even escalate into nuclear war. 

In order to avoid this disastrous outcome, all parties must focus on a peace settlement based on negotiation and compromise, focused around co-operation in the task of creating a sustainable economy in their arid land.

At the heart of the problem is the fact that the increase in population of Israel/Palestine on the part of both communities demands the functional expansion of the carrying capacity of the land, which demands in turn a functional increase in the supply of water to the area in order to increase the productivity of the land.

This must be based on co-operative water management solutions which will be both innovative and intensive.

It will be based on work on water harvesting, waste minimisation and water recycling, and reafforestation from the coast inwards.

While this work is in progress, the role of the international community is to conceive of and facilitate a way for this situation to come about by dialogue with all actors in the Middle East.

The case for peace is overwhelming from a rational point of view. Reason must displace emotions such as fear and resentment as the primary motive for action.

This objective can only be realised through the mutual recognition of the rights of independent statehood and secure borders of both Palestinians and Israelis; an immediate end to the violence and de-escalation of the arms build-up in the region; enforcement of UN resolutions 242 and 338; international assistance so that both the Palestinian and Israeli states can develop co-operative self-reliance in water management, food production and basic services and industries; and long term exploration of the possibility of establishing a confederation with neighbouring states, with free and equal access for each state's citizens.

All Israelis, Palestinians, and their families should have and be able to exercise full human and civil rights throughout Israel and the occupied territories. Israel should be subject to the Geneva Convention concerning the rights of individuals and communities.

All actors must recognise the right of the people of Israel to exist peacefully within secure borders.

Both the Israeli Government and the PLO to unequivocally reject violence as a means of settling their conflict.
Israel should repeal its present "law of return" because it is incompatible with the full exercise of human rights and is implicitly discriminatory, and is open to the accusation of being racist.

Israel should to have direct talks with representatives of the Palestinian people with a view to ensuring genuine religious, political, economic and other human rights for all people within Israel and the occupied territories.

Israel should allow Palestinians and their families to return to their former homes and be offered full Israeli citizenship, or to compensate those unable or unwilling to return to their homes and/or property.

Arab states should agree a mutual non-aggression pact, and a non-aggression pact with Israel. Such pacts must be guaranteed by the international community.

The United States Government should use its special relationship with Israel to halt military and financial support until Israel enters the dialogue called for above.

The Middle East is faced with a decision. Continuation of the old politics of confrontation and conflict can only lead to war. Co-operation in securing the basis of a sustainable economy for all in the area can lead to a just and lasting peace.

The choice is ours.

Israel/Palestine; How do we get peace?

Israel/Palestine looks like Northern Ireland in the Troubles, or South Africa under apartheid. Many pundits shake their heads and intone, "Insoluble". Matthew Parris just wants to stop thinking about it. He wants to wipe I/P off the cognitive map, and in this he is, dare I say it, somewhat like AhmadiNajad, although the latter only wants to wipe the I part of I/P off the map.

It looks insoluble because there are fundamentalist religious bigots on both sides. We have experience of this little problem here in Northern Ireland. Dogmatism and its false absolutes are a powerful force, but war-weariness is in the end and even stronger force. It usually takes a generation to for war to cause people to drop the simple dogmatic absolutes and adopt some realistic compromises. The first intifada was 23 years ago. That means that we should be ready for a resolution soon.

This conflict is a complex system, with multiple lines of causalities, and  multiple positive feedback loops. The question is NOT a simple binary choice of "Which cause is right, the Palestinian cause or the Israeli cause?" The question is, "How can we help reverse the process of escalation of violence?"

Part of this is for the two Governments involved, Israeli and Hamas and their supporters, to understand that their mutual paranoia and mutual violence is counter productive to the interests of their people.

Another important part is to be aware of the many cross-community peace initiatives that exist.

Politicians deal in absolutes. The people deal in realities.

My favourite reality based, cross community initiative is Friends of the Earth Middle East.  I want to see their work supported by the EU, and magnified many times over, into a serious water management system.

If the root cause of the conflict is the inward migration of significant numbers of people, then the answer is to make the land bigger, so that it can support them all.  That sounds impossible, and spatially it is impossible, but functionally it is not. Land is only useful if it is fertile. Water and biological waste recycling are all that is required to make arid land fertile. This can be done with water harvesting, water conservation, and reforestation from the coast inwards. The economic effort of doing this will increase prosperity, and divert energy from hate-related activities.

The vicious cycle of hate can stop. The first step on this journey is for us to stop believing that hate is some kind of a solution, and that hate and paranoia are permanent state of affairs. They are not.

Israel, racism, absolutism, solutions

Adrian, has commented on the post below (Is Israel Racist?). My response is long, so I am putting it here as today's blog.

The original post analysis shows that there is a case to be made that Israel is a state founded on racist ideology, and that the behaviour of the Israeli Government towards the Palestinians is consistent with the inequitable behaviour that is consistent with racism.

I realise this is a controversial area, but please react to what I have written, not to the existing controversy out there.

I am not attacking Israel. I have simply tried to analyse objectively, keeping close to the exact meaning of the words racism, race, and Zionism. If anyone can show that the logic of the situation is not as I have shown it to be, I will be more than happy.

To summmarise again, Jews are (probably) a race, Zionism is a movement to establish and support a state for the Jewish race, and Israelis have been behaving in an unfair way to those not of their race.

The Probably is of interest, because "race" has several different meanings, and it is doubtful that there is a clear scientific basis for the word.

Adrian asks, "If you think Israel is racist because it is a Jewish state, then what of the Islamic states; Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia".

I agree, Islamic states create enormous human rights problems for their citizens. In many ways, Israel is a freer society than, say, Saudi Arabia. There is a difference, in that in Israel, there is conflation with descent ("race") and religion. The Islamic states are characterised by religion only. Although having said that, I would expect that a Caucasian convert to Islam might experience some common or garden discrimination when he goes out and about.

I agree that Iran is a repressive regime. Ahmadinajad's idiotic Holocaust denial and desire for nuclear weapons (not to mention power) was mentioned in the original piece. Adrian gives links to a Human Rights Watch report on Iran.


Adrian: "'Has Israel treated Palestinians unfairly?' I think you need to look at more than this years war to answer that".

We cannnot overlook this year's war.

The link you give to refutations of myths is informative, but on the other hand a pro-Palestinian could give an equally lengthy list of instances of unfair treatment within the State of Israel, and a longer list of complaints relating to the effects of the blockade of Gaza &c &c.

'Arabs in Israel have equal voting rights; in fact, it is one of the few places in the Middle East where Arab women may vote'

This is welcome, and promises well for the future, a good basis to build on.

The problem lies in absolutism. The pro-Palestinian line is that Israel is Zionist, Zionism is racism, therefore Israel must be done away with. The orthodox line is that God has promised the Land to the Jewish people form Dan even unto Beer-sheba. These absolutisms mean only one thing: continuation of the present misery ad infinitum, or all out war.

A more nuanced (new word, thanks Gordon) or relativistic line would be that there are indeed ideological and practical examples of racism in Israel's constitution and behaviour, and these must be amended. The Law of Return would be a good place to start.

This approach is well established in child psychology. You do not tell a child that it is a bad child for doing something; you tell it that the behavior is not helpful, and show the child a better way to respond to events.

We Greens can and must transcend the absolutist, pro-/anti-Israel divide.

First, we need always to distinguish between people and regime. We wish to see both communities flourish with enough water, food, homes, health and security. At the same time we can be as critical as need be for the failures of the Governments, of the Israeli Government, which has made a huge mistake in Operation Cast Lead, and of Hamas, with its absolutist ideology and provocative rocket attacks (though they reduced substantially in the ceasefire), and of the corrupt Fatah regime (have they cleaned up their act yet?).

Greens should seek to be even handed in its criticism of the regimes, and should be constructive in our analysis of the diplomatic efforts that are under way. As things stand, our policy statements lean towards condemnations of Israel.

Most importantly, though, we should open a new front at the level of the community. This is why we should adopt the Water Project, and put it forward as something that the EU should support with significant resources. This will empower the communities, benefiting them directly in economic and physical terms, because a new water regime means more food and more prosperity.

I hope that Adrian will get Reading Green Party to look at and adopt the Water Project. We need to get beyond the pro/anti debate and get behind the pro-peace and prosperity agenda.

Is Israel racist? Yes, but there is a peaceful solution.

Anglophone and European delegates walk out on the Mahmoud Ahmedinajad's speech at the UN's "Durban Review" conference on racism in Geneva.

The question is, "Is Israel a racist state?"

I am going to be very careful here, because this question is enormously charged emotionally and politically, and I have no desire to enter a quagmire of political accusation and counter accusation.
So I am going to go to the dictionaries.

First, what is racism?

Merriam-Webster:
1 a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race
2 racial prejudice or discrimination

Cambridge dictionaries online:
the belief that people's qualities are influenced by their race and that the members of other races are not as good as the members of your own, or the resulting unfair treatment of members of other races:

Cambridge dictionary of American English:
a person who believes that some races are better than others, or who acts unfairly to someone because of their race

So that is pretty clear: racism is a belief in superiority of one race over another, together with the resulting inequitable treatment of another race.

Has Israel treated Palestinians unfairly? All the evidence certainly points in that direction. (The Israelis would say that much of their oppressive behaviour (e.g. Gaza 2009) is because of Palestinian provocation. OK, but the fact is that the kill ratio is more than 10 Palestinians dead for every Israeli dead).

Does the Israeli regime believe that it is racially superior? They would deny it, and a long and confusing debate would follow, because what someone believes is not as clear as what they do.

So inequitable treatment is a more useful indicator than belief. The evidence of ethnic cleansing, bulldozing of homes, appropriation of ground water, destruction of farmland, hindering of farming, blockade of Gaza and the rest, indicates clearly that Israel is acting unfairly. (Though Israel will always quote provocation as the cause, and Palestinians will always quote invasion as the cause of their provocation).

So it is certain that Israel is behaving unfairly, oppressively even, to the Palestinians. Is this racist oppression, or just plain oppression?

To cut through the confusion about belief we can ask the question whether Zionism is racism?

So, what is Zionism?

Interestingly, zionism is not found in the Cambridge Dictionary of American English.

Cambridge Advanced Learner's dictionary:
a political movement which had as its original aim the creation of a country for Jewish people, and which now works to help the development of Israel.

MerriamWebster:
an international movement originally for the establishment of a Jewish national or religious community in Palestine and later for the support of modern Israel.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language:
A Jewish movement that arose in the late 19th century in response to growing anti-Semitism and sought to re-establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Modern Zionism is concerned with the support and development of the state of Israel.

So Zionism is for establishing and supporting a Jewish state.

Next question: are Jews a race?

Compact Oxford English dictionary:
a member of the people whose traditional religion is Judaism and who trace their origins to the ancient Hebrew people of Israel.

MerriamWebster:
2: a member of a nation existing in Palestine from the sixth century b.c. to the first century a.d.
3: a person belonging to a continuation through descent or conversion of the ancient Jewish people
4: one whose religion is Judaism

Cambridge Advance Learner's Dictionary:
a member of a race of people whose traditional religion is Judaism

Webster's New World College Dictionary:
1. a person descended, or regarded as descended, from the ancient Hebrews of Biblical times
2. a person whose religion is Judaism

And just to be sure, what is a race?

Compact OED:
1 each of the major divisions of humankind, having distinct physical characteristics.
2 racial origin or distinction: rights based on race.
3 a group of people sharing the same culture, language, etc.; an ethnic group.
4 a group of people or things with a common feature.

— USAGE Some people now feel that the word race should be avoided, because of its associations with the now discredited theories of 19th-century anthropologists and physiologists about supposed racial superiority. Terms such as people, community, or ethnic group are less emotionally charged.

Cambridge dictionaries online:
a group, especially of people, with particular similar physical characteristics, who are considered as belonging to the same type, or the fact of belonging to such a group:

So we can conclude that Jews are (probably) a race, Zionism is a movement to establish and support a state for the Jewish race, and Israelis have been behaving in an unfair way to those not of their race.

The central item of policy to support this conclusion is embodied in the Law of Return enacted in the Israeli Parliament in 1950, that gives Jews, those of Jewish ancestry, and their spouses the right to migrate to and settle in Israel and gain citizenship.

In defence of the law of return, Israelis argue that other countries exercise a right of return for their citizens. That would be citizens, not members of their race.

In conclusion, it does seem that Ahmedinajad, although in many ways (the supposed benefits of nuclear weapons and Holocaust denial) a deluded person, has a strong logical case about Israel's racism. There is an inherent theoretical racist component in Zionism, and, more importantly, Israel has been behaving unfairly to the Palestinians in a way that is consistent with a racist ideology.

What conclusions can we draw from this? There are two main options, the absolutist, and the realist.

Absolutists argue that Israel is a racist state, and is therefore illegitimate, and should go the way of apartheid South Africa. Israel should be crippled by divestment and sanctions until it folds, and is merged into a single state with power sharing with Palestinians.

However, from the Israeli point of view, that is an existential threat, and the Holocaust has sensitised them against existential threats. Israel's absolutists therefore stand opposed to pro-Palestinian absolutists, an immovable object faced with an irresistible force. Restult: either stalemate or all - out war.

Indeed, the act of abolishing Israel could also be construed as racist.

The realist, or Green, view is that the mess posed by these absolutisms can be avoided by addressing the immediate needs of the people in the Land, while politicians do what they do best: argue and call each other names. Insofar as they will achieve anything, they should start on the Law of Return, removing the racist element of the Israeli constitution.

The real problem is that the Land is semi arid.
The population is growing, partly through immigration.
It is a vital necessity to improve the productivity of the Land to meet the needs of the polulation.
To do this we need water.
To improve the water, we need to harvest every drop that falls onto any roof, we need to conserve water, and we need to plant forests.
We also need lots of solar energy.

Europe and the US need to give resources to enable both communities to cooperate in enabling these things to take place. In doing so, we will be diverting energy and attention from resentment to cooperation, from weapons to hoes, from warfare to welfare.

We have European elections on June 4th. Not that there is anything in the papers about it, because euro-elections are seen as desperately unsexy by the media. Controversy over Ahmediajad is more the style. But today's headline controversy gives us an opportunity to show how we can get to peace through addressing ecological realities.

I hope that the Green Party will soon be putting this forward as its contribution to the otherwise intractable problem Israel and Palestine.

Remember you read (of the proposal that the Greens should adopt this line) it here first.

The Water Project: Peace in Israel/Palestine through cooperation on sustainability

Peace in the Middle East through cooperation on water infrastructure projects


The question of how to create a true, just and sustainable peace in Israel and Palestine (I/P) is now firmly at the top of the international agenda. There is a political agenda to be pursued by diplomats, on which Greens have much to say, but there is also a uniquely ecological issue that we can add. This paper proposes that the approach taken by Friends of the Earth Middle East should be adopted and expanded, and placed on the table of peace negotiations.

It is right and necessary for European Greens to take a constructive interest in I/P matters, since everything on the surface of the Earth is interconnected, and the deep division of opinion there is reflected in tension within our own society. Also, if the conflict escalates to a major war, we will be affected, especially if the war progresses to the use of nuclear weapons.

The proposal is that GPEW, the European Green Party and the US Green Party draw together a coalition of green NGOs in I/P with the aim of persuading funding organisations, primarily the EU and the USA, to put significant amounts of money into a cross-community Water Management Project in I/P.

There are two established principles in conflict resolution: first, find common ground that is of benefit to both parties, and second, introduce a displacement activity to divert attention away from conflict to co-operation, from destruction to construction.

The common ground for both communities is, literally, their common ground: they need to win a sustainable living out of an arid land. The population in the Land has increased since 1946, and this means that the productivity of the land must be increased to meet the needs of the people there. Water is needed to increase agricultural productivity, and at present water is in short supply throughout the Middle East. This scarcity is itself a potential cause for conflict, but intelligent action can transform water into a cause of resolution of conflict.

We are aiming for a massive programme of investment and employment in water conservation, water harvesting, and afforestation. This will require significant financial investment, and the EU is one potential source for such, although other agencies could be tapped also. We know that peace in Northern Ireland came about after massive infrastructure investment in that country.

The Water Project programme has three arms: water conservation, water harvesting and afforestation.


Water Conservation

1 Recycling of grey water.
We can be sure this is happening already, but it needs to be universal, and in towns some technology – such as filters – may be needed.

2 Composting toilets should be used instead of water-mediated sewerage systems.
There are many working models for this approach which we can tap into. The Water Project can trial the many technologies on offer, and the most successful models can be rolled out across the whole ME. Composting toilets replace the conventional water- and energy-intensive system with a natural system which actually enhances the fertility and structure of the soil.

3 In places where boreholes are used, attention should be paid to the levels of water, and if these levels are falling, conservation measures in the locality should be intensified.


Water Harvesting

Every roof should be a water collecting point, and every building should have a water holding cistern appropriate to the size of the roof. This will create many thousands of jobs in both communities, work that requires little training. It will require a large amount of guttering and cisterns, probably made of plastic, preferably recycled. Some of this may come from established and new factories in both communities, some may come from the EU.

This activity will stimulate worthwhile production and good jobs in line with Keynesian policies as a response to the global recession, and will therefore help to relieve the poverty that is endemic in Gaza.


Afforestation

Forests act as aerial aquifers, conducting water inland from the sea in the evapotranspiration cycle. Wangari Maathai of the Green Belt Movement finds that an area of trees in Kenya of 15 square kilometres will create its own rain cloud.
Please see the Desert Rose Project for an outline proposal for (re)creating coastal forests, using water from solar desalination plants, and gradually working inland. Forests moderate the local (and, eventually, global) climate, and provide many other goods and services that are advantageous to the local community.

There are already projects of this nature taking place in Israel. The aim should be to expand them with new investment.

By putting in place these – and other – measures, there will be plenty of work for all people in both communities, with a resulting increase in general prosperity, and a decrease in available time and energy spent in ruminating on injustices and planning of revenge for same.

There is a wealth of experience in these matters within Friends of the Earth Middle East, who have been working on this for many years. They have in-depth knowledge of these matters

The present proposal is that the Green Party here should adopt this proposal and put it to the European Green Party, to the Green Group in the European Parliament, and to the United States’ Green Party. Working in cooperation with FoEME, the Israel Green Party, the Israel Green Movement (when they can be contacted) and as many of the Palestinian Green NGOs as we can contact, we will press for funding to be made available for a serious and expanding approach to water management which will continue until no more can be done to improve the situation.

In working toward this goal, we will be
· assisting the peace process at street level with constructive and economically worthwhile activity
· alleviating water shortages
· producing more productive agriculture
· providing a model that can be applied throughout the Middle East and in other arid and conflict-ridden regions.


This is a preliminary paper, seeking support from within the GPEW International Community, and from the GPEW leadership.

Background Information on Water in IP.

Gaza Ceasefire in doubt

Not very hopeful about the durability of the ceasefire. I bet Hamas continues to fire its rockets, giving Olmert an excuse to continue his pogrom in Gaza.

"You see? We declared a ceasefire, and the rockets continue. We regret the ongoing massacre of the innocents, but it is all Hamas' fault".

'Which side is really to blame?' is a dumb question. Philosophically, it is a category error. Militarism - the belief that violence is a solution to political and economic problems - is to blame.

The solution is not to apportion blame, but to have a permanent ceasefire, stop the blockade, and demilitarise the area by taking the toys away from the boys. To stop the rockets, Gaza and the border crossings has to be patrolled by dogs trained to sniff out explosives, and the supply of arms to Israel from the USA and EU must also stop. In place of militarism, we need massive investment into water management throughout the Land.

Olmert - change your psychologist!

Mr Ehud Olmert
Prime Minister
Tel Aviv
Israel


Dear Mr Olmert,

I write to inform you that your psychological expert advisers have given you bad advice.

Newsnight has just done a piece on Gaza, reporting the opinion of community leaders and psephologists that Israel's action is radicalising Muslim opinion and boosting the risk of terrorism.

I have not seen any Israeli Government report on the psychological analysis of the effects of Cast Lead, but it is save to assume that you simply hope to crush the spirits of the Palestinian people to the point that they reject Hamas.

It is easy to crush human bodies: to break the human spirit takes more persistence, but it can be done, to some individuals. They withdraw, become inactive, self-neglecting, preoccupied with a re-run in their heads of videos of carnage. To that extent, you can crush a spirit.

What your strategists, so politically sophisticated but so psychologically naive, have left out of the picture is the effect on others, maybe more removed from the Ground Zero events: the young men (and women) who have heard friends, cousins, siblings, parents or children being blown to shreds, or groaning in death agonies; or young men who have heard of such things, young Londoners perhaps who have relatives in Gaza whose phones have done dead.

Mr Olmert, the spirit of these young men is not crushed by your attacks. It is inflamed. Your bombs and shells, bursting in filthy black flowers over Gaza, at the same time also plant a filthy black flower of hatred in people everywhere: not just in Palestinian hearts, but also Arab, also Muslims and also in people all over God's earth The echoes of hatred roll on and on, becoming weaker over time, but only too ready to explode out again. There is a reflexivity in the human psyche that your advisers have overlooked. The one that is killed will always kill again.

For God's sake, Ehud, stop! Enough. This is enough violence. It is not proportionate.

You've made your point. The Qassam attacks are intolerable. They must stop. But so also must the blockade, and the Wall, and the ethnic cleansing.

We know full well that the situation in the Middle East is complex to the point of seeming to be insoluble; but within this complexity, there is one very simple truth, which, if held in the mind, can lead us all at last to beside the still waters:

Violence is the problem, not the solution.

The antidote to hatred is not violence but wisdom - the ability to see from the mountain top, not the cave.

I suggest you call your psychological advisers out of their cave, and replace them with some advisers who are versed in social systems.

Thank you for reading this far.


Dr Richard Lawson MB BS MRCPsych
Somerset
UK

You can send letters to him online.

Israel/Palestine: militarism is the problem not the solution

Hamas is a fundamentalist hyper-Islamic cult, with absolutist beliefs based on an extreme literal interpretation of the Hadith. Its charter calls for a final solution to Israel, and among other things, perpetuates the old myth of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The Government of Israel contains similar religious ideologues whose beliefs are based on absolutist interpretations of ancient scriptures.

Caught between these two groups of fundamentalists, whose ideologies can only lead to murder, are millions of ordinary human beings who wish for nothing but to live in peace and win a sustainable living from a land that is desperately short of water. This is the reality that we as greens should be addressing. It is an achievable goal, and in realising it, the Middle East could create a model of development that could be a standard for the rest of the world to follow.

To attain that goal, it is first necessary to understand that we are dealing here with an irrational system of self-sustaining hatred and violence based on militarism. We have to come to the understanding that militarism is the problem, not the solution. The Israeli Defence Force is currently demonstrating the complete unacceptability of militarism.

Both sides blame the other for the violence. Israel absolves its soldiers of all blame for civilian deaths, blaming the rocket attacks for Israel's action. Hamas justifies its rocket attacks for the oppression, ethnic cleansing and collective punishment that Israel is carrying out on its people. "If your land had been occupied, would you not fight?" asks Hamas. "If you had someone firing rockets at you, would you not fight?" asks the Israel Government. This is nothing but a self-sustaining cycle of destruction.

The Israeli response is clearly disproportionate, and is rightly attracting worldwide condemnation, with the exception of the Bush administration. The Qassam rocket attacks are tragedies for the families affected, but are a strategic pinpricks. In response to these pinpricks, the Israeli government has responded with a knife attack.

It is utterly pointless for us or anyone to try to come to a conclusion about which side is right and which side is wrong. What is wrong is the belief that military violence is any kind of a solution. We are dealing with an irrational, dysfunctional system of self perpetuating, mutual hatred and violence that at the moment is in danger of leading to a war that could quite possibly go nuclear.

The alternative to ever-escalating violence is a ceasefire (which seems imminent), the lifting of Israel's blockade on Gaza, and systems put in place to stop imports of arms into the region. America's support for the Israeli military machine must stop, and imports of arms into Gaza for Hamas must likewise be stopped. This is an opportunity for us to put forward the policy we passed at our last Conference, using dogs to identify transfers and caches of ammunition. This is a practical and tested solution which is in routine use: it just needs an effort to train the dogs, and an agreement on who runs and protects the sniffer dog patrols.

Once the instruments of violence are out of the way, the next step is for a massive economic effort to transform water use in the whole region, focusing on water conservation, rainwater harvesting, and afforestation, beginning at the coast. Afforestation will modify the local climate, and bring rainwater inland. The money for this should come from the EU and other players, and as far as possible, people from both communities should be enabled to cooperate in these projects.

Tony Blair Peace Envoy? Repent! Repent!!

Tony Blair is to be at talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders.
We must all hope most fervently that the talks are productive, but it is a pity that Tony Blair is the speaker for the Quartet - UN, US, Russia and EU.

Basically his message has to be that firing rockets at other people is not a good idea; it helps neither side, on the contrary it harms everyone. Warfare is destructive, not constructive. It brings about chaos, turning perfectly good buildings into rubble, and reasonably good human beings into little blobs of jelly, it creates grief, anger and hatred that complete a vicious cycle of destruction when the other side takes revenge.

Blair can bring all his verbal skills, both political and also his training as a barrister to bear on the assembled company. He can make the best speech of his life against the folly of war. He could make the best speech anyone has ever made in the whole of human history about the folly of war. But in the end, both sides can just look him in the eye and say:

"Oh yeah? And what about Iraq?"

And that is the sad truth. Maybe that is the Cunning Plan: to get both sides thinking the same thought.

Maybe his mentor Peter Thompson should talk to him about the great Christian doctrine of repentance. If Tony Blair actually stood up and said

"Look, I have done war. Got the T-shirt. It doesn't work. The invasion of Iraq was a ghastly error. We did succeed in deposing Saddam Hussein, but at a cost that is too great for humanity to bear. I'm sorry. We goofed. I should not have supported GWB. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa".

Then, possibly, he might get through to his target audience.

Or maybe still not. It might be simpler to get someone else to be the Quartet's Peace Envoy.

Sorry Tone. Nothing personal. Just political realism.

Violence in Gaza

The Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has said that air strikes in Gaza which have killed at least 155 people were justified by the "right of Israel to defend herself".

There is a difference between defence and revenge. This was not defence, it was revenge. And revenge just brings more revenge.

There is no defence that I know of against the small rocket attacks launched by Hamas, but luckily they are unguided, and although they do unfortunately kill and maim a few Israelis, strategically they are an irritant rather than a threat. Unfortunately the effect of the irritant is to provoke massive Israeli counter attacks, which hurt Palestinian civilians more than the fighters.

In short, the Hamas rockets cause more harm to Gaza than they do in Israel. When I ask Palestinian sympathisers why they keep up the provocation, the answer is
"The Israelis have robbed us of our country. What would you do if you had been robbed? Lie there quietly, or fight back?"

The image that I have is of Palestine on the ground, robbed and injured. Standing over him is an Israeli with a club. The Palestinian keeps kicking the Israeli on the shin, and each time he does it, he gets another massive beating from the club.

Both parties are locked into a vicious circle of revenge. It is possible to break out of this cycle.

In the end, violence is the problem, not the solution.

Melanie Phillips is not pleased with That Result

As an antidote to the Obamaphoria sweeping the world, I had a look at Melanie Phillips: November 5th: "Millions of Americans ... find themselves today abandoned, horrified, deeply apprehensive for the future of their country and the free world. No longer the land of the free and the home of the brave; they must now look elsewhere". (Where's that, Melanie? Planet Phillips?)

And then I find this from last Saturday: "Over the past seven years, the media has created the Big Lie that America is the biggest rogue state in the world, with Israel its proxy. Now it is ensuring that a man who will act on that very premise to crush America and destroy Israel will be placed in the White House to do so. It is not just that the west’s Big Media can no longer be trusted. It has become the most important weapon in the arsenal of the enemies of the free world."

Set this against a random clipping from Schnews: "a special report from Palestine gives reports a situation rarely brought to light in western media - that it's the Palestinian Authority who are doing Israel's job of crushing dissent..."

The gap between the perceptions of Right and Left (or in this case, Melanie Phillips and anarchists) on everything, but specifically here on Israel/Palestine, is a bit of a worry. I suppose 'twas ever thus, but it brings to mind the task we have in psychiatry, of dealing with delusional beliefs. Straightforward contradiction is counterproductive. It is better to try to find ways of acting that will make the situation better.

The basic problem is in the language of crush. While the Palestinians want to "crush" the Israelis, and the Israelis want to "crush" the Palestinians, misery will continue.

Absolutist talk of "crushing" is the problem, not the solution.

The real problem in the Middle East is not a question of which party gets "crushed", but how to find a way for people to live in what is not so much a Promised land as a distinctly Unpromising land. Chiefly because of its arid nature. Every skuleboy kno that the Jordan has been reduced to a polluted trickle.

The real task therefore for both sides is to embark on a massive project to secure their water supplies. Every drop of rain falling from a roof must be harvested and stored. There is a market opportunity here for recyled plastic guttering and water tanks.
The WC must give way to the composting toilet or earth closet.
And the whole area must be reforested, since : (go forests act as aerial aquifers.

This economic project, an instance of the Green New Deal which is creeping into common discussion, will have the effect of diverting energy away from conflict towards co-operation. At the same time, political negotiations must continue, and statesmen on both sides will start to make confidence building measures.

In short, the work of real politicians is to identify the positive, healing actions that must be done, and not to debate with people who are beyond the reach of reason.

Israel cuts power to Gaza

On openDemocracy

Abdulksaida is a Palestinian, writing here http://www.opendemocracy.net/forum/2007/10/28/fragile_peace

I understand her to be saying that Palestinians get called terrorists by western media, but they are only defending their right to live in the land that is now occupied by Israel.

Whatever our journalists may say, he definition of terrorism is the act of killing and injuring civilians, non-combatant men, women and children, for a political aim. Under this definition, it is clear that Israel, Hamas, and the UK and US are ALL guilty of terrorism. Israel UK and US are state terrorists, and Hamas are just ordinary terrorists; but in the end they all kill civilians to get their political aims.

Israel's current threat to cut electricity supply to Gaza is economic violence, it will hurt civilians, maybe kill some. It does not promote peace, build trust, or lead to any kind of a solution.
Hamas' (and other violent jihadis') rockets will hurt civilians, maybe kill some. They do not promote peace, build trust, or lead to any kind of a solution.

Both actions only serve to strengthen the passion of the extremists on the opposite sides. Extremists only see the wrongdoing of the other side, they cannot see that they are in a system, that is, that their actions create reactions, and that the end result of these actions and reactions is not good.

The OneVoice movement http://www.onevoicemovement.org/ is where people of both sides have a non-violent approach.

I have heard innuendo against oneVoice, but I have seen no evidence to suggest they are not on the side of sanity.